de Balzac, Honore

After his death Balzac became recognised as one of the fathers of Realism in literature, and distinct in his approach from the "pure" Romantics like Stendhal and Victor Hugo. La Comedie humaine spanned more than 90 novels and short stories in an attempt to comprehend and depict the realities of life in contemporary bourgeois France. In the 20th Century his vision of a society in flux, where class, money and personal ambition were the major players, achieved the distinction of being endorsed equally by critics of Left-wing and Right-wing political tendencies.

He guided European fiction away from the overriding influence of Walter Scott and the Gothic school, by showing that modern life could be recounted as vividly as Scott recounted his historical tales, and that mystery and intrigue did not need ghosts and crumbling castles for props. Maupassant, Flaubert and Zola were writers of the next generation who were directly influenced by him, and Marcel Proust (that other weaver of a great tapestry) acknowledged his influence.

In one of his last tales, Les comediens sans le savoir (The Unwitting Actors, 1847) a provincial is rescued from a ruinous speculation by a boulevardier who asks him "Will you not now concede, my friend, that Paris is bigger than you are?". What Balzac had brought to fiction was the social context, a factor unrecognized by the Romantics, for whom the inner world of the individual was all that counted.

In the 1960s, the counter-culture unearthed two strange and mystical novels from Balzac's early years: the quasi-autobiographical Louis Lambert (1832) and Seraphita (1834), in which an angel guides the gender-bending hero/heroine around the solar-system. Some academics have claimed that alchemy, animal-magnetism and other esoteric theories underlie Balzac's interpretation of society, and that his credentials as a Realist should be questioned. But the critical literature on his work is very large, and one can find almost any shade of opinion if one looks for it.

It is Balzac the observer of society, morals and human psychology who continues to appeal to readers today. His novels have always remained in print. His vivid realism and his encyclopedic gifts as a recorder of his age outweigh the sketchiness and inconsistent quality of some of his works. Enough of them are recognized as masterpieces, to rank him as the Charles Dickens of France.

Book list:

A story set during and after the Russian campaign against Napoleon, it tells of the crossing of the Beresina River.

Monsieur Rabordin, a ministry chief, battles bureaucracy as he and his wife deals with his faltering career.

The story of do-gooder Dr. Benassis.

A young, poverty-stricken writer is invited to a wedding where he encounters an aging musician who sparks his interest. The musician turns out to be the descendent of Venetian royalty, telling the writer his story. The young writer suggests the two go to Venice to reclaim the fortune, but it is too late.

A young man, while dying, asks a friend to deliver the news of his death to his lover, but the lover falls for the messenger.

A young woman studying art in Paris finds a soldier hiding in the studio and marries him.