Crystallization (love) - Story Behind Term

Story Behind Term

Along one particular trip into the 500-ft deep Salzburg mines, Stendhal and Madame Gherardi were introduced to an intelligent Bavarian officer who thereafter joined their company. Soon enough, the officer began to become quite taken by Madame Gherardi. The officer, according to Stendhal, could be seen to be visually "falling in love" with her. What struck Stendhal the most, as an undertone of madness grew moment by moment in the discourse of the officer, was how the officer saw perfections in this woman which were more or less invisible to Stendhal’s eyes. For example, he began to praise Madame Gherardi’s hand, which had been curiously marked by smallpox in her childhood and had remained very pocked and rather brown.

Stendhal reasoned, "How shall I explain what I see?" He wondered, "Where shall I find a comparison to illustrate my thought?" Just at that moment Madame Gherardi was toying with a pretty branch covered with salt crystals which the miners had given her. The sun was shining (it was the third of August) and the little salt prisms glittered like the finest diamonds in a brightly lit ballroom. From this observation Stendhal formulated his concept of mental "crystallization" and thus set forth to explain it to Madame Gherardi, who was curiously unaware of the officer's enhanced infatuation for her.

He told her, "The effect produced on this young man by the nobility of your Italian features and those eyes of which he has never seen the like is precisely similar to the effect of crystallization upon that little branch of hornbeam you hold in your hand and which you think so pretty. Stripped of its leaves by the winter it was certainly anything but dazzling until the crystallization of the salt covered its black twigs with such a multitude of shining diamonds that only here and there can one still see the twigs as they really are." That is, "This branch is a faithful representation of la Ghita (Madame Gherardi) as viewed by the imagination of this young officer."

Thus, according to Stendhal, the moment one begins to take interest in a person, one no longer sees him or her as they really are, but as it suits one to see them. According to this metaphor, one sees flattering illusions created by a nascent interest; illusions analogous to pretty diamonds hiding a leafless branch of hornbeam, perceived only by the eyes of the one falling in love.