(The Human Comedy #37 of 98) Part one of the longer (the longest Balzac wrote) work Lost Illusions. Here the story is setup in romantic fashion: a mise(The Human Comedy #37 of 98) Part one of the longer (the longest Balzac wrote) work Lost Illusions. Here the story is setup in romantic fashion: a miserly father (a retired printer) constantly looking to hoodwink anyone he can to gain more money including his own son; the son, David, who is idealistic and always thinks the best of everyone but who is hoodwinked by his own father and locked into terrible financial bargains because he doesn't believe his own father would swindle him, David is a poet and taking over his father's printing business means that he can be surrounded by words and poetry; Lucien, son of a pharmacist (not the respected profession it is today), who has been spoiled rotten by his widowed mother and doting older sister, who believes himself to be a wonderful poet held back only by situation and lack of finance; Eve the doting older sister who believes her brother to be capable of great things and feeds his fantasies and his selfish ambitions.
In part one, Lucien is feted as a great poet in the local Provincial lady's household by a foppish suitor looking to ingratiate himself into the bosom of Mme de Brageton, a lady bred for Paris but stuck in the backwater Angouleme married to a bore, his plan however backfires when Mme is REALLy interested in the beautiful (but average poet) Lucien and drops the fop.
David, Eve and Eve's mother spend all their money ensuring Lucien has fine clothes and opportunity to develop his place at Court, but will Lucien remember who has sacrificed so much to give him his little leg up when scandal envelops the region of Angouleme?
For Balzac, it's an enjoyable romp, but I still feel I can only give it three stars without being unfair to other books that have got 4....more
(The Human Comedy #36 of 98) An interesting story short, only about 15 pages long, written as a memory from the author's youth. Written in the first pe(The Human Comedy #36 of 98) An interesting story short, only about 15 pages long, written as a memory from the author's youth. Written in the first person it opens at a wedding party where the author spends his time observing the people, honing his skills of description and of imagination when he sees the band, a trio of blind musicians. The elderly italian-looking clarinetist in particular attracts his attention. And after sitting with the band he hears the man's story, like the ancient mariner.
In the first half I thought the story would develop more than it does but unfortunately it quickly dissolved away and the whole feels rushed, unfinished and unrevised - for example, we never hear what happens to an accomplice to a robbery who simply conveniently disappears, nor do we find out what happens to Facino Cane's love, Bianca, who just dies from nothing as far as we can tell. Nor, in fact, do we find out how Facino goes blind - he just does, presumably god's ire or something, or symbolism for greed blinding us to the world around us. And then the ending is ridiculously abrupt, just cutting off in a sentence as though Balzac's dinner going had rung and he thought "that's close enough, damnit".
So, a slight disappointment in the end after a very good start...more
(The Human Comedy #35 of 98) Definitely at the better end of The Human Comedy. This novella moves at a good pace, has interesting characters and has en(The Human Comedy #35 of 98) Definitely at the better end of The Human Comedy. This novella moves at a good pace, has interesting characters and has enough description and scene setting without dragging it out for dozens of pages (which is Balzac's default way of working - I guess he was paid by the word).
The mysterious opening has an older man, down on his luck, being mocked by the cheeky clerks of a up and coming Parisian law firm. We find out that this is the legendary Colonel Chabert, a veteran of the Russian front who has been legally dead for almost ten years.
Come home, he has to prove his identity and reclaim his fortune and his (remarried - and now very fashionable and upper class) wife.
Overall its an entertaining read that doesn't outstay its welcome, although I didn't like the ending (a common complaint with Balzac) because as far as I could see no justice was done and no comeuppance was had....more
(The Human Comedy #34 of 98) Probably not quite worth 4 stars, but it’s so nice to read a short, simple and satisfying tale from Balzac that I was more(The Human Comedy #34 of 98) Probably not quite worth 4 stars, but it’s so nice to read a short, simple and satisfying tale from Balzac that I was more than happy to round it up.
This short story is remarkably focused and concise - especially for Balzac. We’re introduced to two young men, strangers but of similar ages and background who share the seats on the roof of a carriage travelling from Paris to Moulins. Over the journey they grow close, ultimately sharing tales of their loves - both being older, married women.
An accident leaves one of them dying and he charges the other with the task of taking the news to his lover personally, along with returning the lady’s love letters.
And alongside the concluding visit to the lady herself that’s essentially all there is to it. And after reading so many stories / novels from Balzac that are stuffed to the ginnel with unnecessary digressions into the history of a cellar on a Parisian street corner, or the previous 50 years in the life of a side character, this was a welcome relief. Nothing profound, nothing unexplored by other writers, but refreshing indeed....more
**spoiler alert** (Human Comedy #33 of 98) Balzac in a late collapse into sentimentality and Victorian pseudo-medicine (you know the sort, where women **spoiler alert** (Human Comedy #33 of 98) Balzac in a late collapse into sentimentality and Victorian pseudo-medicine (you know the sort, where women drop dead for no medical reason other than a stain on their honour) spoils what was heading towards one of his best works.
The opening two thirds were excellent: an entitled womanising officer chasing a virtuous married woman, Clemence, is rebuffed but when he sees her visiting a house in a seedy part of Paris, takes it on himself to prove she’s really a whore to get revenge. As he plots to expose her, people die around him and he narrowly escapes murder several times by the mysterious master of disguise Farragus. Eventually, in pique, he tells Clemence’s husband about his wife’s secret wanderings.
[spoiler] The “twist” is visible from space, it’s that obvious. But I would have accepted that had Balzac not gone with the hugely lazy and annoying trope of the virtuous, loving wife, dropping dead when suspected by her husband of infidelity. The husband begs her forgiveness for doubting her, which she gives gladly, dying happily knowing that she is loved once more. I seriously doubt that dropping dead of scandal (not suicide, just a general unstoppable fading away) was any more common in the 1800s than it is now - ie not at all.
Balzac pulled a similar trick in Cesar Biroteau, but then the titular character dropped dead of excess Joy and contentment.
I really really hate this plot device, because it’s even more lazy than “it was all a dream”.
Human Comedy #32 of 98) A superior Balzac novella. Two chums are out hunting - a portly magistrate and a Colonel. While resting to catch the magistrateHuman Comedy #32 of 98) A superior Balzac novella. Two chums are out hunting - a portly magistrate and a Colonel. While resting to catch the magistrate’s breath they see a feral woman in the trees. The colonel has an anxiety attack, having recognised her from 8 years previous.
We then hear the story of Stephanie and the Colonel (who was a Major then) in 1812. Stephanie, married to an elderly Count but lover to the Major, was being evacuated from the Russian front with her entourage when embroiled in the disaster / massacre of Beresina, where the roughly 100,000 fleeing soldiers and civilian support were trapped at the pinch point of rickety wooden bridges crossing the river. Napoleon had counted upon its being iced over, as was usual, but it had thawed and was in full flood. The bridge collapsed. They built a pontoon, but Napoleon ordered it burnt before everyone was across to prevent the Russian army gaining possession.
Balzac paints a grotesque and harrowing portrait of their coach riding over the bodies of people too cold, hungry and exhausted to move. Stephanie gets separated and spends 2 years without protection amongst the travelling desperate groups of soldiers - Balzac doesn’t clearly say so, but there’s no ignoring the abuses she would have endured during those times before being recognised and rescued by her Uncle in Strasbourg. Suffering from extreme PTSD she now behaves as a wild animal, mute apart from one word - “farewell” - the last word she said to the Major as he got trapped on the other side of the river.
Of course, Balzacreturns to his love of death as a great redemption, but this story has so many great qualities that I’m happy to overlook the ending for once....more
(Human Comedy #31 of 98) Not one of Balzac’s best. It combines a few of his problems: a propensity to rambling over-description, especially for rhapsod(Human Comedy #31 of 98) Not one of Balzac’s best. It combines a few of his problems: a propensity to rambling over-description, especially for rhapsodic states, such as when the eponymous hated son is looking at the sea for about 3 pages; his ideal of woman being a saint, untainted by any emotions whatsoever and certainly not by passion, I think Gabrielle might be his apotheosis of this type so far in the works in the Human Comedy I’ve read, as her father has deliberately raised her with no education or knowledge whatsoever because she is so fragile reading a book would kill her; and his love of death as being the most pure and wonderful thing to do.
I had to laugh when Etienne and Gabrielle couldn’t escape because getting on a horse would kill them both.
I added a star because the last paragraph added a touch of macabre humour. But, geez, Balzac, pull your finger out....more
Balzac goes back into the sickly baroque of the decadent 1700s. This story languished as a fairly overlooked novella in t(The Human Comedy: #30 of 98)
Balzac goes back into the sickly baroque of the decadent 1700s. This story languished as a fairly overlooked novella in the Human Comedy series until Roland Barthes tore it to pieces almost word by word in his seminal work “S/Z”, laying the foundation of the death of the author and the style of literary criticism that would dominate the second half of the 20th Century.
The novella itself is one of Balzac’s better works. Setting a series of contrasts, he works at showing the tension between them: young and old, male and female, artifice and reality, lust and disgust, beauty and ugliness. He uses a framing story, to tell the main tale: a narrator takes a young woman he wishes to seduce to a party where an old, effeminate gentleman arrives, painted and bewigged to unsuccessfully hide their years. His presence casts an uneasy, queasy pall over the party, but the narrator promises to tell his date the full story of the old man on the following evening, which he does.
The tale is a Grand Guignol, involving cast out sons, kidnappings, cross dressing, murder and self-loathing. It’s a grab bag of sensationalism and scandal. One of the odder moments is Sarrasine himself telling him chums that the lark he's involving them in won't feature anything that a gentleman need be ashamed of doing : the escapade is forcibly kidnapping a woman Sarrasine is infatuated with, but who doesn't want to be with Sarrasine, and taking her - bound - to an unknown destination for Sarrasine to make her agree to marry him.
Definitely worth reading (and I can’t say that for all of Balzac’s work)....more
(The Human Comedy #29/98) A routine little short story from Balzac. He likes this trope of taking real historical personages (Poussin and Porbus were r(The Human Comedy #29/98) A routine little short story from Balzac. He likes this trope of taking real historical personages (Poussin and Porbus were real 17th century artists) and introducing them into a fictional tale about the made-up artist Frenhofer. And this works nicely, if a little inconsequentially. P & P are fascinated by an older artist who is obsessed with perfecting the realistic reproduction of life and who, because he is independently wealthy, has the capacity to allow his obsession to become a mania.
The tale discourses on the nature of art and love and possession and obsession, but hasn't really the length or bulk to deal with these in any great depth. Apparently Cezanne identified heavily with Frenhofer and his attempts to depict the vitality of animated life. Picasso too went so far as to inhabit a studio in the very area of Paris that Balzac depicts Frenhofer's studio (it was here he painted Guernica)....more
(The Human Comedy #28/98) Oh Balzac! Why do you do things like this? This book was heading to 4 stars - a low 4 stars sure but - for Balzac - this was (The Human Comedy #28/98) Oh Balzac! Why do you do things like this? This book was heading to 4 stars - a low 4 stars sure but - for Balzac - this was working out pretty well. Set in the 1820s this is a tale of the merchant classes. Cesar Biroteau is a perfumer, a petit bourgeois, a good man who lives comfortably, dines out on the story of being wounded by Napoleon 20 years earlier “on the steps of Saint Roch”, has dreams of retiring with his wife to the countryside he grew up in, marrying his daughter to a successful man whom she loves, he’s respected, honoured (deputy mayor and the legion of honour). But he is caught by his trusting nature inside a financial scam set by an ex-employee with a vendetta against him that ultimately leads to complete financial ruin.
I really enjoyed this all the way through. It didn’t have so much of Balzac’s but usual faults (over descriptions, pages of philosophising, giving you a century of background about a street corner that will appear for no more than two pages) and Biroteau and his family were believably good rather than angelic.
But the last two pages made me want to belt Balzac about the head with his own book! After all that, the ending made me scream with frustration. A night’s sleep has changed my rating from two stars to three, but that Victorian type ending makes me so mad....more
(The Human Comedy #26/98) This short story is included in Balzac's "biography" (a term VERY loosely applied to Balzac's work) of Catherine de Medici, b(The Human Comedy #26/98) This short story is included in Balzac's "biography" (a term VERY loosely applied to Balzac's work) of Catherine de Medici, but it really doesn't sit well alongside the other two sections. While those were recreations of significant moments in de Medici's life as long novellas, this is a pretty standard Balzac short story in which two out-of-place guests at a posh dinner party tell after-dinner stories about dreams each of the two of them have had, one of which happens to include de Medici justifying the St Bartholomew's Day massacre.
It's pretty standard stuff for Balzac and not very interesting and includes a fairly normal Balzac-style "twist" about someone's real identity, which is intended to make you go *gasp*, but which actually just makes you go *meh*....more
(The Human Comedy #25/98) Part 2 of Balzac’s life of Catherine de Medici, and in this section she’s barely even a bit player. This novella deals with h(The Human Comedy #25/98) Part 2 of Balzac’s life of Catherine de Medici, and in this section she’s barely even a bit player. This novella deals with her son King Charles IX and his conviction he’s being poisoned. It’s essentially a rumination on alchemy. Like the first book in this set once he’s dealing with story and dialogue, it’s not too bad, but as a history it’s dreadful. Balzac’s exposition is truly awful, just throwing names and dates at you without context or explanation in such a dense manner that it’s impossible to keep track even if you’re familiar with the era.
Also, few people had a more interesting and event-filled life than Catherine de Medici, yet Balzac chooses the most boring parts to dramatize. Odd....more
(The Human Comedy 23 & 24/98) This first volume (Introduction and Part 1) of the three part history of Catherine de Medici is incredibly uneven. The 60(The Human Comedy 23 & 24/98) This first volume (Introduction and Part 1) of the three part history of Catherine de Medici is incredibly uneven. The 60 page introduction is possibly the best example of how NOT to write about history that I’ve read - tedious, opinionated (not in an interesting way) full of dates, names and places with almost no context or connection and total expectation that you’ll know what and who they are. By the end of the intro it was just words flowing past my eyes.
The story itself (The Calvinist Martyr) is also uneven - when he actually tells the story, it’s not too bad, but all too often Balzac falls back into thinking he’s writing a guidebook to a national trust property and spends 5 pages telling you about a fireplace when he’s just dropped half a dozen names on you without telling you who the people are.
All Balzac’s worst impulses are on display in this book....more
(The Human Comedy 22/98) Not a lot to this short story - based in a roundabout way on the tale of Don Juan and a Hoffman fairy tale it teases with Juan(The Human Comedy 22/98) Not a lot to this short story - based in a roundabout way on the tale of Don Juan and a Hoffman fairy tale it teases with Juan as an interesting character, who murders his father after discovering, partway through resurrecting him, that he really HAS discovered the elixir of life, in order to keep it for himself.
But Juan’s debauched life isn’t elaborated upon, just a lot of philosophising with a monk and a very confused but oddly gruesome climax.
(The Human Comedy 21/98) Balzac, you old dog. Just when I'd become reconciled to my journey through The Human Comedy being largely one of sparkles with(The Human Comedy 21/98) Balzac, you old dog. Just when I'd become reconciled to my journey through The Human Comedy being largely one of sparkles within mediocrity and my better reviews being qualified as "good ... for Balzac", he springs this on me.
What a wonderfully entertaining yarn this was. Yes, it has Balzac's inevitable faults of requiring a 50-plus page preamble where he sets the scene in meticulous detail and every character as we go through requires his or her life story from birth to be served to you, but here those tales are part of the enjoyment. And the main story itself, about regaining the wrongly-pilfered inheritance back in Issoundun, jolts and races along like Dumas at his very very best. The bad behaviour is believably bad (and truly bad) and the characters for most part are given realistic backgrounds and incentives to their behaviour. Nobody is a saint and nobody is truly a devil.
This novel rates right up there with Pere Goriot in the Balzac canon. It's definitely given me new hope that I don't have 70 more works to wade through merely searching for crumbs of interest.
As with most of Balzac's works, however, this comes under a seeming endless array of alternative titles. The original French title, "La Rabouilleuse", has been replaced in English by "The Two Brothers" (the version that I read), "A Bachelor's Establishment" and "The Black Sheep", it's also been filmed as both "Honour in the Family" and "The Opportunists". Tracking down which work exactly is next on your list, is part of the mystery of getting through The Human Comedy....more
(The Human Comedy #27/98) This is definitely one of Balzac’s best novels. His forensic dissection of a character’s history, morals, background, clothes(The Human Comedy #27/98) This is definitely one of Balzac’s best novels. His forensic dissection of a character’s history, morals, background, clothes, furniture etc and the entire area around them for two dozen miles work particularly well for this tale of a miser’s pathological love of gold;or wealth for the mere sake of wealth. Pere Grandet is a selfish, boorish, controlling, thieving, boring, cleverly conniving, duplicitous, greedy man who loves nobody and nothing except the knowledge that he has money. He controls the people around him by dangling the prospect of a small share of that money before them: a share that will never ever leave his pocket. He has a canniness and powered of persuasion that, were it put to benificent causes, could have worked wonders, but he gathers untold, immense wealth around him, but never ever enjoys its worth.
The characters, being all monsters or saints, are quite believable and the saints are the reason this only get 4 stars. Because Eugenie and her mother are this typical Balzacian portrayal of the perfect woman (in his eyes): patient, forgiving and selfless beyond any mortal, reasonable or moral boundaries. To be a good wife or daughter in a Balzac novel, you must bear all privations, abuse, suffering and isolation that your father or husband wishes to burden you with.
If only Balzac’s women weren’t so passive.
However, having said that, Eugenie does bear a wonderful metaphorical role as the only person in the entire novel caring nothing at all for gold and wealth, yet attracting it like a magnet.
(The Human Comedy #20/98) It's not quite worthy of 4 stars, but I've been very critical of Balzac in the last few Human Comedy entries, so I'm going to(The Human Comedy #20/98) It's not quite worthy of 4 stars, but I've been very critical of Balzac in the last few Human Comedy entries, so I'm going to round up.
I've often complained of Balzac's propensity to luxuriate rather too much in description and scene-setting, showing too often how he's paid by the word and takes an age to get round the actual story he's planing to tell. However, in this case the opening preamble (a full quarter or more of the book) is easily the best part of it. It's a cynical, hard-nosed appraisal of Paris and its citizens, none of whom come out with any praise whatsoever, and it's among the best sections of Balzac I've read.
The tale itself is a gory, sensational penny dreadful worthy of Ann Radcliffe or Jim Thompson. We meet Henri de Marsay, a beautiful amoral illegitimate fop who lives only for pleasure, gold and revelling in the humiliation of others. He falls for the eponymous "Girl With the Golden Eyes" and the story spirals into sex, cross-dressing, lesbianism and murder. The messy, fairly confusing finale is worthy of the most outrageous Grand-Guignol.
For Balzac, this was packed full of incident, so I heartily approve and wish that more of his works moved at this pace....more
(The Human Comedy #19/98) Oh Balzac, you’re such a frustrating writer. When you’re good, you’re very very good, but when you’re bad you’re horrid. And (The Human Comedy #19/98) Oh Balzac, you’re such a frustrating writer. When you’re good, you’re very very good, but when you’re bad you’re horrid. And this book contains both aspects.
This is one of his “philosophical portraits”. Which means pages and pages of descriptions of internal life; telling us what someone’s like rather than showing us. And that is very irritating. For example, we’re told how witty, clever and captivating Mme d’Aiglemont is, but never shown any examples of this. We’re told how awful the Marquis/Colonel/General is, but never really shown what he’s done.
The book is six periods of Julie’s life covering 30 years and her journey from coquettish teenager in love with the idea of love and infatuated with the Young Colonel, through coldness and loveless marriage and a refusal of affection, her first (unconsummated) adultery, second (very much consummated - off screen) adultery producing four children - not sure how the Marquis didn’t notice - to elderly (at 50 for god’s sake!!) obsession with her spoiled and ungrateful daughter’s moral life.
Balzac had a reputation for understanding women, but none of this rang true - too melodramatic, too extreme, too maudlin, too dreary. The whole book, like Jude the Obscure, seems a silent scream for more accommodating divorce laws. Yet, Balzac never ever lets any women who transgress society’s mores have anything more than the most fleeting happiness (see Helene’s fate) before being damned to hell.
However, sections 4 and 5 returned to classic Balzac. There was action (a murder and pirates no less) and it had me yearning that more of the Human Comedy could have been action-oriented, but I’m in a run of Balzac’s more talky pieces right now....more
(The Human Comedy #18/98) 2.5 stars, I suppose, but I was feeling stingy. It's always a shame that Balzac was paid by the word, because when he deliber(The Human Comedy #18/98) 2.5 stars, I suppose, but I was feeling stingy. It's always a shame that Balzac was paid by the word, because when he deliberately works on a small canvas, or his story justifies the length of a novel, then he's very good indeed, but too often we get works like this one, which really only suits a short story.
It takes 50 pages before we even get a smidge of a story, instead getting descriptions of flanders, houses in flanders and the ancient history of two families. Then, once the story gets going we essentially get the same event happening over and over again.
Balthasar Claes - an apparently good, loving and attentive husband, we're told (often), inexplicably decides that he's going to search for "the Absolute", the God Particle, the Philosopher's Stone - whatever it is, it's never really described other than being the key to all matter. Blazac goes to great pains to say that he's not an alchemist (this being the early 1800s, not the middle ages), but Cleas is obsessed with the possibility of creating diamonds and gold, so I'm not sure where Balzac's nicities are coming from. To all intents and purposes, he is certainly playing at being an alchemist. And for no good reason I can gather, Cleas becomes utterly obsessed with this and pulls his entire family into ruin, illness, death and despair on his coat tails.
We then get a repetitive meme of Cleas being ruined, his wife or his daughter bailing him out, him promising to never touch a test tube again and as soon as their backs are turned, he's selling the family silver without telling anyone again. Half a dozen times this happens.
Balzac bizarrely insists constantly that not only is Claes a genius, and not an asshole, but that geniuses deserve special treatment and should be loved and adored despite ruining and making miserable everybody around them. Balzac keeps telling me that Claes is a great man, with no indication as to why he is. This really annoyed me.
What also annoyed me is that a woman's value in the story is always based upon how much patience and endurance they can suffer on behalf of the man child that's in charge of the family.
At some point near the end, Claes is sent away for 7 years and mistakenly leaves an experiment running, unobserved, through this time. When he returns, it's miraculously grown a diamond, but Claes could never reproduce it.
Then, just before he dies a Polish mathematician discovers "the Absolute" (whatever it's supposed to be) and when Claes read this in the papers he pops his clogs in pique.
When Balzac is good - Cousin Bette, Pere Goriot etc - he's very good indeed, but this, coming hot on the heels of the execrable Louis Lambert, is pretty low quality stuff....more
(The Human Comedy #17/98) Worst entry so far in The Human Comedy. A whiney pseud goes mad to get out of his wedding. His equally whiney school chum wri(The Human Comedy #17/98) Worst entry so far in The Human Comedy. A whiney pseud goes mad to get out of his wedding. His equally whiney school chum writes his biography.
Terrible, turgid and tedious. Avoid, unless you have to complete the series....more
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