Human Comedy, Volume XIV

Author: (French) 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 an internationally recognized master of realism. Through 20 years of dedicated work, he created the miracle of literary history, La Comédie Humaine. He unified over 90 novels of varying lengths into a complete and all-encompassing social portrait, providing an "excellent realism 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 oeuvre 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 mere storytelling to become a highly expressive and entirely new art form.
Balzac lived during the historical turning point in France's transition from a feudal to a capitalist society, personally experiencing key historical phases such as the Napoleonic Empire, the Bourbon Restoration, and the July Monarchy, as well as major events like the revolutions of 1830 and 1848. The complex contradictions and rapid, sustained social upheavals of this period brought unprecedented intellectual ferment, 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 time in their works, but Balzac's aspiration was to fully recreate his era. He was not content with depicting a mere social facet or a few typical characters but sought to complete "a work on 19th-century France," where "each chapter is a novel, and each novel represents an era." He brought thousands of characters to life on the page, forming a complete society that vividlyed the history of France from the French Revolution to the full establishment of bourgeois rule by 1848. 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 alien to literary poetics to intrude into the novel: financial and monetary affairs, debt litigation, bank bankruptcies, and store inventory settlements—all were poetically depicted by Balzac. Characters from all trades and social strata could find their representatives in La Comédie Humaine. Thus, it was said, with some exaggeration: "The more complex society, the more complex the content of La Comédie Humaine; the richer life, the more abundant its scenes."
Moreover, Balzac sought to further explore the causes of these social phenomena, analyzing their essence and significance. Balzac had from an early age a strong desire to comprehend, understand, and explain everything. Before becoming a novelist, he aspired to be a philosopher; when deciding to use fiction to reflect contemporary history, he first thought of studying human society as Buffon studied the animal kingdom. 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 works collectively La Comédie Humaine, metaphorically likening all the struggles and joys of human existence to theatrical performances on a stage.
In the La Comédie Humaine published starting 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 contemporary social life of France; "Philosophical Studies" explored the causes of these social phenomena, seeking the hidden meaning behind the multitude of 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 140 novels under the overarching title La Comédie Humaine, but he completed only 96, most of which belonged to "Customs Studies" and were primarily concentrated in the first three scenes. None of these 96 novels were all masterpieces, but as a whole, they formed a magnificent and grand structure. In the literary history of France and even Europe, no second such structure existed. The protagonist of Le Père Goriot, Rapha?l, once said, "I feel I have a certain thought to express, a certain system to establish, and a certain doctrine to elucidate." This was precisely Balzac's state of mind as he wrote La Comédie Humaine.
To achieve the height he aspired to, he voraciously read vast amounts of philosophical, social sciences, and natural sciences literature throughout history, constantly comparing, analyzing, and synthesizing; 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. He carefully dissected 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 discovered an unalterable law beyond human control: the ascendancy of the bourgeoisie and the decline and dissolution of the aristocracy. Such a historical trend was the essential force dominating all social life. 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 his comprehensive understanding of society, Balzac was able to grasp the essential historical content from scattered, individual, and phenomena, successfully depicting the profound changes in social life and the profound 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 mind 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, a single scene should summarize a complete philosophy." Thus, he elevated the novel to the level of historical philosophy, achieving a depth unattainable by ordinary literary works.
As a customs historian, Balzac was more powerful than true historians because he did not rely on concepts but on images. Everything that historians explained with concepts, he guided readers to feel through numerous typical characters and events. 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 about economic details (such as the redistribution of movable and immovable property after the revolution) more than from all professional historians, economists, and statisticians combined."
Shaping images and the typical characters in typical environments were Balzac's primary means of summarizing and refining life, and also his main contribution to realist art. He combined character development with profound historical content, creating 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 portrayal of character. Even minor characters in his works were vividly individualized and lifelike, though somewhat exaggerated, yet firmly grounded in reality, making them appear lifelike and convincing. Belyayev once marveled at the multitude of 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, "ancient and Roman figures seemed pale and trembling, and medieval figures lay prostrate 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 by his rich life experiences. Born into a family that had risen from peasantry to the bourgeoisie, with relatives who were middle- and lower-class merchants, he became 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 aristocracy. During his law studies, he worked as a trainee in a law firm and notary office, gaining insight into the darker side of Parisian society. More importantly, during the ten years 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 bill collectors and the exploitation of usurers. Among his contemporaries, no one had a more direct and profound experience of the torment of money and the dominance of materialism. In terms of accumulated life experiences, none were as rich as he. Like some of the geniuses he himself portrayed, he had "lived, struggled, and felt" in the crucible of Paris. He was not only the author of La Comédie Humaine but also an actor on this grand stage. Baudelaire 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—exactly these personal experiences and feelings formed the most brilliant chapters of the work.
Imagination is an indispensable quality for an artist, and it was one of Balzac's strongest talents. He was both an exceptionally clear-eyed observer and a person of fervent and abundant 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 entirely under his subjective control. Balzac often lived in a world of hallucinations, constantly interacting with the characters he had created, to the point where he was tormented by them day and night. He fantasized, suffered, and struggled alongside his characters, sometimes confusing the fictional world with real life. He would eagerly report news about these fictional characters to his friends, as if they truly lived among them. It was said that when he was ill, he called the name of the fictional doctor Bienvenu, claiming only he could relieve his suffering. This extraordinary mental state was a manifestation of the artist's overly intense function of imaginative thinking.
The reason characters in Balzac's works often appeared more vivid, realistic, and convincing than real people was 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 highly complex. His mind was filled with conflicting doctrines and theories, and in his works, 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 escape the framework of capitalist free competition, yet politically, he inclined toward the legitimist party.
What mattered most was that as a writer, Balzac always considered it his duty to deeply understand and faithfully represent the objective world. His self-deprecating yet proud confession, "French society is the historian, and I should only be its secretary,"① accurately reflects Balzac's realist creative attitude. Although Balzac lived in an era when Romanticism swept France, and although he himself was a highly romantic figure who often lived in a world of fantasy, and although his works contained many romantic chapters, no matter how romantic or even absurd his expressive methods, he remained rooted in the soil of real life, focusing on reflecting its essence. Thus, 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 him to conclusions contrary to his own beliefs and wishes. Therefore, 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 openly admired were precisely his political opponents."③ Engels summarized this as "one of the greatest victories of realism"④. It was precisely for this reason that Balzac, a legitimist who claimed to write under the "eternal truths" of "monarchy" and "religion," unexpectedly found his works verifying some scientific conclusions of Marxism.
Balzac has become a figure for Chinese readers, and this is the contents of the book: Customs Studies · Parisian Life Scene [V] Uncle Goriot Broker The Wandering Prince Godesca II Civil Servant Preface