Honoré de Balzac (French IPA: [ɔnɔ'ʀe də bal'zak]) (May 20, 1799 – August 18, 1850) was a nineteenth-century
French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of almost 100
novels and plays collectively entitled La Comédie Humaine, which presents a
panorama of French life in the years after the fall of Napoléon Bonaparte in
1815.
Due to his keen observation of detail and unfiltered representation of society, Balzac is regarded as one of the founders of
realism in European literature. He is renowned for his
multi-faceted characters; even his lesser characters are complex, morally ambiguous and fully human. Inanimate objects are imbued
with character as well; the city of Paris, a backdrop for much of his writing,
takes on many human qualities. His writing influenced many famous writers, including the novelists Émile Zola, Charles Dickens, Gustave Flaubert, and Henry James, as well as important
philosophers such as Friedrich Engels. Many of Balzac's works have been made into
films, and they continue to inspire other writers.
An enthusiastic reader and independent thinker as a child, Balzac had trouble adapting himself to the teaching style of his
grammar school. His willful nature caused trouble throughout his life, and frustrated his ambitions to succeed in the world of
business. When he finished school, Balzac was apprenticed as a legal clerk, but he turned his back on the law after wearying of
its inhumanity and banal routine. Before and during his career as a writer, he attempted to be a publisher, printer, businessman,
critic, and politician. He failed in all of these efforts. La Comédie Humaine reflects his real-life difficulties, and
includes scenes from his own experience.
Balzac suffered from health problems throughout his life, possibly due to his intense writing schedule. His relationship with
his family was often strained by financial and personal drama, and he lost more than one friend over critical reviews. In 1850,
he married Ewelina Hańska, his longtime paramour; six months later, he died.
Biography
Birth and family
Honoré de Balzac was born into a family which had struggled to achieve respectability. His father, born Bernard-François
Balssa, was one of eleven children from a poor family in Tarn, a region in the south of
France. In 1760 the elder Balzac set off for Paris with only a louis in his pocket, determined to improve his social standing; by 1776 he had become Secretary to the
King's Council and a Freemason. (He had also changed his name to that of an ancient noble
family, and added – without any official cause – the aristocratic-sounding de.)[1] After the Reign of Terror (1793–94), he
was sent to Tours to coordinate provisions for the Army.[2]
Balzac's mother, born Anne-Charlotte-Laure Sallambier, came from a family of haberdashers
in Paris. Her family's wealth was a considerable factor in the match: she was eighteen at the time of the wedding, and
Bernard-François fifty.[3] As British writer and critic
V. S. Pritchett puts it, "She was certainly drily aware that she had been given to an
old husband as a reward for his professional services to a friend of her family and that the capital was on her side. She was not
in love with her husband."[4]
Honoré (so named after Saint Honoré of Amiens, who is commemorated on May 16,
four days before Balzac's birthday) was actually the second child born to the Balzacs; exactly one year previous, Louis-Daniel
had been born, but he lived for only a month.[5] Honoré's
sisters Laure and Laurence were born in 1800 and 1802, and his brother Henry-François in 1807.[6][7]
Early life
Immediately after his birth, Honoré was sent to a wet-nurse; he was joined by his sister
Laure soon afterwards and they spent four years away from home.[8] (Although Genevan philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau's
influential book Émile convinced many mothers of the time to nurse their
own children, sending babies to wet-nurses was still common among the middle and upper classes.) When the Balzac children
returned home, they were kept at a frigid distance by their parents, which affected the author-to-be significantly. His 1835
novel Le Lys dans la Vallée features a cruel governess named Miss
Caroline, modeled after his own caretaker.[9]
The Collège de Vendôme – engraving by A. Queyroy
At the age of eight Balzac was sent to the Oratorian grammar school at Vendôme, where he
studied for seven years. His father, seeking to instill the same hardscrabble work ethic which had gained him the esteem of
society, intentionally sent very little spending money to the boy. This made him the object of ridicule among his much wealthier
schoolmates.[10][11]
Balzac had difficulty adapting himself to the rote style of learning at the school. As
a result, he was frequently sent to the "alcove", a punishment cell reserved for disobedient students.[12] (The janitor at the school, when asked later if he remembered Honoré, replied:
"Remember M. Balzac? I should think I do! I had the honour of escorting him to the dungeon more than a hundred times!")[13] Still, his time alone gave the boy ample freedom to read
every book which came his way.
Balzac worked these scenes from his childhood – as he did many aspects of his life and the lives of those around him – into
La Comédie Humaine. His time at Vendôme is reflected in Louis Lambert,
his 1832 novel about a young boy studying at an Oratorian grammar school at Vendôme. The narrator states: "He devoured books of
every kind, feeding indiscriminately on religious works, history and literature, philosophy and physics. He had told me that he
found indescribable delight in reading dictionaries for lack of other books."[14]
But though his mind was receiving nourishment, the same could not be said for Balzac's body. He often fell ill, finally
causing the headmaster to contact his family with news of a "sort of a coma".[15] When he returned home, his grandmother said: "Voilà donc
comme le collège nous renvoie les jolis que nous lui envoyons!" ("Look how the academy returns the young people we send
them!")[16] Balzac himself attributed his condition to
"intellectual congestion", but his extended confinement in the "alcove" was surely a factor. (Meanwhile, his father had been
writing a treatise on "the means of preventing thefts and murders, and of restoring the men who commit them to a useful role in
society", in which he heaped disdain on prison as a form of crime prevention.)[17]
In 1814 the Balzac family moved to Paris, and Honoré was sent to private tutors and schools for the next two and a half years.
This was an unhappy time in his life, during which he attempted suicide on a bridge over the Loire
River.[18]
In 1816 Balzac entered the Sorbonne, where he studied under three famous professors.
François Guizot, who later became prime minister, was Professor of Modern History.
Abel-François Villemain, a recent arrival from the Collège Charlemagne,
delivered lectures on French and classical literature to packed audiences. And – most influential of all – Victor Cousin's courses on philosophy encouraged his students to think independently.[19]
Once his studies were completed, Balzac was persuaded by his father to follow him into the law; for three years he trained and
worked at the office of Victor Passez, a friend of the family. It was during this time that he began to understand the vagaries
of human nature. In his 1840 novel Le Notaire, Balzac wrote that a young person in the legal profession sees "the oily
wheels of every fortune, the hideous wrangling of heirs over corpses not yet cold, the human heart grappling with the Penal
Code."[20]
In 1819 Passez offered to make Balzac his successor, but his apprentice had had enough of the law. He despaired of being "a
clerk, a machine, a riding-school hack, eating and drinking and sleeping at fixed hours. I should be like everyone else. And
that's what they call living, that life at the grindstone, doing the same thing over and over again…. I am hungry and nothing is
offered to appease my appetite."[21] He announced his
intention to be a writer.
The loss of this opportunity caused serious discord in the Balzac household, although Honoré was not turned away entirely.
Instead, in April 1819, he was allowed to live in the French capital – as English critic George Saintsbury describes it – "in a garret furnished in the most Spartan fashion, with a starvation
allowance and an old woman to look after him," while the rest of the family moved to a house twenty miles (32 km) outside
Paris.[22]
First literary efforts
Balzac's first project was a comic opera called Le Corsaire, based on
Lord Byron's tale of Conrad the
pirate. Realizing he would have trouble finding a composer, however, he turned to other pursuits.
In 1820, he completed the five-act verse tragedy Cromwell. Although it
pales in comparison to later works, critics differ as to its quality.[23][24] When he finished,
Balzac went to Villeparisis and read the entire work to his family; they were
unimpressed.[25] He followed this effort by starting (but
never finishing) three novels: Sténie, Falthurne, and Corsino.
In 1821 Balzac met the enterprising Auguste Lepoitevin; he convinced his new friend to write stories, which Lepoitevin would
then sell to publishers. This effort quickly turned to longer works, and by 1826 Balzac had written nine novels, all published
under pseudonyms and often produced in collaboration with other writers.[26] For example, the scandalous novel Vicaire des Ardennes (1822) – banned for its depiction
of pseudo-incestuous relations and, more egregiously, of a married priest – was attributed to a 'Horace de Saint-Aubin'.[27] These books were potboiler novels, designed to sell quickly and titillate audiences. In Saintsbury's view, "They are curiously,
interestingly, almost enthrallingly bad."[28] He
indicates that Robert Louis Stevenson, who had read Balzac's earliest writing,
tried to dissuade him from writing these books.[29]
American critic Samuel Rogers, however, notes that "without the training they gave Balzac, as he groped his way to his mature
conception of the novel, and without the habit he formed as a young man of writing under pressure, one can hardly imagine his
producing La Comédie Humaine."[30] Biographer
Graham Robb suggests that as he discovered the Novel, Balzac discovered himself.[31]
Also during this time, Balzac wrote two pamphlets in support of primogeniture and the
Society of Jesus. The latter, regarding the Jesuit order, illustrated his life-long
admiration of the Catholic Church. Later, in a preface to La Comédie Humaine, he wrote: "Christianity, and especially
Catholicism, being a complete repression of man's depraved tendencies, is the greatest element in Social Order."[32]
"Une bonne spéculation"
In the late 1820s, Balzac also dabbled in several business ventures, blamed by his sister on the temptation of an unknown
neighbor.[33] The first of these was a publishing
enterprise which turned out cheap one-volume editions of French classics including the works of Molière. This business failed miserably, with many of the books "sold as waste paper".[34] Balzac had better luck publishing the memoirs of
Laure Junot, Duchesse d'Abrantès – with whom he also had an
affair.[35]
Borrowing money from his family and other sources, he tried again as a printer and then as a typefounder. But as with the
publishing business, Balzac's inexperience and lack of capital caused his ruin in these trades. He gave the businesses to a
friend (who made them successful) but carried the debts for many years.[34] In April 1828, he owed his own mother 50,000 francs.[36]
This penchant for une bonne spéculation never left Balzac. It resurfaced painfully much later when – as a renowned and
busy author – he traveled to Sardinia in the hopes of reprocessing the slag from the Roman mines in that country. Toward the end of
his life, he became captivated by the idea of cutting acres ( km²) of oak wood in the
Ukraine and transporting it for sale in France.[34]
La Comédie Humaine and literary success
-
In 1832 (after writing several novels), Balzac conceived the idea for an enormous series of books that would paint a panoramic
portrait of "all aspects of society." When the idea struck, he raced to his sister's apartment and proclaimed: "I am about to
become a genius."[37] Although he originally called it
Etudes des Mœurs, it eventually became known as La Comédie Humaine, and he included in it all of the fiction he
published in his lifetime under his own name. This was to be Balzac's life work and his greatest achievement.
After the collapse of his businesses, Balzac traveled to Brittany and stayed with the de
Pommereul family outside Fougères. It was here that he drew inspiration for Les Chouans (1829), a tale of love gone wrong amid the Chouan royalist
forces.[26] A supporter of the crown himself,
Balzac paints the counter-revolutionaries in a sympathetic light – even though they are the center of the book's most brutal
scenes. This was the first book Balzac released under his own name, and it gave him what one critic called "passage into the
Promised Land".[38] It established him as an author of
note (even if the surface owes a debt to Walter Scott) and provided him with a name outside
the pseudonyms of his past.
Soon afterwards, around the time of his father's death, Balzac wrote El Verdugo – about a 30-year-old man who kills his
father (Balzac was 30 years old at the time). This was the first work signed "Honoré de Balzac". Like his father, he added
the aristocratic-sounding particle to help him fit into respected society, but it was a choice based on skill, not birthright.
"The aristocracy and authority of talent are more substantial than the aristocracy of names and material power," he wrote in
1830.[39] The timing of the decision was also
significant. Robb frames it this way: "The disappearance of the father coincides with the adoption of the nobiliary particle. A
symbolic inheritance."[40] Just as his father had worked
his way up from poverty into respectable society, Balzac considered toil and effort his real mark of nobility.
When the July Revolution overthrew Charles
X in 1830, Balzac declared himself a Legitimist, supporting Charles' House of Bourbon – but with qualifications. He felt that the new July
Monarchy (which claimed widespread popular support) was disorganized and unprincipled, in need of a mediator to keep the
political peace between the King and insurgent forces. He called for "a young and vigorous man who belongs neither to the
Directoire nor to the Empire, but who is 1830 incarnate…."[41] He planned to be such a candidate, appealing especially to the higher classes in Chinon. But after a near-fatal accident in 1832 (he slipped and cracked his head on the street), Balzac decided
not to stand for election.[42]
1831 saw the success of La Peau de Chagrin (The Wild Ass's Skin), a
fable-like tale about a despondent young man named Raphaël de Valentin who finds an animal skin promising great power and wealth.
He obtains these things, but loses the ability to manage them. In the end, his health fails and he is consumed by his own
confusion. Balzac meant the story to bear witness to the treacherous turns of life, its "serpentine motion."[43]
In 1833, Balzac released Eugénie Grandet, his first best-selling
novel.[44] It also became the most critically acclaimed
book of his career. The writing is simple, yet the individuals (especially the bourgeois title character) are dynamic and
complex.[45]
Balzac's house in Paris, seen from the Rue Berton
Le Père Goriot (Old Father Goriot, 1835) was his next big success.
Balzac transposes the story of King Lear to 1820s Paris in order to rage at a society
bereft of all love save the love of money. The centrality of a father in this novel coincides with Balzac's own position – not
only as mentor to his troubled young secretary, Jules Sandeau,[46] but also the fact that he had (most likely) fathered a child, Marie-Caroline, with his
otherwise-married lover, Maria Du Fresnay.[47]
In 1836, Balzac took the helm of the Chronique de Paris, a weekly magazine of society and politics. He tried to enforce
strict impartiality in its pages and a reasoned assessment of various ideologies.[48] As Rogers notes, "Balzac was interested in any social, political, or economic theory, whether from
the right or the left."[49] The magazine failed, but in
July 1840, he founded another publication called the Revue Parisienne. It lasted for only three issues.[50]
These dismal business efforts – and his misadventures in Sardinia – provided an appropriate milieu in which to set the
two-volume Illusions Perdues (Lost Illusions, 1843). The novel concerns
Lucien de Rubempré, a young poet trying to make a name for himself, who becomes trapped in the morass of society's darkest
contradictions. Lucien's journalism work is informed by Balzac's own failed ventures in the field.[51] Splendeurs et
misères des courtisanes (The Harlot High and Low, 1847) continues Lucien's story. He is trapped by the Abbé
Herrera (Vautrin) in a convoluted and disastrous plan to regain social status. The book
undergoes a massive temporal rift; the first part (of four) covers a span of six years, while the final two sections focus on
just three days.[52]
Le Cousin Pons (1847) and La Cousine
Bette (1848) tell the story of Les Parents Pauvres (The Poor Relations). The conniving and wrangling
over wills and inheritances reflects the expertise gained by the author as a young law clerk. Balzac's health was deteriorating
by this point, making the completion of this pair of books a significant accomplishment.[53]
Many of his novels were initially serialized, like those of Dickens. Their length was
not predetermined. Illusions Perdues extends to a thousand pages after starting inauspiciously in a small-town print shop,
whereas La fille aux yeux d'Or (Tiger-eyes, 1835) opens with a broad panorama of Paris but becomes a closely
plotted novella of only fifty.
Work habits
Balzac's work habits are legendary – he did not work quickly, but toiled with an incredible focus and dedication. His
preferred method was to eat a light meal at five or six in the afternoon, then sleep until midnight. He then rose and wrote for
many hours, fuelled by innumerable cups of black coffee. He would often work for fifteen hours or more at a stretch; he claimed
to have once worked for 48 hours with only three hours of rest in the middle.[54]
First page of the first proofs of
Béatrix
He revised obsessively, covering printer's proofs with changes and additions to be reset. Balzac sometimes repeated this
process during the publication of a book, causing significant expense for both himself and the publisher.[55] As a result, the finished product was frequently quite different from the
original book. While certain books of Balzac's never reached a finished state, some texts which are really only
works-in-progress, such as Les employés (The Government Clerks, 1841), are still noted by critics.[56]
Although Balzac was "by turns a hermit and a vagrant",[57] he managed to stay connected to the social world which nourished his writing. He was friends with
Théophile Gautier and Pierre-Marie-Charles de Bernard du Grail de la Villette, and he
knew Victor Hugo. Nevertheless, he did not spend as much time in salons and clubs as
did many of his characters. "In the first place he was too busy," explains Saintsbury, "in the second he would not have been at
home there…. [H]e felt it was his business not to frequent society but to create it."[58] He would, however, often spend long periods staying at Château de Saché, near Tours, the home of his friend Jean de Margonne,
his mother's lover and father to her youngest child. Many of Balzac's tormented characters were conceived in the small
second-floor bedroom. Today the Château is a museum dedicated to the author's life.
Marriage and later life
In February 1832, Balzac received a letter from Odessa – lacking a return address and signed
only by "L'Étrangère" ("The Stranger") – expressing sadness at the cynicism and atheism in La Peau de Chagrin and
its negative portrayal of women. He responded by purchasing a classified
advertisement in the Gazette de France, hoping that his secret critic would find it. Thus began a fifteen-year
correspondence between Balzac and "the object of [his] sweetest dreams": Ewelina
Hańska.[59]
She was married to a man twenty years older than herself: Wacław Hański, a wealthy Polish landowner living in Kiev; it was an arrangement of convenience to preserve her family's fortune. In Balzac, Ewelina found a kindred
spirit for her emotional and social desires, with the added benefit of feeling a connection to the glamorous capital of
France.[60] Their correspondence reveals an intriguing
dance of propriety and patience; Robb says it is "like an experimental novel in which the female protagonist is always trying to
pull in extraneous realities but which the hero is determined to keep on course, whatever tricks he has to use."[61]
When M. Hański died in 1841, his widow and her admirer finally had the chance to pursue their affections. Competing with the
Hungarian composer Franz Liszt, Balzac visited her in St.
Petersburg in 1843 and impressed himself on her heart.[62] After a series of economic setbacks, health problems, and prohibitions from the Tsar, the couple was finally able to wed.[63] On March 14, 1850, with Balzac's
health in serious decline, they drove from their home in Wierzchownia to a church in Berdyczów
and were married. The ten-hour journey to and from the ceremony took a toll on both husband and wife: her feet were too swollen
to walk, and he endured severe heart trouble.[64]
Although he married late in life, Balzac had already written two treatises on marriage: Physiologie du Mariage and
Scènes de la Vie Conjugale. These works suffered from a lack of first-hand knowledge; Saintsbury points out that "Coelebs
cannot talk of [marriage] with much authority."[65]
Balzac's monument at Cimetière du Père-Lachaise
Several months after his wedding, on August 18, Balzac died. His mother was the only one
with him when he expired; Mme. Hańska had gone to bed.[66] He had been visited that day by Victor Hugo, who later served
as pallbearer and eulogist at Balzac's funeral.[67][68]
He is buried at the Cimetière du Père Lachaise in Paris. "Today," said Hugo at
the ceremony, "we have a people in black because of the death of the man of talent; a nation in mourning for a man of
genius."[69] The funeral was attended by "almost every
writer in Paris", including Frédérick Lemaître, Gustave Courbet, Dumas père and Dumas fils.[70]
Later, Balzac became the subject of a monumental statue by the French sculptor
Auguste Rodin, which stands near the intersection of Boulevard Raspail and Boulevard
Montparnasse.
Writing style
The Comédie Humaine remained unfinished at the time of his death – Balzac had plans to include numerous other books,
most of which he never started.[71] He frequently moved
between works in progress, and "finished" works were often revised between editions. This piecemeal style is reflective of the
author's own life, a possible attempt to stabilize it through fiction. "The vanishing man," writes Pritchett, "who must be
pursued from the rue Cassini to … Versailles, Ville
d'Avray, Italy, and Vienna can construct a settled dwelling
only in his work."[72]
Realism
Balzac's extensive use of detail, especially the detail of objects, to illustrate the lives of his characters made him an
early pioneer of literary realism.[73] While he admired and drew inspiration from the Romantic style
of Scottish novelist Walter Scott, Balzac sought to depict human existence through the use
of particulars.[74] In the preface to the first edition
of Scènes de la Vie privée, he writes: "The author firmly believes that details alone will henceforth determine the merit
of works…."[75] Plentiful descriptions of décor,
clothing, and possessions help breathe life into the characters.[76] For example, Balzac's friend Hyacinthe de Latouche had knowledge of hanging wallpaper. Balzac
transferred this to his descriptions of the Pension Vauquer in Le Père Goriot, making the wallpaper speak of the
identities of those living inside.[77]
Some critics consider Balzac's writing exemplary of naturalism
– a more pessimistic and analytical form of realism, which seeks to explain human behavior as intrinsically linked with the
environment. French novelist Émile Zola declared Balzac the father of the naturalist
novel.[78] Elsewhere, Zola indicated that, whereas
Romantics saw the world through a colored lens, the naturalist sees through a clear glass – precisely the sort of effect Balzac
attempted to achieve in his works.[79]
Characters
Balzac sought to present his characters as real people, neither fully good nor fully evil, but fully human. "To arrive at the
truth," he wrote in the preface to Le Lys dans la vallée, "writers use
whatever literary device seems capable of giving the greatest intensity of life to their characters."[80] "Balzac's characters," Robb notes, "were as real to him as if he were observing
them in the outside world."[81] This reality was noted by
playwright Oscar Wilde, who said: "One of the greatest tragedies of my life is the death of
[Illusions Perdues protagonist] Lucien de Rubempré…. It haunts me in my moments of pleasure. I remember it when I
laugh."[82]
At the same time, the characters represent a particular range of social types: the noble soldier, the scoundrel, the proud
workman, the fearless spy, and the alluring mistress, among others.[83] That Balzac was able to balance the strength of the individual against the representation of the
type is evidence of the author's skill. One critic explained that "there is a center and a circumference to Balzac's
world."[84]
Balzac's use of repeating characters, moving in and out of the Comédie's books, strengthens the realist representation.
"When the characters reappear," notes Rogers, "they do not step out of nowhere; they emerge from the privacy of their own lives
which, for an interval, we have not been allowed to see."[85] He also used a realist technique which French novelist Marcel
Proust later named "retrospective illumination", whereby a character's past is revealed long after she or he first
appears.
1901 edition of
The Works of Honoré de Balzac
A nearly infinite reserve of energy propels the characters in Balzac's novels. Struggling against the currents of human nature
and society, they may lose more often than they win – but only rarely do they give up. This universal trait is a reflection of
Balzac's own social wrangling, that of his family, and an interest in the Austrian mystic and physician Franz Mesmer, who pioneered the study of animal magnetism. Balzac
spoke often of a "nervous and fluid force" between individuals, and Raphaël Valentin's decline in La Peau de Chagrin
exemplifies the danger of withdrawing from the company of other people.[86]
Place
Representations of the city, countryside, and building interiors are essential to Balzac's realism, often serving to paint a
deterministic backdrop before which the characters' lives follow a particular course. (This gave him a reputation as an early
naturalist.) Intricate details about locations sometimes stretch
for fifteen or twenty pages.[87] As he did with the
people around him, Balzac studied these places in depth, traveling to remote locations and surveying notes he had made on
previous visits.[88]
The influence of Paris permeates La Comédie. Nature takes a back seat to the artificial metropolis, in stark contrast
to the depictions of weather and wildlife in the countryside. "If in Paris," Rogers says, "we are in a man-made region where even
the seasons are forgotten, these provincial towns are nearly always pictured in their natural setting."[89] Balzac himself said, "the streets of Paris possess human qualities and we
cannot shake off the impressions they make upon our minds."[90] His labyrinthine city provided a literary model used later by English novelist Charles Dickens and Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky.[91] The centrality of Paris in La Comédie Humaine is key
to Balzac's legacy as a realist. "Realism is nothing if not urban," notes critic Peter
Brooks; the scene of a young man coming into the city to find his fortune is ubiquitous in the realist novel, and appears
repeatedly in Balzac's works, such as Illusions Perdues.[92][93]
Perspective
Balzac's literary mood evolved over time from one of despondency and chagrin to one of solidarity and courage – but not
optimism.[94] La Peau de Chagrin, among his
earliest novels, is a pessimistic tale of confusion and destruction. But the cynicism declined as his oeuvre progressed, and the characters of Illusions
Perdues reveal sympathy for those who are pushed to one side by society. As part of the 19th-century evolution of the novel
as a "democratic literary form," Balzac once wrote that "les livres sont faits pour tout le monde," ("these books are
written for everybody").[95]
Balzac concerned himself overwhelmingly with the darker essence of human nature and the corrupting influence of middle and
high societies.[96] He worked hard to observe humanity in
its most representative state, frequently passing incognito among the masses of Parisian society to do research.[97] He used incidents from his life and the people around him,
in works like Eugénie Grandet and Louis Lambert.[98]
Legacy
Balzac had a significant influence on the writers of his time and beyond. He has been compared to – and cited as an influence
on – Charles Dickens. Critic W. H. Helm calls one "the French Dickens" and the other
"the English Balzac".[99] Another critic, Richard Lehan,
says that "Balzac was the bridge between the comic realism of Dickens and the naturalism of Zola."[100]
French author Gustave Flaubert was also substantially influenced by Balzac. Praising
his portrayal of society while attacking his prose style, Flaubert once wrote: "What a man he would have been had he known how to
write!"[101] While he disdained the label of "realist",
Flaubert clearly took heed of Balzac's close attention to detail and unvarnished depictions of bourgeois life.[102] This influence shows in Flaubert's work L'education
sentimentale, which owes a debt to Balzac's Illusions Perdues.[103] "What Balzac started," says Lehan, "Flaubert helped finish."[104]
Marcel Proust similarly learned from the Realist example; he adored Balzac and studied
his works carefully.[105] Balzac's story Une Heure
de ma Vie (An Hour of my Life, 1822), in which minute details are followed by deep personal reflections, is a clear
ancestor of the style used by Proust in À la recherche du temps
perdu.[106]
Perhaps no author was more affected by Balzac than the American expatriate novelist Henry
James. In 1878 James wrote with sadness about the lack of commentary attention paid to Balzac, and lavished praise on the
French writer in four essays (in 1875, 1877, 1902, and 1913). "Large as Balzac is," James wrote, "he is all of one piece and he
hangs perfectly together."[107] He wrote with
admiration of Balzac's attempt to portray in writing "a beast with a hundred claws."[108] In his own novels, James chose to explore more of the psychological motives
of the characters and less of the historical sweep exhibited by Balzac – a conscious style preference. "[T]he artist of the
Comédie Humaine," he wrote, "is half smothered by the historian."[109] Still, both authors used the form of the realist novel to probe the machinations of society and
the myriad motives of human behavior.[110][111]
Balzac's vision of a society in which class, money and personal ambition are the major players has been endorsed by critics of
both left-wing and right-wing political tendencies.[112] Marxist Friedrich Engels wrote: "I have learned more
[from Balzac] than from all the professional historians, economists and statisticians put together."[113] Balzac has received high praise from critics as diverse as Walter Benjamin and Camille Paglia.[114] In 1970 Roland Barthes published
S/Z, a detailed analysis of Balzac's story Sarrasine and a key work in structuralist literary criticism.
Balzac has also influenced popular culture. Many of his works have been made into popular films, including Les Chouans
(in 1947), Le Père Goriot (BBC mini-series, in 1968), and La Cousine Bette (in 1998, starring Jessica Lange). He was also adapted into a character in Orson Scott
Card's alternate history series The Tales of Alvin Maker. Balzac is
presented as a crude but deeply witty and insightful man. In 2000, Chinese author Dai Sijie
published Balzac et la Petite Tailleuse Chinoise
(Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress), in which a suitcase filled with novels helps to sustain prisoners being
"re-educated" during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. It was made into a film
(adapted and directed by the author) in 2002.
Works
Tragic verse
Incomplete at time of death
- Le Corsaire (opera)
- Sténie
- Falthurne
- Corsino
Published pseudonymously
As "Lord R'Hoone", in collaboration
- L'Héritière de Birague (1822)
- Jean-Louis (1822)
As "Horace de Saint-Aubin"
- Clotilde de Lusignan (1822)
- Le Centenaire (1822)
- Le Vicaire des Ardennes (1822)
- La Dernière Fée (1823)
- Annette et le Criminal (Argon le Pirate) (1824)
- Wann-Chlore (1826)
Published anonymously
- Du Droit d'Ainesse (1824)
- Histoire Impartiale des Jésuites (1824)
- Code des Gens Honnêtes (1826)
Selected titles from La Comédie Humaine
Plays
- L'École des Ménages (1839)
- Vautrin (1839)
- Les Ressources de Quinola (1842)
- Paméla Figaud (1842)
- La Marâtre (1848)
- Mercadet ou le Faiseur (1848)
Tales
- Contes drolatiques (1832–37)
Notes
