He wanted, in real life, to build a spiral staircase between the Jardin de Luxembourg and the catacombs beneath; and that's a fairly obvious metaphor for how he saw his grand work, as a bridge between the highest and lowest of society. Graslin (Curé de Village) are almost the sum-total of woman. Balzac became a successful writer, read throughout Europe, though the more he wrote and published, and lived the Parisian existence he dreamt of, the more he went into debt. Those who insist on reading in me the intention to consider man as a finished creation are strangely mistaken. The fragment of Petronius on the private life of the Romans excites rather than satisfies our curiosity. If Buffon could produce a magnificent work by attempting to represent in a book the whole realm of zoology, was there not room for a work of the same kind on society? In certain fragments of this long work I have tried to popularize the amazing facts, I may say the marvels, of electricity, which in man is metamorphosed into an incalculable force; but in what way do the phenomena of brain and nerves, which prove the existence of an undiscovered world of psychology, modify the necessary and undoubted relations of the worlds to God? It might seem as though the Virgin Mary had chilled the hearts of those sophists who have banished her from heaven with her treasures of loving kindness. The differences between a soldier, an artisan, a man of business, a lawyer, an idler, a student, a statesman, a merchant, a sailor, a poet, a beggar, a priest, are as great, though not so easy to define, as those between the wolf, the lion, the ass, the crow, the shark, the seal, the sheep, etc. Catholicism and Royalty are twin principles. I would also say that delightful and brilliant though Dickens is, Balzac is quite simply the superior novelist, more on the alert against mawkishness. List of characters in the Comedie Humaine and the stories in which they appear. The social state has freaks which Nature does not allow herself; it is nature plus society. I can only present a small selection of the 2,472 figures who enter this imagined world, of course, but chosen carefully they open onto the whole Balzacian universe. “The Animal” is elementary, and takes its external form, or, to be accurate, the differences in its form, from the environment in which it is obliged to develop. Animals have little property, and neither arts nor sciences; while man, by a law that has yet to be sought, has a tendency to express his culture, his thoughts, and his life in everything he appropriates to his use. The Creator works on a single model for every organized being. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. I cannot, therefore, enter on religious discussions, nor on the political discussions of the day. Sep15 by Dagny. Though the advocates of forgiveness of injuries may regret that I should have displayed my skill in literary fence, there are many Christians who are of opinion that we live in times when it is as well to show sometimes that silence springs from generosity. He traveled, had a number of liaisons (and at least one child we can be sure of), and eventually married Evelina Hanska, the Polish countess who nearly twenty years earlier had sent him a fan letter. Then, among animals the drama is limited; there is scarcely any confusion; they turn and rend each other – that is all. Now every one who, in the domain of ideas, brings his stone by pointing out an abuse, or setting a mark on some evil that it may be removed–every such man is stigmatized as immoral. Many of his stories are enfolded within themselves – narrator passing on the story told by a character he meets, etc – and sometimes I found myself thinking of a large-scale version of the miniaturist Stefan Zweig. This work, so far, was nothing. and of Frederick of Prussia would be conclusive against any kind of moral law, if they were judged by the twofold aspect of the morality which guides ordinary mortals, and that which is in use by crowned heads; for, as Napoleon said, for kings and statesmen there are the lesser and the higher morality. And the great thing about work this entertaining is that it's still exciting nearly 200 years on; so it isn't just a bridge, it's a fully functioning time machine. The use of characters who reappear from one novel to the next as well as the fragmented form in which the works were published indicate that the point of reference is not the single novel but rather the entire Human Comedy, which individual readers reconstruct anew, to the best of their ability, usually with a sense of wonder at its crisscrossing paths and ever receding horizons. French society would be the real author; I should only be the secretary. As we read the extraordinary writings of the mystics who studied the sciences in their relation to infinity, such as Swedenborg, Saint-Martin, and others, and the works of the greatest authors on Natural History – Leibnitz, Buffon, Charles Bonnet, etc., we detect in the monads of Leibnitz, in the organic molecules of Buffon, in the vegetative force of Needham, in the correlation of similar organs of Charles Bonnet – who in 1760 was so bold as to write, “Animals vegetate as plants do” – we detect, I say, the rudiments of the great law of Self for Self, which lies at the root of Unity of Plan. Donald Trump's Tax Returns Raise More Questions Than Answers, Taunts and Abuse: On What Really Happened Between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, How a 27-Year-Old Heiress Helped Shape the Post-WWII World. It was from observing this great void in the field of history that the Abbé Barthélemy devoted his life to a reconstruction of Greek manners in Le Jeune Anacharsis. She may be chaste, pure, virtuous; but her unexpansive love will always be as calm and methodical as the fulfilment of a duty. To understand the dimensions and applications of this invented world is what matters. ( Log Out /  Under these six heads are classified all the studies of manners which form the history of society at large, of all its faits et gestes, as our ancestors would have said. At times, it is astonishing to find the movement of the narrative arrested for the backstory of a new character; we may even be annoyed at the delay, until we come to realize that the new character’s story is indispensable to the narrative as a whole. Outside of France, however—maybe especially in the English-speaking world—Balzac has lost his primacy, perhaps because it’s hard to come by much of his work in decent contemporary translations. Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. My scenes of political life are founded on this profound observation. Dagny tells a wonderful story about this proofreading: One of the guys at PG once held an informal proofreading contest. Change ), You are commenting using your Facebook account. These tactics, familiar in party warfare, are a disgrace to those who use them. ( Log Out /  He helped to establish the traditional form of the novel and is generally considered to be one of the greatest novelists of all time. ( Log Out /  He died in 1850, just after he returned with her to his new house in Paris. On this point it remains to be said that the most conscientious moralists doubt greatly whether society can show as many good actions as bad ones; and in the picture I have painted of it there are more virtuous figures than reprehensible ones. Madame de la Chanterie. Balzac is, basically, more grown up. Firstly, there were four translators to whom the English-speaking world owes a great debt. Marcel Proust, as well as James, recognized Balzac as his master, the novelist he had to know in order to forge his own style and create his novelistic world. I seem to remember seeing a few of Balzac’s works offered on Amazon, by a translator whose name I forget, but who translated them at least after WWII. The wonders of animal magnetism, with which I have been familiar since 1820; the beautiful experiments of Gall, Lavater’s successor; all the men who have studied mind as opticians have studied light – two not dissimilar things – point to a conclusion in favor of the mystics, the disciples of St. John, and of those great thinkers who have established the spiritual world – the sphere in which are revealed the relations of God and man. Bibi-Lupin (chief of secret police, called himself Gondureau), Bourignard, Gratien-Henri-Victor-Jean-Joseph, Bourlac, Bernard-Jean-Baptiste-Macloud, Baron de, Bousquier, Du (or Du Croisier or Du Bourguier), Brambourg, Comte de (Title of Philippe Bridau, later Joseph), Bridau, Madame Philippe (born Flore Brazier), Chatelet, Marie-Louise-Anais de Negrepelisse, Baronne du (born Marie-Louise-Anais Negrepelisse, also Madame de Bargeton), Chaulieu, Armande-Louise-Marie de (later Madame Marie Gaston), Cinq-Cygne, Laurence, Comtesse (afterwards Marquise de), Esgrignon, Charles-Marie-Victor-Ange-Carol, Marquis d’ (or Des Grignons), Esgrignon, Victurnien, Comte (then Marquis d’), Espard, Charles-Maurice-Marie-Andoche, Comte de Negrepelisse, Marquis d’, Espard, Jeanne-Clementine-Athenais de Blamont-Chauvry, Marquise d’, Estorade, Louis, Chevalier, then Vicomte and Comte de l’, Galathionne, Prince and Princess (both not in each story), Grosstete (younger brother of F. Grosstete), Guénic, Gaudebert-Calyste-Charles, Baron du, La Bastie la Briere, Madame Ernest de (born Marie-Modeste Mignon), La Billardiere, Athanase-Jean-Francois-Michel, Baron Flamet de, La Chanterie, Baronne Henri le Chantre de, Manerville, Paul Francois-Joseph, Comte de, Maufrigneuse, Duchesse de (born Diane d’Uxelles, later Princesse de Cadignan), Mirouet, Ursule (see Portenduere, Vicomtesse Savinien de), Montauran, Marquis de (younger brother of Alphonse de), Mortsauf, Comtesse de (born Blanche-Henriette de Lenoncourt), Poiret, Madame (nee Christine-Michelle Michonneau), Porta, Madame Luigi (born Ginevra di Piombo), Rastignac, Baron and Baronne de (Eugene’s parents), Remonencq, Madame (previously Madame Cibot), Ronceret, Fabien-Felicien du (or Duronceret), Scherbelloff, Princesse (or Scherbellof or Sherbelloff), Sommervieux, Madame Theodore de (Augustine), Stael-Holstein (Anne-Louise-Germaine Necker, Baronne de), Tours-Minieres, Bernard-Polydor Bryond, Baron des, Vissard, Charles-Amedee-Louis-Joseph Rifoel, Chevalier du, For a brief biography of these characters and more, see: Have chosen to approach my initial question—why Balzac? — by way of the between! 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