(An alchemist, his family and his valet, Caliban, settle i...)
An alchemist, his family and his valet, Caliban, settle in an isolated village. After their deaths, their young son, Abel, who has read only fairy tales, falls in love with a local girl, Catherine, whom he mistakes for the legendary Pearl Fairy. But the scheming Lady Sommerset, infatuated with Abel, plans to use his delusions to her advantage...
(In 1799, in France, the Chouans, royalist Breton peasants...)
In 1799, in France, the Chouans, royalist Breton peasants, in a guerrilla, oppose the Republicans. An aristocrat, Marie de Verneuil, is sent by Joseph Fouché, the terrible minister of police to seduce and capture their leader, the Marquis de Montauran, known as "the Guy" (le Gars). She must be helped by a skilful, ambitious and unscrupulous policeman, Corentin.
(The Physiology of Marriage coolly examines the economics ...)
The Physiology of Marriage coolly examines the economics and power relationships of seduction and love. Balzac proposes that marriage and the selection of a wife be treated as a science, and examines topics ranging from moral education to methods for foiling adulterous relationships. For all of its apparent misogyny, the Physiology is surprisingly evenhanded in its rough treatment of both men and women (and is said to have been written with the collaboration of two women).
(The Grandet family is violently out of the ordinary, sinc...)
The Grandet family is violently out of the ordinary, since the sudden arrival of his late Cousin Charles Eugenie, recently orphaned and without money. Eugenie's emotional awakening, stimulated by her love for her cousin, leads to a direct conflict with her father, whose smart and financial success matched her determination to rebel. The moving story of Eugenie is placed in the background of provincial oppression and the functioning of the financial system following the French Revolution. It is both a fascinating portrait of private life and a vigorous fictional document of his age.
(Passionate and perceptive, the three short novels that ma...)
Passionate and perceptive, the three short novels that make up Balzac's History of the Thirteen are concerned in part with the activities of a rich, powerful, sinister and unscrupulous secret society in nineteenth-century France.
(Pere Goriot' is the tragic story of a father whose obsess...)
Pere Goriot' is the tragic story of a father whose obsessive love for his two daughters leads to his financial and personal ruin. Interwoven with this theme is that of the impoverished young aristocrat, Rastignac, come to Paris from the provinces to make his fortune, who befriends Goriot and becomes involved with the daughters. The story is set against the background of a whole society driven by social ambition and lust for money.
(Astride upon my thought, like Astolphe on his hippogriff,...)
Astride upon my thought, like Astolphe on his hippogriff, I was galloping through worlds, suiting them to my fancy. Presently, as I looked about me to find some omen for the bold productions my wild imagination was urging me to undertake, a pretty cry, the cry of a woman issuing refreshed and joyous from a bath, rose above the murmur of the rippling fringes as their flux and reflux.
(In The Duchesse of Langeais, Honore De Balzac tells us th...)
In The Duchesse of Langeais, Honore De Balzac tells us the story of an ill-fated love affair between a Parisian socialite and a Napoleonic war hero. The depth of character is astonishing and the writing superb.
(The Lily of the Valley is an 1835 novel about love and so...)
The Lily of the Valley is an 1835 novel about love and society by French novelist and playwright Honoré de Balzac. It concerns the affection - emotionally vibrant but never consummated - between Felix de Vandenesse and Henriette de Mortsauf. It is part of his series of novels (or Roman-fleuve) known as La Comédie humaine (The Human Comedy), which parodies and depicts French society in the period of the Restoration and the July Monarchy (1815-1848).
(The story of Lucien Chardon, a young poet from Angoulême ...)
The story of Lucien Chardon, a young poet from Angoulême who tries desperately to make a name for himself in Paris, is a brilliantly realistic and boldly satirical portrait of provincial manners and aristocratic life. Handsome and ambitious but naïve, Lucien is patronized by the beau monde as represented by Madame de Bargeton and her cousin, the formidable Marquise d'Espard, only to be duped by them. Denied the social rank he thought would be his, Lucien discards his poetic aspirations and turns to hack journalism; his descent into Parisian low life ultimately leads to his own death.
(Brimming with finely observed details and Balzac's tradem...)
Brimming with finely observed details and Balzac's trademark insight into human motivations and morality, An Old Maid follows several men who have designs - honorable and not-so-honorable - on one of the village's wealthiest bachelorettes.
(Handsome would-be poet Lucien Chardon is poor and naive, ...)
Handsome would-be poet Lucien Chardon is poor and naive, but highly ambitious. Failing to make his name in his dull provincial hometown, he is taken up by a patroness, the captivating married woman Madame de Bargeton, and prepares to forge his way in the glamorous beau monde of Paris.
(Formerly an aide-de-camp to Napoleon but now without pros...)
Formerly an aide-de-camp to Napoleon but now without prospects, Phillippe Bridau and his younger brother Joseph, a shiftless artist, become entangled in a struggle to recover the family inheritance in a world where "to be without money is to be without power."
(Our heroine Julie is attending with her ailing father one...)
Our heroine Julie is attending with her ailing father one of Napoleon’s reviews of his troops. It is after the debacle in Russia, but the Old Guard still knows how to put on a show. The lovely young girl is dazzled by Colonel Victor d’Aiglemont, a dashing young adjutant who gallops by. The father notices Julie’s fascination and shakes his head anxiously, knowing that the young man is unworthy of her.
(The Wrong Side of Paris, the final novel in Balzac’s The ...)
The Wrong Side of Paris, the final novel in Balzac’s The Human Comedy, is the compelling story of Godefroid, an abject failure at thirty, who seeks refuge from materialism by moving into a monastery-like lodging house in the shadows of Notre-Dame.
(The Human Comedy (French: La Comédie Humaine) is the titl...)
The Human Comedy (French: La Comédie Humaine) is the title of Honoré de Balzac's multi-volume collection of interlinked novels and stories depicting French society in the period of the Restoration (1815-1830) and the July Monarchy (1830–1848).
Honoré de Balzac was a French writer and novelist, who helped to establish the traditional form of the novel. He is generally considered to be one of the greatest novelists of all time.
Background
Balzac was born on May 20, 1799, in Tours, France. His family, of peasant stock, had its roots in southern France (Languedoc), and bore surname Balssa. The change of name was made by Honoré's father, who migrated to Paris in 1767 to begin a long administrative career, before moving in 1798 to Tours to take up various civil posts there.
Education
At age ten Balzac was sent to the Oratorian grammar school in Vendome, where he studied for seven years. His father, seeking to instill the same hardscrabble work ethic which had gained him the esteem of society, intentionally gave little spending money to the boy. This made him the object of ridicule among his much wealthier schoolmates. His education continued at Tours, then at Paris, where the Balzac family returned in 1814.
In 1816 Balzac entered the Sorbonne, where he studied under three famous professors: François Guizot, who later became Prime Minister, was Professor of Modern History; Abel-François Villemain, a recent arrival from the Collège Charlemagne, lectured on French and classical literature; and, most influential of all, Victor Cousin's courses on philosophy encouraged his students to think independently.
Once his studies were completed, Balzac was persuaded by his father to follow him into the law; for three years he trained and worked at the office of Victor Passez. Although the expected great work did not materialize, Balzac persisted, and between 1820 and 1825 he wrote a number of sensational or humorous novels, some of them in collaboration with friends and none signed with his own name. At the same time he collaborated with various hack writers in the production of a number of novels having a purely popular appeal. He thus painfully acquired a technique, but he never incorporated these juvenilia in his signed work.
In 1825, he launched one-volume editions of the works of the French authors Molière and La Fontaine, but they did not sell well. An attempt to make his fortune as a publisher, printer, and type manufacturer (1826-1828) involved Balzac in large debts. He resumed writing and in 1829 published Le dernier Chouan, revised and republished in 1834 as Les Chouans. It was the first novel signed with his own name. This, and a humorous manual for husbands, La Physiologie du mariage, although anonymous, brought him into public notice. It was at this point that his essential work began: in 1830 came the first Scenes of Private Life, among which is La Maison du chat que pelote, an undoubted masterpiece, and in 1831 his first Philosophical Novels and Tales.
For a few years free-lance journalism also took up some of his time; but, in the main, from 1830 to 1848 Balzac devoted himself wholeheartedly to the composition of that vast cycle of novels and stories since known to the world as La Comédie humaine. He had mixed motives for doing this: to achieve fame; to pay off ever-mounting debts caused by his extravagance and love of ostentation; but above all to give expression to his superabundant genius by consigning to fiction the social history of his own times. He derived the rudiments of this idea from Scott but developed it beyond recognition.
Balzac contracted to produce the first collected edition of the Etudes de moeurs, while many of the works were still in progress or unwritten, his normal habit being to sell each novel for serial publication in a periodical, then to publish it in book form, and then to include it in volumes of collected works. These Etudes comprised "Scenes" of private, provincial, Parisian, political, military, and country life. Those of private life, purporting to deal chiefly with youth and its problems, were not intended to be attached to any specific type of locality; but those of provincial, Parisian, and country life were to have their setting in precisely defined milieux; and this in fact is one of the most striking and original features of the Etudes de moeurs.
Besides writing the social history of France, Balzac also intended to diagnose the ills from which society suffered and to propose remedies. This purpose is manifest in all his work, but was specially entrusted to the Etudes philosophiques, the first collected edition of which appeared between 1835 and 1837. As the Etudes de moeurs were to reveal "effects," so the Etudes philosophiques were to reveal "causes."
The third main division of Balzac's group of works was to consist of Etudes analytiques, which were to deal with "principles." However, he never clarified his intentions in this respect, and in fact he finished only two of these Etudes - the serio-comic Physiologie du mariage and Petites misères de la vie conjugale.
Balzac had already mapped out this ambitious scheme by the autumn of 1834, but from year to year he went on filling the cadres. He even found time to write, in an imitation of the language and style of Rabelais, an amusing though salacious series of medieval tales, Les Contes drolatiques, which remain extraneous to the Comédie humaine. By 1840 or 1841 he had invented this latter title for his ever-expanding cycle of works, and a new edition of them, bearing that title for the first time, began to appear in 1842. It is usually known as the Furne edition after the name of one of its editors. It of course followed the same scheme of divisions as the Etudes of 1833-1837, and was prefaced by an avant-propos in which Balzac explained his intentions. His production continued unabated, and by 1846 sixteen octavo volumes had appeared; they were supplemented in 1848 and (posthumously) in 1855 by other volumes incorporating his latest works.
In 1845 Balzac began to prepare for yet another edition, to which he proposed to add a large number of works which he was never able to write. The so-called "definitive edition" (Calmann-Lévy), which was brought out between 1869 and 1876, includes the Contes drolatiques, his Théâtre, and some badly edited correspondence. It also contains two novels, Les petits Bourgeois and Le Député d'Arcis, only begun by Balzac and completed by an inferior writer, Charles Rabou. Balzac died in Paris on August 18, 1850.
Balzac was a legitimist; in many ways, his views are the antithesis of Victor Hugo's democratic republicanism. Nevertheless, his keen insight regarding working-class conditions earned him the esteem of many Socialists and Marxists.
Views
Balzac's works were written largely in the tradition of French romanticism, with its emphasis on exceptional events, the idealization of love, and the use of contrasting characters (the beautiful and the grotesque, the lofty, and the popular, the tragic and the comic). Balzac is now considered one of the creators of realism in literature. A keen observer of human life and behavior, Balzac wrote about the everyday events in the lives of individuals in every sector of French society, from noblemen to peasants, artists to businessmen, churchmen to prostitutes. Some of his major themes include family, economics, theatre, modern scientific knowledge, and history. He introduced a new set of themes in Western literature related to the material life in the industrial society. Class, money, and the struggle for material benefits and social status are key sources of conflict in his works. Balzac's "philosophy" is a curious blend of scientific materialism, the theosophy of Swedenborg and kindred mystics, the "physiognomy" of Lavater, the "phrenology" of Gall, the "magnetism" of Mesmer, and occultism. The whole was made to square, somewhat unconvincingly, with the formal Catholicism and the political conservatism which Balzac officially sponsored.
Quotations:
"Solitude is fine but you need someone to tell that solitude is fine."
"Reading brings us unknown friends."
"All happiness depends on courage and work."
"Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught."
"Every moment of happiness requires a great amount of Ignorance."
"Behind every great fortune there is a crime."
"Marriage must fight constantly against a monster which devours everything: routine."
"It is absurd to pretend that one cannot love the same woman always, as to pretend that a good artist needs several violins to execute a piece of music."
"The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness."
"There is no such thing as a great talent without great willpower."
"Nothing so fortifies a friendship as a belief on the part of one friend that he is superior to the other."
"I'm a great poet. I don't put my poems on paper: they consist of actions and feelings."
"Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power on earth can ever turn it into a fact."
"True love is eternal, infinite and always like itself. It's always equal and pure. Without violent demonstrations: It is seen with white hairs and is always young at heart."
"An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man's entire existence."
"Power is not revealed by striking hard or often, but by striking true."
"Our worst misfortunes never happen, and most miseries lie in anticipation."
"First love is a kind of vaccination which saves a man from catching the complaint a second time."
Personality
Balzac was a hard worker, spending 16 to 20 hours a day to writing. He was anxious for sympathy, frankly delighted with his own masterpieces, yet modest in a fashion peculiar to himself, Balzac gave a dominant impression of kindliness and bonhomie, which overshadowed even the idea of intellect. Balzac was always the delightful, whimsical companion, to be thought of and written of afterwards with an amused, though affectionate smile. He occasionally showed the discouragement to which the artistic nature is prone. Sometimes the state of the weather, which always had a great effect on him, the difficulty of his work, the fatigue of sitting up all night, and his monetary embarrassments, brought him to an extreme state of depression, both physical and mental. He lived to a great extent in a world of his own, peopled by the imaginary characters in his books, and he would gravely discuss its news, as others do that of the real world.
Physical Characteristics:
Balzac was short and stout, with an abundant mane of thick black hair. His shoulders were square. He had deep red thick lips, high, broad, and unwrinkled forehead. His neck was thick, round, and columnar, contrasted in their whiteness with the colour in the rest of the face. His hands were large and dimpled. His nose was well cut, rather long, and square at the end, with the lobes of the open nostrils standing out prominently. As to his eyes, they had inconceivable life, light, and magnetism. Balzac's sister speaks of them as brown; but, according to other contemporaries, they were like brilliant black diamonds, with rich reflections of gold, the white of the eyeballs being tinged with blue.
Quotes from others about the person
Henry James: "Quantity and intensity are at once and together his sign."
George Saintsbury: "You are not, with Balzac, in the Elysian fields; you are sometimes much rather in the Halls of Eblis. But, if you can only apprehend it, there is always Imagination to guide, relieve, console you; and it is the Imagination of a Titan, if not exactly of a God."
Interests
Music & Bands
Ludwig van Beethoven
Connections
On 14 March 1850 Balzac married Ewelina Hańska, a Polish noblewoman. They had no children.
Balzac: A Biography
In the first major English biography of Honore de Balzac for over fifty years, Graham Robb has produced a compelling portrait of the great French novelist whose powers of creation were matched only by his self-destructive tendencies. As colorful as the world he described, Balzac is the perfect subject for biography: a relentless seducer whose successes were as spectacular as his catastrophes; a passionate collector, inventor, explorer, and political campaigner; a mesmerizing storyteller with the power to make his fantasies come true.