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Balzac 4/20/2016 7:41:46 PM
When I was in high school, my parents gave me a complete set of the novels of Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850). I read about half of them before I went off to university. Balzac's knowledge of the world made an impression on me and no doubt influenced my thinking about where I would go and what I would do.
I reread some of his novels when I later worked in mid-north Ontario and recently listened to three of them on audiobooks and havd begun a fourth - "Eugenie Grandet".
Balzac's novels stand up, for he was well-suited to his work. He had a keen eye for detail, astute insights into his characters, and an extensive view of society. Few doors were closed to his imagination. What's more, his thinking was sound and solid, not neurotic as Flaubert's writing seems at times.
He knew a lot about how we stray and love to please ourselves while causing harm to others. He was not amoral, though, or indifferent to wrong. His values were consistent with traditional Christianity.
While reading a modern novel with themes that Balzac would have appreciated, I spotted a difference between the two writers. Balzac understood the importance of love, both in its twisted form -- miserliness, revenge, ambition for wealth and social prominence.sensuality, obsession with worldliness -- and love that is purposeful and fruitful, the love that strengthens and is faithful through withering ups and downs.
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I doubt that anyone would ever call Balzac the most profound or graceful of novelists and sometimes he seems infatuated with his own words, but readers can always count on him for clarity and creative energy.
I have favorable memories of "Lost Illusions" and "The Splendors and Miseries of Courtesans". I also recently found "Cousin Bette" to be an outstanding work, in which Balzac outdoes himself. It is his longest novel and gives a vivid picture of Parisian society, which seems filled with people who are on the alert for what others can do for them.
None of the characters in "Cousin Bette" leads what many people think of as a normal, productive life and more than one self-seeker creates misery for him- or herself and for others.
Along with entertaining his readers and drawing a picture of the human predicament, Balzac also draws attention to the failings of a corrupt, materialist culture, and at the same time he gives the impression that he resides securely in the center of it and reaps its benefits. A remarkable accomplishment. He must have worked tirelessly to create what he called his human comedy. Little wonder that he died fairly young.
