Works of Honore De Balzac, page 1
THE WORKS OF
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
(1799 – 1850)
Contents
THE HUMAN COMEDY
THE HISTORY OF ‘LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE’
AVANT-PROPOS (PREFACE)
STUDIES OF MANNERS IN THE 19TH CENTURY
Scenes from Private Life
AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET
THE BALL AT SCEAUX
LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES
THE PURSE
MODESTE MIGNON
A START IN LIFE
ALBERT SAVARUS
VENDETTA
A SECOND HOME
DOMESTIC PEACE
MADAME FIRMIANI
STUDY OF A WOMAN
THE IMAGINARY MISTRESS
A DAUGHTER OF EVE
THE MESSAGE
THE GRAND BRETECHE
LA GRENADIERE
THE DESERTED WOMAN
HONORINE
BEATRIX
GOBSECK
A WOMAN OF THIRTY
FATHER GORIOT
COLONEL CHABERT
THE ATHEIST’S MASS
THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY
THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT
ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN
Scenes from Provincial Life
URSULE MIROUET
EUGENIE GRANDET
The Celibates
PIERRETTE
THE VICAR OF TOURS
THE TWO BROTHERS
Parisians in the Country
THE ILLUSTRIOUS GAUDISSART
THE MUSE OF THE DEPARTMENT
The Jealousies of a Country Town
THE OLD MAID
THE COLLECTION OF ANTIQUITIES
Lost Illusions
TWO POETS
A DISTINGUISHED PROVINCIAL AT PARIS
EVE AND DAVID
Scenes from Parisian Life
The Thirteen
FERRAGUS
THE DUCHESSE DE LANGEAIS
GIRL WITH THE GOLDEN EYES
RISE AND FALL OF CÉSAR BIROTTEAU
THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN
Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
ESTHER HAPPY: HOW A COURTESAN CAN LOVE
WHAT LOVE COSTS AN OLD MAN
THE END OF EVIL WAYS
VAUTRIN’S LAST AVATAR
SECRETS OF THE PRINCESSE DE CADIGNAN
FACINO CANE
SARRASINE
PIERRE GRASSOU
The Poor Relations
COUSIN BETTY
COUSIN PONS
A MAN OF BUSINESS
A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA
GAUDISSART II
BUREAUCRACY
UNCONSCIOUS COMEDIANS
THE LESSER BOURGEOISIE
The Seamy Side of History
MADAME DE LA CHANTERIE
THE INITIATE
Scenes from Political Life
AN EPISODE UNDER THE TERROR
AN HISTORICAL MYSTERY
The Deputy of Arcis
THE ELECTION
LETTERS EXPLANATORY
MONSIEUR DE SALLENAUVE
Z. MARCAS
Scenes from Military Life
THE CHOUANS
A PASSION IN THE DESERT
Scenes from Country Life
SONS OF THE SOIL
THE COUNTRY DOCTOR
THE VILLAGE RECTOR
THE LILY OF THE VALLEY
PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES
THE MAGIC SKIN
CHRIST IN FLANDERS
MELMOTH RECONCILED
THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE
GAMBARA
MASSIMILLA DONI
THE ALKAHEST
THE HATED SON
FAREWELL
JUANA
THE RECRUIT
EL VERDUGO
A DRAMA ON THE SEASHORE
MAITRE CORNELIUS
THE RED INN
Catherine de’ Medici
THE CALVINIST MARTYR
THE SECRETS OF THE RUGGIERI
THE TWO DREAMS
THE ELIXIR OF LIFE
THE EXILES
LOUIS LAMBERT
SERAPHITA
ANALYTICAL STUDIES
PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE
LITTLE MISERIES OF CONJUGAL LIFE
Pathology of Social Life
TRAITÉ DE LA VIE ÉLÉGANTE
THÉORIE DE LA DÉMARCHE
TRAITÉ DES EXCITANTS MODERNES
OTHER WORKS
The Short Stories
DROLL STORIES
THE NAPOLEON OF THE PEOPLE
The Plays
INTRODUCTION TO BALZAC’S DRAMAS by J. Walker McSpadden
VAUTRIN
THE RESOURCES OF QUINOLA
PAMELA GIRAUD
THE STEPMOTHER
MERCADET
RESOURCES
The Criticism
HONORÉ DE BALZAC by Henry James
A LETTER, 1883 by Robert Louis Stevenson
BALZAC by John Cowper Powys
BALZAC’S NOVELS by Leslie Stephen
BALZAC by William Ernest Henley
BALZAC AS A DRAMATIST by Epiphanius Wilson
THE NOVEL by D. H. Lawrence
The Biographies
HONORÉ DE BALZAC by Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
HONORÉ DE BALZAC, HIS LIFE AND WRITINGS by Mary F. Sandars
BALZAC AND MADAME HANSKA by Elbert Hubbard
BALZAC by Frederick Lawton
WOMEN IN THE LIFE OF BALZAC by Juanita Helm Floyd
Glossary of Characters in ‘La Comédie humaine’
© Delphi Classics 2012
Version 1
THE WORKS OF
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
By Delphi Classics, 2012
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THE HUMAN COMEDY
Rue Nationale, Tours, the birthplace of Balzac
Rue Nationale, Tours, today
Balzac’s father Bernard-François Balssa, was one of eleven children from a poor family in Tarn, in the south of France. The author’s mother, 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.
Balzac’s sister Laure was a life-long companion and muse to the author
THE HISTORY OF ‘LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE’
This is the title of Balzac’s monumental series of interlinked novels and stories, which depict French society in the period of the Restoration and the July Monarchy, from 1815 to 1848. The series comprises 91 finished works and 46 unfinished works, with some only existing as titles. The term La Comédie humaine alludes to Dante’s Divine Comedy, suggesting a comprehensive and epic story, though Balzac’s works are more concerned with worldly, human concerns from a realist standpoint, than the theological concerns of the medieval poet.
La Comédie humaine was the result of a long and gradual evolution. Balzac’s first works were written without any overall plan, but by 1830 the author began to group his first novels (e.g. Sarrasine, Gobseck) into a series entitled Scènes de la vie privée (Scenes from Private Life).
With the publication of Eugénie Grandet in 1833, Balzac envisioned a second series entitled Scènes de la vie de province (Scenes from Provincial Life). It was at this time that he devised the idea of having characters reappear from novel to novel, and the first novel to use this technique was Le Père Goriot in 1834. The idea may seem simple now to modern readers, but having characters reappearing in novels over a time period creates an impression as though they have lives of their own. Readers can appreciate the continuing development of characters, giving a more life-like impression. The technique has since been used by hundreds of writers, with early examples being found in the works of Thackeray, Trollope, Proust, Zola and many others. The decision to use previous characters was also a very shrewd one in terms of commercial sales. Readers would want to buy works featuring characters they were familiar with, especially in novels that were popular and being widely discussed at the time.
In 1834, Balzac announced in a letter to Madame Hanska his decision to reorganise the works into three larger groups, allowing him to include his La physiologie du mariage (a philosophical essay on divorce) and to separate his fantasy stories, such as La Peau de chagrin and Louis Lambert, into their own Philosophical Studies section. The overall three groups were:
Etudes de Moeurs au XIXe siècle (Studies of Manners in the 19th Century)
Etudes philosophiques (Philosophical Studies)
Etudes analytiques (Analytical Studies)
Balzac intended the Etudes de Moeurs to study the effects of society, considering differences in genders, social classes, ages and professions. The Etudes philosophiques would explore the causes of these effects and the final Etudes analytiques section would study the principles behind these phenomena.
By 1836, the Etudes de Moeurs was already divided into six parts:
Scènes de la vie privée
Scènes de la vie de province
Scènes de la vie parisienne
Scènes de la vie politique
Scènes de la vie militaire
Scènes de la vie de campagne
In 1839, for the first time Balzac mentioned in a letter to his publisher the expression La Comédie humaine and the title is recorded in the contract he signed in 1841. The first actual publication of La Comédie humaine in
Sadly, Balzac’s intended collection was never finished. In 1845, he wrote a complete catalogue of the ensemble which included works he had started or envisioned, but never finished. In some cases, Balzac moved a novel or tale around between different sections, making a definitive ordering of La Comédie humaine a difficult task, particularly due to the unwritten or incomplete texts. The structure provided in this collection represents the last version recorded by Balzac.
Advertising poster for the first printing of the complete series, 1842
AVANT-PROPOS (PREFACE)
Translated by Ellen Marriage
In giving the general title of “The Human Comedy” to a work begun nearly thirteen years since, it is necessary to explain its motive, to relate its origin, and briefly sketch its plan, while endeavoring to speak of these matters as though I had no personal interest in them. This is not so difficult as the public might imagine. Few works conduce to much vanity; much labor conduces to great diffidence. This observation accounts for the study of their own works made by Corneille, Moliere, and other great writers; if it is impossible to equal them in their fine conceptions, we may try to imitate them in this feeling.
The idea of The Human Comedy was at first as a dream to me, one of those impossible projects which we caress and then let fly; a chimera that gives us a glimpse of its smiling woman’s face, and forthwith spreads its wings and returns to a heavenly realm of phantasy. But this chimera, like many another, has become a reality; has its behests, its tyranny, which must be obeyed.
The idea originated in a comparison between Humanity and Animality.
It is a mistake to suppose that the great dispute which has lately made a stir, between Cuvier and Geoffroi Saint-Hilaire, arose from a scientific innovation. Unity of structure, under other names, had occupied the greatest minds during the two previous centuries. As we read the extraordinary writings of the mystics who studied the sciences in their relation to infinity, such as Swedenborg, Saint-Martin, and others, and the works of the greatest authors on Natural History — Leibnitz, Buffon, Charles Bonnet, etc., we detect in the monads of Leibnitz, in the organic molecules of Buffon, in the vegetative force of Needham, in the correlation of similar organs of Charles Bonnet — who in 1760 was so bold as to write, “Animals vegetate as plants do” — we detect, I say, the rudiments of the great law of Self for Self, which lies at the root of Unity of Plan. There is but one Animal. The Creator works on a single model for every organized being. “The Animal” is elementary, and takes its external form, or, to be accurate, the differences in its form, from the environment in which it is obliged to develop. Zoological species are the result of these differences. The announcement and defence of this system, which is indeed in harmony with our preconceived ideas of Divine Power, will be the eternal glory of Geoffroi Saint-Hilaire, Cuvier’s victorious opponent on this point of higher science, whose triumph was hailed by Goethe in the last article he wrote.
I, for my part, convinced of this scheme of nature long before the discussion to which it has given rise, perceived that in this respect society resembled nature. For does not society modify Man, according to the conditions in which he lives and acts, into men as manifold as the species in Zoology? The differences between a soldier, an artisan, a man of business, a lawyer, an idler, a student, a statesman, a merchant, a sailor, a poet, a beggar, a priest, are as great, though not so easy to define, as those between the wolf, the lion, the ass, the crow, the shark, the seal, the sheep, etc. Thus social species have always existed, and will always exist, just as there are zoological species. If Buffon could produce a magnificent work by attempting to represent in a book the whole realm of zoology, was there not room for a work of the same kind on society? But the limits set by nature to the variations of animals have no existence in society. When Buffon describes the lion, he dismisses the lioness with a few phrases; but in society a wife is not always the female of the male. There may be two perfectly dissimilar beings in one household. The wife of a shopkeeper is sometimes worthy of a prince, and the wife of a prince is often worthless compared with the wife of an artisan. The social state has freaks which Nature does not allow herself; it is nature plus society. The description of social species would thus be at least double that of animal species, merely in view of the two sexes. Then, among animals the drama is limited; there is scarcely any confusion; they turn and rend each other — that is all. Men, too, rend each other; but their greater or less intelligence makes the struggle far more complicated. Though some savants do not yet admit that the animal nature flows into human nature through an immense tide of life, the grocer certainly becomes a peer, and the noble sometimes sinks to the lowest social grade. Again, Buffon found that life was extremely simple among animals. Animals have little property, and neither arts nor sciences; while man, by a law that has yet to be sought, has a tendency to express his culture, his thoughts, and his life in everything he appropriates to his use. Though Leuwenhoek, Swammerdam, Spallanzani, Reaumur, Charles Bonnet, Muller, Haller and other patient investigators have shown us how interesting are the habits of animals, those of each kind, are, at least to our eyes, always and in every age alike; whereas the dress, the manners, the speech, the dwelling of a prince, a banker, an artist, a citizen, a priest, and a pauper are absolutely unlike, and change with every phase of civilization.
Hence the work to be written needed a threefold form — men, women, and things; that is to say, persons and the material expression of their minds; man, in short, and life.
As we read the dry and discouraging list of events called History, who can have failed to note that the writers of all periods, in Egypt, Persia, Greece, and Rome, have forgotten to give us a history of manners? The fragment of Petronius on the private life of the Romans excites rather than satisfies our curiosity. It was from observing this great void in the field of history that the Abbe Barthelemy devoted his life to a reconstruction of Greek manners in Le Jeune Anacharsis.
But how could such a drama, with the four or five thousand persons which society offers, be made interesting? How, at the same time, please the poet, the philosopher, and the masses who want both poetry and philosophy under striking imagery? Though I could conceive of the importance and of the poetry of such a history of the human heart, I saw no way of writing it; for hitherto the most famous story-tellers had spent their talent in creating two or three typical actors, in depicting one aspect of life. It was with this idea that I read the works of Walter Scott. Walter Scott, the modern troubadour, or finder (trouvere=trouveur), had just then given an aspect of grandeur to a class of composition unjustly regarded as of the second rank. Is it not really more difficult to compete with personal and parochial interests by writing of Daphnis and Chloe, Roland, Amadis, Panurge, Don Quixote, Manon Lescaut, Clarissa, Lovelace, Robinson Crusoe, Gil Blas, Ossian, Julie d’Etanges, My Uncle Toby, Werther, Corinne, Adolphe, Paul and Virginia, Jeanie Deans, Claverhouse, Ivanhoe, Manfred, Mignon, than to set forth in order facts more or less similar in every country, to investigate the spirit of laws that have fallen into desuetude, to review the theories which mislead nations, or, like some metaphysicians, to explain what Is? In the first place, these actors, whose existence becomes more prolonged and more authentic than that of the generations which saw their birth, almost always live solely on condition of their being a vast reflection of the present. Conceived in the womb of their own period, the whole heart of humanity stirs within their frame, which often covers a complete system of philosophy. Thus Walter Scott raised to the dignity of the philosophy of History the literature which, from age to age, sets perennial gems in the poetic crown of every nation where letters are cultivated. He vivified it with the spirit of the past; he combined drama, dialogue, portrait, scenery, and description; he fused the marvelous with truth — the two elements of the times; and he brought poetry into close contact with the familiarity of the humblest speech. But as he had not so much devised a system as hit upon a manner in the ardor of his work, or as its logical outcome, he never thought of connecting his compositions in such a way as to form a complete history of which each chapter was a novel, and each novel the picture of a period.
