Drawing on history, literature, philosophy and his own experience of unrequited passion, 'Love' is a thinly disguised picture of the author's innermost feelings. Stendhal's obsession with Mathilde Viscontini Dembowski is at the heart of this book. For her part, she neither returned his love nor understood him. In an attempt to explain his feelings to her--and to exorcize his love--he dissects his passion. Bringing together the conflicting sides of his nature, the deeply emotional and the coolly analytical, Stendhal constructed a work that is both acutely personal and universally applicable.