See also: Balzac

Honore Balzac , known as Honore de Balzac , born with Turns the May 20th 1799 and died in Paris the August 18th 1850, is a Romancier, Critique arts person, Essayiste, Journaliste and French writer.

He is regarded as largest French writer in the field of the Romance realistic, of the Romance Philosophique and of the Romance Fantastique by Gerard Gengembre, G. Basket maker, the philosopher Alain, and Albert Béguin. Charles Baudelaire saw in him a visionary.

But it is difficult to classify in one or the other category, its work covering a field so vast that criticisms, so much its century than of the next century, will spend much time to seek to him a suitable label without reaching that point.

It worked out a monumental work, the human Comedy , coherent cycle several Romance tens of , Nouvelles, Conte S Philosophique S of which the ambition was to describe in an quasi-exhaustive way the French company of its time or, according to the famous formula, to compete with “the registry office”. He did not hesitate, into full Monarchie with July, to post his convictions Légitimiste S.

Biography

Genealogy

See also: Genealogy of Honore de Balzac

Years of training

Wire of Bernard François Balsa, administrator of the old people's home of Turns, and Anne Charlotte Sallambier, Honore de Balzac is the elder one of three children (Laure, Laurence and Henry). Laure its is preferred by far. There is between him and his sister Laure Surville a complicity, a reciprocal affection which was never contradicted. She will give to him her support for many recoveries: she writes with him, and in 1858, she publishes the biography of her brother. Of 1807 with 1813, Honore is boarder with the college of the Oratoriens of external Vendôme then to the college of Tours until in 1814, before joining this same year, the Lepitre pension, located street of Turenne at Paris, then in 1815 the institution of the abbot Ganser, Rue of Thorigny. The pupils of these two institutions of the Quartier of the Marsh followed in fact the courses of the Lycée Charlemagne. The father of Balzac, Bernard Francois, having been appointed director of the vivres for the First military division in Paris, the family settles street of the Temple, in the Marsh, which is the district of origin of the family (that of large the Sallambier mother).

November 4th 1816, Honore de Balzac is registered in Droit in order to obtain the diploma of graduate later three years, in 1819. At the same time, it takes particular lessons and follows the courses to the Sorbonne. However, his/her father judging that it was necessary to associate the practical right to theoretical teaching, Honore spends his three years of right at a Avoué, friend of Balzac, Jean-Baptiste Guillonnet-Merville, cultivated man who had the taste of the letters. The young man will exert the trade of Clerc of notary in this study where Jules Janin was already errand boy . He will use this experiment to create the character of Derville Master and the chahuteuse environment of the errand boy of a study of solicitor in the Colonel Chabert . A plate Rue of the Temple to Paris testifies to its passage in this solicitor, in a building of the Quartier of the Marsh.

First writings

It is by attending the Sorbonne that the Balzac young person éprend also of Philosophie. As he affirms a literary vocation , its family places it in an attic and leaves him two years to write: Balzac endeavors to write a Tragédie in worms, whose result, Cromwell , appear disappointing. The work is poor and its faculties do not open out in the tragedy.

It turns to another way, that of the Romance . After two attempts awkward but close to its future vision, it conforms to the taste of the time and publishes novels of adventure, which it writes in collaboration and hidden under a Pseudonyme. This work is hardly palpitating but forging mill already its style. In 1822, he becomes the lover of Laure de Berny, Dilecta , which encourages it, advises it, its tenderness lavishes to him and makes him appreciate the taste and manners of the Ancien Mode. At the beginning of 1825, always ignored but eager of glory, Balzac joins a bookseller and buys a printing works: he attends the mediums of the edition thus, of the bookstore, of which he will draw up a wild and precise satire besides. Its business appears an immense financial failure: it collapses under a debt rising with a hundred and thousand francs. To refund the debt will be for him a perpetual concern.

The recognized writer

After this bankruptcy, Balzac returns to the writing, to be finally success there: in 1829, it offers to the public the Physiologie of the marriage , regarded as a “analytical study”, and the novel politico-soldier Chouans . These successes are the first of long series, marked out many and dense works: the production of Balzac is one of most prolific of the French Littérature. It continues to travel and attend the living rooms, in particular that of the Duchesse of Abrantès, with which it had begun a stormy connection in 1825 and with which it also held place to advise and of literary corrector. The dedication of the abandoned Woman is addressed to it.

In 1832, interested by a political career, it makes known its opinions monarchists and catholics and rests his social doctrines on the political authority and nun. In January 1833, it begins its correspondence with the countess Hańska, a Polish admiror. It will see it several times, in Suisse, Saxony and even in Russia. Its correspondence with it spreads out over seventeen years, joined together after its death under the title Lettres with foreign the .

Of 1830 with 1835, it publishes many novels: the Shagreen (1831), Louis Lambert (1832), Séraphîta (1835), the Research of the absolute (1834, 1839, 1845), which he regards as philosophical novels. In the Country doctor (1833), it exposes an economic system and social. Gobseck (1830), Woman the thirty year old (1831), the Colonel Chabert (1832 -35), the Priest of Turns (1832) inaugurates the category “studies of manners” of its work. In this same way, it still looks further into the realism of its paintings and draws powerful portraits of the human types. With Eugenie Grandet (1833) and the Father Goriot (1834 - 1835), it offers consecutively two accounts, later high with the row the traditional ones. He takes again in December 1835 the review the Chronicle of Paris , whose publication is suspended six months later: its debts are still weighed down by this disaster, but that does not have any effect on its literary activity.

the human Comedy

See also: the human Comedy

the Father Goriot mark besides the return of already known protagonists: Balzac from now on will bind between them the accounts, by employing several times the same figures, digging their personality. This recurrence of characters leads it to think the composition of a cyclic work “competing with the civil statue”. He dreams of a unit well organized, segmented in studies, which would be the counterpart of its company. He wants to embrace glance all his time and to lock up it in his human Comédie . However, in 1837, the title which it considers is more austere: social Studies .

It continues the development of its account, cutting the stones which will form its building: it publishes the Lily in the valley (1835 - 1836), Histoire of the size and the decline of César Birotteau (1837), the House Nucingen (1838), the Priest of village , Béatrix (1839), Ursule Mirouët (1841). The drafting of lost Illusions extends from 1837 with 1843.

In 1838, with in particular Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas and George Sand, it founds the Société of the men of letters (currently located in the Hôtel of Massed, street Saint-Jacob with Paris), association of authors intended to defend the Moral right, the patrimonial and legal interests of the authors of the writing.

He will become the president in about it 1839.

In 1842, the social Études become the human Comedy . The publications continue, at regular intervals.

The scene

Balzac approached also the theater with various fortunes.

See also: Balzac with the theater

Last years and death

In 1847 and 1848, Balzac remains in Ukraine at the countess Hańska. Increasingly suffering, Honore de Balzac marries Mrs. Hańska with Berditchev the May 14th 1850 and the husbands settle in Paris the May 21st. He dies the August 18th 1850 to 11 p.m. 30, three months later, éreinté by the extraordinary efforts made during his life. Its work, if abundant and so dense, required a voracious work. The rumor would like that it had called with its bedside of failing Horace Bianchon, the eminent doctor of the human Comedy : it had felt so intensely the stories which it forged that reality merged with the fiction. It is buried with the Cimetière of the Father-Lachaise, where Victor Hugo made a speech in form of Funeral oration. In 1855, Mrs. de Balzac publishes the Peasants (written in 1844 and unfinished). In 1854, Charles Rabou supplements and publishes the Deputy of Arcis (written in 1847 and unfinished) and the Small middle-class men (unfinished). In 1877 are published its complete works, of 24 volumes.

Inventive Balzac of the modern novel

By covering all the kinds: Fantastic and Philosophical, with the Shagreen , Louis Lambert , History of the Thirteen, Séraphîta , realistic, with the Father Goriot , lost Illusions , Splendors and miseries of the courtesans , poetic, with the Lily in the valley , Grenadière , Balzac produced a titanic work which will be used as reference to its century and the next century, thus giving its noble letters to a kind (it Romance), until confused there with the Popular Serial . the Lily in the valley was a reference for sentimental Education of Gustave Flaubert, with: Woman the thirty year old , it inspired in Flaubert Mrs Bovary .

Balzac produced few serials. If its works appear in the newspapers in pre-publication, it has already at the head the novel to come, or in any case one of the miles versions which it will alter inlassablement.

It is especially obsessed by the total construction of a gigantic unit. In that, he is the inventor of the romantic cycle and the reappearing characters that authors like Gide, Zola, Proust, Giono and will begin again in their turn. But it is not only by the novel that it innovates, it is as by the variety of the forms as it adopts: Conte, Nouvelle, Essai, study, and as by the meticulous style as one recognizes to him nowadays. The style of Balzac is that of the precision of the terms, of the texture of the sentences, the configuration of the word, the many corrections made to its works shows that it sticks of close with the Writing. The Balzac novel hardly resembles the amalgam of dish realism and romantic which one could join with this name.

The Balzac world

Work is indissociable life of the author. It is necessary to follow with precision each one of its madnesses: multiple removals, debts, loves, voyages, loan of false names, secret places of residence, stays in castles: Saché, Frapesle, frequentation of the banking , voyages in Italy, money problems, disentangled with the Press and the Critical arts person, to understand that the least lived detail nourished its imaginary world and that it made thus reality truer than any realistic had been able to do it before him. It was able to study the miles facets of a character, a medium, of a situation, to transpose them, to reorganize them and to restore them truer than natural. Engels said that he had learned on the company of the 19th century in Balzac than at all the books from the historians, economists, and statisticians professional.

The author of the human Comedy was in fact Balzac of all his characters. He lived itself their own life until exhaustion. Like Raphaël in the Shagreen , each one of its works required an effort so considerable which it narrowed unrelentingly its existence, consequently very short.

The Balzac character

the Human Comedy is not only this compete with the civil statue whose the author claimed itself. It is also a revolt:

monarchism Balzac is registered obviously initially like a refusal: middle-class company, of its vision of the world, its conquering capitalism, the new ambitions of generated careers by it.

Indeed, Balzac theoretically in favor of a company divided into immutable classes loves only the characters who have a destiny. The Balzac being par excellence is that of excess. All those to which the author obviously stuck are revolted: Béatrix, (Lucien de Rubempré in lost Illusions ), or of out the law: Vautrin, De Marsay in History of the Thirteen , of the human racing cars which cross with from top to bottom violence or upwards the stages of the social hierarchy: Eugene de Rastignac , Coralie or Esther in lost Illusions and Splendors and miseries of the courtesans , Birotteau in César Birotteau , the extravagant musician Gambara, the woman immured in Large Bretèche . That it leaves a lower class to rise in the higher realms or although it falls from the more high ranking to sink in misery or the crime, it is a permanent challenge, a personality except standards, a learnedly organized web of contradictions.

It can leave the hollow very well (Madam de Saint Estève, aunt of Vautrin ) and hold an extraordinary capacity, or on the contrary, it can be of high birth and however very stripped in front of its own prejudices (Emilie de Fontaine in the Ball of Seals ).

See also: Characters of the human Comedy

The invention of the fantastic one

Balzac reacts to a passion produced by Hoffmann and its tale of fantasies, to which it pays homage nevertheless, but of which it thinks that the kind was galvaudé. In a article published in the Caricature the February 16th 1832, it knows liking with the authors of the brown Contes used the word fantastic : unhealthy program of a kind which one already too much used by the abuse the name only . Balzac invents fantastic new, not like literary kind, but like the appearance of reality. It is in reality that the mystery and the horror of the Shagreen are revealed, the fantastic one escapes the presence from any magic object, it nourishes reality and is due to the nature of the situations, the places and the characters. With its fantastic Balzac dessille the eyes of the reader and obliges it to look at better what is, as well in Massimilla Doni , as in Sarrasine , where it approaches the reality of the Castrat, in Gambara , where it presents the back of musical creation in his madness, and Séraphîta , where it treat the question of the Androgyne, angel and fallen angel. It is by the fantastic one that its realism reaches with the surreal philosophical.

Mysticism and Balzac esotericism

Balzac gathered under the philosophical term a mixing system of ideas: the esotericism, the Occultism, faculties visionaries, the prophetic intuition , the action Métapsychique of which it pushes the effect in the direction of the fantastic Réalisme, we would be almost tempted to say: Science fiction. Raymond Abellio.

Indeed, the mysticism which impregnates the philosophical Études : Louis Lambert, Proscribed the, Jesus-Christ in Flanders, Séraphîta, the Research of the absolute, as well as other works of the human Comedy, interferes the influence Swedenborg, theologist and indicator Swedish, and the science of the animal Magnétisme according to Frederic-Antoine Mesmer, tendency which was not paradoxical with the traditional Catholicism transcended by Balzac. I write with the gleam of two eternal truths: the religion, monarchy, two needs which the events proclaim (...). In what the cerebral phenomena and highly-strung persons which show the existence of a new moral world disturb the relationship between the worlds and God? In what the catholic dogmas would be shaken by it? . The author of the human Comedy was, to some extent regulates some with the Catholic church what did not prevent Rome from putting it at the Index in 1841 and left there a long time, not for its not very orthodoxe mysticism, but because he had written many love stories.

Residences of Balzac

They form integral part of the human Comedy , Balzac had been identified, with its preferred characters: those which passed from an attic to a private mansion of great luxury: Lucien de Rubempré in lost Illusions, those which installed secret residences for creatures of dream: the Girl with the eyes of gold , those which passed from the most final ruin to the most immense fortune: the Shagreen, those which were burdened with debts, like him: Anastasy of Restaud in the Father Goriot . But one cannot say with exactitude in which direction the inspiration of the author functioned, how it digested what it had lived or if it continued by imitation the madnesses of the great figures of his work. In any case imagination ordered and work is there to compensate for the insanity;.

records of the street Cassini

In 1826, Balzac took refuge at Henri de Latouche, street of the German Holy Marsh (today Rue Visconti), where the ground floor offered an enough vast space to install a printing works. Latouche, good prince, also arranged a garçonnière on the first floor to him where the writer could receive Madam de Berny. But very quickly, the company failed. Alexandre Deberny took the direction of the business of which it saved a part. But Balzac, attacked by its creditors, let the Sédillot cousin regulate the bankruptcy while his/her beautiful Surville brother rented for him a housing with the n° 1 of the Rue Cassini, in the district of the Observatoire of Paris at the time regarded as the end of the world and which will undoubtedly inspire the geographical environment of the Histoire of the Thirteen . Latouche, which in common had with Balzac the taste of furniture, took an active part in the decoration of the places, choosing, as for the garçonnière of the Rue Visconti, to cover the walls of a blue fabric to the silky aspect. Balzac forgot its debts to launch out in a sumptuous installation, with carpets, a clock with yellow marble pedestal, a library of mahogany tree filled of invaluable editions. Its cabinet of bath in white stucco (walls and bath-tub) was lit by a window out of frosted glass of red color which flooded the pink places of rays. The way of life of Balzac was with the endorsement: costumes of a sought elegance, invaluable objects. Faithful Latouche was involved in debt itself to help his/her friend to carry out his vision of the Eastern luxury by increasing by purchase successive the housing which will become a charming house. It is in this place that will be born: Chouans initially entitled the Last Chouan , then the Physiology of the marriage , the Shagreen , the Scenes of the private life , the thirty year old Woman , the Priest of Turns , History of the Thirteen , the Duchess of Langeais inspired partly by the convent of the Carmelite nuns, near of the street Cassini. But especially Balzac will provide during these years the first foundations of the human Comedy .

13 rue des Batailles

The street of the battles was in Paris, it is called nowadays Avenue of Iéna.

The sumptuous way of life of the Rue Cassini had further increased the debts of Balzac. Having accumulated invaluable goldsmithery and objects of which famous canes with gold pommel, turquoises or stones invaluable. And despite everything the money which it had gained with its enormous literary production, the creditors and the National guard always pursued it so much so that it had to take refuge in the village of Chaillot (Quartier of Chaillot), in an apartment which it rented under the name of Durand widow . One entered there only while giving a password, and it was necessary to cross empty parts, then a corridor to reach to the study of the writer. Richly furnished part, with matelassés walls, which resembled curiously the secret home of the Girl with the eyes of gold , of which the manuscript was transmitted to the Comtesse Hanska by the care of prince Alfred de Schönburg, extraordinary envoy of Ferdinand 1st near Louis-Philippe, which risked in the cave of the writer. There, Balzac worked day and night with the completion of its novel the Lily in the valley , of which he had written essence with the Château of Saché and of which he improved the tests of printing works a very great number of times.

The house of Jardies and the Legend of Pineapples

Balzac bought the house of Jardies with Sevres in 1837 not to cultivate pineapples there as one claimed, but to sell to the inhabitants of the capital pieces to be parcelled out in the grounds which it acquired thereafter, not far from the way of railroad which had just been created between Paris and Versailles. Unfortunately, always continued by its creditors, it will have to flee since 1840. The only trace of its passage which it left is a rustic dresser.

Leon Gozlan and Théophile Gautier and were pilot delusions of grandeur of Balzac which wanted initially to transform the house into palate with invaluable materials, and which had vaguely referred to pineapple plantations. But this anecdote remains a legend amply deformed and amplified because indeed, Balzac dreamed of trees and tropical fruits. Sought at the same time by the national guard and the ushers, the writer did not have the leisure to put his projects at executions and it had to take refuge with Passy (the Seine).

House of Balzac with Passy

Under the name of Madam de Breugnol , Balzac settled street Basse in Passy (currently Rue Raynouard) in a housing with two exits where one penetrated only by giving a password. Madam de Breugnol, of her true name Louise Breugniol, really existed. She held place of controlling with the writer and introduced at his place the sure visitors like the director of the newspaper the Time to which Balzac delivered a serial. The writer lived seven years in an apartment of five parts located in ground floor of the building. The site was very convenient to join the center of Paris while passing by the barrier of Passy via the Rue Berton, downwards. Balzac appreciated calm place and the flowered garden where it gathered bouquets of violets and lilac. It is here that its literary production was most abundant. In the small study (which still remains in the state in the house become museum), one found Balzac vêtu her legendary dressing gown white, with for any material a small table, his coffee machine… and his feather. It wrote there inter alia: Rabouilleuse , Splendors and miseries of the courtesans , the Cousin White beet , the Cousin Pons , and altered the whole of the human Comedy .

The house of Passy , become today the Maison of Balzac is a museum in homage to this giant of the literature. One finds there his rare documents, manuscripts, letters autographs, editions, and some traces of his eccentricities as the famous cane with turquoises, and his coffee machine with the initial ones HB . In addition to the apartment of Balzac, the museum occupies three levels, and extends on several parts and dependences formerly occupied by other tenants. A Généalogie of the characters of the human Comedy is at the disposal of the public. In the form of a 14,50 m long table where 1.000 characters out of the 6.000 are referred who account the human Comedy. One can buy a folding copy of this exceptional realization which makes it possible to measure the vastness of work.

The last palate of Balzac

Balzac has an obsession: to marry the Countess Hanska and to arrange for its future wife a palate worthy of it. For that, the September 28th 1846, it buys (with the money of the countess) Charteuse Beaujon, a house of the street Fortunée, now called Street Balzac . It decorates it according to its practices with a splendor which enchants his/her friend Théophile Gautier, but this decoration will take to him all the time that it should have devoted to the writing. Moreover Balzac does not have any more the taste to write. It will be necessary for him to go in Wierzchownia, in Ukraine to find its dash and to produce the second episode of the Back of the modern history , the Woman author . But, of return to Paris it is Balzac with end of force which will start as of 1848 the Peasants and the Deputy of Romance Arcis remained unfinished with its death. It is besides this palate of the street Fortunée which should have been the Balzac museum if the building had not been destroyed and dispersed collections.

The Balzac museum in Saché

In the Castle of Saché to Saché in Touraine where it remained 1830 with 1837, in his friend Jean de Margonne, the author of the human Comedy wrote in particular: the Father Goriot , lost Illusions and the Research of the absolute . The valley of the Indre, its castles and its soft countryside will be used as framework with its novel the Lily in the valley , (it is called the castle of the Lily). One finds some portraits of Balzac there (one by Louis Boulanger), and the room of the writer remained in the state on the second floor.

Alive models of Balzac

The whole entourage of Balzac was used as model with his characters, including itself which one finds the self-portrait in many works. Like painter of its time , it produced, with the human Comedy, a gallery of portraits which one sought much to compare with the originals. In Béatrix one finds allusions rather clear to Marie d' Agoult (the character of Béatrix). In the same novel, Georges Sand is evoked in the character of Happiness of the Keys, undoubtedly Delphine of Girardin in that of Sabine, and Franz Liszt in that of the lover of the marchioness of Rochefide: the Conti musician.

The author often put episodes of his private life in filigree, in particular in the Lily in the valley where one recognizes perfectly Laure de Berny to which it dedicated the work. As for Balzac itself, one guesses it without sorrow under the features of Felix de Vandenesse.

One believed to see Lamartine in the large Canalis poet of Modeste Mignon, or Victor Hugo in the Nathan poet whom one finds in many works: lost Illusions , Béatrix , Rabouilleuse , Splendors and miseries of the courtesans , Nice Modeste , the Shagreen , writer and poet who knows a fast rise in the literary world. It could also be of Arthez, writer become famous in the Secrecies of the princess of Cadignan , and which is also politician and committed. But also perhaps in the Cousin White beet . The Hulot couple could be a transposition of the household of Victor Hugo (Hector Hulot) and of Adele Foucher (Adeline Fischer).

The duchess of Castries would have been used as model with the Duchess of Langeais and the Duchesse of Abrantès would have been used itself as model at the same time with Madam de Beauséant in the abandoned Woman, and with the duchess of Carigliano in the House of the cat-which-ball . Balzac wrote the House in Mafflier, close to Isle-Adam in 1829 whereas the duchess of Abrantès remained at the Talleyrand-Périgord in the same place. But this last assertion remains a careful assumption. But it is necessary to keep reducing bringings together because the characters of Balzac are often composite. Thus one saw Eugene Delacroix much behind Joseph Bridau the initial painter of Rabouilleuse , undoubtedly because of the physical description of the boy (Delacroix was small and it had a famous person). He is even fore-mentioned Eugene Bridau in Between scientists . But Bridau of Rabouilleuse is also a reflection of Balzac, child badly loved by his mother.

Actually Balzac has sponged each drop of life, joins together the facts in a very personal order, and if it took as a starting point various facts as in César Birotteau , the unit is always skilfully mixed, rebuilds and of the blow each figure becomes a puzzle.

Works

Principal works

History of the editions

There exist several collections of works of Balzac in multiple formats in various editors. By chronological order, one can quote the editions Levasseur and Urbain Canel (1829), Mame-Delaunay (1830), Gosselin (1832), Mrs Charles-Béchet (1833), Werdet (1837), Charpentier (1839). An illustrated edition of Charles Furne (20 vol., in-8°, of 1842 with 1852) joined together the integrality of the human Comedy in partnership with Houssiaux then Hetzel, Dubochet and Paulin.

The human Comedy

This list is based on the edition Furne, edition of reference for the human Comedy . It follows divisions that Balzac installation itself.

Studies of manners

Scenes of the private life

Scenes of the life of province

the competitions

Scenes of Parisian life

Scenes of the political life

Scenes of the military life

Scenes of the life of countryside

Philosophical studies

Analytical studies

Outlines attached to the human Comedy

The Outlines attached to the human Comedy are Conte S, Nouvelle S, Fragment S of history or Essai S which make it possible to reconstitute the literary course of a prolific author and to clarify the remote regions of them. In that, they have an important historical value, and sometimes, an unexpected literary value. But it is especially by what she teach us from Balzac and her manner of writing that they are invaluable. The whole of these manuscripts scattered with died of the author could be joined together thanks to the patient work of collector of the Viscount Charles de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, and after him with literary archeologists who worked to give in order, to interpret the direction of these texts while seeking what attached them to the human Comedy. They were initially gathered in 1937 by Marcel Bouteron (eight texts), then Roger Pierrot in 1959 (ten texts), Maurice Bardèche. Many of these texts had remained new the alive one of the author, others had been published. In 1950, at the time of the centenary of died of Balzac, two texts were published separately: the Woman author and Miss of Vissard. And again the Woman author and others Fragment S of the human Comedy. The whole being published in a volume complementary to Pleiade.Pratiquement all the updated outlines were successively published by Maurice Bardèche in complete Works of Balzac, then in 1968 per Roger Pierrot and J.A. Ducourneau, by respecting divisions of the human Comedy that Balzac had given to the twenty five texts and that the Pleiad respected.

See also: Outlines attached to the human Comedy

Published after the death of the writer

  • the Peasants (unfinished)

  • the Deputy of Arcis (unfinished), finished and published in 1854 by Charles Rabou, according to the promise which it had made in Balzac little before his death. The text is composed of three parts:
  • the Small middle-class men of Paris (unfinished), finished and published by Charles Rabou in 1856 - 1854

Others

Films based on the work of Balzac

Balzac did not cease being adapted to the screen (television and cinema) since nearly one hundred years. Very regularly, one or more of its works are the subject of new films. Its novels and news offer an ideal scenario from where the images emerge from they-even according to Jacques Rivette.

See also: Catalog of films of Honore de Balzac

Illustrators of Balzac

Illustrated books

Henri Monnier: the Priest of Turns

Grandville and Gavarni.: Heartbreaks of an English and others scenes of private life and public she-cat of the animals . Hetzel 1844 and 1845

Charles Huard: the Cousin White beet for the edition 1910

Honore Daumier: drawing for Ferragus and lists illustrators of Balzac

Gustave Gilded: 425 drawings for Hundred tales drolatic

Albert Robida: illustrations for Hundred tales drolatic

Pablo Picasso : Picasso and the unknown Masterpiece . Ambroise Vollard proposed in 1921 with Picasso to illustrate the unknown Masterpiece of Balzac. The history puts in scene an old genious painter (Frenhofer) to which Picasso, fascinated by the text, was identified all the more easily as the workshop of Frenhofer was located street of Large Augustins. Little time after the proposal of Vollard, Picasso was going to rent itself a workshop with number 7 of this same street where it would paint its masterpiece: Guernica . and

Pierre Alechinsky: the Treated exciting modern , 1989. The book, accompanied by a postface of Michel Butor is published by Yves Rivière.

pol. Bury: The second part of Pathology of the social life , Theory of the step , delivers illustrated in 1990

Portraits of the author

Sculptures

Towards the end of the 19th century the Société of the men of letters places order of a statue of Balzac to Henri Chapu who dies in July 1891, leaving only drafts and outlines of the monument. Emile Zola obtains whereas the order is entrusted to Auguste Rodin on August 14th 1891. Rodin seizes the subject to produce Balzac seized in the sharp one of the creative energy of which he wants to make a symbol. Knowing little, it is devoted to many research: portraits painted of the Balzac young person represented as a monk rubicond with the proletarian tourangeau that Rodin takes as model of the “Balzac type”. It immerses in the human Comedy , consults files and collections, produces successively heads of the busts, the naked athletic ones. Until the moment when spouts out the final idea by observing one of the figures of its Bourgeois of Calais . It will follow from there a violent polemic at the time of the first presentation of the work devoted to the novelist. The hagiographal ones of Balzac would have liked a statue flattered, out of bronze, the conformist saw in the work of Rodin a novelist draped in rigidities of shroud, the presentation makes scandal. In spite of the eulogistic articles of Emile Zola the sculptor is in butts at worst the insults. The Company of the men of letters repudiates Rodin and order with Falguière a “Balzac without clashes”.

Rodin carries work in its villa of Meudon and it is there, which, a few years later, a young German photographer, the beauty will discover, ensuring the beginnings of its posterity. It is only in 1939 that a bronze pulling was set up in Paris, Boulevard Raspail. Rodin wrote in 1908: “This work which one laughed, that one took care to ridicule because one could not destroy it, is the resultant of all my life, the pivot of my esthetics”.

Outline of the statue of Auguste Rodin, 1898 Raspail Boulevard. Paris.

Balzac and the press

The press was not tender with Balzac which, in its novels, caused it by scratching it readily. In lost Illusions , the writer makes say to wise coterie , when Lucien de Rubempré announces that it goes to throw itself in the newspapers You in good keep, there would be fall it from beautiful, the suave Lucien which we like (…). You will not resist the constant opposition of pleasure and work which is in the life of the journalists; and to resist the bottom, it is the virtue. You would be so magic to exert the power, to have the right of life and of died on works of the thought, which you would be journalist in two months. To be a journalist, it is to become proconsul in the republic of the letters. Who can all say, is able at to do everything! This maxim is of Napoleon and is included/understood.

What is all the same in contradiction with the powerful desire of Balzac for becoming Master of the literary and political world, thanks to its association the red Horse . In contradiction also with its two unhappy press companies: the Chronicle of Paris (1835) and later the Parisian Review (1839).

Nevertheless the more success of Balzac grows near the public, the more criticism is done lasts, unjust, and often petty, since its eagerness continues after its death.

Like notes it André Maurois in the epilog of Prométhée or the life of Balzac : All the large monuments throw shade; there are people who see only the shade. The naturalists recognized (wrongly) in him an ancestor, although Zola believed to distinguish “a crack of the genius” in the policy and the mystic of Balzac. Emile Faguet, in 1887, reproached him its ideas of clerk of notary of province and vulgarities of its style.

Since 1856, Leon Gozlan, which had succeeded Balzac with the presidency of the Société of the men of letters after Victor Hugo, testified to eagerness postmortem of the literary critics and especially of the academics who ended up acknowledging their error later a few years: The newspapers, there are some twelve or fifteen years, dealt much with Balzac, but they did it as they do all, i.e. quickly and without reflection. They spoke only about its hair, its rings and its cane. It was the lion of the fortnight, spend year, then they left it after having made it look fatter, exaggerated and inordinately swollen. It should be said, it is this caricature of the extraordinary man who remained in the spirit of the generation.

Newspapers of Balzac

the Chronicle of Paris

In 1835. Balzac learned that this newspaper, a royalist sheet, was to be sold, and it bought it as usual, with funds which it did not have. The company, which had appeared dramatic with very other, filled of joy Balzac which built at once its “castles in Spain”. All was simple: Gustave Planche would take care of literary criticism, Théophile Gautier, whose Balzac appreciated the young talent, would belong to the drafting. The young novelist, very impressed by Balzac, promised articles.

When finally the Chronicle of Paris appeared (January 1st, 1836), the team included/understood important feathers: Victor Hugo, Gustave Board, Alphonse Karr, Théophile Gautier. And for the illustrations, there was Henri Monnier, Grandville and Daumier. Balzac reserving the policy (since the newspaper was a tool of being able), and it would provide also news. Actually, if the members of the drafting feasted much at Balzac, well little of them their engagements held. Balzac practically wrote the Chronicle with him all alone. It published there texts which one will find later in the human Comedy , altered thousand times Prohibition , the Mass of the atheist , Facino Cane .

As for the signed political articles of its hand, here an extract of that published on May 12th, 1836:

At the beginning, the newspaper had a great success. The new subscribers flowed and the Chronicle could have succeeded if Balzac had not been obliged to deliver, at the same time, with its editors (Mrs Béchet, and Werdet) last volumes of the Études of manners , if it, in addition, had not gone bankrupt in another chimerical company launched with his Surville brother-in-law, and if it had not had on the arms a lawsuit against François Buloz in connection with the Lys in the valley . Stopped by the National guard, conduit at the prison (which the Werdet editor made it leave rather quickly), it was now discouraged. Threatened to be put in bankruptcy, it decided to give up the Chronicle .

the Parisian Review

The ruinous experiment of the Chronicle of Paris should have discouraged Balzac forever any press company. But in 1839, Armand Dutacq, (director of the famous daily newspaper the Century and initiator of the Romance serial with Emile of Girardin), offered to him to finance a small monthly review. At once Balzac imagined the Parisian Review whose Dutacq would be administrator and with which it would share the benefit. The company was supposed to be used the interests of the feuilletonist Balzac for one time when Alexandre Dumas, and Eugene Sue skilfully managed the kind in the daily newspapers. Very at ease to exploit the receipts of the serial, they used, better than Balzac, the principle of cutting and the suspense. The author of the human Comedy launched out in the competition, writing practically only for three months a review which he wanted also literary and political. He published inter alia Z. Marcas (the July 25th 1840) which was integrated into the human Comedy in August 1846 in the Scènes of the political life .

In addition to its attacks against the monarchical mode, the Parisian Review was characterized by literary criticisms rather violent in the praise as in the load. Among his victims one counts Henri de Latouche with which it was scrambled and that it hated from now on:

  • Mister de Latouche has neither art to prepare scenes, nor that to draw characters, to form contrasts, to support the interest.

And also, its natural enemy: Holy-Beuve, whose Port-Royal was the subject of a true outburst. Balzac was avenged for last humiliations:

  • Mr Holy-Beuve had the petrifying idea to restore the tedious kind. In a point, this author deserves that it is rented: he goes justice, he goes little in the world and spreads the trouble only by its feather (…).

Balzac was still caught of it that and there rather wrongfully in Eugene Sue, but it paid a homage vibrating to Chartreuse of Parma of Stendhal, at one time when, by mutual agreement, the press remained dumb on this novel:

  • Mr Stendhal wrote a book where the sublime one bursts of chapter in chapter. It produced, at the age where the men seldom find subjects imposing, and after having written a score of extremely spiritual volumes, a work which can be appreciated only by the higher hearts and people (…). Goethe also showed him very admiring of Stendhal in the Conversations with Eckerman .

But this marked the last number of the Parisian review which died out after the third publication. Balzac and Dutacq shared the losses which were not very heavy besides. However, once again, Balzac had failed in the press, and the businesses.

Monograph of the Parisian press. Lampoon

This humorous monograph, by Balzac (1843), was republished by Jean-Jacques Pauvert in 1965, thus drawing from the oubliettes a complete analysis of the components of the press indexed by Balzac. One finds there the definition of the publicity agent, the journalist, the “rienologist”: “Popularizer, alias: homo papaver, necessarily without any variety (…), which extends an idea of idea in a bucket of commonplaces, and outputs mechanically this appalling compounding philosophico-arts person in continuous sheets”. Balzac can be off-hand in the Satire.

The foreword of Gerard de Nerval is in the same tone. In a style deadpan, it gives a definition of the duck : information manufactured hawked by satirical sheets and from where was born the word slang duck to indicate a newspaper.

Balzac and the Daguerreotype

See also: Balzac and the daguerreotype

Balzac and writers of his time

Balzac had few enemies among the large feathers of its time, even if inevitable squabbles burst sometimes. Its only true enemies were those which Boris Vian will designate like piss-copy , namely aggressive and impotent literary criticisms such Holy-Beuve to which Michel Polac allots the small sourness of the missed writer who returns it nearer to a critic of the NRF of years 20-40, that of its contemporaries . and that Angelo Rinaldi attacks with humor in the Express train of December 16th, 1988.

See also: Balzac and writers of his time

Balzac and its counterfeiters

Balzac is the author of the 19th century which was counterfeited the most in Belgium, and it did not fail to complain some. It is only after its death, in 1853, which was signed between France and Belgium a bilateral convention reciprocally guaranteeing the rights of the authors on the protection of their works.

According to Robert Paul: the counterfeit had been born from the absence of any international understanding for the protection of works of the spirit. The industry which resulted from this and which developed in Holland as of 17th century consisted in reproducing and to launch on the European market of the works recently published to Paris. As the Belgian counterfeiter did not remunerate the authors, it could easily compete with the Parisian editor. If France remained to him closed, it was free to flood Belgium, England, Germany, Austria, Italy and even Russia. In 1836, three counterfeiters of Brussels, Wahlen, Hauman and Méline have deposits in Germany and Italy, in Kehl and as far as Algeria. French editors and writers protest. As of 1834, Honore de Balzac took the head of the movement with its famous Lettre with the French writers of the 19th century . Other authors will follow it, until a Franco-Belgian convention of 1853 comes to put a term at this practice

Currently, the Belgian counterfeits of Balzac are very required. One can find them in bookstores or on sites of old books of mail-order selling. List nonexhaustive:

  • Physiology of the marriage , counterfeit published at Meline, in Brussels, in 1834.

  • Chouans , counterfeit in 1835 at Hauman in Brussels (under the title the Chouan Last or Brittany in 1800 ). Another at Méline in 1837
  • the Father Goriot Parisian history by Honore de Balzac. Brussels, Meline, Camwoods and Company, 1837. Printed two years after the original edition.
  • the Shagreen Brussels, Louis Hauman, 1831. counterfeit at the date of the original edition
  • the Lily in the valley
  • the Employees or the higher Woman appears in July 1837, in fifteen daily serials. It is starting from this edition that the same year three Belgian counterfeits are carried out.
  • a beginning in the life . 1842. Under the title the Danger of the mystifications appeared the same year three counterfeits Belgian.
  • the last incarnation of Vautrin , 1847. Brussels, Lebègue and Sacré wire. The Belgian counterfeit appears one year before the French edition
  • lost Illusions , a great man of province in Paris . 1839 published Counterfeit the same year as the original edition of Paris
  • New scenes of the private life . Brussels, Méline, 1832. First Belgian counterfeit containing: the Council , the Stock Exchange , the Duty of a woman , the Single people , the Appointment , the thirty year old Woman , the Finger of God , the Two meetings , the Atonement .

the business Octave Mirbeau

The Radziwill business

The princess Catherine Radziwill, born Rzewuska on March 30th, 1858 with Saint-Pétersbourg, wife of Prussian prince Guillaume Radziwill, was the girl of the younger brother of Mrs Hanska, the count Adam Rzewuski. After having left her husband in 1899 for an adventurous life which successively led it in England, then in South Africa where she imitated the signature of Cecil Rhodos, founder of the diamond company De Beers, she took refuge with the the United States.

Claiming its origins, and of its relationship with Mrs Hanska, therefore with Balzac, it monnaya shamefully of the letters of Mrs Hanska manufactured of any part, whose originals would have been inaccessible to him because of the come to power of the Soviets. In front of dazzled amateurs of Balzac, it produced ten seven letters of Mrs Hanska with her younger brother, in whom the countess made very precise confidences on Balzac, her character, her practices and their relations. To deceive the Balzac ones of America, the princess presented herself like having passed her childhood under the roof of Madam de Balzac, which is impossible taking into account its birth date (1858). At that time there Mrs Hanska had lived Paris for eight years.

It took a certain time to ventilate trickery. In 1926, appeared at Plon a thesis of doctorate of an American young person Juanita Helm Floyd: women in the life of Balzac . The text was prefaced, abundantly annotated by Catherine Radziwill and the ten seven letters manufactured there were added in appendix. Moreover the princess published an article which gave great hopes to the Balzac ones: one was going finally to find this correspondence that Mrs Hanska had required of Balzac to burn. One accepted the miracle. But very quickly the Blue Revue found this correspondence suspect, at all in the usual style of Mrs Hanska. And Sophie de Korwin-Piotrowska, who knew the Rzewuski family well, stated that Mrs Hanska did not have any relation with his/her younger brother and that it would not have had any reason of him to speak about this French literary man which he disapproved.

Finally one discovered in the Gotha that the last address of the Radziwill princess was in 1929 with Leningrad: 63, Ligowka; and that it was thus not victim of the Soviets as it had affirmed to be accommodated better in America.

The thesis of doctorate of Miss Juanita Helm Floyd, removed from the Radziwill writings, remains a very serious reference book.

Voyages of Balzac

Balzac travelled much: Ukraine, Russia, Prussia Austria, Italy. But well few places, apart from Paris and of the French Province, will be a source of inspiration for the author of the human Comedy . Only the Italy, inspires a passion to him which it expresses in very many writings, in particular the Conte S and Nouvelle S Philosophique S. In Russia, it is rather Balzac which will leave its traces in the person of Dostoïevski.

Italy

He likes the Italy, this mother of all arts , for his natural beauty, the generosity of his inhabitants, the simplicity and the elegance of sound aristocracy, which he regards as the first of Europe , for the genius of its musicians (Rossini). Sent in 1836 to Turin by his Guibodoni-Visconti friends, he discovers this same year Milan where he is the host of prince Porcia to which he will send in June 1837 the manuscript of Massimilla Doni , then the following year Venice, country of the wonders, country of Thousand and One Nights. Balzac does not dry up praises on this country, its splendors, and it places Lord Byron in the category of the hypocritical which feel sorry for the decline of Venice .

The author of the human Comedy on the contrary is dazzled by the Italian creativity by the Mosé and the Barber of Seville of Rossini which it meets with Bologna, and to which it devotes two twin news : Massimilla Doni and Gambara. Also dazzled by the beauties of Florence, Genoa, Rome, by its painters, sculptors, architects. ( Sarrasine , Facino Duck . If it were filled with enthusiasm by Chartreuse of Parma , it is also because the novel of Stendhal offers Italian statues comparable with those of the gardens of the large villas. A passion which Italy returns to him well since it is accommodated there in the country with open arms.

Russia

It is on the contrary with a little mistrust that one sees it arriving at Saint-Petersbourg in 1843 to help Mrs Hanska in a business of succession. Its reputation of involved in debt preceded it. In Paris already, when he asks a visa, the embassy secretary Victor de Balabine supposes that he goes in Russia because he does not have the penny, and the person in charge Russian in Paris proposes with his government of going to the front of the needs for money of Mister de Balzac and making profitable the feather of this author, who still keeps a certain popularity here,… to write a refutation of the book slanderer of Mister of Custine. .

It in what it is mistaken. Balzac will not refute Astolphe de Custine, either which he will seek of subsidies with Saint-Petersbourg. It came only to see Mrs Hanska. The author of the human Comedy however is very loved and very read in Russia. The public regards it as the writer who has best included/understood feelings of the women . Among its admirors: an young man who flatters himself to have read any Balzac as of the sixteen years age and who takes his first steps in literature by translating Eugenie Grandet : Fedor Dostoievski .

Myths of Balzac

Quotations, analyzes and comments

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