Honore de Balzac

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Honoré de Balzac

Template:French literature (small) Honoré de Balzac (May 20, 1799 – August 18, 1850) was a French novelist. Along with Flaubert, he is generally regarded as a founding father of realism in European fiction. His large output of novels and stories, collectively entitled La Comédie humaine, is a broad panorama of French society in the period of the Restoration (1815-1830) and the July Monarchy (1830-1848).

Life

He was born at Tours, Indre-et-Loire, France in the rue de l'Armée Italienne, into a well-to-do bourgeois family, his father having been a regional administrator during the Revolutionary period. He was educated at the somewhat spartan college of the Oratorians at Vendôme, and then in Paris (from 1816) where he matriculated in jurisprudence, and worked as clerk to an advocate. He soon drifted towards journalism and contributed to political and artistic reviews set up by a new generation of intellectuals who viewed the cultural debris of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Empire, and the complacency of the restored monarchy with a mixture of cynicism, idealism and regret. By 1830 political discontent had swelled enough to overturn the Bourbon monarchy for good. The new regime of the 'bourgeois monarch' Louis Philippe, which lasted until nearly the end of Balzac's life, is the context of most of his novels.

The journals to which he contributed were increasingly looking for short fiction, which Balzac was able to provide. A collection Scènes de la vie privée (Scenes from Private Life) came out in 1829, and was well received: these were tales told with a journalistic eye which looked into the fabric of modern life and did not shun social and political realities. Balzac had found a distinctive voice.

He had already turned out potboiler historical novels in the manner of Walter Scott and Anne Radcliffe, on commission from publishers, but only under pseudonyms. With Le dernier Chouan (1829) he entered the mainstream as an author of full-length fiction.

This sober tale of provincial France in Revolutionary times was soon overshadowed by the success in 1831 of La peau de chagrin (The Goat-skin), a fable-like tale delineating the excesses and vanities of contemporary life. With public acclaim and the assurance of publication, Balzac's subsequent novels began to shape themselves into a broad canvas depicting the turbulent unfolding of destinies amidst the visible finery and squalor of Paris, and the dramas hidden under the surface of respectability in the quieter world of provincial family life.

In Le père Goriot (Old Father Goriot, 1835), his next big success, he transposed the story of King Lear to 1820s Paris to show that the only "legitimacy" left in the modern world was the law of influence and connections. His novels are unified by a vision of a world in which the social and political hierarchies of the Ancien Régime had been replaced by a pseudo-aristocracy of favouritism, patronage and commercial fortunes, and where a "new priesthood" of financiers had filled the gap left by the collapse of organised religion. "There is nothing left for literature but mockery in a world that has collapsed" he remarked in the preface to La peau de chagrin, but the cynicism grew less as his oeuvre progressed and he revealed great sympathy for those whom society pushes to one side when the old certainties have gone and everything is up for grabs.

Along with shorter pieces and novellas there followed notably Les Illusions Perdues (Lost Illusions, 1843), Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes (The Harlot High and Low, 1847), Le cousin Pons (1847) and La Cousine Bette (1848). Of novels in provincial settings Le curé de Tours (The Vicar of Tours, 1832), Eugénie Grandet (1833), Ursule Mirouet (1842) and Modeste Mignon (1844) are highly regarded.

Many of his novels were initially serialised, like those of Dickens, but in Balzac's case there was no telling how long they would end up. Illusions perdues extends to a thousand pages after starting inauspiciously in a small-town print shop, whereas La fille aux yeux d'Or (Tiger-eyes, 1835) opens grandly with a panorama of Paris but ties itself up as a closely-plotted novella of only fifty.

Balzac's work habits were legendary — he wrote for up to 15 hours a day, fuelled by innumerable cups of black coffee, and without relinquishing the social life which was the source of his observation and research. (Many of his stories start with fragments of the plot overheard at social gatherings, before uncovering the real story behind the gossip.) He revised obsessively, sending back printer's proofs almost obscured by changes and additions to be reset. Even a sturdy physique like his took the toll of his ever expanding plans for new works and new editions of old ones. There was unevenness in this prodigious output, but some works which are really only work-in-progress such as Les employés (The Government Clerks, 1841), are of real interest.

Curiously, he continued to worry about money and status even after he was rich and respected, and believed he could branch out into politics or into the theatre without letting up on his novels. His letters and memoranda reveal that ambition was not only ingrained in his character, but acted on him like a drug — every success leading him on to enlarge his plans still further — and ahead of time, around 1847, his strength began to fail. A polarity can be found in his cast of characters between the profligates who expend their life-force and the misers who live long but become dried-up and withdrawn. His contemporary Victor Hugo exiled himself to Guernsey in disgust at French politics, but lived on to write poems about being a grandfather decades after Balzac's death. Balzac himself could not, by temperament, draw back or curtail his vision.

Bust of Balzac by Auguste Rodin, in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

In 1849, as his health was failing, Balzac travelled to Poland to visit Eveline Hanska, a wealthy Polish lady, with whom he had corresponded for more than 15 years. They married in 1850, and three months later, Balzac died.

He lies buried in the cemetery of Père Lachaise, overlooking Paris, and is commemorated by a monumental statue commissioned from Auguste Rodin, standing near the intersection of Boulevard Raspail and Boulevard Montparnasse. "Henceforth" said Victor Hugo at his funeral "men's eyes will be turned towards the faces not of those who are the rulers but of those who are the thinkers."

Works

La Comédie humaine consists of 95 finished works (stories, novels or analytical essays) and 48 unfinished works (or which exist only as titles). It does not include Balzac's 5 theatrical plays or his collection of humorous tales, the Contes drolatiques (1832-37).

File:HBalzac.jpg

Honoré de Balzac

Template:French literature (small) La Comédie humaine is the title of Honoré de Balzac's (1799 – 1850) multi-volume collection of interlinked novels and stories depicting French society in the period of the Restoration and the July Monarchy 1815-1848.

Overview

The title of the series is a reference to Dante's "Divine Comedy." While Balzac sought the comprehensive scope of Dante, his title indicates the worldly, human concerns of a realist novelist. The stories are placed in a variety of settings, with characters reappearing in multiple stories.

Balzac's works have fallen into the public domain, and a number of them are available online from Project Gutenberg.

Evolution of the Project

The "Comédie humaine" was the result of a slow evolution. The first of Balzac's works were written without any global plan ("Les Chouans" is a historical novel; "La physiologie du mariage" is an analytical study of marriage), but by 1830, Balzac began to group his first novels ("Sarrasine", "Gobseck") into a series intitled "Scènes de la vie privée" ("Scenes from Private Life").

In 1833, with the publication of "Eugénie Grandet", Balzac envisioned a second series entitled "Scènes de la vie de province" (Scenes from Provincial Life). Most likely in this same year Balzac came upon the idea of having characters reappear from novel to novel, and the first novel to use this technique was "le Père Goriot" (1834-5).

In a letter written to Madame Hanska in 1834, Balzac decided to reorganize his works in three larger groups, allowing him (1) to integrate his ""La physiologie du mariage" into the ensemble and (2) to separate his most fantastic or metaphysical stories — like "La Peau de chagrin" (1831) and "Louis Lambert" (1832) — into their own "philosophical" section. The three sections were:

• Etudes de Moeurs au XIXe siècle (Studies of Manners in the 19th Century) - including the various "Scène de la vie..."
• Etudes philosophiques
• Etudes analytiques - including the "Physiology du mariage"

In this letter, Balzac went on to say that the "Etudes de Moeurs" would study the effects of society and touch on all genders, social classes, ages and professions of people. Meanwhile, the "Etudes philosophiques" would study the causes of these effects. Finally, the third "analytical" section would study the principles behind these phenomena. Balzac also explained that while the characters in the first section would be "individualités typisées" ("individuals made into types"), the characters of the "Etudes philosophiques" would be "types individualisés" (types made into individuals").

By 1836, the "Etudes de Moeurs" was already divided into six parts:

• "Scènes de la vie privée"
• "Scènes de la vie de province"
• "Scènes de la vie parisienne"
• "Scènes de la vie politique
• "Scènes de la vie militaire"
• "Scènes de la vie de campagne"

In 1839, in a letter to his publisher, Balzac mentioned for the first time the expression "Comédie humaine", and this title is in the contract he signed in 1841. The publication of the "Comédie humaine" in 1842 was preceded by an important preface or "avant-propos" describing his major priciples and the work's overall structure (see below). For this edition, novels which had appeared in serial form were stricken of their chapter titles.

Balzac's intended collection was never finished. In 1845, Balzac wrote a complete catalogue of the ensemble which includes works he started or envisioned but never finished. In some cases, Balzac moved a work around between different sections as his overall plan developed; the catalogue given below represents that last version of that process.

The "Avant-propos"

In 1842, Balzac wrote a preface (an "Avant-propos") to the whole ensemble in which he explained his method and the collection's structure. This preface consists of the following:

Motivated by the work of biologists Buffon, Cuvier and most importantly Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Balzac explains that he seeks to understand "social species" in the way a biologist would analyse "zoological species", and to accomplish this he intends to describe the interrealations of men, women and things. The importance of the woman is underlined by Balzac's contention that, while a biologist may gloss over the differences between a male and female lion, "in Society the woman is not simply the female of the man".

Balzac then gives an extensive list of writers and works that influenced him, including Walter Scott, François Rabelais and Miguel de Cervantes.

He then describes his writerly role as a "secretary" who is transcribing society's "history" ; moreover, he posits that he is interested in something that no previous historian has attempted: a history of "moeurs" (customs, manners and morals). He also notes his desire to go behind the surface of events, to show the reasons and causes for social phenomena. Balzac then professes his belief in two profound truths — Religion and Monarchy — and his concern for understanding the individual in the context of his Family.

In the last half of his preface, Balzac explains the "Comédie humaine"'s different parts (which he compares to "frames" and "galeries"), and which are more or less the final form of the collection (see below).

Sources of the "Comédie humaine"

Because of its volume and complexity, the "Comédie humaine" touches on the major literary genres in fashion in the first half of the 19th century.

Balzac and the historical novel

The historical novel was a European phenomenon in the first half of the 19th century — largely through the works of Walter Scott, James Fenimore Cooper and, in France, Alexandre Dumas and Victor Hugo. Balzac's first novel "Les Chouans" was inspired by this vogue and tells of the rural inhabitants of Brittany during the revolution with Cooper-like descriptions of their dress and manners.

Although the bulk of the "Comédie humaine" takes place during the Restoration and the July Monarchy, there are several novels which take place during the French Revolution and others which take place in the Middle Ages or the Renaissance, including "About Catherine de Medici" and "The Elixir of Long Life".

Balzac and the popular novel

Balzac's later works are decidedly influenced by the popular "roman feuilleton" (especially in the works of Eugène Sue which concentrate on depicting the secret worlds of crime and vice that hide below the surface of French society) and by the melodrama.

Balzac and the fantastic

Many of Balzac's shorter works have elements taken from the popular "roman noir" or gothic novel, but often the fantastic elements are used for very different purposes in Balzac's work.

His use of the magical ass' skin in "La peau de chagrin" for example becomes a metaphor for diminished male potency and a key symbol of Balzac's conception of energy and will in the modern world.

In a similar way, Balzac undermines the character of Melmoth the Wanderer in his "Melmoth Reconciled": Balzac takes a character from a fantastic novel (by Charles Robert Maturin) who has sold his soul for power and long life and has him sell his own power to another man in Paris... this man then sells this gift in turn and very quickly the infernal power is traded from person to person in the Parisian stock exchange until it loses any of its original power.

Themes of the "Comédie humaine"

The following are some of the major themes that reoccur throughout the various volumes of the "Comédie humaine":

France after the Revolution

Balzac frequently bemoans the loss of a pre-Revolutionary society of honor which has now become — especially after the fall of Charles X of France and the arrival of the July Monarchy — a society dominated by money.

Money and Power

"At the origin of every fortune lies a crime" : this precept from the "Red Inn" reoccurs constantly in the "Comédie humaine", both as a biographical truth (Taillefer's murderous fortune, Goriot's deals with the Revolutionary army), and as a sign of French collective guilt at the horrors of the Revolution (and most notably by the death of the Louis XVI of France).

Social Success

Two young men dominate the "Comédie humaine": Lucien de Rubempré and Eugène de Rastignac. Both are poor but noble youths from the provinces, both attempt to achieve greatness in society through the intercession of women and both come into contact with Vautrin, but only Rastignac succeeds while Lucien de Rubempré ends his life by his own hand in a jail in Paris.

Structure of "La Comédie humaine"

Balzac's final plan (1845) of the Comédie Humaine is as follows (projected works not included):

Studies of Manners

Scenes From Private Life

• At the Sign of the Cat and Racket
• The Ball at Sceaux
• The Purse
• The Vendetta
• Madame Firmiani
• A Second Home
• Domestic Peace
• The Imaginary Mistress
• Paz
• Study of a Woman
• Another Study of a Woman
• La Grand Breteche
• Albert Savarus
• Letters of Two Brides
• A Daughter of Eve
• A Woman of Thirty
• The Deserted Woman
• La Grenadiere
• The Message
• Gobseck
• A Marriage Contract
• A Start in Life
• Modeste Mignon
• Beatrix
• Honorine
• Colonel Chabert
• The Atheist's Mass
• The Commission in Lunacy
• Pierre Grassou

Scenes From Provincial Life

• Ursule Mirouet
• Eugénie Grandet
• The Celibates:
  • Pierrette
  • The Vicar of Tours
• A Bachelor's Establishment
• The Two Brothers
• The Black Sheep
• Parisians in the Country:
  • Gaudissart the Great, or The Illustrious Gaudissart
  • The Muse of the Department
• The Jealousies of a Country Town:
  • The Old Maid
  • The Collection of Antiquities
• The Lily of the Valley
• Lost Illusions:—I.
  • The Two Poets
  • A Distinguished Provincial at Paris, Part 1
• Lost Illusions:—II.
  • A Distinguished Provincial at Paris, Part 2
  • Eve and David

Scenes From Parisian Life

• Scenes from a Courtesan's Life:
  • Esther Happy
  • What Love Costs an Old Man
  • The End of Evil Ways
  • Vautrin's Last Avatar
• A Prince of Bohemia
• A Man of Business
• Gaudissart II.
• The Unwitting Actors or The Unwitting Comedians
• The Thirteen:
  • Ferragus
  • The Duchesse de Langeais
  • The Girl with the Golden Eyes
• Father Goriot (Le père Goriot)
• The Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau
• The Firm of Nucingen
• The Secrets of a Princess or The Secrets of the Princess Cadignan
• The Government Clerks
• Bureaucracy
• Sarrasine
• Facino Cane
• Poor Relations:—I.
  • Cousin Bette (La Cousine Bette)
• Poor Relations:—II.
  • Cousin Pons
• The Middle Classes or The Lesser Bourgeoise

Scenes From Political Life

• The Gondreville Mystery or An Historical Mystery
• An Episode Under the Terror
• The Seamy Side of History: or The Brotherhood of Consolation:
  • Madame de la Chanterie
  • Initiated or The Initiate
• Z. Marcas
• The Member for Arcis or The Deputy for Arcis

Scenes From Military Life

• The Chouans
• A Passion in the Desert

Scenes From Country Life

• The Country Doctor
• The Country Parson or The Village Rector
• The Peasantry or Sons of the Soil

Philosophical Studies

• The Magic Skin (La peau de chagrin)
• The Quest of the Absolute or The Alkahest
• Christ in Flanders
• Melmoth Reconciled
• The Unknown Masterpiece or The Hidden Masterpiece
• The Hated Son
• Gambara
• Massimilla Doni
• The Maranas or Juana
• Farewell
• The Conscript or The Recruit
• El Verdugo
• A Seaside Tragedy or A Drama on the Seashore
• The Red Inn
• The Elixir of Life
• Maitre Cornelius
• About Catherine de' Medici
  • The Calvinist Martyr
  • The Ruggieri's Secret
  • The Two Dreams
• Louis Lambert
• The Exiles
• Seraphita

Analytical Studies

• Physiology of Marriage
• Pathology of the Social Life

Characters

Recurring characters

• Daniel d'Arthez
• César Birotteau
• la marquise d'Espard
• Jean-Esther van Gobseck
• Jean-Joachim Goriot
• Roger de Granville
• Louis Lambert
• la duchesse de Langeais
• Henri de Marsay
• la comtesse de Mortsauf
• Frédérick de Nucingen
• la baronne de Nucingen née Goriot
• Eugène de Rastignac
• la comtesse de Restaud
• Lucien Chardon de Rubempré (the use of "de Rubempré" is contested)
• Ferdinand du Tillet
• Maxime de Trailles
• Félix-Amédée de Vandenesse
• Esther Gobseck
• Jacques Colin a/k/a Carlos Herrera a/k/a Vautrin

Characters in a single volume

• Raphaël de Valentin
• le baron Hulot
• Balthazar Claës
• Grandet
• le cousin Pons

External links

• Works by Honoré de Balzac. Project Gutenberg
• Comprehensive works with dates

fr:Comédie humaine

Selected titles of La Comédie humaine:

• (1831) La peau de chagrin
• (1833) Eugénie Grandet
• (1835) Le père Goriot [1]
• (1837) Les Illusions Perdues (I, 1837; II, 1839; III, 1843)
• (1846) La Cousine Bette
• (1847) Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes

Plays:

• Cromwell (1820)
• Ressources de Quinola (1842)
• Paméla Giraud (1843)
• La Marâtre (1848)
• Mercadet ou le Faiseur (1848)

Tales: Contes drolatiques (1832-37)

File:Maison-de-Balzac hi-res.jpg

Balzac's house in Paris. View from the Rue Berton.

Legacy

After his death Balzac became recognised as one of the fathers of Realism in literature, and distinct in his approach from the "pure" Romantics like Stendhal and Victor Hugo. La Comédie humaine spanned more than 90 novels and short stories in an attempt to comprehend and depict the realities of life in contemporary bourgeois France. In the 20th Century his vision of a society in flux, where class, money and personal ambition were the major players, achieved the distinction of being endorsed equally by critics of Left-wing and Right-wing political tendencies.

He guided European fiction away from the overriding influence of Walter Scott and the Gothic school, by showing that modern life could be recounted as vividly as Scott recounted his historical tales, and that mystery and intrigue did not need ghosts and crumbling castles for props. Maupassant, Flaubert and Zola were writers of the next generation who were directly influenced by him, and Marcel Proust (that other weaver of a great tapestry) acknowledged his influence.

In one of his last tales, Les comédiens sans le savoir (The Unwitting Actors, 1847) a provincial is rescued from a ruinous speculation by a boulevardier who asks him "Will you not now concede, my friend, that Paris is bigger than you are?". What Balzac had brought to fiction was the social context, a factor unrecognized by the Romantics, for whom the inner world of the individual was all that counted.

In the 1960s, the counter-culture unearthed two strange and mystical novels from Balzac's early years: the quasi-autobiographical Louis Lambert (1832) and Séraphîta (1834), in which an angel guides the gender-bending hero/heroine around the solar-system. Some academics have claimed that alchemy, animal-magnetism and other esoteric theories underlie Balzac's interpretation of society, and that his credentials as a Realist should be questioned. But the critical literature on his work is very large, and one can find almost any shade of opinion if one looks for it.

It is Balzac the observer of society, morals and human psychology who continues to appeal to readers today. His novels have always remained in print. His vivid realism and his encyclopedic gifts as a recorder of his age outweigh the sketchiness and inconsistent quality of some of his works. Enough of them are recognized as masterpieces, to rank him as the Charles Dickens of France.

Balzac in popular culture

Honoré de Balzac is mentioned throughout the novel "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress," by Chinese-born French author Dai Sijie (2000). A movie from the novel, titled, "Balzac et la petite tailleuse chinoise," was written and directed by Dai in 2002.

Balzac is also the author whom Antoine Doinel reads in "The 400 Blows", the 1959 film by François Truffaut. Doinel establishes a shrine to Balzac which he forgets about and which bursts into flames, angering his father. "The 400 Blows" is widely regarded as the first film of the French New Wave.

Other uses of "Balzac"

Balzac is also a commune in the Charente département of France. The site gives its name to Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac, a 17th century French writer.

Balzac is also the name of a Japanese horror-punk band.

External links

Insert the text of the quote here, without quotation marks.

• Works by Honoré de Balzac. Project Gutenberg
• Honore de Balzac by Albert Keim and Louis Lumet, available for free via Project Gutenberg
• Comprehensive works with dates

bg:Оноре дьо Балзак cs:Honoré de Balzac da:Honoré de Balzac de:Honoré de Balzac et:Honoré de Balzac es:Honorato de Balzac eo:Honoré de BALZAC fr:Honoré de Balzac ga:Honoré de Balzac ko:오노레 드 발자크 hr:Honoré de Balzac it:Honoré de Balzac he:אונורה דה באלזאק lt:Onorė de Balzakas nl:Honoré de Balzac ka:ბალზაკი, ონორე დე ja:オノレ・ド・バルザック no:Honoré de Balzac pl:Honoriusz Balzac pt:Honoré de Balzac ru:Бальзак, Оноре де fi:Honoré de Balzac sv:Honoré de Balzac tr:Honoré de Balzac zh:巴尔扎克

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