Between 1836 and 1839 he wrote Le Cabinet des antiques (1839), the first two parts of another masterpiece, Illusions perdues (1837–43; Lost Illusions), César Birotteau (1837), and La Maison Nucingen (1838; The Firm of Nucingen). The narrator says : "He devoured books of every kind, feeding indiscriminately on religious works, history and literature, philosophy and physics. Han… In 1834, 8 months after the event, Maria Du Fresnay's daughter by Balzac, Marie-Caroline Du Fresnay, was born. [15] (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.) [26], 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 family friend. Lost Illusions book. His response was to place a classified advertisement in the Gazette de France, hoping that his anonymous critic would see it. [6] He is renowned for his multi-faceted characters; even his lesser characters are complex, morally ambiguous and fully human. An enthusiastic reader and independent thinker as a child, Balzac had trouble adapting to the teaching style of his grammar school. 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. Honoré’s mother came from a family of prosperous Parisian cloth merchants. Linked with this idea of the potentially destructive power of passionate will, emotion, and thought is Balzac’s peculiar notion of a vital fluid concentrated inside the person, a store of energy that he may husband or squander as he desires, thereby lengthening or shortening his vital span. [69] However he often spent long periods at the Château de Saché, near Tours, the home of his friend Jean de Margonne, his mother's lover and father to her youngest child. Omissions? [133] Balzac has received high praise from critics as diverse as Walter Benjamin and Camille Paglia. "Honoré de Balzac, una creatività "sempre recidiva, mai stanca" – Con lui il romanzo s'è fatto uomo", su "Ricorditi di me...", in "Lecco 2000", Lecco, febbraio 1999. March 6, 2019. Balzac's literary mood evolved over time from one of despondency and chagrin to that of solidarity and courage—but not optimism. [115] However, Proust wrote later in life that the contemporary fashion of ranking Balzac higher than Tolstoy was "madness". Honore de Balzac : Modesty is the conscience of the body . Honoré de Balzac’s Gay Anti-Hero . His most important work is La Comédie Humaine. Pierre-Marie-Charles de Bernard du Grail de la Villette, Learn how and when to remove this template message, Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, "Campaign of General Buonaparte in Italy, during the fourth and fifth years of the French republic /". "[49] Just as his father had worked his way up from poverty into respectable society, Balzac considered toil and effort his real mark of nobility. [42] Balzac had better luck publishing the Memoirs of the Duchess of Abrantès, with whom he also had a love affair. Many of Balzac's works have been made into films and continue to inspire other writers. NEARLY 200 YEARS AGO, the French novelist Honoré de Balzac created a remarkable character, Vautrin, a charming, hyper-masculine master criminal, and a man who loves men. It is now a Museum dedicated to Balzac where one can see his writing desk and quill pen and chair. [96] Zola indicated that whilst the 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. "[135] In 1970 Roland Barthes published S/Z, a detailed analysis of Balzac's story Sarrasine and a key work in structuralist literary criticism. Le Père Goriot (Old Father Goriot, 1835) was his next success, in which 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. From this point forward Balzac spent much of his time in Paris. [93] Plentiful descriptions of décor, clothing, and possessions help breathe life into the characters. A nearly infinite reserve of energy propels the characters in Balzac's novels. [47] It established him as an author of note (even if its historical fiction-genre imitates that of Sir Walter Scott) and provided him with a name outside his past pseudonyms. The writing is simple, yet the individuals (especially the bourgeois title character) are dynamic and complex. ")[23] Balzac himself attributed his condition to "intellectual congestion", but his extended confinement in the "alcove" was surely a factor. [112] La Peau de Chagrin, among his earliest novels, is a pessimistic tale of confusion and destruction. [124], Marcel Proust similarly learned from the Realist example; he adored Balzac and studied his works carefully, although he criticised what he perceived as Balzac's "vulgarity". [101] That Balzac was able to balance the strength of the individual against the representation of the type is evidence of the author's skill. Then he tried a business career as a publisher, printer, and owner of a typefoundry, but disaster soon followed. His writing influenced many famous writers, including the novelists Émile Zola, Charles Dickens, Gustave Flaubert, and Henry James, filmmaker François Truffaut, and philosophers such as Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx. [67], Although Balzac was "by turns a hermit and a vagrant",[68] he managed to stay in tune with the social spheres which nourished his writing. He wrote from 1 am to 8 am every morning and sometimes even longer. He called for "a young and vigorous man who belongs neither to the Directoire nor to the Empire, but who is 1830 incarnate...."[50] He planned to be such a candidate, appealing especially to the higher classes in Chinon. Due to his keen observation of details and an altered representation of society, Honore de Balzac is regarded as one of the main founders of realism in literature. His inexperience and lack of capital caused his ruin in these trades. The latter, regarding the Jesuits, illustrated his lifelong admiration for the Catholic Church. He helped to establish the traditional form of the novel and is generally considered to be one of the greatest novelists of all time. Cast in bronze, the Balzac Monument has stood since 1939 nearby the intersection of Boulevard Raspail and Boulevard Montparnasse at Place Pablo-Picasso. Frequently his villains are more vigorous and interesting than his virtuous characters. Honoré de Balzac [ɔnɔ'ʁe də balˈzak] war ein französischer Schriftsteller. He wrote novels and plays. [58] Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes (The Harlot High and Low, 1847) continues Lucien's story. [53] The tale of a young lady who inherits her father's miserliness, it also became the most critically acclaimed book of his career. Honoré de Balzac Né le : 20/05/1799 Décédé le : 18/08/1850. 6 S p C T J o L T P n s o r e d 7 3 I. Robert W. Mack . A rival of the Hungarian composer Franz Liszt, Balzac visited Countess Hańska in St. Petersburg in 1843 and won her heart. [79] 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. He was born on March 20, 1799, in Tours, France. Nevertheless, his keen insight regarding working-class conditions earned him the esteem of many socialists including Marxists. The novel sequence La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of post-Napoleonic French life, is generally viewed as his magnum opus. Previous Post Next Post. Honoré de Balzac (20 May 1799 – 18 August 1850) was a French writer. [9] After the Reign of Terror (1793–94), François Balzac was despatched to Tours to coordinate supplies for the Army. Balzac could write very rapidly; some of his novels, written with a quill, were composed at a pace equal to thirty words per minute on a modern typewriter. [55] The centrality of a father in this novel matches Balzac's own position—not only as mentor to his troubled young secretary, Jules Sandeau,[56] but also the fact that he had fathered a child, Marie-Caroline Du Fresnay, with his otherwise-married lover, Maria Du Fresnay, who had been his source of inspiration for Eugénie Grandet. He despaired of being "a clerk, a machine, a riding-school hack, eating and drinking and sleeping at fixed hours. [45], 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. Six ans plus tard, son envie de devenir philosophe se confirme lorsqu’il devient pensionnaire à l’institution Ganser de Paris. [128] He wrote with admiration of Balzac's attempt to portray in writing "a beast with a hundred claws". It haunts me in my moments of pleasure. [51], 1831 saw the success of La Peau de chagrin (The Wild Ass's Skin or The Magic Skin), a fable-like tale about a despondent young man named Raphaël de Valentin who finds an animal skin which promises great power and wealth. Travelling to Ukraine to visit his future wife Ewelina Hańska he stopped in Krakow for 4 times. Honoré de Balzac was a French writer, his works are famous all around the world. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Honoré de Balzac [ɔnɔ'ʁe də balˈzak] (* 20. Tours: Elhunyt: 1850. augusztus 18. These novels are unsurpassed for their narrative drive, their large casts of vital, diverse, and interesting characters, and their obsessive interest in and examination of virtually all spheres of life: the contrast between provincial and metropolitan manners and customs; the commercial spheres of banking, publishing, and industrial enterprise; the worlds of art, literature, and high culture; politics and partisan intrigue; romantic love in all its aspects; and the intricate social relations and scandals among the aristocracy and the haute bourgeoisie. [43], Balzac borrowed money from his family and friends and tried to build a printing business, then a type foundry. Honoré de Balzac, Writer: Eugénie Grandet. À cela s'ajoutent Les Cent Contes drolatiques, ainsi que des romans … In 1828 he was narrowly saved from bankruptcy and was left with debts of more than 60,000 francs. In 1820 Balzac completed the five-act verse tragedy Cromwell. Updates? He then rose and wrote for many hours, fueled by innumerable cups of black coffee. Quoted in Robb, 44. Balzac’s His health deteriorated on the way, and Ewelina wrote to her daughter about Balzac being "in a state of extreme weakness" and "sweating profusely". Romancier français (1799-1850) auteur d'une gigantesque épopée romanesque, la Comédie humaine. or Best Offer . In 1878 James wrote: "Large as Balzac is, he is all of one piece and he hangs perfectly together". He was especially attracted by the theme of the individual in conflict with society: the adventurer, the scoundrel, the unscrupulous financier, and the criminal. No Comments. Honoré de Balzac (May 20, 1799 – August 18, 1850) was a French novelist recognized as one of the founders of realism in European fiction. [73], Ewelina (née Rzewuska) was married to a nobleman twenty years her senior, Marshal Wacław Hański, a wealthy Polish landowner living near Kiev. [92] In the preface to the first edition of Scènes de la Vie privée, he wrote: "the author firmly believes that details alone will henceforth determine the merit of works". A fascinating raconteur, he was fairly well received in society. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). He tried to enforce strict impartiality in its pages and a reasoned assessment of various ideologies. [66] As a result, the finished product quite often was different from the original text. Balzac uses a lot of detail. These long short stories are for the most part psychological studies of girls in conflict with parental authority. 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. At Napoleon’s downfall his family moved from Tours to Paris, where he went to school for two more years and then spent three years as a lawyer’s clerk. Settle in for this novel-length quiz and find out what you know. Balzac worked these scenes from his boyhood—as he did many aspects of his life and the lives of those around him—into La Comédie humaine. Balzac suffered from health problems throughout his life, possibly owing to his intense writing schedule. [65], Balzac revised obsessively, covering printer's proofs with changes and additions to be reset. [34] These books were potboiler novels, designed to sell quickly and titillate audiences. This was an unhappy time in his life, during which he attempted suicide on a bridge over the Loire River. In the period 1832–35 he produced more than 20 works, including the novels Le Médecin de campagne (1833; The Country Doctor), Eugénie Grandet (1833), L’Illustre Gaudissart (1833; The Illustrious Gaudissart), and Le Père Goriot (1835), one of his masterpieces. Louis Lambert (1832), as translated by Clara Bell; Tout pouvoir humain est un composé de patience et de temps. He was both fascinated and appalled by the French social system of his time, in which the bourgeois values of material acquisitiveness and gain were steadily replacing what he viewed as the more stable moral values of the old-time aristocracy. Illusions Perdues extends to a thousand pages after starting inauspiciously in a small-town print shop, whereas La Fille aux yeux d'or (The Girl with the Golden Eyes, 1835) opens with a broad panorama of Paris but becomes a closely plotted novella of only fifty pages. Realizing he would have trouble finding a composer, however, he turned to other pursuits. [33] For example, the scandalous novel Vicaire des Ardennes (1822)—banned for its depiction of nearly-incestuous relations and, more egregiously, of a married priest—attributed to a "Horace de Saint-Aubin". 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! To clear his debts and put himself in a position to marry Madame Hanska now became Balzac’s great incentive. In February 1832 Balzac received an intriguing letter from Odessa—with no return address and signed simply "L'Étrangère" ("The Foreigner")—expressing sadness at the cynicism and atheism in La Peau de Chagrin and its negative portrayal of women. In 1850, Balzac married Ewelina Hańska, a Polish aristocrat and his longtime love; he died in Paris five months later. Leave a Reply Cancel reply. Her marriage to a considerably older man (Charles du Fresnay, Mayor of Sartrouville) had been a failure from the outset. C $204.25. Balzac had difficulty adapting to the rote style of learning at the school. Balzac admired those individuals who were ruthless, astute, and, above all, successful in thrusting their way up the social and economic scale at all costs. Balzac meant the story to bear witness to the treacherous turns of life, its "serpentine motion".[52]. The novel sequence La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of post-Napoleonic French life, is generally viewed as his magnum opus. [25], 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, lectured on French and classical literature; and, most influential of all, Victor Cousin's courses on philosophy encouraged his students to think independently. [28] He announced his intention to become a writer. [58] As Rogers notes, "Balzac was interested in any social, political, or economic theory, whether from the right or the left. [115] He used incidents from his life and the people around him, in works like Eugénie Grandet and Louis Lambert.[116]. D’un père directeur des vivres pour les armées et d’une mère 32 ans plus jeune que son mari, Balzac est placé en nourrice dès son plus jeune âge. La Peau de chagrin (1831), Eugénie Grandet (1833) and Le Père Goriot (1835) are some of the most famous works from this collection. The minute attention he gave to describing domestic background in his works anticipated the spectacularly detailed societal observations of his later Parisian studies. [85][86], Balzac is buried at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. They agreed to marry when her husband died, and so Balzac continued to conduct his courtship of her by correspondence; the resulting Lettres à l’étrangère (“Letters to a Foreigner”), which appeared posthumously (4 vol., 1889–1950), are an important source of information for the history both of Balzac’s life and of his work. He followed his father in the surname Balzac but added the aristocratic-sounding nobiliary particle to help him fit into respected society, a choice based on skill rather than by right. [136], "Balzac" redirects here. (51 évesen) Párizs: Álneve The French novelist Honoré de Balzac was the first writer to use fiction to convey the social scene prevailing at a particular period in one country's history. [107] Balzac said, "the streets of Paris possess human qualities and we cannot shake off the impressions they make upon our minds. Honore De Balzac was a French playwright and novelist who is famously known for the La Comedie Humaine book series. When the Balzac children returned home, they were kept at a frosty distance from their parents, which affected the author-to-be significantly. Balzac was a legitimist; in many ways, his views are the antithesis of Victor Hugo's democratic republicanism. The Works of Honore' de Balzac 16 misc volumes 1929 McKinley Stone VG 190410. She, like many other women, had written to Balzac expressing admiration of his writings. He often worked 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. William Saroyan wrote a short story about Balzac in his 1971 book, Letters from 74 rue Taitbout or Don't Go But If You Must Say Hello To Everybody. Balzac is mentioned to humorous effect in Meredith Willson's musical The Music Man. At his memorial service, Victor Hugo pronounced "Today we have people in black because of the death of the man of talent; a nation in mourning for a man of genius". The loss of this opportunity caused serious discord in the Balzac household, although Honoré was not turned away entirely. "The aristocracy and authority of talent are more substantial than the aristocracy of names and material power", he wrote in 1830. francia regényíró, a francia realista regény megteremtőinek egyike, neve a világirodalom legjelentősebb alakjai között szerepel. Honoré de Balzac: Balzac egy 1842-es dagerrotípián: Született: 1799. május 20. In 1878 James wrote with sadness about the lack of contemporary attention paid to Balzac, and lavished praise on him in four essays (in 1875, 1877, 1902, and 1913). 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.[29]. He was at the peak of his creative power. Balzac's vision of a society in which class, money and personal ambition are the key players has been endorsed by critics of both left-wing and right-wing political persuasions. I had the honour of escorting him to the dungeon more than a hundred times! [94] For example, Balzac's friend Henri de Latouche had a good knowledge of hanging wallpaper. After writing several novels, in 1832 Balzac conceived the idea for an enormous series of books that would paint a panoramic portrait of "all aspects of society". [19] (The janitor at the school, when asked later if he remembered Honoré, replied: "Remember M. Balzac? [32] He followed this effort by starting (but never finishing) three novels: Sténie, Falthurne, and Corsino. "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". Engels declared that Balzac was his favorite writer. [22] When he returned home, his grandmother said: "Voilà donc comme le collège nous renvoie les jolis que nous lui envoyons!" Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. This was to be Balzac's life work and his greatest achievement. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Two works of 1829 brought Balzac to the brink of success. Corrections? (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. He began to frequent some of the best-known Parisian salons of the day and redoubled his efforts to set himself up as a dazzling figure in society. In 1832 Balzac became friendly with Éveline Hanska, a Polish countess who was married to an elderly Ukrainian landowner. Among the shorter works were Le Colonel Chabert (1832), Le Curé de Tours (1832; The Vicar of Tours), the trilogy of stories entitled Histoire des treize (1833–35; History of the Thirteen), and Gobseck (1835). Near the end of his life Balzac was captivated by the idea of cutting 20,000 acres (81 km2) of oak wood in Ukraine and transporting it for sale in France.[42]. [125][126] 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 forebear of the style which Proust used in À la recherche du temps perdu. During the 1830s he also wrote a number of philosophical novels dealing with mystical, pseudoscientific, and other exotic themes. [134] He was also praised by James Baldwin, who said 1984: "I’m sure that my life in France would have been very different had I not met Balzac. Balzac is renowned for his unique and complex characters. [117] He wrote, in his essay "Society and the Individual": "The only absolute authority which the imagination has been able to conceive, the authority of God, works according to rules which He has imposed on Himself. Honoré de Balzac was a French writer whose works have been made into films, such as, Cousin Bette (1998) starring Jessica Lange, and television serials, such as, _Cousin Bette (1971 TV mini-series)_, starring Margaret Tyzack and Helen Mirren. [13][14], As an infant Balzac was sent to a wet nurse; the following year he was joined by his sister Laure and they spent four years away from home. His time at Vendôme is reflected in Louis Lambert, his 1832 novel about a young boy studying at an Oratorian grammar school at Vendôme. Indeed, a supremely important feature in Balzac’s characters is that most are spendthrifts of this vital force, a fact that explains his monomaniacs who are both victim and embodiment of some ruling passion; avarice, as in the main character of Gobseck, a usurer gloating over his sense of power, or the miserly father obsessed with riches in Eugénie Grandet; excessive paternal affection, as in the idolatrous Learlike father in Le Père Goriot; feminine vindictiveness, as evidenced in La Cousine Bette and a half-dozen other novels; the mania of the art collector, as in Le Cousin Pons; the artist’s desire for perfection, as in Le Chef-d’oeuvre inconnu; the curiosity of the scientist, as in the fanatical chemist of La Recherche de l’absolu; or the vaulting and frustrated ambition of the astonishingly resourceful criminal mastermind Vautrin in Illusions perdues and Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes. )[24], 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. The structure of his novels, in which the plot is presented in sequential order by an omniscient narrator and one event causes … His sister Laure (later de Surville) was his only childhood friend, and she became his first biographer. [42] As of April 1828 Balzac owed 50,000 francs to his mother. Who invented the historical novel? From Russian Federation. 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. [12], Honoré (named after Saint-Honoré of Amiens, who is commemorated on 16 May, 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. In Balzac Countess 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. [127], Perhaps the author most affected by Balzac was American expatriate novelist Henry James. He also began to have love affairs with fashionable or aristocratic women at this time, finally gaining that firsthand understanding of mature women that is so evident in his novels. [87] The funeral was attended by "almost every writer in Paris", including Frédérick Lemaître, Gustave Courbet, Dumas père and Dumas fils,[88] as well as representatives of the Légion d'honneur and other dignitaries.[89]. Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree.... What was Arthur Conan Doyle’s actual profession? [100], At the same time, the characters depict a particular range of social types: the noble soldier, the scoundrel, the proud workman, the fearless spy, the alluring mistress. But the cynicism declined as his oeuvre developed, and the characters of Illusions Perdues reveal sympathy for those who are pushed to one side by society. "[108] His labyrinthine city provided a literary model used later by English novelist Charles Dickens and Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky.
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