HONORé DE BALZAC

'Honoré de Balzac' (French IPA: ) (May 20, 1799 – August 18, 1850) was a nineteenth-century French novelist and playwright. His ''magnum opus'', a sequence of almost 100 novels and plays collectively entitled ''La Comédie Humaine'', presents a broad panorama of French life in the years after the fall of Napoléon Bonaparte in 1815.
Balzac is regarded as one of the founding fathers of Realism in European literature, due to his extensive use of precise detail and unfiltered representation of society. His writing was profoundly influential on many famous writers, including Émile Zola, Charles Dickens, Gustave Flaubert, and Henry James.
An enthusiastic reader and independent thinker as a child, Balzac had trouble adapting himself to the teaching style of his grammar school. This pattern repeated itself throughout his life, creating tension and frustration as he tried to gain entry into the various circles of Paris. His fiction reflects his real-life difficulties, and includes scenes taken directly from his experience.
His first job was as a legal clerk, but he turned his back on the law after becoming disenchanted with its inhumanity. In addition to his career as a writer, Balzac attempted to be a publisher, printer, businessman, critic, and politician. He failed in all of these efforts, but incorporated elements from them in his stories.
Balzac suffered from health problems throughout his life, due largely 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.

Contents

Biography

Birth and family

Early life

First literary efforts

''"Une bonne speculation"''

''La Comédie Humaine'' and literary success

Work habits

Marriage and later life

Writing style and themes

Legacy

Works

Notes

Bibliography

External links

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 born to 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. Only eighteen at the time of their wedding (he was fifty),^[3] her family's wealth was a considerable factor in Bernard-François's attention towards her. 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 lived for only a month.^[5] Honoré's sisters Laure and Laurence were born in 1800 and 1802, respectively; his brother Henry-François was born 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 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 to their parents, they enjoyed at best a frigid distance, 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]

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 became ill with great regularity, 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 a fairly unhappy time in his life, punctuated by a suicide attempt 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 in his students a yearning for independent thought.^[19]
Once his studies were completed, Balzac was persuaded by his father to follow him into the law; for three years Honoré trained and worked at the office of Victor Passez, a friend of the family. It was during this time that he got a real taste for 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 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 of 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 finished 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. English critic George Saintsbury opines that "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 the task.^[29]
Still, it was a vital process for the novelist. English poet and critic Samuel Rogers notes, "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] As biographer Graham Robb puts it: "Discovering the Novel, Balzac was discovering 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 speculation"''

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 his books "sold as waste paper".^[34] He 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 lack of experience and insufficient 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. In April 1828, he owed his own mother 50,000 francs.^[36]
This penchant for ''une bonne speculation'' never left Balzac, and 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 of oak wood in the Ukraine and transporting it for sale in France.

''La Comédie Humaine'' and literary success

Main articles: La Comédie Humaine

In 1832 (after writing several novels), Balzac spawned the idea for an enormous series of books painting an enormous 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''. This was to be Balzac's life work, his contribution to global literature.
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. This was the first book Balzac released under his own name, and it gave him "passage into the Promised Land".^[38] It established his reputation as an author of note (even as 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". He added the aristocratic-sounding particle to help him fit into respected society (as his father had), but he had a more nuanced reason. "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]
When the July Revolution broke out in 1830, Balzac solidified his political standing as a Legitimist, but with qualifications. He felt that the new government was disorganized and unprincipled, and called for "a young and vigorous man who belongs neither to the Directoire nor to the Empire, but who is 1830 incarnate…."^[41] He tried to be such a candidate, appealing especially to the higher classes, but in the end a near-fatal accident caused him to abort the effort.^[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 inside (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. In it, 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 the ''Chronique de Paris'', a weekly magazine of society and politics. Here, he tried to assert a strict impartiality and reasoned assessment of varying 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 compose 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 reflects Balzac's own failed experiments in the field.^[48]
''Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes'' (''The Harlot High and Low'', 1847) continues Lucien's story, wherein 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) combine to 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, but in Balzac's case 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 then 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, sending back printer's proofs almost obscured by changes and additions to be reset. Balzac sometimes continued this process repeatedly 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 his 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 knew Victor Hugo. Nevertheless, he did not spend the ample 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.

Portrait of Ewelina Hańska by Holz Sowgen, 1825

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, they were 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 wrote two treatises on the subject of marriage before experiencing the institution himself: ''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 and themes

Balzac planned to include 48 additional works in the ''Comédie'', which remained unfinished at the time of his death. He grouped the books by subject matter, rather than chronologically. This piecemeal style is reflective of the author's own life. "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."^[37]
His extensive use of raw detail (especially the detail of objects) to illustrate the lives of his characters made Balzac an early pioneer of literary Realism.^[72] 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…."^[73] Lavish descriptions of décor, clothing, and possessions work to breathe life into the characters.^[74]
Balzac worked hard 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."^[75] "Balzac's characters," Robb notes, "were as real to him as if he were observing them in the outside world."^[76] 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."^[77]
Nevertheless, the characters are representative of a particular range of social types – the noble soldier, the scoundrel, the proud workman, the fearless spy, and the alluring mistress, among others.^[78] That he 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."^[79]
His use of repeating characters, moving in and out of the ''Comédie's books, provided Balzac with a sociological power not available to most writers. "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."^[80] He also used a technique which Marcel Proust called "retrospective illumination", whereby a character's past is revealed long after she or he first appears – not unlike real life.
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.)^[81]

1901 edition of ''The Works of Honoré de Balzac''

Thematically, Balzac concerned himself overwhelmingly with the darker essence of human nature and the corrupting influence of middle and high societies.^[82] He worked hard to observe humanity in its most representative state; he frequently moved incognito among the masses of Parisian society to do research.^[83] He used incidents from his life and the people around him, in works like ''Eugénie Grandet'' and ''Louis Lambert''.^[84]
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").^[85] While this clashes with his royalist politics, Balzac was able to conceive a dichotomy between how the society is and how it ought to be run.
His literary mood evolved over time, from one of despondency and chagrin to one of solidarity and courage – but not optimism.^[86] ''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 his characters reveal sympathy for those who are pushed to one side by society.
Representations of place and environment 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 stretched for fifteen or twenty pages.^[87] As 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 is felt deeply in ''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's labyrinthine Paris provided a literary model used later by English novelist Charles Dickens and Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky.^[90]
The transposition of human elements and inanimate objects is another recurring theme. For example, Balzac said, "the streets of Paris possess human qualities and we cannot shake off the impressions they make upon our minds."^[91] His friend Hyacinthe de Latouche had extensive knowledge of hanging wallpaper; Balzac used this both in his home at Rue Cassini and in his literature. The descriptions of the Pension Vauquer in ''Le Père Goriot'' focus specifically on the wallpaper, speaking loudly to the identities of those living inside.^[92]

Bust of Balzac by Auguste Rodin, in the Victoria and Albert Museum

Legacy

Balzac is hailed as one of the founders of literary Realism, owing to his elaborate and unfiltered descriptions of the world and people in it. While he admired and drew inspiration from the Romantic style of Scottish novelist Walter Scott, Balzac sought to represent a more unrefined look at human existence.^[93]
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''.^[94][95]
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 environment and institutional surroundings. French novelist Émile Zola declared Balzac the father of the Naturalist novel.^[96] Elsewhere, Zola indicated that, whereas Romantics saw the world through a colored lens, the Naturalist sees through a clear glass – precisely the sort of effort Balzac made in his representations.^[97]
Balzac had an incredible 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 called one "the French Dickens" and the other "the English Balzac".^[98] Another critic, Richard Lehan, said that "Balzac was the bridge between the comic realism of Dickens and the naturalism of Zola."^[99]
French author Gustave Flaubert was also substantially influenced by Balzac. He once wrote of the author's sociological acumen: "What a man he would have been had he known how to write!"^[100] While he disdained the label of "Realist", Flaubert clearly took heed to Balzac's close attention to detail and unvarnished depictions of bourgeois life.^[101] This influence shows up in Flaubert's work ''L'education sentimentale,'' which owes a debt to Balzac's ''Illusions Perdues''.^[102] "What Balzac started," says Lehan, "Flaubert helped finish."^[103]
Marcel Proust similarly learned from the Realist example; he adored Balzac and studied his works carefully.^[104] Balzac's story ''Une Heure de ma Vie'' (''An Hour of my Life'', 1822) is a clear ancestor of the intricate reflections in ''À la Recherche du Temps Perdus''.^[83]
But 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 no less than four separate essays (in 1848, 1876, 1902, and 1913). "Large as Balzac is," James wrote, "he is all of one piece and he hangs perfectly together."^[106] He wrote with admiration of Balzac's attempt to portray in writing "a beast with a hundred claws."^[107] 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 matter of style preference. "[T]he artist of the Comédie Humaine," he wrote, "is half smothered by the historian."^[108] Still, both authors used the Realist novel form to probe the machinations of society and the myriad motives of human behavior.^[109][103]
Balzac's vision of a society in flux – where class, money and personal ambition are the major players – has achieved the distinction of being endorsed equally by critics of Left-wing and Right-wing political tendencies.^[111] Friedrich Engels wrote: "I have learned more [from Balzac] than from all the professional historians, economists and statisticians put together."^[112] Balzac has received high praise from critics as diverse as Walter Benjamin and Camille Paglia.^[113] In 1970 Roland Barthes published ''S/Z'', a detailed analysis of Balzac's story ''Sarrasine'' and a key work in structuralist literary criticism.
Balzac's influence can also be seen through his appearance in 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 novels of the 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'

★ ''Cromwell'' (1819)
'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'''

★ ''Les Chouans'' (1829)

★ ''Sarrasine'' (1830)

★ ''La Peau de chagrin'' (1830)

★ ''Le Colonel Chabert'' (1832)

★ ''La Fille aux Yeux d'Or'' (1833)

★ ''Eugénie Grandet'' (1833)

★ ''Le Contrat de Mariage'' (1835)

★ ''Le Père Goriot'' (1835)

★ ''Le Lys dans la Vallée'' (1835)

★ ''Illusions Perdues'' (I, 1837; II, 1839; III, 1843)

★ ''La Cousine Bette'' (1846)

★ ''Le Cousin Pons'' (1847)

★ ''Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes'' (1847)
'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

1. Robb, 4.
2. Robb, 5.
3. Robb, 5-6.
4. Pritchett, 23.
5. Robb, 6.
6. Robb, 8.
7. Robb, 18.
8. Pritchett, 25.
9. Robb, 9.
10. Pritchett, 26.
11. Robb, 14.
12. Pritchett, 29.
13. Champfleury (1878). ''Balzac au Collège''. Patay. Quoted in Robb, 15.
14. Balzac (1832). ''Louis Lambert''. Quoted in Pritchett, 29.
15. Robb, 22.
16. Saintsbury, "Honoré de Balzac," xi.
17. Robb, 24.
18. Robb, 30.
19. Robb, 48.
20. Balzac (1840). "Le Notaire". Quoted in Robb, 44.
21. Quoted in Pritchett, 42.
22. Saintsbury, "Honoré de Balzac", xiii.
23. Robb, 59.
24. Rogers, 19
25. Robb, 60.
26. Saintsbury, EB, 298.
27. Robb, 103.
28. Saintsbury, "Honoré de Balzac," xv.
29. Saintsbury, "Honoré de Balzac," xiv.
30. Rogers, 23.
31. Robb, 63.
32. Rogers, 15.
33. Saintsbury, "Honoré de Balzac," xvii.
34. Saintsbury, "Honoré de Balzac," xviii.
35. Robb, 130.
36. Robb, 138.
37. Pritchett, 161.
38. Saintsbury, "Honoré de Balzac," xix.
39. Robb, 169.
40. Robb, 162.
41. Quoted in Robb, 190.
42. Robb, 193.
43. Robb, 178.
44. Pritchett, 155.
45. Rogers, 120.
46. Robb, 258.
47. Robb, 246.
48. Robb, 272.
49. Rogers, 18.
50. Robb, 326.
51. Robb, 272.
52. Rogers, 168.
53. Robb, 365.
54. Saintsbury, "Honoré de Balzac," xxvi.
55. Saintsbury, "Honoré de Balzac," xxvii.
56. Robb, 106.
57. Saintsbury, EB, 299
58. Saintsbury, "Honoré de Balzac," xxviii.
59. Robb, 223-224.
60. Robb, 227.
61. Robb, 230.
62. Robb, 340.
63. Pritchett, 261.
64. Pritchett, 261-262.
65. Saintsbury, "Honoré de Balzac," xxiv.
66. Pritchett, 263.
67. Saintsbury, "Honoré de Balzac," xxxv.
68. Saintsbury, EB, 301.
69. Full text available at Victor Hugo Central.
70. Robb, 412.
71. Pritchett, 161.
72. Brooks, 16.
73. Quoted in Rogers, 144.
74. Brooks, 26.
75. Quoted in Rogers, 161.
76. Robb, 254.
77. Robb, 156.
78. Helm, 23.
79. Lehan, 45.
80. Rogers, 182.
81. Rogers, 73-74.
82. Fernquest.
83. Robb, 70.
84. Robb and Pritchett cite specific examples, included in Biography, above.
85. Quoted in Prendergast, 26.
86. Helm, 130.
87. Helm, 5.
88. Bertault, 36.
89. Rogers, 62.
90. Brooks, 22.
91. Balzac. ''Histoire des Treize: Ferragus, chef des dévorants'', XIII, 13. Quoted in Rogers, 45.
92. Robb, 152.
93. Brooks, 21.
94. Brooks, 131.
95. Lehan, 204.
96. Robb, 421.
97. Brooks, 125.
98. Helm, 124.
99. Lehan, 38.
100. Robb, 422.
101. Brooks, 54.
102. Brooks, 27.
103. Lehan, 48.
104. Brooks, 202.
105. Robb, 70.
106. James (1878), 89.
107. James (1914), 127.
108. James (1914), 115.
109. Stowe, 28-31.
110. Lehan, 48.
111. Rogers, vii.
112. Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederick Engels (1947). ''Literature and Art: Selections from Their Writings. New York. Quoted in Rogers, ix.
113. Robb, 423.

Bibliography

★ Bertault, Philippe (1963). ''Balzac and The Human Comedy''. English version by Richard Monges. New York: NYU Press. .

★ Brooks, Peter (2005). ''Realist Vision''. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0300106807.

★ Fernquest, Jon. ''Reader's Guide: Themes in the Novels of Balzac''. ''Balzac's World''. Retrieved on 23 August 2007.

★ Helm, W. H. (1905). ''Aspects of Balzac''. London: Eveleigh Nash. .

★ James, Henry (1878). ''French Poets and Novelists''. New York: Grosset & Dunlap. .

★ James, Henry (1914). ''Notes on Novelists''. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. .

★ Lehan, Richard (2005). ''Realism and Naturalism''. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 0299208702.

★ Prendergast, Christopher (1978). ''Balzac: Fiction and Melodrama''. London: Edward Arnold Ltd. ISBN 0713159693.

★ Pritchett, V. S. (1973). ''Balzac''. New York: Alfred A. Knopf Inc. ISBN 039448357X.

★ Robb, Graham (1994). ''Balzac: A Biography''. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0393036790.

★ Rogers, Samuel (1953). ''Balzac & The Novel''. New York: Octagon Books. .

★ Saintsbury, George (1901). "Honoré de Balzac". ''The Works of Honoré de Balzac'' (Vol. I, pp. vii-xivi). Philadelphia: Avil Publishing Company. .

★ Saintsbury, George Edward Bateman (1911). "Balzac, Honore de." ''The Encyclopædia Britannica'' (11th ed., Vol. 3). New York: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Wikisource. Retrieved on 18 August 2007.

★ Stowe, William W (1983). "Systematic Realism". In ''Honoré de Balzac''. Edited by Harold Bloom. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers. ISBN 0791070425.

External links

★

★

★ Bio and selected works

★ Reader's Guide: Themes in the Novels of Balzac

★ Honoré de Balzac's works: text, concordances and frequency lists

★ Balzac and anthropology:

★ Balzac on mimetism, language, desire for the absolute

★ Free book downloads in HTML, PDF, text formats at ebooktakeaway.com

★ Pathfinder guide to Balzac and The Human Comedy

★ Victor Hugo's eulogy for Honoré de Balzac

★ Greta Garbo & Balzac