Human Comedy, Volume Sixteen

Author: (French) Balzac/H. / Multiple Authors
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 1997-08-01
Features: Honoré Balzac (1799–1850) was one of the greatest novelists of the 19th century, a master of creating typical characters, and a universally recognized master of realism. Through 20 years of diligent work, he created the miracle of the novel in the history of literature with La Comédie Humaine. He united over ninety novels of varying lengths into a complete and all-encompassing social portrait, providing an "excellent realism history of French society, especially the upper class of Paris,"① transforming novels, which were once seen as mere entertainment, into works of documentary value. Balzac's entire body of work proves that he creatively practiced and developed the theory of realism in literature, greatly enriching and perfecting the art of the novel, ultimately elevating it beyond the realm of "story" to become a highly expressive and entirely new form of art.
Balzac lived during the historical turning point in France's transition from a feudal society to a capitalist society, personally experiencing important historical stages such as the Napoleonic Empire, the Bourbon Restoration, and the July Monarchy, as well as major historical events like the revolutions of 1830 and 1848. The complex contradictions and rapid, sustained social upheavals during this period of (the interplay of old and new) led to an unprecedentedly vibrant intellectual climate, fostering the prosperity and development of 19th-century French literature and exerting a decisive influence on Balzac's creative work. All great writers reflect their era in their works, but Balzac's aspiration was to completely recreate his time. He was not satisfied with depicting only certain aspects of society or creating a few typical characters but aimed to complete "a series of works on 19th-century France," where "each chapter is a novel, and each novel represents an era." He brought thousands of characters to life on paper, forming a complete society and vividly recreating the history from the French Revolution to 1848, when the bourgeoisie fully gained control. In his own words, this was "a customs history that many historians overlooked."
Balzac boldly broke through traditional artistic boundaries and methods, almost infinitely expanding the subject matter of literature, allowing everything in social life that seemed incompatible with literary poetry to intrude into the novel: financial and monetary affairs, debt litigation, bank insolvencies, and store inventory settlements were all poetically depicted in his works; characters from all trades and social strata could be found in La Comédie Humaine. Thus, it was said, without exaggeration: "The more complex society is, the more complex the content of La Comédie Humaine; the richer life is, the richer its scenes." Moreover, Balzac attempted to further explore the causes of these social phenomena, analyzing their essence and significance. Early in his life, Balzac had a strong desire to grasp everything, understand everything, and explain everything. Before deciding to become a novelist, he aspired to be a philosopher; when he chose to reflect contemporary history through novels, he first thought of studying human society as comprehensively as Buffon studied the animal world. For Balzac, writing was a means of researching and explaining the world. Therefore, beginning in 1830, he published his novels under titles such as "Private Life Scenes," "Philosophical Studies," and "Customs Studies." In 1841, inspired by Dante's La Divina Commedia (literally The Divine Comedy), he decided to title his entire work La Comédie Humaine, metaphorically equating all the struggles and joys of human existence with theatrical performances on stage.
In the La Comédie Humaine that began publication in 1842, Balzac divided his work into three parts: "Customs Studies," "Philosophical Studies," and "Analytical Studies." According to his own explanation, "Customs Studies" depicted the contemporary social customs of France; "Philosophical Studies" explored the causes of these social phenomena and sought the hidden meanings within the numerous characters, emotions, and events; and "Analytical Studies" analyzed the essence and roots of these causal relationships from the perspective of "the natural laws of humanity." Among these three parts, "Customs Studies" was the most extensive and significant. Based on the categories of subject matter, Balzac further divided it into six scenes: "Private Life," "Provincial Life," "Parisian Life," "Political Life," "Military Life," and "Rural Life." Balzac originally planned to write over one hundred and forty novels under the overarching title of La Comédie Humaine, but he completed only ninety-six, most of which belonged to "Customs Studies" and were primarily concentrated in the first three scenes. None of these ninety-six novels were all masterpieces, but as a whole, they formed a magnificent and grand structure. In the history of French and European literature, no second such monumental structure exists. The protagonist of Le Père Goriot, Rapha?l, once said, "I feel that I have a certain idea to express, a certain system to establish, and a certain doctrine to explain." This was precisely Balzac's state of mind when writing La Comédie Humaine. To achieve the height he aspired to, he voraciously read a vast amount of philosophical, social sciences, and natural sciences literature throughout history, constantly comparing, analyzing, and summarizing; he delved into every corner of social life, uncovering people's inner secrets, observing the political and economic structures, the distribution of power and wealth, the mysteries of law, and the efficacy of religion with the meticulousness of a philosopher and scientist, dissecting people's emotions, desires, and the motivations behind their actions, patiently exploring the internal connections of various social phenomena. In this chaotic and turbulent society, he discovered an uncontrolled law of nature: the rising dominance of the bourgeoisie and the disintegration and demise of the aristocracy. Such a historical trend was the essential force governing all social life at the time. All conflicts, struggles, upheavals, and crimes in society, as well as the tragedies and comedies in family and personal life, were closely tied to this specific historical process.
Thanks to this overall understanding of society, Balzac was able to grasp the essential historical content from scattered, individual, and (accidental) phenomena, successfully depicting the profound changes in social life and the deep impact on people's destinies and souls during France's transition from a feudal to a capitalist society. Thus, Balzac's works surpassed those of his contemporaries not only in breadth but also in depth, earning him high praise from Marx and Engels. What set Balzac apart from ordinary writers was that he was both a philosopher in thought and a historian in vision. His works transcended personal experiences and emotions, incorporating a comprehensive analysis of society. In his novel La Défaite de l'Extrême-Orient, Balzac wrote, "The highest art is to incorporate ideas into images," and "a single word should contain countless thoughts, and a single scene should summarize a whole philosophy." In this way, he elevated the novel to the level of historical philosophy, achieving a depth that general literary works could not attain. As a customs historian, Balzac was more powerful than true historians because he did not use concepts but appealed to images. Everything that historians explained with concepts, he guided readers to feel through numerous typical characters and typical examples. Therefore, the history he depicted with images often left a more profound and compelling impression than the history written by historians, making it more persuasive. Engels once said that from La Comédie Humaine, he learned "even more about economic details (such as the redistribution of movable and immovable property after the revolution) than from all the professional historians, economists, and statisticians of the time." Creating images and portraying the typical characters in typical environments were Balzac's primary means of summarizing and refining life, and also his main contribution to the art of realism. By combining character development with profound historical content, he established the most magnificent gallery of characters in the history of French literature. Balzac allowed his characters to reveal their personalities through action, making the plot and setting serve skillfully the shaping of characters. The characters in Balzac's works, even minor ones, were all vividly individualized and lifelike, though somewhat exaggerated, yet firmly grounded in reality, making them appear lifelike and convincing. Belyayev once marveled at the fact that none of the numerous characters in Balzac's novels were completely identical. Zola admiringly remarked that in the face of Balzac's vivid and realistic characters, "the figures of ancient Greece and Rome seemed pale and trembling, and the figures of the Middle Ages fell to the ground like toy lead soldiers." Balzac possessed the keen insight of an artistic master, able to quickly delve into people's inner lives and capture their essential characteristics through brief encounters. This extraordinary artistic talent was fully developed due to his rich life experiences. He was born into a family that had risen from farming to the bourgeoisie, with relatives who were mostly middle- and lower-class old-style merchants, making him familiar with the various members of that class from a young age. After becoming a writer, he was accepted by the "upper class," giving him more opportunities to study the customs and traditions of the nobility. During his time studying law at university, he worked as an apprentice in a law firm and notary office, gaining insight into the corruption behind the facade of Parisian society. More importantly, during the ten years of his early career, he engaged in various trades, experienced countless struggles and failures, endured the hardships of business, bankruptcy, closures, liquidations, and debts, and suffered the harassment of promissory notes and the exploitation of usurers. Among his contemporaries, no one had a more direct and profound experience of the torment of money and the rule of materialism. In terms of accumulated life experiences, none were as rich as he. Like some of the geniuses he once depicted, he had "lived, struggled, and felt" in the (Purgatory) of Paris. He was not only the author of La Comédie Humaine but also an actor on this grand stage. Baudelaire once called him one of the "most peculiar, interesting, and romantic characters"① among the numerous figures in La Comédie Humaine, as well as the "most poetic."② In La Comédie Humaine, he depicted not only his observations but also his experiences and feelings, and it was these personal experiences and feelings that constituted the most (excellent) chapters of the work.
Imagination is an indispensable quality for an artist, and it was one of Balzac's strongest talents. He was not only an exceptionally clear-eyed observer but also possessed a passionate and rich imagination. The ideas he formed through observation and reflection were quickly transformed into a variety of characters. These characters acted according to the logic of life in the writer's mind, seemingly not under the writer's subjective control. Balzac often lived in a world of hallucinations, constantly interacting with the characters he had created, being tormented by them day and night. He and his characters fantasized, suffered, and struggled, sometimes confusing the fictional world with real life. He would eagerly report news about these fictional characters to his friends, as if they really lived among them. It was said that when he was critically ill, he called the name of the famous doctor Bienvenu in La Comédie Humaine, claiming that only this doctor could relieve his suffering. This extraordinary mental state was a manifestation of the artist's overactive function of imaginative thinking. The characters in Balzac's works were often more vivid, realistic, and convincing than real people, largely thanks to his exceptionally strong imagination.
Balzac lived in the bizarre society of 19th-century Paris, exposed to a variety of ideologies and theories, making his own thoughts extremely complex. His mind was filled with conflicting doctrines and theories, and in his works, a wealth of profound insights coexisted with absurdities, sharp analyses with ridiculous conclusions. He believed in the materiality of the world but was deeply attracted to mystical doctrines; he was essentially an atheist but fervently promoted religion; his blueprint for social development did not transcend the framework of capitalist free competition, yet politically, he inclined toward the legitimist party. But what mattered most was that as a writer, Balzac always considered it his duty to deeply understand and faithfully represent the objective world. The statement, "French society is a historian, and I should only be its secretary,"① both humbly and proudly, accurately reflects Balzac's attitude toward realism in his creative work. Although Balzac lived in an era swept by Romanticism in France, although he himself was a person with a strong romantic temperament, often living in a world of fantasy, and although his works contained many chapters of Romanticism, no matter how romantic or even absurd his expressive methods were, he remained rooted in the soil of real life, focusing on reflecting the essence of real life. Therefore, Plekhanov said that Balzac was a "realist in the deepest sense of the word." Starting from his rich life experiences, Balzac achieved a clear understanding of the essence of contemporary society and the trends of historical development. He respected history and life, even when the logic of life led to conclusions that contradicted his own beliefs and desires. Thus, as Engels pointed out, although his great work was an "endless elegy for the inevitable collapse of the upper class,"② when he made the nobility act, "his satire was unprecedentedly sharp, his irony unprecedentedly biting, and the characters he often openly admired were precisely his political adversaries."③ Engels summarized this as "one of the greatest victories of realism"④. And precisely because of this, Balzac, the legitimist who claimed to write under the "eternal truths" of "sovereignty" and "religion," unexpectedly found that his works often confirmed some scientific conclusions of Marxism.
Balzac has become a figure for Chinese readers, with a?book_contents=Customs Study · Political Life Scene A Interlude from the Terror Period A Mysterious Case Chapter 1 The Dilemmas of the Administrative Authorities Chapter 2 Corantin's Revenge Chapter 3 A Political Case of the Empire Conclusion The Deputy of Arcis, Zé Preface