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Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) - Original name Honoré Balssa | |
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French journalist and writer, one of the creators of realism in literature. Balzac's huge production of novels and short stories are collected under the name La Comédie humaine, which originated from Dante´s The Divine Comedy. Before his breakthrough as an author, Balzac wrote without success several plays and novels under different pseudonyms. "...Well, Balzac was politically a legitimist; his great work is a constant elegy on the irreparable decay of good society; his sympathies are with the class that is doomed to extinction. But for all that, his satire is never keener, his irony never more bitter, than when he sets in motion the very men and women with whom he sympathizes most deeply - the nobles..." (Friedrich Engels in 1888) Honoré de Balzac was born in Tours. His father, Bernard François Balzac, had risen to the middle class, and married the daughter of his Parisian superior, Anne-Charlotte-Laure Sallambier; she was 31 years his junior. Bernard François Balzac had worked as a state prosecutor in Paris but was transferred to Tours because of his royalistic opinions during the French Revolution. In 1814 the family moved back to Paris. Balzac spent the first four years of life in foster care, not so uncommon practice in France even in the 20th century. During his school years Balzac was an ordinary pupil. He studied at the Collège de Vendôme and the Sorbonne, and then worked in law offices. In 1819, when his family moved for financial reasons to the small town of Villeparisis, Balzac announced that he wanted to be a writer. He returned to Paris and was installed in a shabby room at 9 rue Lediguiéres, near the Bibliothéque de l'Arsenal. A few years later he described the place in LA PEAU DE CHARGIN (1931), a fantastic tale owing much to E.T.A. Hoffmann (1776-1822). Balzac's first work was CROMWELL. The tragedy on verse made the whole family dispirited. By 1822 Balzac had produced several novels under pseudonyms, but he was ignored as a writer. Against his family's hopes, Balzac continued his career in literature, believing that the simplest road to success was writing. Unfortunately, he also tried his skills in business. Balzac ran a publishing company and the bought a printing house, which did not have much to print. When these commercial activities failed, Balzac was left with a heavy burden of debt. It plagued him to the end of his career. "All happiness depends on courage and work. I have had many periods of wretchedness, but with energy and above all with illusions, I pulled through them all." After the period of failures, Balzac was 29 years old, and his efforts had been fruitless. Accepting the hospitality of General de Pommereul, he spent a short time at their home in Fougères in Brittany in search of a local color for his new novel. In 1829 appeared LA DERNIER CHOUAN (later called LES CHOUANS), a historical work in the manner of Sir Walter Scott, which he published under his own name. Gradually Balzac began to gain notice as an author. Between the years 1830 and 1832 he published six novelettes titled SCÈNES DE LA VIE PRIVÉE. His father had died in 1829. When Balzac's mother miraculously recoverd from an illness, he started to study the works of Jacob Boehme, Swedenborg and followed Anton Mesmer's lectures about 'animal magnetism' at Sorbonne. These influences are seen in LA PEAU DE CHARGIN (1831). In 1833 Balzac conceived the idea of linking together his old novels so that they would comprehend the whole society in a series of books. Eventually This plan led to 90 novels and novellas, which included eventually more than 2,000 characters. Balzac's huge and ambitious plan drew a picture of the customs, atmosphere, and habits of the bourgeois France. Balzac got down to the work with great energy, but also found time to pile up huge debts and fail in hopeless financial operations."I am not deep," the author once said, "but very wide." "Left alone, Rastignac walked a few steps to the highest part of the cemetary, and saw Paris spread out below on both banks of the winding Seine. Lights were beginning to twinkle here and there. His gaze fixed almost avidly upon the space that lay between the column of the Place Vendôme and the dome of the Invalides; there lay the splendid world that he wished to conquer." (from Old Goriot, 1835) In the 'Avant-propos' to The Human Comedy from 1842 Balzac compares under the influence of Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire's theories the animal kingdom and human society. "Does not Society make of man, according to the milieu in which his activity takes places, as many different men as there are varieties in zoolog?" However, Balzac sees that human life and human customs are more multifarious and there are dramatic conflicts in love which seldom occur among animals. Among the masterpieces of The Human Comedy are LE PÉRE GORIOT, LES ILLUSIONS PERDUES, LES PAYSANS, LA FEMME DE TRENTE ANS, and EUGÉNIE GRANDET. In these books Balzac covered a world from Paris to Provinces. The primarly landscape is Paris, with its old aristocracy, new financial wealth, middle-class trade, demi-monde, professionals, servants, young intellectuals, clerks, criminals... In this social mosaic Balzac had recurrent characters, such as Eugène Rastignac, who came from an impoverished provincial family to Paris, mixed with the nobility, pursued wealth, had many mistresses, gambled, and was a successful politician. Henry de Marsay appeared in twenty-five different novels. There are many anecdotes about Balzac's relationship to his characters, who also lived in the author's imagination outside the novels. Once Balzac interrupted one of his friends, who was telling about his sister's illness, by saying: "That's all very well, but let's get back to reality: to whom are we going to marry Eugénie Grandet?" "Balzac himself always speaks of his characters as of natural phenomena, and when he wants to describe his artistic intentions, he never speaks of his psychology, but always of his sociology, of his natural history of society and of the function of the individual in the life of the social body. He became, anyhow, the master of the social novel, if not as the 'doctor of the social sciences', as he described himself, yet as the founder of the new conception of man, according to which 'the individual exists only in relation to society'." (Arnold Hauser in Social History of Art, vol. 4, 1962) Balzac worked often in Saché, near Tours, although a great part of his work was done in Paris. From 1828-36 he lived at 1 rue Cassini, near the Observatory, on the edge of the city. In 1847 he moved to the Rue Fortunée. Energetically Balzac used to write 14 to 16 hours daily, drinking large amounts of specially blended Parisian coffee. After supper he slept some hours, woke up at midnight and wrote until morning. Despite his devotion to writing, he had time for affairs and he enjoyed life. It is told that Balzac once devoured first 100 oysters, and then 12 lamb chops with vegetables and fruits. Close to his heart was Mme de Berny, who was much older, and whose death was a deep blow to the author. LA COUSIN BETTE (1846) contained thinly veiled autobiographical elements of Balzac's love affairs. In the story a spinster, Cousin Bette, tries to revenge her family with a beautiful courtesan Valerie Marneffe all her disappointments. The aristocratic Baron Hulot d'Evry, whom Bette had wanted to marry, had married her cousin, Adeline. She also loses her new love, Count Wenceslas Steinbock, to Baron Hulot's daughter. Valerie seduces Hulot, who has several mistresses, and Steinbock. After some financial troubles Hulot escapes into the slums. Adeline finds him. Bette falls ill with pneumonia and dies. Hulot continues his affairs with a cook, and finally marries the cook's apprentice. Balzac lived mostly in his villa in Sèvres during his later years. Among his friends was Eveline Hanska, a rich Polish lady, with whom he had corresponded for more than 15 years, and who had posed as a model for some of his feminine portraits (Mme Hulot in LA COUSINE BETTE, 1847). In October 1848 Balzac travelled to Ukraine. Mme Hanska's husband had died in 1841 and Balzac could now stay with her a longer time. His health had already broken down, but they were married in March 1850. Balzac returned with her to Paris, where he died on August 18, 1850. Le Père Goriot (1835) - originally published in the Revue de Paris in 1834, appeared in book form in 1835. An adaptation of Shakespeare's play King Lear. Le Pére Goriot is a pessimistic study of bourgeois society's ills after the French Revolution. It tells the intertwined stories of Eugène de Rastignac, an ambitious but penniless young man, and old Goriot, a father who sacrifices everything for his children. His daughters Anastaria and Delphine are married into a rich family. They are ashamed of their father and visit him only to ask for money. Rastignac falls in love with Delphine. Goriot has gradually lost all his money, he doesn't have enough for a proper burial. On his death bed Goriot learns about his daughters' egoism - they don't come to see him. At the same time he admits his own guilt and forgives his daughters. Rastignac pays the expenses of the burial. Goriot's coffin is followed by the empty luxurious carriages of his daughters. For further reading: Balzac, ed. by Michael Tilby (1995); Balzac: A Life by Graham Robb (1994); Critical Essays on Honore de Balzac by Martin Kanes (1990); Honore de Balzac by Theophile Gautier (1989, paparback); Honore de Balzac: Old Goriot by David Bellos (1988); Balzac and the Drama of Perspective by Joan Dargan (1985); Balzac and the French Revolution by Ronnie Butler (1983); Balzac, James, and the Realistic Novel by William W. Stowe (1983); Balzac's Comedy of Words by Martin Kanes (1978); Evolution of Balzac's 'Commedie Humaine' by E. Preston Dargan (1942); Balzac by E.R. Curtius (1933) - See also: Stefan Zweig, Isaiah Berlin, Andre Maurois: Prometheus: The Life of Balzac - Note: television film about Balzac's life (1999), starring Gérard Depardieu as the author, Jeanne Moreau as Balzac's mother, and Fanny Ardant as Eveline Hanska. - Museums: Musée Balzac, Château de Saché, 37190 Saché, Indre et Loire - a sixteenth century castle, devoted to the author who lived there between 1829 and 1837; La maison de Balzac, 47 rue Raynourd, Chaillot Quarter - Balzac lived there for seven years. - Suom: Kirjailijalta on myös ilmestynyt suomeksi teos Perijätär, suom. V.A. Koskenniemi (1913) Selected works:
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