Human Comedy, Volume 20

Author: (French) Balzac (Balzac/H.) / Multiple Authors
Publisher:
Publication Date: 1997-08-01
Features: Honoré Balzac (1799–1850) was one of the greatest novelists of the 19th century, a master of creating archetypes, and a universally recognized master of realism. Through 20 years of diligent work, he created the miracle of "La Comédie Humaine" in the history of the novel. He united over 90 novels of varying lengths into a complete and all-encompassing social portrait, "providing an outstanding realistic history of French 'society,' especially the 'upper class' of Paris,"① transforming novels, once seen as mere entertainment, into works of documentary value. Balzac's entire body of work demonstrates his original and innovative practice and development of realist literary theory, 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 of this period brought unprecedented vitality to social thought, fostering the prosperity and development of 19th-century French literature and exerting a decisive influence on Balzac's own creative work. All great writers reflect their era in their works, but Balzac's aspiration was to fully recreate his own time. He was not satisfied with depicting a mere social aspect or creating a few typical characters but sought 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 of France from the French Revolution to the complete dominance of the bourgeoisie by 1848. In his own words, this was "a customs history that many historians had 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 alien to literary poetics to intrude into the novel: financial and monetary affairs, debt litigation, bank bankruptcies, 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 not without exaggeration that someone said: "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. Balzac had from an early age a strong desire to understand everything, to know everything, and to explain everything. Before aspiring to be a novelist, he had wanted to become a philosopher; when he decided to use the novel to reflect contemporary history, he first thought it should be like Buffon studying the animal world, treating the entire human society as his research subject. For Balzac, writing was a means of studying and explaining the world. Therefore, starting from 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 Comedy of God"), he decided to name the overall title of his works "La Comédie Humaine," metaphorically equating all the struggles and joys of human life with theatrical performances. In the "La Comédie Humaine" that began publication in 1842, Balzac divided the works into three parts: "Customs Studies," "Philosophical Studies," and "Analytical Studies." According to his own explanation, "Customs Studies" depicted the social customs of contemporary France; "Philosophical Studies" explored the causes of these social phenomena, seeking the hidden meaning behind the numerous characters, passions, 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 substantial. 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 140 novels under the overarching title of "La Comédie Humaine," but he completed only 96, most of which belonged to "Customs Studies" and were primarily concentrated in the first three scenes. These 96 novels were not all masterpieces, but as a whole, they formed a magnificent and grand structure. In the history of French and European literature, no second such structure exists. The protagonist of "Le Père Goriot," Rapha?l, once said, "I felt that I had a certain idea to express, a certain system to establish, and a certain doctrine to explain." This was precisely the mood Balzac was in 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 works from ancient and modern times, constantly comparing, analyzing, and summarizing; he delved into every corner of social life, uncovering the secrets of people's hearts, 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 turbulent and restless society, he finally 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, disturbances, and crimes in society, as well as the tragedies and comedies in family and personal life, were closely tied to this specific historical process. Due to this overall understanding of society, Balzac was able to grasp the essential historical content from the scattered, individual, and phenomena, thereby successfully depicting the profound changes in social life and the profound impact on people's destinies and souls brought about by France's transition from a feudal society 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. Balzac's superiority over ordinary writers lay in his being a writer with both a philosopher's mind and a historian's perspective. His works transcended personal experiences and emotions, integrating a comprehensive analysis of society. In the 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, a single scene should summarize a whole philosophy." Thus, he elevated the novel to the level of historical philosophy, achieving a depth that general literary works could not match. As a customs historian, Balzac was more powerful than genuine historians because he did not use abstract 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 combined." Creating images and typical characters in typical environments were Balzac's primary means of summarizing and refining life, as well as his main contribution to realist art. He combined character development with profound historical content, establishing 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 descriptions skillfully serve character development. The characters in Balzac's works, even minor ones, were all vividly individualized and lifelike, though somewhat exaggerated, yet firmly rooted in reality, making them appear lifelike and convincing. Belyayev once marveled at the numerous characters and personalities in Balzac's novels, none of which were entirely 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 sharp 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-fashioned 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 darker side of Parisian society; more importantly, during the ten years of wandering before gaining fame, he engaged in various trades, experienced countless struggles and failures, endured the pains 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 than he did. In terms of accumulated life experiences, no one was as rich as he was. He was, as he himself had described some of the geniuses he portrayed, "a man who had lived, struggled, and felt in the hell 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, romantic, and poetic" characters in "La Comédie Humaine."① What he depicted in "La Comédie Humaine" was not only his observations but also his experiences and feelings, and it was precisely these personal experiences and feelings that constituted the most 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 control of his subjective will. 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 out the name of the famous physician 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 overly intense function of imaginative thinking. The characters in Balzac's works were often more vivid, realistic, and convincing than real people, largely due to his exceptionally strong imagination. Balzac lived in the bizarre society of 19th-century Paris, exposed to a variety of and doctrines, making his own thoughts extremely complex. His mind was filled with conflicting claims and doctrines, 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 mysticism; he was essentially an atheist but actively 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 serve as its secretary,"① both humble and proud, accurately reflects Balzac's realist creative attitude. Although Balzac lived in an era when Romanticism swept across France, and although he himself was a highly romantic figure who often lived in a world of fantasy, and although his works contained many chapters of Romanticism, no matter how romantic or even absurd his expressive techniques were, he remained rooted in the soil of real life, focusing on reflecting the essence of life. Therefore, Plekhanov said that Balzac was a "realist in the deepest sense of the word." Balzac, starting from his vast life experiences, 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 him to conclusions contrary to his own beliefs and wishes. Thus, as Engels pointed out, although his great works were an "endless elegy for the inevitable collapse of the upper class,"② when he made the aristocracy 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 "royalty" and "religion," unexpectedly found that his works often confirmed some scientific conclusions of Marxism. Balzac has become a familiar figure to Chinese readers, with the contents including "Philosophical Studies [I]"·