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HONORS DE BALZAC (1790-1850)
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HONORS DE See also:BALZAC (1790-1850) , See also:French novelist, was See also:born at See also:Tours on the 20th of May 1799 . His See also:father, See also:Bernard See also:Francois, never called himself de See also:Balzac and Honore only assumed the particle after 183o . But the father had equally little right to the name of Balzac at all, for his See also:birth-certificate has been recently discovered . The true name was " Balsaa," and this in various forms (" Balsa," " Balsas ") has been traced for more than a See also:century before the novelist's birth as that of a See also:family of See also:day-labourers or very small See also:peasant proprietors in the See also:parish of Canezac, See also:department of the See also:Tarn . It is probable that the novelist himself was not aware of this, and his father appears to have practised some mystification as to his own professional career . In and after the Revolution, however, he actually attained positions of some importance in the See also:commissariat and See also:hospital departments of the See also:army, and he married in 1797 See also:Anne See also:Charlotte Laure Sallambier, who was a beauty, an heiress, and a woman of considerable See also:faculty . She survived her son; the father died in 1829 . There were two sisters (the See also:elder, Laure, afterwards Madame Surville, was her See also:brother's favourite and later his biographer), and a younger brother, See also:Henri, of whom we hear little and that little not very favourable . Honore was put out to See also:nurse till he was four years old, and in 18o6, when he was seven, was sent to the See also:college (See also:grammar school) of See also:Vendome, where he remained till See also:April 1813 as a, strict boarder without any holidays . From this he passed as a day-boy to the college of Tours . His father's See also:official See also:work was transferred to See also:Paris the See also:year after, and Balzac came under the teaching of a royalist private schoolmaster, M . Lepitre, and others .
He See also:left school altogether in 1816, being then between seventeen and eighteen
.
His experiences at Vendome served as See also:base for much of See also:
Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, the See also:great authority on Balzac's See also:life and bibliography; but it has never been published
.
The novels, Cocqsigrue and Stella, proved abortions, but were only the first of many attempts at his true way until he found it
.
See also:Drama he never abandoned; but for him it was always an See also:error
.
The garret-See also:period from 182o to 1822 was succeeded by another of equal length at See also:home, but before it had finished (1821) he found his way into See also:print with the first of the singular productions which (and that not entirely or finally) have taken a sort of outside See also:place in his See also:works under the See also:title of TEuvres de jeunesse
.
The See also:incunabula of Balzac were See also:Les Deux See also:Hector, ou Les Deux Families bretonnes, and See also: See also:Hanotaux and Vicaire published the results of their inquiries into the actual accounts of the concern . There seems to have been no See also:reason why it should not have succeeded, and there has been claimed for it first, that it provided Balzac with a great amount of actual detail which he utilized directly in the novels, and secondly, that it gave him at whatever cost a still more valuable experience of practical life—the experience which has so often been wanting to men of letters . Anyhow, from 1825 to 1828, the future author of the Comedie humaine was a publisher, printer and type-founder; and in the last year he had to See also:abscond, or something like it, under pressure of debts which were never fully settled till 1838, and then by a further See also:obligation of ninety thousand francs, chiefly furnished by his See also:mother and never repaid to her . It was Balzac's See also:habit throughout his life to relieve the See also:double pressure of debt and of work by frequent excursions into the See also:country and abroad . On this occasion he fled to See also:Brittany with an introduction to a M. and Mme. de Pommereul, who received him hospitably in their See also:chateau near See also:Fougeres . Here he obtained some of the See also:direct material, and most of the scenery and See also:atmosphere, for what he himself recognized as his first serious See also:attempt in novel-See also:writing, Les See also:Chouans, or, as it was at first called, Le Dernier Chouan . This See also:hook (obviously written in direct following of See also:Scott, of whom Balzac was a lifelong admirer) has been very variously judged—those who See also:lay most stress on his See also:realism thinking little of it, while those who maintain that he was always a romantic with a difference " place it higher . It has at any See also:rate brilliant colouring, some very vivid scenes, and almost more See also:passion as well as " See also:curtain " at its ending than any other of his books . 'Though not without a See also:touch of See also:melodrama it differs utterly from the confused and tedious imitations of Mrs See also:Radcliffe, M . G . See also:Lewis and C . R . See also:Maturin which fill most of the (Euvres de jeunesse . At the same time Balzac was engaged on a very different work, the See also:analytic-satirical sketches which compose the Physiologic du mariage, and which illustrate his other and non-romantic See also:side, again with some crudity, but again also with a vast advance on his earlier productions . Both were published in the year 1829, from which his real See also:literary career unquestionably starts . It had exactly twenty-one years to run . The See also:history of these twenty-one years, though (in consequence mainly of the See also:diligence and See also:luck as a See also:collector of the above-named M. de Lovenjoul) the materials for it are large and constantly accumulating, has never been arranged in a really See also:standard See also:biography, and there seems to be an increasing habit of concentrating the See also:attention on parts of it . It divides itself under three heads mainly, the history of Balzac's business affairs, that of his loves and friendships and that of his actual work . The first has some small resemblance to Scott's similar experiences, though in Balzac's See also:case there was no great See also:crash but a lifelong pressure; on the other See also:hand, his debts were brcught upon him by a See also:long course not so much of extravagance in actual See also:expenditure (though there was something of this) as of See also:financial irregularities of almost every description,—anticipations of earnings, costly methods of See also:production (he practically wrote his novels on a See also:succession of printed revises), speculations, travel, and lastly the collection of curiosities . As regards the second, although his See also:fashion of life made him by turns a See also:hermit and a vagrant, he was on good terms with most of the famous men of letters of his day from See also:Hugo downwards, and seems never to have quarrelled with any man, except with some of his editors and publishers, by his own See also:fault . Balzac was indeed, in no belittling sense of the word, one of the most good-natured of men of See also:genius . But his friendships with the other See also:sex are of much more importance, and not in the least matters of mere See also:gossip . His sister Laure, as has been said, and a school-friend of hers, Mme Zulma . Carraud, played important and not questionable parts as his correspondents . But at least three ladies, all of a See also:rank higher than his own, figure as his "Egerias" to such an extent that it is hardly extravagant to say that Balzac would not have been Balzac without them . These are Madame de Berny, a See also:lady connected with the See also:court of the ancien regime, much older than himself and the mother of nine See also:children, to whom he was introduced in 1821, who became to him La dilecta, who was the See also:original of Mme de Mortsauf in Le Lys data la vallee, and who seems to have exercised an excellent See also:influence on him in matters of See also:taste till her See also:death in 1836; the marquise de Castries, who took him up for a time and dropped him, and who has been supposed to have been his See also:model for his less impeccable ladies of fashion; and lastly, the See also:Polish-See also:Russian countess Evelina Hanska, who after addressing, as l'Etrangere, a See also:letter to him as early as 1832, became his idol, rarely seen but constantly corresponded with, for the last eighteen years, and his wife for the last few months of his life . Some of his letters to her have long been known, but the bulk of them constituted the greatest See also:recent addition to our knowledge of him as given in the two volumes of Lettres a l'etrangere . Of hers we have practically none and it is exceedingly hard to See also:form any clear See also:idea of her, but his devotion is absolutely beyond question . Business, friendship and love, however, much more other things, were in Balzac's case always connected with and on the whole quite secondary to work . He would even sometimes resist the commands by which at long intervals Mme Hanska would summon him to see her, and abstract the greater See also:part of his actual visits to her in See also:order to serve this still more absorbing See also:mistress . He had, as we have seen, worked See also:pretty hard, even before 1829, and his work had partly taken forms not yet mentioned—See also:political See also:pamphlets and See also:miscellaneous articles which are now accessible in the Edition definitive of his works, and hardly one of which is irrelevant to a just conception of him . Nor did he by any means abandon these by-works after 1829; indeed, he at one time started and almost entirely wrote, a periodical called the Revue parisienne . He wrote some dramas and planned many more, though the few which reached the See also:stage left it again promptly . Balzac's dramas, as they appear in his works, consist of Vautrin, Les Ressources de Quinola, Pamela See also:Giraud (arranged for the stage by others), La Maratre and Mercadet le faiseur, the last of which has, since his death, been not unsuccessful . But on the whole he did devote himself to his true vocation, with a furious See also:energy beside which even Scott's, except in his sadder and later days, becomes leisurely . Balzac generally wrote (dining early and lightly, and sleeping for some See also:hours immediately after See also:dinner) from midnight till any See also:hour in the following day—stretches of sixteen hours being not unknown, and the See also:process being often continued for days and See also:weeks . Besides his habit of correcting a small printed original into a long novel on the proofs, he was always altering and re-shaping his work, even before, in 1842, he carried out the idea of See also:building it all into one huge structure—the Comedic humaine with its subdivisions of Scenes de la See also:vie parisienne, Etudes philosophiques, &'c . Much pains have been spent upon this title and Balzac's intentions in selecting it . But the "Human See also:Comedy," as a description for mere studies of life as his, will explain itself at once or else can never be explained . Of its constituents, however, some See also:account must be given, and this can be best done through an exact and See also:complete See also:list of the whole work by years, with such abbreviated notes on the See also:chief constituents as may See also:lead up to a general See also:critical See also:summary . Of the two See also:capital works of 1829, we have spoken . 1830, the See also:epoch year, saw part (it was not fully published till the next) of La Peau de chagrin, one of the crudest, but according to some estimates, one of the greatest of the works, full of romantic extravagance and surplusage, but with an See also:engrossing central idea—the See also:Nemesis of accomplished See also:desire—powerfully worked out; La Maison du chat qui pelote, a See also:triumph of observation and nature, together with a See also:crowd of things less in bulk but sometimes of the first excellence—El Verdugo, Etude de femme, La Paix du See also:menage, Le Bal de sceaux, La See also:Vendetta, Gobseck, Une Double Famille, Les Deux Rieves, Adieu, L'See also:Elixir de longue vie, Sarrazine, Une Passion daps le See also:desert and Un See also:Episode sous la Terreur . In 1831, La Peau de chagrin appeared complete, accompanied by Le Requisitionnaire, Les Proscrits, Le Chef-d'oeuvre inconnu (a masterpiece fortunately not unrecognized), Jesus See also:Christ en Flandre and Maitre See also:Cornelius . 1832 gave Madame Firmiani, Le See also:Message, Le See also:Colonel Chabert and Le Cure de Tours (two stories of contrasted but extraordinary excellence), La See also:Bourse, La Femme abandonnee, Louis Lambert (autobiographical and philosophic), La Grenadiere and Les Marana (a great favourite with the author).' In 1833 appeared Ferragus, chef des devorants, the first part of L'Histoire des treize (a collection in the more extravagant romantic manner, very popular at the time, and since a favourite with some, but few, good See also:judges), Le Medecin de campagne (another pet of the author's, and a See also:kind of intended document of his ability to support the cause of virtue, but, despite certain great things, especially a wonderful popular "See also:legend of See also:Napoleon," a little heavy as a whole), the universally admitted masterpiece of See also:Eugenie Grandet, and L'Illustre Gaudissart (very amusing) . 1833 also saw the beginning of a remarkable and never finished work—out of his usual See also:scope but exceedingly powerful in parts-the Conies drolatiques, a See also:series of tales of Old See also:France in Old (or at least Rabelaisian) French, which were to have been a See also:hundred in number but never got beyond the third batch of ten . They often See also:borrow the licence of their 15th and 16th century See also:models; but in La Succube and others there is undoubted genius and not a little See also:art . 1834 continued the Treize with La Duchesse de See also:Langeais and added La Recherche de l'absolu (one of Balzac's great studies of monomania, and thought by some to be the greatest, though others prefer Le Chef-d'auvre inconnu), La Femme de trente ans (the chief example of the author's caprice for re-handling, and very differently judged as a whole), with yet another of the acknowledged triumphs, Le Pere Goriot . On the whole, this year's work, though not the author's largest, is perhaps his most unique . 
Next year (1835) followed Melmoth reconcilie (a See also:tribute to the great influence which Maturin exercised, not over Balzac only, at this time in France), Un Drame au bord de lamer, the brilliant, if questionable, conclusion of Les Treize, La Fille aux yeux d'or, Le Contrat de mariage and Seraphita . This last, a Swedenborgian rhapsody of great beauty in parts, has divided critics almost more than anything else of its writer's, some seeing in it (with excuse) nothing but the See also:short description given above in three words, the others (with See also:justice) reckoning it his greatest triumph of See also:style and his nearest attempt to reach See also:poetry through prose . 1836 furnished La Messe de t'athee, See also:Interdiction, Facino See also:Cane, Le Lys dans la vallee (already referred to and of a somewhat sickly sweetness), L'Enf See also:ant maudit, La Vieille Fille and Le See also:Secret des Ruggieri (connected with the earlier Les deux See also:Reeves under the general title, Sur See also:Catherine de Medicis, and said to have been turned out by Balzac in a single See also:night, which is hardly possible) . In 1837 were published Les Deux Pates, destined to form part of Illusions perdues, Les Employes, Gambara and another capital work, Histoire de la grandeur et de la decadence de Cesar Birotteau, where Balzac's own unlucky experiences in whole, not easy to define, is much less hard to comprehend; if See also:trade are made thoroughly See also:matter of art . 1838 was less fruitful, contributing only Le See also:Cabinet des antiques, which had made an earlier partial See also:appearance, La Maison Nucingen and Une Fille d'See also:Eve . But 1839 made amends with the second part of Illusions perdues, Un See also:Grand Homme de See also:province a Paris (one of Balzac's See also:minor diploma-pieces), Le Cure de See also:village (a very considerable thing), and two smaller stories, Les Secrets de la princesse de Cadignan and Massimilla Doni . Ptierrette, Z . Marcas, Un See also:Prince de la Bo/team and See also:Pierre Grassou followed in 1840, and in 1841 Une Tenebreuse Affaire (one of his most remarkable workings-up of the minor facts of actual history), Le See also:Martyr Calviniste (the conclusion of Sur Catherine de Medicis), Ursule Mirouet (an admirable See also:story), La Fausse Maitresse and Memoires de deux jeunes mariees, on which again there have been very different opinions . 1842 supplied See also:Albert Savarus (autobiographical largely), Un Debut clans la vie, the very variously named and often rehandled Rabouilleuse (which, since Ta.See also:ine's exaltation of it, has often been taken as a Balzacian See also:quintessence), and Autre etude de femme, yet another rehandling of earlier work . In 1843 came the introduction of the completed Sur Catherine de Medicis Honorine and La Muse du department (almost as often reconstructed as La Femme de trente ans), with Comment aiment les jeunes flues (a similar rehandling intended to start the collected Splendeurs et miseres des courtisanes), and a further See also:instalment of Illusions perdues, Les Souffrances d'un inventeur . Three out of the next four years were astonishingly fruitful . 1844 gave Modeste See also:Mignon (a See also:book with a place to itself, and said to be founded on a story actually written by Madame Hanska), Gaudissart II., A combien l'amour revient aux vieillards (a second part of the Splendeurs), Beatrix (one of the most powerful if not of the most agreeable), and the first and very promising part of Les Paysans . Only Un Hamme d'affaires came out in 1845, but this was made up in 1846 by Les Comediens sans le savoir (sketched earlier), another part of the Splendeurs, Oic menent les mauvais chemins, the first part of Les Parents pauvres, La Cousine Bette (sometimes considered the topmost achievement of Balzac's genius), and the final form of a work first issued fifteen years earlier and often retouched, Pelites miseres de la vie conjugate . 1847 was even richer, with Le Cousin Pons (the second part of Les Parents pauvres, and again a See also:master-piece), the conclusion of the Splendours, La Derniere Incarnation de Vautrin, L'Envers de l'histoire contemporaine (which had been on and off the See also:stocks for five years), and the unfinished Depute d'Arcis . This was the last See also:scene of the comedy that appeared in the life of its author . The conclusion of the Depute d'Arcis, published in 1853, and those of Les Paysans and Les Petits See also:Bourgeois which appeared, the first in this year, the second wholly in 1855, are believed or known to be by Balzac's friend, Charles Rabou (1803-1871) . This immense and varied See also:total stands to its author in a somewhat different relation from that of any other work to any other writer . It has been well said that the whole of Balzac's production was always in his See also:head together; and this is the main See also:justification for his See also:syllabus of it as the " Comedy." Some part never came out of his head into print; we have numerous titles of work (sometimes spoken of in his letters as more or less finished) of which no trace remains, or only fragmentary MS. sketches . One apparently considerable book, La Bataille, which was to be devoted to the See also:battle of Essling, and for which he actually visited the ground, is frequently referred to as in progress from the time of his early letters to Madame Hanska onwards; but it has never been found . Another result of this relation was the See also:constant altering, re-shaping, re-connecting of the different parts . That if Balzac had lived as long as Hugo, and had preserved his faculties as well, he could never have finished the Comedie, is of course obvious: the life of See also:Methuselah, with the See also:powers of See also:Shakespeare, would not suffice for that . But that he never would—even if by some impossibility he could—is almost equally certain . Whether there is any See also:mark of decline in his latest work has been disputed, but there could hardly have been farther advance, and the See also:character of the See also:prejudice be kept out of the way . That character was put early, but finally, by See also:Victor Hugo in his funeral discourse on Balzac, whose work he declared, with unusual terseness, among other phrases of more or less gorgeous See also:rhetoric, to be " observation and See also:imagination." It may be doubted whether all the volumes written on Balzac (a reasoned See also:catalogue of the best of which will be found below) have ever said more than these three words, or have ever said it more truly if the due stress be laid upon the " and." On the other side, most of the mistakes about him have arisen from laying undue stress on one of the two qualities, or from considering them separately rather than as inextricably mixed and blended . It is this blending which gives him his unique position . He is an observer of the most exact, the most See also:minute, the most elaborate; but he suffuses this observation with so See also:strange and constant an imaginative quality that he is, to some careful and experienced critics, never quite " real "—or almost always something more than real . He seems accustomed to create in a fashion which is not so much of the actual See also:world as of some other, possible but not actual—no matter whether he deals with money or with love, with Paris or with the provinces, with old times or with new . A further See also:puzzle has arisen from the fact that though Balzac has virtuous characters, he See also:sees humanity on the whole " in See also:black ": and that, whether he actually prefers the delineation of See also:vice, misfortune, failure, or not, he produces as a See also:rule in his readers the sensation familiarly described as "uncomfortable." His morality has been fiercely attacked and valiantly defended, but it is absolutely certain that he wrote with no immoral intention, and with no indifference to morality . In the same way there has been much discussion of his style, which seldom achieves beauty, and sometimes falls short of correctness, but which still more seldom lacks force and adequacy to his own purpose . On the whole, to write with the shorthand necessary here, it is idle to claim for Balzac an See also:absolute supremacy in the novel, while it may be questioned whether any single book of his, or any scene of a book, or even any single character or situation, is among the very greatest books, scenes, characters, situations in literature . But no novelist has created on the same See also:scale, with the same range; none has such a cosmos of his own, pervaded with such a sense of the originality and See also:power of its creator . Balzac's life during these twenty years of strenuous production has, as regards the production itself, been already outlined, but. its outward events, its distractions or avocations—apart from that almost weekly process of "raising the See also:wind," of settling old debts by contracting new ones, which seems to have taken up no small part of it—must now be shortly dealt with . Besides constant visits to the Margonne family at Sadie in See also:Touraine, and to the Carrauds at Frapesle in See also:Berry, he travelled frequently in France . He went in 1833 to See also:Neuchatel for his first See also:meeting with Madame Hanska, to See also:Geneva later for his second, and to See also:Vienna in 1835 for his third . He took at least two flights to See also:Italy, in more or less curious circumstances . In 1838, he went on a See also:journey to See also:Sardinia to make his See also:fortune by melting the See also:silver out of the slag-heaps of See also:Roman mines,— a project, it seems, actually feasible and actually accomplished, but in which he was anticipated . The year before, tired of Paris apartments, he had bought ground at Ville d' Avray, and there constructed, certainly at great, though perhaps exaggerated expense, his See also:villa of Les Jardies, which figures largely in the Balzacian legend . His rash and complicated literary engagements, and (it must be added) his disregard of them when the whim took him, brought him into frequent legal difficulties, the most serious of which was a law-suit with the Revue de Paris in 1836 . In 1831, and again in 1834, he had thought of See also:standing for See also:election as See also:Deputy, and in the latter year he actually did so both at See also:Cambrai and See also:Angouleme; but it is not certain that he received any votes . He also more than once took steps to become a See also:candidate for the See also:Academy, but retired on several occasions before the voting, and when at last, in 1849, he actually stood, he only obtained two votes . As early as the Genevan meeting of 1833, Madame Hanska had formally promised to marry Balzac in the case of her See also:husband's death, and this occurred at the end of 1841 . She would not, however, allow him even to visit her till the next year had expired, and then, though he travelled to St See also:Petersburg and the engagement was renewed after a fashion, its fulfilment was indefinitely postponed . For some years Balzac met his beloved at See also:Baden, See also:Wiesbaden, See also:Brussels, Paris, See also:Rome and elsewhere . Only in See also:September 1847 was he invited on the definite footing of her future husband to her See also:estate of Wierzschovnia in the See also:Ukraine; and even then the visit, interrupted by one excursion to Paris and back, was prolonged for more than two years before (on the 14th of See also: |