Honoré de Balzac, by common consent the greatest of French novelists and
to many of his admirers the greatest of all writers of prose fiction,
was born at Tours, May 16th, 1799. Neither his family nor his place of
birth counts for much in his artistic development; but his sister Laure,
afterwards Madame Surville,--to whom we owe a charming sketch of her
brother and many of his most delightful letters,--made him her hero
through life, and gave him a sympathy that was better than any merely
literary environment. He was a sensitive child, little comprehended by
his parents or teachers, which probably accounts for the fact that few
writers have so well described the feelings of children so situated [See
'Le lys dans la vallée' (The Lily in the Valley) and 'Louis Lambert'].
He was not a good student, but undermined his health by desultory though
enormous reading and by writing a precocious Treatise on the Will, which
an irate master burned and the future novelist afterwards naïvely
deplored. When brought home to recuperate, he turned from books to
nature, and the effects of the beautiful landscape of Touraine upon his
imagination are to be found throughout his writings, in passages of
description worthy of a nature-worshiper like Senancour himself. About
this time a vague desire for fame seems to have seized him,--a desire
destined to grow into an almost morbid passion; and it was a kindly
Providence that soon after (1814) led his family to quit the stagnant
provinces for that nursery of ambition, Paris. Here he studied under new
masters, heard lectures at the Sorbonne, read in the libraries, and
finally, at the desire of his practical father, took a three years'
course in law.
[Illustration: HON. DE BALZAC.]
He was now at the parting of the ways, and he chose the one nearest his
heart. After much discussion, it was settled that he should not be
obliged to return to the provinces with his family, or to enter upon the
regular practice of law, but that he might try his luck as a writer on
an allowance purposely fixed low enough to test his constancy and
endurance. Two years was the period of probation allotted, during which
time Balzac read still more widely and walked the streets studying the
characters he met, all the while endeavoring to grind out verses for a
tragedy on Cromwell. This, when completed, was promptly and justly
damned by his family, and he was temporarily forced to retire from
Paris. He did not give up his aspirations, however, and before long he
was back in his attic, this time supporting himself by his pen. Novels,
not tragedies, were what the public most wanted, so he labored
indefatigably to supply their needs and his own necessities; not
relinquishing, however, the hope that he might some day watch the
performance of one of his own plays. His perseverance was destined to be
rewarded, for he lived to write five dramas which fill a volume of his
collected works; but only one, the posthumous comedy 'Mercadet', was
even fairly successful. Yet that Balzac had dramatic genius his matured
novels abundantly prove.
The ten romances, however, that he wrote for cheap booksellers between
1822 and 1829 displayed so little genius of any sort that he was
afterwards unwilling to cover their deficiencies with his great name.
They have been collected as youthful works ('Oeuvres de jeunesse'), and
are useful to a complete understanding of the evolution of their
author's genius; but they are rarely read even by his most devoted
admirers. They served, however, to enable him to get through his long
and heart-rending period of apprenticeship, and they taught him how to
express himself; for this born novelist was not a born writer and had to
labor painfully to acquire a style which only at rare moments quite
fitted itself to the subject he had in hand.
Much more interesting than these early sensational romances were the
letters he wrote to his sister Laure, in which he grew eloquent over his
ambition and gave himself needed practice in describing the characters
with whom he came in contact. But he had not the means to wait quietly
and ripen, so he embarked in a publishing business which brought him
into debt. Then, to make up his losses, he became partner in a printing
enterprise which failed in 1827, leaving him still more embarrassed
financially, but endowed with a fund of experience which he turned to
rich account as a novelist. Henceforth the sordid world of debt,
bankruptcy, usury, and speculation had no mystery for him, and he laid
it bare in novel after novel, utilizing also the knowledge he had gained
of the law, and even pressing into service the technicalities of the
printing office [See 'Illusions perdues' (Lost Illusions)]. But now at
the age of twenty-eight he had over 100,000 francs to pay, and had
written nothing better than some cheap stories; the task of wiping out
his debts by his writings seemed therefore a more hopeless one than
Scott's. Nothing daunted, however, he set to work, and the year that
followed his second failure in business saw the composition of the first
novel he was willing to acknowledge, 'Les Chouans.' This romance of
Brittany in 1799 deserved the praise it received from press and public,
in spite of its badly jointed plot and overdrawn characters. It still
appeals to many readers, and is important to the 'Comédie humaine' as
being the only novel of the "Military Scenes.". The 'Physiology of
Marriage' followed quickly (1829-30), and despite a certain pruriency of
imagination, displayed considerable powers of analysis, powers destined
shortly to distinguish a story which ranks high among its author's
works, 'La Maison du chat-qui-pelote' (1830). This delightful novelette,
the queer title of which is nearly equivalent to 'At the Sign of the Cat
and the Racket,' showed in its treatment of the heroine's unhappy
passion the intuition and penetration of the born psychologist, and in
its admirable description of bourgeois life the pictorial genius of the
genuine realist. In other words the youthful romancer was merged once
for all in the matured novelist. The years of waiting and observation
had done their work, and along the streets of Paris now walked the most
profound analyst of human character that had scrutinized society since
the days when William Shakespeare, fresh from Stratford, trod the
streets and lanes of Elizabethan London.
The year 1830 marks the beginning not merely of Balzac's success as the
greatest of modern realists, but also of his marvelous literary
activity. Novel after novel is begun before its predecessor is finished;
short stories of almost perfect workmanship are completed; sketches are
dashed off that will one day find their appropriate place in larger
compositions, as yet existing only in the brain of the master. Nor is it
merely a question of individual works: novels and stories are to form
different series,--'Scenes from Private Life,' 'Philosophical Novels and
Tales,'--which are themselves destined to merge into 'Studies of Manners
in the Nineteenth Century,' and finally into the 'Comédie humaine'
itself. Yet it was more than a swarm of stories that was buzzing in his
head; it was a swarm of individuals often more truly alive to him than
the friends with whom he loved to converse about them. And just because
he knew these people of his brain, just because he entered into the
least details of their daily lives, Balzac was destined to become much
more than a mere philosopher or student of society; to wit, a creator of
characters, endowed with that "absolute dramatic vision" which
distinguishes Homer and Shakespeare and Chaucer. But because he was also
something of a philosopher and student of sociology, he conceived the
stupendous idea of linking these characters with one another and with
their several environments, in order that he might make himself not
merely the historian but also the creator of an entire society. In other
words, conservative though he was, Balzac had the audacity to range
himself by the side of Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, and to espouse the cause
of evolution even in its infancy. The great ideas of the mutability of
species and of the influence of environment and heredity were, he
thought, as applicable to sociology as to zoölogy, and as applicable to
fiction as to either. So he meditated the 'Comédie humaine' for several
years before he announced it in 1842, and from being almost the rival of
Saint-Hilaire he became almost the anticipator of Darwin.
But this idea of evolution was itself due to the evolution of his
genius, to which many various elements contributed: his friendships and
enmities with contemporary authors, his intimacies with women of
refinement and fashion, his business struggles with creditors and
publishers, his frequent journeys to the provinces and foreign
countries; and finally his grandiose schemes to surround himself with
luxury and the paraphernalia of power, not so much for his own sake as
for the sake of her whose least smile was a delight and an inspiration.
About each of these topics an interesting chapter might be written, but
here a few words must suffice.
After his position as an author was more or less assured, Balzac's
relations with the leaders of his craft--such as Victor Hugo, Théophile
Gautier, and George Sand--were on the whole cordial. He had trouble with
Sainte-Beuve, however, and often felt that his brother-writers begrudged
his success. His constant attacks on contemporary journalists, and his
egotistic and erratic manners naturally prejudiced the critics, so that
even the marvelous romance entitled 'La Peau de chagrin' (The Magic
Skin: 1831),--a work of superb genius,--speedily followed as it was by
'Eugénie Grandet' and 'Le Père Goriot,' did not win him cordial
recognition. One or two of his friendships, however, gave him a
knowledge of higher social circles than he was by birth entitled to, a
fact which should be remembered in face of the charge that he did not
know high life, although it is of course true that a writer like Balzac,
possessing the intuition of genius, need not frequent salons or live in
hovels in order to describe them with absolute verisimilitude.
With regard to Balzac's debts, the fact should be noted that he might
have paid them off more easily and speedily had he been more prudent. He
cut into the profits of his books by the costly changes he was always
making in his proof-sheets,--changes which the artist felt to be
necessary, but against which the publishers naturally protested. In
reality he wrote his books on his proof-sheets, for he would cut and
hack the original version and make new insertions until he drove his
printers wild. Indeed, composition never became easy to him, although
under a sudden inspiration he could sometimes dash off page after page
while other men slept. He had, too, his affectations; he must even have
a special and peculiar garb in which to write. All these eccentricities
and his outside distractions and ambitions, as well as his noble and
pathetic love affair, entered into the warp and woof of his work with
effects that can easily be detected by the careful student, who should
remember, however, that the master's foibles and peculiarities never for
one moment set him outside the small circle of the men of supreme
genius. He belongs to them by virtue of his tremendous grasp of life in
its totality, his superhuman force of execution and the inevitableness
of his art at its best.
The decade from 1830 to 1840 is the most prolific period of Balzac's
genius in the creation of individual works; that from 1840 to 1850 is
his great period of philosophical co-ordination and arrangement. In the
first he hewed out materials for his house; in the second he put them
together. This statement is of course relatively true only, for we owe
to the second decade three of his greatest masterpieces: 'Splendeurs et
misères des courtisanes,' and 'La Cousine Bette' and 'Le Cousin Pons,'
collectively known as 'Les Parents pauvres' (Poor Relations). And what a
period of masterful literary activity the first decade presents! For the
year 1830 alone the Vicomte de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul gives seventy-one
entries, many of slight importance, but some familiar to every student
of modern literature, such as 'El Verdugo,' 'La Maison du
chat-qui-pelote,' 'Gobseck,' 'Adieu,' 'Une Passion dans le desert' (A
Passion in the Desert), 'Un Épisode sous la Terreur' (An Episode of the
Terror). For 1831 there are seventy-six entries, among them such
masterpieces as 'Le Réequisitionnaire' (The Conscript), 'Les Proscrits'
(The Outlaws), 'La Peau de chagrin,' and 'Jésus-Christ en Flandre.' In
1832 the number of entries falls to thirty-six, but among them are 'Le
Colonel Chabert,' 'Le Curé de Tours' (The Priest of Tours), 'La Grande
Bretèche,' 'Louis Lambert,' and 'Les Marana.' After this year there are
fewer short stories. In 1833 we have 'Le Médecin de campagne' (The
Country Doctor), and 'Eugénie Grandet,' with parts of the 'Histoire des
treize' (Story of the Thirteen), and of the 'Contes drolatiques' (Droll
Tales). The next year gives us 'La Recherche de l'absolu' (Search for
the Absolute) and 'Le Père Goriot' (Old Goriot) and during the next six
there were no less than a dozen masterpieces. Such a decade of
accomplishment is little short of miraculous, and the work was done
under stress of anxieties that would have crushed any normal man.
But anxieties and labors were lightened by a friendship which was an
inspiration long before it ripened into love, and were rendered bearable
both by Balzac's confidence in himself and by his ever nearer view of
the goal he had set himself. The task before him was as stupendous as
that which Comte had undertaken, and required not merely the planning
and writing of new works but the utilization of all that he had
previously written. Untiring labor had to be devoted to this
manipulation of old material, for practically the great output of the
five years 1829-1834 was to be co-ordinated internally, story being
brought into relation with story and character with character. This
meant the creation and management of an immense number of personages,
the careful investigation of the various localities which served for
environments, and the profound study of complicated social and political
problems. No wonder, then, that the second decade of his maturity shows
a falling off in abundance, though not in intensity of creative power;
and that the gradual breaking down of his health, under the strain of
his ceaseless efforts and of his abnormal habits of life, made itself
more and more felt in the years that followed the great preface which in
1842 set forth the splendid design of the 'Comédie humaine.'
This preface, one of the most important documents in literary history,
must be carefully studied by all who would comprehend Balzac in his
entirety. It cannot be too often repeated that Balzac's scientific and
historical aspirations are important only in so far as they caused him
to take a great step forward in the development of his art. The nearer
the artist comes to reproducing for us life in its totality, the higher
the rank we assign him among his fellows. Tried by this canon, Balzac is
supreme. His interweaving of characters and events through a series of
volumes gives a verisimilitude to his work unrivaled in prose fiction,
and paralleled only in the work of the world-poets. In other words, his
use of co-ordination upon a vast scale makes up for his lack of delicacy
and sureness of touch, as compared with what Shakespeare and Homer and
Chaucer have taught us to look for. Hence he is with them even if not
of them.
This great claim can be made for the Balzac of the 'Comédie humaine'
only; it could not be made for the Balzac of any one masterpiece like
'Le Père Goriot,' or even for the Balzac of all the masterpieces taken
in lump and without co-ordination. Balzac by co-ordination has in spite
of his limitations given us a world, just as Shakespeare and Homer have
done; and so Taine was profoundly right when he put him in the same
category with the greatest of all writers. When, however, he added St.
Simon to Shakespeare, and proclaimed that with them Balzac was the
greatest storehouse of documents that we have on human nature, he was
guilty not merely of confounding _genres_ of art, but also of laying
stress on the philosophic rather than on the artistic side of fiction.
Balzac does make himself a great storehouse of documents on human
nature, but he also does something far more important, he sets before us
a world of living men and women.
To have brought this world into existence, to have given it order in the
midst of complexity, and that in spite of the fact that death overtook
him before he could complete his work, would have been sufficient to
occupy a decade of any other man's life; but he, though harassed with
illness and with hopes of love and ambition deferred, was strong enough
to do more. The year 1840 saw the appearance of 'Pierrette,' and the
establishment of the ill-fated 'Revue parisienne.' The following year
saw 'Ursule Mirouet,' and until 1848 the stream of great works is
practically unbroken. The 'Splendeurs et misères' and the 'Parents
pauvres' have been named already, but to these must be added 'Un Ménage
de garçon' (A Bachelor's House-keeping), 'Modeste Mignon,' and 'Les
Paysans' (The Peasants). The three following years added nothing to his
work and closed his life, but they brought him his crowning happiness.
On March 14th, 1850, he was married to Mme. Hanska, at Berditchef; on
August 18th, 1850, he died at Paris.
Madame Evelina de Hanska came into Balzac's life about 1833, just after
he had shaken off the unfortunate influence of the Duchesse de Castries.
The young Polish countess was much impressed, we are told, by reading
the 'Scènes de la vie privée' (Scenes of Private Life), and was somewhat
perplexed and worried by Balzac's apparent change of method in 'La Peau
de chagrin.' She wrote to him over the signature "L'Étrangère" (A
Foreigner), and he answered in a series of letters recently published in
the Revue de Paris. Not long after the opening of this correspondence
the two met, and a firm friendship was cemented between them. The lady
was about thirty, and married to a Russian gentleman of large fortune,
to whom she had given an only daughter. She was in the habit of
traveling about Europe to carry on this daughter's education, and Balzac
made it his pleasure and duty to see her whenever he could, sometimes
journeying as far as Vienna. In the interim he would write her letters
which possess great charm and importance to the student of his life. The
husband made no objection to the intimacy, trusting both to his wife and
to Balzac; but for some time before the death of the aged nobleman,
Balzac seems to have distrusted himself and to have held slightly aloof
from the woman whom he was destined finally to love with all the fervor
of his nature. Madame Hanska became free in the winter of 1842-3, and
the next summer Balzac visited St. Petersburg to see her. His love soon
became an absorbing passion, but consideration for her daughter's future
withheld the lady's consent to a betrothal till 1846. It was a period of
weary waiting, in which our sympathies are all on one side; for if ever
a man deserved to be happy in a woman's love, it was Balzac. His
happiness came, but almost too late to be enjoyed. His last two years,
which he spent in Poland with Madame de Hanska, were oppressed by
illness, and he returned to his beloved Paris only to die. The struggle
of thirty years was over, and although his immense genius was not yet
fully recognized, his greatest contemporary, Victor Hugo, was
magnanimous enough to exclaim on hearing that he was dying, "Europe is
on the point of losing a great mind." Balzac's disciples feel that
Europe really lost its greatest writer since Shakespeare.
In the definitive edition of Balzac's writings in twenty-four volumes,
seventeen are occupied by the various divisions of the 'Comédie
humaine.' The plays take up one volume; and the correspondence, not
including of course the letters to "L'Étrangère," another; the 'Contes
drolatiques' make still another; and finally we have four volumes filled
with sketches, tales, reviews, and historical and political articles
left uncollected by their author.
The 'Contes' are thirty in number, divided into "dixains," each with its
appropriate prologue and epilogue. They purport to have been collected
in the abbeys of Touraine, and set forth by the Sieur de Balzac for the
delight of Pantagruelists and none others. Not merely the spirit but the
very language of Rabelais is caught with remarkable verve and fidelity,
so that from the point of view of style Balzac has never done better
work. A book which holds by Rabelais on the one hand and by the Queen of
Navarre on the other is not likely, however, to appeal to that part of
the English and American reading public that expurgates its Chaucer, and
blushes at the mention of Fielding and Smollett. Such readers will do
well to avoid the 'Contes drolatiques;' although, like 'Don Juan,' they
contain a great deal of what was best in their author, of his frank,
ebullient, sensuous nature, lighted up here at least by a genuine if
scarcely delicate humor. Of direct suggestion of vice Balzac was,
naturally, as incapable as he was of smug puritanism; but it must be
confessed that as a _raconteur_ his proper audience, now that the
monastic orders have passed away, would be a group of middle-aged
club-men.
The 'Comédie humaine' is divided into three main sections: first and
most important, the 'Études de moeurs' (Studies of Manners), second the
'Études philosophiques' (Philosophic Studies), and finally the 'Études
analytiques' (Analytic Studies). These divisions, as M. Barrière points
out in his 'L'Oeuvre de H. de Balzac' (The Work of Balzac), were
intended to bear to one another the relations that moral science,
psychology, and metaphysics do to one another with regard to the life of
man, whether as an individual or as a member of society. No single
division was left complete at the author's death; but enough was
finished and put together to give us the sense of moving in a living,
breathing world, no matter where we make our entry. This, as we have
insisted, is the real secret of his greatness. To think, for example,
that the importance of 'Séraphita' lies in the fact that it gives
Balzac's view of Swedenborgianism, or that the importance of 'Louis
Lambert' lies in its author's queer theories about the human will, is
entirely to misapprehend his true position in the world of literature.
His mysticism, his psychology, his theories of economics, his
reactionary devotion to monarchy, and his idealization of the Church of
Rome, may or may not appeal to us, and have certainly nothing that is
eternal or inevitable about them; but in his knowledge of the human mind
and heart he is as inevitable and eternal as any writer has ever been,
save only Shakespeare and Homer.
The 'Études de moeurs' were systematically divided by their author into
'Scenes of Private Life,' 'Scenes of Provincial Life,' 'Scenes of
Country Life,' 'Scenes of Parisian Life,' 'Scenes of Political Life,'
and 'Scenes of Military Life,'--the last three divisions representing
more or less exceptional phases of existence. The group relating to
Paris is by far the most important and powerful, but the provincial
stories show almost as fine workmanship, and furnish not a few of the
well-known masterpieces. Less interesting, though still important, are
the 'Scenes of Private Life,' which consist of twenty-four novels,
novelettes, and tales, under the following titles: 'Béatrix,' 'Albert
Savarus,' 'La Fausse maitresse' (The False Mistress), 'Le Message' (The
Message), 'La Grande Bretèche,' 'Étude de femme' (Study of Woman),
'Autre étude de femme' (Another Story of Woman), 'Madame Firmiani,'
'Modeste Mignon,' 'Un Début dans la vie' (An Entrance upon Life),
'Pierre Grassou,' 'Mémoires de deux jeunes mariées' (Recollections of a
Young Couple), 'La Maison du chat-qui-pelote,' 'Le Bal de Sceaux' (The
Ball of Sceaux), 'Le Contrat de mariage' (The Marriage Contract), 'La
Vendetta,' 'La Paix du ménage' (Household Peace), 'Une Double famille'
(A Double Family), 'Une Fille d'Éve' (A Daughter of Eve), 'Honorine,'
'La Femme abandonnée' (The Abandoned Wife), 'La Grenadière,' 'La Femme
de trente ans' (The Woman of Thirty).
Of all these stories, hardly one shows genuine greatness except the
powerful tragic tale 'La Grande Bretèche,' which was subsequently
incorporated in 'Autre étude de femme,' This story of a jealous
husband's walling up his wife's lover in a closet of her chamber is as
dramatic a piece of writing as Balzac ever did, and is almost if not
quite as perfect a short story as any that has since been written in
France. 'La Maison du chat-qui-pelote' has been mentioned already on
account of its importance in the evolution of Balzac's realism, but
while a delightful novelette, it is hardly great, its charm coming
rather from its descriptions of bourgeois life than from the working out
of its central theme, the infelicity of a young wife married to an
unfaithful artist. 'Modeste Mignon' is interesting, and more romantic
than Balzac's later works were wont to be; but while it may be safely
recommended to the average novel-reader, few admirers of its author
would wish to have it taken as a sample of their master. 'Béatrix' is a
powerful story in its delineation of the weakness of the young Breton
nobleman, Calyste du Guénie. It derives a factitious interest from the
fact that George Sand is depicted in 'Camille Maupin,' the _nom de
plume_ of Mlle. des Touches, and perhaps Balzac himself in Claude
Vignon, the critic. Less factitious is the interest derived from
Balzac's admirable delineation of a doting mother and aunt, and from his
realistic handling of one of the cleverest of his ladies of light
reputation, Madame Schontz; his studies of such characters of the
_demi-monde_--especially of the wonderful Esther of the 'Splendeurs et
misères'--serving plainly, by the way, as a point of departure for Dumas
_fils_. Yet 'Béatrix' is an able rather than a truly great book, for it
neither elevates nor delights us. In fact, all the stories in this
series are interesting rather than truly great; but all display Balzac's
remarkable analytic powers. Love, false or true, is of course their main
theme; wrought out to a happy issue in 'La Bourse,' a charming tale, or
to a death of despair in 'La Grenadière' The childless young married
woman is contrasted with her more fortunate friend surrounded by little
ones ('Mémoires de deux jeunes mariées'), the heartless coquette flirts
once too often ('Le Bal de Sceaux'), the eligible young man is taken in
by a scheming mother ('Le Contrat du mariage'), the deserted husband
labors to win back his wife ('Honorine'), the tempted wife learns at
last the real nature of her peril ('Une Fille d'Éve'); in short, lovers
and mistresses, husbands and wives, make us participants of all the joys
and sorrows that form a miniature world within the four walls of
every house.
The 'Scenes of Provincial Life' number only ten stories, but nearly all
of them are masterpieces. They are 'Eugénie Grandet,' 'Le Lys dans la
vallée,' 'Ursule Mirouet,' 'Pierrette,' 'Le Curé de Tours,' 'La
Rabouilleuse,' 'La Vielle fille' (The Old Maid), 'Le Cabinet des
antiques' (The Cabinet of Antiques), 'L'Illustre Gaudissart' (The
Illustrious Gaudissart), and 'La Muse du département' (The Departmental
Muse). Of these 'Eugénie Grandet' is of course easily first in interest,
pathos, and power. The character of old Grandet, the miserly father, is
presented to us with Shakespearean vividness, although Eugénie herself
has, less than the Shakespearean charm. Any lesser artist would have
made the tyrant himself and his yielding wife and daughters seem
caricatures rather than living people. It is only the Shakespeares and
Balzacs who are able to make their Shylocks and lagos, their Grandets
and Philippe Brideaus, monsters and human beings at one and the same
time. It is only the greater artists, too, who can bring out all the
pathos inherent in the subjection of two gentle women to a tyrant in
their own household. But it is Balzac the inimitable alone who can
portray fully the life of the provinces, its banality, its meanness, its
watchful selfishness, and yet save us through the perfection of his art
from the degradation which results from contact with low and sordid
life. The reader who rises unaffected from a perusal of 'Eugénie
Grandet' would be unmoved by the grief of Priam in the tent of Achilles,
or of Othello in the death-chamber of Desdemona.
'Le Lys dans la vallée' has been pronounced by an able French critic to
be the worst novel he knows; but as a study of more or less ethereal and
slightly morbid love it is characterized by remarkable power. Its
heroine, Madame Mortsauf, tied to a nearly insane husband and pursued by
a sentimental lover, undergoes tortures of conscience through an
agonizing sense of half-failure in her duty. Balzac himself used to cite
her when he was charged with not being able to draw a pure woman; but he
has created nobler types. The other stories of the group are also
decidedly more interesting. The distress of the abbé Birotteau over his
landlady's treatment, and the intrigues of the abbé Troubert ('Le Curé
de Tours') absorb us as completely as the career of Caesar himself in
Mommsen's famous chapter. The woes of the little orphan subjected to the
tyranny of her selfish aunt and uncle ('Pierrette'), the struggles of
the rapacious heirs for the Mirouet fortune ('Ursule Mirouet,') a story
which gives us one of Balzac's purest women, treats interestingly of
mesmerism (and may be read without fear by the young), the siege of
Mlle. Cormon's mature affections by her two adroit suitors ('Une Vielle
fille'), the intrigues against the peace of the d'Esgrignons and the
sublime devotion to their interests of the notary Chesnel ('Le Cabinet
des antiques'), and finally the ignoble passions that fought themselves
out around the senile Jean Jacques Rouget, under the direction of the
diabolical ex-soldier Philippe Brideau ('La Rabouilleuse,' sometimes
entitled 'Un Ménage de Garcon'), form the absorbing central themes of a
group of novels--or rather stories, for few of them attain considerable
length--unrivaled in the annals of realistic fiction.
The 'Scenes of Country Life,' comprising 'Les Paysans,' 'Le Médecin de
campagne,' and 'Le Curé de village' (The Village Priest), take high rank
among their author's works. Where Balzac might have been crudely
naturalistic, he has preferred to be either realistic as in the first
named admirable novel, or idealistic as in the two latter. Hence he has
created characters like the country physician, Doctor Benassis, almost
as great a boon to the world of readers as that philanthropist himself
was to the little village of his adoption. If Madame Graslin of 'Le
Curé de village' fails to reach the height of Benassis, her career has
at least a sensational interest which his lacked; and the country
curate, the good abbé Bonnet, surely makes up for her lack on the ideal
side. This story, by the way, is important for the light it throws on
the workings of the Roman Church among the common people; and the
description of Madame Graslin's death is one of Balzac's most effective
pieces of writing.
We are now brought to the 'Parisian Scenes,' and with the exception of
'Eugénie Grandet,' to the best-known masterpieces. There are twenty
titles; but as two of these are collective in character, the number of
novels and stories amounts to twenty-four, as follows:--'Le Père
Goriot,' 'Illusions perdues,' 'Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes,'
'Les Secrets de la princesse de Cadignan' (The Secrets of the Princess
of Cadignan), 'Histoire des treize' [containing 'Ferragus,' 'La Duchesse
de Langeais,' and 'La Fille aux yeux d'or' (The Girl with the Golden
Eyes)], 'Sarrasine,' 'Le Colonel Chabert,' 'L'lnterdiction' (The
Interdiction), 'Les Parents pauvres' (Poor Relations, including 'La
Cousine Bette' and 'Le Cousin Pons'), 'La Messe de l'athée' (The
Atheist's Mass), 'Facino Cane,' 'Gobseck,' 'La Maison Nucingen,' 'Un
Prince de la Bohème' (A Prince of Bohemia), 'Esquisse d'homme
d'affaires' (Sketch of a Business man), 'Gaudissart II.' 'Les Comédiens
sans le savoir' (The Unconscious Humorists), 'Les Employés' (The
Employees), 'Histoire de César Birotteau,' and 'Les Petits bourgeois'
(Little Bourgeois). Of these twenty-four titles six belong to novels,
five of which are of great power, nine to novelettes and short stories
too admirable to be passed over without notice, eight to novelettes and
stories of interest and value which need not, however, detain us, and
one, 'Les Petits bourgeois', to a novel of much promise unfortunately
left incomplete. 'Les Secrets de la princesse de Cadignan' is remarkable
chiefly as a study of the blind passion that often overtakes a man of
letters. Daniel d'Arthez, the author, a fine character and a favorite
with Balzac, succumbs to the wiles of the Princess of Cadignan (formerly
the dashing and fascinating Duchesse de Maufrigneuse) and is happy in
his subjection. The 'Histoire des treize' contains three novelettes,
linked together through the fact that in each a band of thirteen young
men, sworn to assist one another in conquering society, play an
important part. This volume is the most frankly sensational of Balzac's
works. 'La Duchesse de Langeais' however, is more than sensational: it
gives perhaps Balzac's best description of the Faubourg St. Germain and
one of his ablest analyses of feminine character, while in the
description of General Montriveau's recognition of the Duchess in the
Spanish convent the novelist's dramatic power is seen at its highest.
'La Fille aux yeux d'or,' which concludes the volume devoted to the
mysterious brotherhood, may be considered, with 'Sarrasine,' one of the
dark closets of the great building known as the 'Comédie humaine.' Both
stories deal with unnatural passions, and the first is one of Balzac's
most effective compositions. For sheer voluptuousness of style there is
little in literature to parallel the description of the boudoir of the
uncanny heroine. Very different from these stories is 'Le Colonel
Chabert,' the record of the misfortunes of one of Napoleon's heroic
soldiers, who after untold hardships returns to France to find his wife
married a second time and determined to deny his existence. The law is
invoked, but the treachery of the wife induces the noble old man to put
an end to the proceedings, after which he sinks into an indigent and
pathetic senility. Balzac has never drawn a more heart-moving figure,
nor has he ever sounded more thoroughly the depths of human selfishness.
But the description of the battle of Eylau and of Chabert's sufferings
in retreat would alone suffice to make the story memorable.
'L'Interdiction' is the proper pendant to the history of this
unfortunate soldier. In it another husband, the Marquis d'Espard,
suffers from the selfishness of his wife, one of the worst characters in
the range of Balzac's fiction. That she may keep him from alienating his
property to discharge a moral obligation she endeavors to prove him
insane. The legal complications which ensue bring forward one of
Balzac's great figures, the judge of instruction, Popinot; but to
appreciate him the reader must go to the marvelous book itself.
'Gobseck' is a study of a Parisian usurer, almost worthy of a place
beside the description of old Grandet; while 'Les Employés' is a
realistic study of bureaucratic life, which, besides showing a wonderful
familiarity with the details of a world of which Balzac had little
personal experience, contains several admirably drawn characters and a
sufficient amount of incident. But it is time to leave these sketches
and novels in miniature, and to pass by the less important 'Scenes' of
this fascinating Parisian life, in order to consider in some detail the
five novels of consummate power.
First of these in date of composition, and in popular estimation at
least among English readers, comes, 'Le Père Goriot.' It is certainly
trite to call the book a French "Lear," but the expression emphasizes
the supreme artistic power that could treat the _motif_ of one of
Shakespeare's plays in a manner that never forces a disadvantageous
comparison with the great tragedy. The retired vermicelli-maker is not
as grand a figure as the doting King of Britain, but he is as real. The
French daughters, Anastasie, Countess de Restaud, and Delphine, Baroness
de Nucingen, are not such types of savage wickedness as Regan and
Goneril, but they fit the nineteenth century as well as the British
princesses did their more barbarous day. Yet there is no Cordelia in
'Le Père Goriot,' for the pale Victorine Taillefer cannot fill the place
of that noblest of daughters. This is but to say that Balzac's bourgeois
tragedy lacks that element of the noble that every great poetic tragedy
must have. The self-immolation of old Goriot to the cold-hearted
ambitions of his daughters is not noble, but his parental passion
touches the infinite, and so proves the essential kinship of his creator
with the creator of Lear. This touch of the infinite, as in 'Eugénie
Grandet,' lifts the book up from the level of a merely masterly study of
characters or a merely powerful novel to that of the supreme
masterpieces of human genius. The marvelously lifelike description of
the vulgar Parisian boarding-house, the fascinating delineation of the
character of that king of convicts, Vautrin, and the fine analysis of
the ambitions of Rastignac (who comes nearer perhaps to being _the_ hero
of the 'Comédie humaine' than any other of its characters, and is here
presented to us at the threshold of his successful career) remain in the
memory of every reader, but would never alone have sufficed to make
Balzac's name worthy of immortality. The infinite quality of Goriot's
passion would, however, have conferred this honor on his creator had he
never written another book.
'Illusions perdues' and 'Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes' might
almost be regarded as one novel in seven parts. More than any other of
his works they show the sun of Balzac's genius at its meridian. Nowhere
else does he give us plots so absorbing, nowhere else does he bring us
so completely in contact with the world his imagination has peopled. The
first novel devotes two of its parts to the provinces and one to Paris.
The provincial stories centre around two brothers-in-law, David Séchard
and Lucien de Rubempré, types of the practical and the artistic
intellect respectively. David, after struggling for fame and fortune,
succumbs and finds his recompense in the love of his wife Eve, Lucien's
sister, one of Balzac's noble women. Lucien, on the other hand, after
some provincial successes as a poet, tries the great world of Paris,
yields to its temptations, fails ignominiously, and attempts suicide,
but is rescued by the great Vautrin, who has escaped from prison and is
about to renew his war on society disguised as a Spanish priest. Vautrin
has conceived the idea that as he can take no part in society, he will
have a representative in it and taste its pleasures through him. Lucien
accepts this disgraceful position and plunges once more into the vortex,
supported by the strong arm of the king of the convicts. His career and
that of his patron form the subject of the four parts of the 'Splendeurs
et misères' and are too complicated to be described here. Suffice it to
say that probably nowhere else in fiction are the novel of character and
the novel of incident so splendidly combined; and certainly nowhere
else in the range of his work does Balzac so fully display all his
master qualities. That the story is sensational cannot be denied, but it
is at least worthy of being called the Iliad of Crime. Nemesis waits
upon both Lucien and Vautrin, and upon the poor courtesan Esther whom
they entrap in their toils, and when the two former are at last in
custody, Lucien commits suicide. Vautrin baffles his acute judge in a
wonderful interview; but with his cherished hope cut short by Lucien's
death, finally gives up the struggle. Here the novel might have ended;
yet Balzac adds a fourth part, in order to complete the career of
Vautrin. The famous convict is transformed into a government spy, and
engages to use his immense power against his former comrades and in
defense of the society he has hitherto warred upon. The artistic
propriety of this transformation may be questioned, but not the power
and interest of the novel of which it is the finishing touch.
Many readers would put the companion novels 'La Cousine Bette' and 'Le
Cousin Pons' at the head of Balzac's works. They have not the infinite
pathos of 'Le Père Goriot,' or the superb construction of the first
three parts of the 'Splendeurs et misères,' but for sheer strength the
former at least is unsurpassed in fiction. Never before or since have
the effects of vice in dragging down a man below the level of the lowest
brute been so portrayed as in Baron Hulot; never before or since has
female depravity been so illustrated as in the diabolical career of
Valérie Marneffe, probably the worst woman in fiction. As for Cousine
Bette herself, and her power to breed mischief and crime, it suffices to
say that she is worthy of a place beside the two chief characters.
'Le Cousin Pons' is a very different book; one which, though pathetic in
the extreme, may be safely recommended to the youngest reader. The hero
who gives his name to the story is an old musician who has worn out his
welcome among his relations, but who becomes an object of interest to
them when they learn that his collection of bric-a-brac is valuable and
that he is about to die. The intrigues that circulate around this
collection and the childlike German, Schmucke, to whom Pons has
bequeathed it, are described as only the author of 'Le Curé de Tours'
could have succeeded in doing; but the book contains also an almost
perfect description of the ideal friendship existing between Pons and
Schmucke. One remembers them longer than one does Frazier, the
scoundrelly advocate who cheats poor Schmucke; a fact which should be
cited against those who urge that Balzac is at home with his vicious
characters only.
The last novel of this group, 'César Birotteau,' is the least powerful,
though not perhaps the least popular. It is an excellent study of
bourgeois life, and therefore fills an important place in the scheme of
the 'Comedy,' describing as it does the spreading ambitions of a rich
but stupid perfumer, and containing an admirable study of bankruptcy. It
may be dismissed with the remark that around the innocent Caesar surge
most of the scoundrels that figure in the 'Comédie humaine,' and with
the regret that it should have been completed while the far more
powerful 'Les Petits bourgeois' was left unfinished.
We now come to the concluding parts of the 'Études de moeurs.' the
'Scenes' describing Political and Military Life. In the first group are
five novels and stories: 'L'Envers de l'histoire contemporaine' (The
Under Side of Contemporary History, a fine story, but rather social than
political), 'Une Ténébreuse affaire' (A Shady Affair), 'Un Épisode sous
la Terreur,' 'Z. Marcas,' and 'Le Deputé d'Arcis' (The Deputy of Arcis).
Of these the 'Episode' is probably the most admirable, although 'Z.
Marcas' has not a little strength. The 'Deputé,' like 'Les Petits
bourgeois,' was continued by M. Charles Rabou and a considerable part of
it is not Balzac's; a fact which is to be regretted, since practically
it is the only one of these stories that touches actual politics as the
term is usually understood. The military scenes are only two in number,
'Les Chouans' and 'Une Passion dans le désert.' The former of these has
been sufficiently described already; the latter is one of the best known
of the short stories, but rather deserves a place beside 'La Fille aux
yeux d'or.' Indeed, for Balzac's best military scenes we must go to 'Le
Colonel Chabert' or to 'Adieu.'
We now pass to those subterranean chambers of the great structure we are
exploring, the 'Études philosophiques.' They are twenty in number, four
being novels, one a composite volume of tales, and the rest stories. The
titles run as follows:--'La Peau de chagrin,' 'L'Élixir de longue vie'
(The Elixir of Life), 'Melmoth réconcilié,' 'Le Chef-d'oeuvre inconnu'
(The Anonymous Masterpiece), 'Gambara,' 'Massimila Doni,' 'Le
Réquisitionnaire,' 'Adieu,' 'El Verdugo,' 'Les Marana,' 'L'Auberge
rouge' (The Red Inn), 'Un Drame au bord de la mer' (A Seaside Drama),
'L'Enfant maudit' (A Child Accursed) 'Maître Cornélius' (Master
Cornelius), 'Sur Catherine de Médicis,' 'La Recherche de l'absolu,'
'Louis Lambert,' 'Séraphita,' 'Les Proscrits,' and 'Jésus-Christ
en Flandre.'
Of the novels, 'La Peau de chagrin' is easily first. Its central theme
is the world-old conflict between the infinite desires and the finite
powers of man. The hero, Raphael, is hardly, as M. Barrière asserts, on
a level with Hamlet, Faust, and Manfred, but the struggle of his
infinite and his finite natures is almost as intensely interesting as
the similar struggles in them. The introduction of the talisman, the
wild ass's skin that accomplishes all the wishes of its owner, but on
condition that it is to shrink away in proportion to the intensity of
those wishes, and that when it disappears the owner's life is to end,
gave to the story a weird interest not altogether, perhaps, in keeping
with its realistic setting, and certainly forcing a disastrous
comparison with the three great poems named. But when all allowances are
made, one is forced to conclude that 'La Peau de chagrin' is a novel of
extraordinary power and absorbing interest; and that its description of
its hero's dissipations in the libertine circles of Paris, and its
portrayal of the sublime devotion of the heroine Pauline for her slowly
perishing lover, are scarcely to be paralleled in literature. Far less
powerful are the short stories on similar themes, entitled 'L'Élixir de
longue vie,' and 'Melmoth réconcilié' (Melmoth Reconciled), which give
us Balzac's rehandling of the Don Juan of Molière and Byron, and the
Melmoth of Maturin.
Below the 'Peau de chagrin,' but still among its author's best novels,
should be placed 'La Recherche de l'absolu,' which, as its title
implies, describes the efforts of a chemist to "prove by chemical
analysis the unity of composition of matter." In the pursuit of his
philosophic will-o'-the-wisp, Balthazar Claës loses his fortune and
sacrifices his noble wife and children. His madness serves, however, to
bring into relief the splendid qualities of these latter; and it is just
here, in its human rather than in its philosophic bearings, that the
story rises to real greatness. Marguerite Claës, the daughter, is a
noble heroine; and if one wishes to see how Balzac's characters and
ideas suffer when treated by another though an able hand, one has but to
read in conjunction with this novel the 'Maître Guérin' of the
distinguished dramatist Émile Augier. A proper pendant to this history
of a noble genius perverted is 'La Confidence des Ruggieri,' the second
part of that remarkable composite 'Sur Catherine de Médicis,' a book
which in spite of its mixture of history, fiction, and speculative
politics is one of the most suggestive of Balzac's minor productions.
Concerning 'Séraphita' and 'Louis Lambert,' the remaining novels of this
series, certain noted mystics assert that they contain the essence of
Balzac's genius, and at least suggest the secret of the universe.
Perhaps an ordinary critic may content himself with saying that both
books are remarkable proofs of their author's power, and that the former
is notable for its marvelous descriptions of Norwegian scenery.
Of the lesser members of the philosophic group, nearly all are admirable
in their kind and degree. 'Le Chef-d'oeuvre inconnu' and 'Gambara' treat
of the pains of the artistic life and temperament. 'Massimila Doni,'
like 'Gambara,' treats of music, but also gives a brilliant picture of
Venetian life. 'Le réquisitionnaire,' perhaps the best of Balzac's
short stories, deals with the phenomenon of second sight, as 'Adieu'
does with that of mental alienation caused by a sudden shock. 'Les
Marana' is an absorbing study of the effects of heredity; 'L'Auberge
rouge' is an analysis of remorse, as is also 'Un Drame au bord de la
mer'; while 'L'Enfant maudit' is an analysis of the effects of extreme
sensibility, especially as manifested in the passion of poetic love.
Finally, 'Maître Cornelius' is a study of avarice, in which is set a
remarkable portrait of Louis XI.; 'Les Proscrits' is a masterly sketch
of the exile of Dante at Paris; and 'Jésus-Christ en Flandre' is an
exquisite allegory, the most delicate flower, perhaps, of
Balzac's genius.
It remains only to say a few words about the third division of the
'Comédie humaine,' viz., the 'Études analytiques.' Only two members of
the series, the 'Physiologie du mariage' and the 'Petites misères de la
vie conjugale,' were ever completed, and they are not great enough to
make us regret the loss of the 'Pathology of Social Life' and the other
unwritten volumes. For the two books we have are neither novels nor
profound studies, neither great fiction nor great psychology. That they
are worth reading for their suggestiveness with regard to such important
subjects as marriage and conjugal life goes without saying, since they
are Balzac's; but that they add greatly to his reputation, not even his
most ardent admirer would be hardy enough to affirm.
And now in conclusion, what can one say about this great writer that
will not fall far short of his deserts? Plainly, nothing, yet a few
points may be accentuated with profit. We should notice in the first
place that Balzac has consciously tried almost every form of prose
fiction, and has been nearly always splendidly successful. In analytic
studies of high, middle, and low life he has not his superior. In the
novel of intrigue and sensation he is easily a master, while he succeeds
at least fairly in a form of fiction at just the opposite pole from
this, to wit, the idyl ('Le Lys dans la vallée'). In character sketches
of extreme types, like 'Gobseck,' his supremacy has long been
recognized, and he is almost as powerful when he enters the world of
mysticism, whither so few of us can follow him. As a writer of
novelettes he is unrivaled and some of his short stories are worthy to
rank with the best that his followers have produced. In the extensive
use of dialect he was a pioneer; in romance he has 'La Peau de chagrin'
and 'La Recherche de l'absolu' to his credit; while some of the work in
the tales connected with the name of Catherine de Medici shows what he
could have done in historical fiction had he continued to follow Scott.
And what is true of the form of his fiction is true of its elements.
Tragedy, comedy, melodrama are all within his reach; he can call up
tears and shudders, laughter and smiles at will. He knows the whole
range of human emotions, and he dares to penetrate into the arcana of
passions almost too terrible or loathsome for literature to touch.
In style, in the larger sense of the word, he is almost equally supreme.
He is the father of modern realism and remains its greatest exponent. He
retains always some of the good elements of romance,--that is to say, he
sees the thing as it ought to be,--and he avoids the pitfalls of
naturalism, being a painter and not a photographer. In other words, like
all truly great writers he never forgets his ideals; but he is too
impartial to his characters and has too fast a grip on life to fall into
the unrealities of sentimentalism. It is true that he lacked the
spontaneity that characterized his great forerunner, Shakespeare, and
his great contemporary, George Sand; but this loss was made up by the
inevitable and impersonal character of his work when once his genius was
thoroughly aroused to action. His laborious method of describing by an
accumulation of details postponed the play of his powers, which are at
their height in the action of his characters; yet sooner or later the
inert masses of his composition were fused into a burning whole. But if
Balzac is primarily a dramatist in the creation and manipulation of his
characters, he is also a supreme painter in his presentation of scenes.
And what characters and what scenes has he not set before us! Over two
thousand personages move through the 'Comédie humaine,' whose
biographies MM. Cerfberr and Christophe have collected for us in their
admirable 'Répertoire de la comédie humaine,' and whose chief types M.
Paul Flat has described in the first series of his 'Essais sur Balzac.'
Some of these personages are of course shadowy; but an amazingly large
number live for us as truly as Shakespeare's heroes and heroines do. Nor
will any one who has trod the streets of Balzac's Paris, or spent the
summer with him at the chateau des Aigues ('Les Paysans'), or in the
beautiful valleys of Touraine, ever forget the master's pictures.
Yet the Balzac who with intangible materials created living and
breathing men and women and unfading scenes, has been accused of
vitiating the French language and has been denied the possession of
verbal style. On this point French critics must give the final verdict;
but a foreigner may cite Taine's defense of that style, and maintain
that most of the liberties taken by Balzac with his native language were
forced on him by the novel and far-reaching character of his work. Nor
should it be forgotten that he was capable at times of almost perfect
passages of description, and that he rarely confounded, as novelists are
too apt to do, the provinces of poetry and prose.
But one might write a hundred essays on Balzac and not exhaust him. One
might write a volume on his women, a volume to refute the charge that
his bad men are better drawn than his good, a volume to discuss Mr.
Henry James's epigrammatic declaration that a five-franc piece may be
fairly called the protagonist of the 'Comédie humaine.' In short one
might go on defending and praising and even criticizing Balzac for a
lifetime, and be little further advanced than when one began; for to
criticize Balzac, is it not to criticize life itself?
[Illustration: Signature W.P. Trent]