Abstract: For Stendhal, the modern world is an object of adherence and of refusal: at the centre of the problem, already outlined in Stendhal et l'Amérique I, there is utilitarian thinking, axis of modernity, which Stendhal adopts because it dismisses the old world of metaphysics.
Keyword: Littérature du xixe siècle, romantisme, pensée romantique, valeurs romantiques, critique de la modernité, nihilisme moderne, problème de la civilisation, relations de l'Amérique et de l'Europe
