Culture vs. Civilization in Stendhal's "voyages en France": North Atlantic maltreatment and the Union for the Mediterranean

While on the prolonged release from duty that he is granted between 1836 - 1839, Stendhal, consul in Italy - the country of his heart - since 1830, rediscovers in his fatherland, France, a country utterly changed by the swerve in growth that has occurred since the July Monarchy. This is the real shock that his "journeys in France" testify to, when the journey of recognition is accompanied by the self- examination in which what he sees sends Stendhal back to the blind spot of his vision, of France and of the world. Upon revisiting France, Stendhal also revisits his axiological system, which brings him, between life study and fictional mediation, to a semantic separation between civilization and culture, which follows quite closely the separation of waters between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic.