III. Balzac's Work— tiie Comédie Humaine

The dream of Balzac's life was to shine as a dramatic author, yet from the ill-fated tragedy Cromwell, with which he had hoped to open his career as a man of letters, to the four or five other plays which he produced at various intervais, ail were a complète failure at the time, though his Mercadet still occasionally appears on the playbills of the Comédie Française. Posterity will always think of Balzac as the author of the Comédie Humaine, compared to whicl^. ail his otlier works sink into insignificance.

Concerning the title, critics are at variance as to whether it was chosen in deliberate contrast to Dante's Divina Commedia or not. The story runs that a fricnd of Bal/ac's, having returncd from a visit to Italy burning

INTRODUCTION xvii

with enthusiasm for the great Florentine, suggested the title to hini. Brunetière, on the other hand, in his récent book on Balzac, takes it to signify merely ' la comédie que se joue Fhumanité à elle-même/ without any symbolic meaning.

It lias been said above o£ the proposed scope of the Comédie Humaine, that its gigantic dimensions were such as no mortal man could achieve, although Balzac himsel£ never doubted his ability to carry out his plan. Nevertheless, the work as it now stands, with some 2,000 characters drawn from ail stations of life, appearing now to the fore and now in the rear of the action ^, with its vivid pictures of every human passion and every human weakness, is almost bewildering in its vastness. Many of his heroes vie wdth those of Shakespeare in intensity of will ; even the most incidental personages are drawn with equally able penmanship, and Balzac himself ranks next to Molière in his knowledge of human nature.

Balzac grouped his novels under two principal headings. Études de mœurs and Etudes philosophiques , which he again subdivided according to the ^ milieu^ in which the action takes place. Thèse are ^ :

I. Etudes de Mœurs: 1. Scènes de la vie privée: Modeste Mignon, Le Père Goriot. 2. Scènes de la vie de province : Le Lys dans la vallée, Ursule Mirouet, Eugénie Grandet, Le Curé de Tours. 3. Scènes de la vie parisienne : César Birotteau^ La Maison Nmingen.

* Référence to a table at the end of the Notes will show how some of the more impoi-tant characters in César Birotteau appear in some of Balzac's other novels.

^ A complète list of the novels comprised in the Comédie Humaine can be found in de Lovenjoul, Histoire des Œuvres de Balzac, pp. 217 et seqq., and Brunetière, Honoré de Balzac, pp. 77 et seqq.

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4. Scènes de la vie politique : Un Éjnsode sous la Terreur, Une Ténébreuse Affaire, 5. Scènes de la vie militaire : Les Chouans. 6. Scènes de la vie de campagne : Le Médecin de campagne, Le Curé de village.

IL Etudes philosophiques : La Peau de chagrin, La Recherche de V Absolu.

There was also to be a third pai% Études analytiques, in which Balzac intended to discuss the priiiciples underlying the causes and effects described in the two former parts, but only one item was ever composed.

It is obvions that thèse divisions are more or less arbitrary and must overlap to some extent; for instance. César Birotteau, which is called a scène from Paris Hfe, is necessarily at the same time a scène from private Ufe, and so forth ; but they serve to give a rapid summary of a plan which it would otherwise be impossible to survey at a glance.

It was Balzac^s object to depict life as it really is, therefore life as he lived it himself and felt its throb about him was his only model. In order to attain that intense reality which is so characteristic of his art, after having portrayed with the most circumstantial minuteness the outward appearance of his personages, their dress, their walk, any Httle personal habit, he procecds to describe in détail the room in which tliey live, the house of which this forms a part, the street, the to^m ; always bringing home to the reader the intimate though unconscious relationship which must exist between them. At other tiines, beginning witli the furtlier object, he gradually narrows the circle until the characters seem to be the natural déduction of wliat bas gone before ; they.

INTRODUCTION xix

moreover, ahvays form an intégral part of the social stratum in which they live^ and cannot be isolated from it. This is what is meant by Balzac^s '^scientific^ method. — We read in the Préface to the Comédie Humaine: ^ Mon ouvrage a sa géographie comme il a sa généalogie et ses familles^ ses lieux et ses choses^ ses personnes et faits/ Herein lies a part of Balzac's great originality. Some of his descriptions of provincial towns of France might almost serve as guide-books to the tourist, so vivid and accurate is the picture they give ; and many quaint and interesting corners of old Paris now survive only in some of Balzac's immortal pages.

If Balzac is unsurpassed as a descriptive writer, he excels no less as a painter of the society of his time. No one has understood better than he the middle-class world of the Restoration, with its sudden rise of prosperity, its society of parvenus and mammon-worshippers. None before hini had realized the suprême importance of the money question as a factor of modem life. He first showed the différent ways in which money may be earned^ honestly and dishonestly, by hard work and economy, by spéculation^ commercial or political, by usury, or by marriage. He introduces us into every kind of office and workshop ; we see fortunes built up and lost before our very eyes ; indeed it has been said that in order to foUow the story of César Birotteau with ease the reader must be something of a merchant himself ; and the same principle holds good for several others of Balzac's novels. This largely constitutes their intrinsic ^modernness/

Yet it must be allowed that, if Balzac is unparalleled as a painter of the lower and middle classes, he fails

pitiably when he attempts to depict society on a higher plane. His lords and ladies hâve no true refinement. When the author himself lacks nobility and tact, he cannot impart it to his characters. Balzac has nothing in common with genuine aristocracy; in spite of his contempt for the ' bourgeoisie/ he belongs to it by nature, and in handling this alone can he trust to the guidance of his instinct. Perfect purity and beauty find but little place in his work. He is essentially a painter of the shadier side of humanity, and this he depicts without a trace of bitterness or irony, regarding it simply as a manifestation of nature. He has created types of vice admirable in their greatness, which can rank with Shakespeare^s Richard HI in power of conception. On the whole, Balzac as an artist may fairh' be compared with Rubens. The work of both teems with an exubérance of physical life, devoid of higher aspirations, but magnilicent in its rich abundance and ^ariety. Of both might be said with equal truth : ' il est presque aussi difficile de Faimer que de ne pas Padmirer.^

Much has been written about Balzac's political and religions opinions. Being a sworn enemy to individualism, and thinking that the masses should be held in check, he was a staunch upholder of autliority, ])oth as regards government and religion; that is to say, lie was a Royalist and a Catholic, but in neither case wcrc his convictions the resuit of very profound investigation, nor do they hâve any very important bearing on the ténor of his Works. Balzac was not a great sociologist, in spite of the many social théories with which his books abound ; but the society he describes is a living organic whole, such as no writer of fiction has ever called into exist-

INTRODUCTION xxi

ence either before or after him. The great and peculiar qualities of his work hâve been admirably summed up by Victor Hugo in a few words spoken after Balzac' s death : — ^ Tous ses livres ne forment qu^un livre, livre vivant, lumineux, profond, où Fon voit aller et venir et marcher et mouvoir, avec je ne sais quoi d'effaré et de terrible mêlé au réel, toute notre civilisation contemporaine ; livre merveilleux, que le poète intitule Comédie et qu'il aurait pu intituler Histoire, qui prend toutes les formes et tous les styles ; livre qui est l'observation et qui est l'imagination, qui prodigue le vrai, l'intime, le bourgeois, le trivial, le matériel, et qui, par moments, à travers toutes les réalités brusquement et largement déchirées, laisse tout à coup entrevoir le plus sombre et le plus tragique idéal.'