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Honoré de Balzac book. The Human Comedy" was written in 1997, on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of Balzac's birth. However, like everything I wrote, I did not find demand. We have "specialists" everywhere. They also ended up in IMLI: director of IMLI RAS F.F. Kuznetsov (ordered to carry out computer typing) and a specialist in French literature, “Balzac scholar” T. Balashova (wrote a negative review). Their publishing house "Heritage", of course, is not for M.Sc. With. Ivin. "What is your degree?"

The book was also rejected:

G. M. Stepanenko, Ch. editor of the Moscow State University publishing house (“we didn’t order!”),

Z. M. Karimova, ed. "Knowledge",

V. A. Milchin, ed. "Knowledge",

V. P. Zhuravlev, ed. "Education",

L. N. Lysova, ed. "School-Press",

I. K. Husemi, “Lit. Newspaper",

M. A. Dolinskaya, ed. "Knowledge" (do not sell!),

S. I. Shanina, IMA-Press,

L. M. Sharapkova, SCREAMS,

A. V. Doroshev, Ladomir,

I. V. Kozlova, "School-Press",

I. O. Shaitanov, Russian State University for the Humanities,

N. A. Shemyakina, Moscow Department of Education,

A. B. Kudelin, IMLI,

A. A. Anshukova, ed. "Academic project" (we publish Gachev, and who are you?),

O. B. Konstantinova-Weinstein, Russian State University for the Humanities,

E. P. Shumilova, RGGU (Russian State University for the Humanities), extract from the minutes of the meeting No. 6 dated April 10, 1997

T. Kh. Glushkova, ed. Bustard (accompanied the refusal with exhortations),

Yu. A. Orlitsky, Russian State University for the Humanities,

E. S. Abelyuk, MIROS (Institute for the Development of Educational Systems),

Ph.D. n. O. V. Smolitskaya, MIROS (both great "specialists", but how arrogant!),

Ya. I. Groisman, Nizhny Novgorod ed. "Dekom",

S. I. Silvanovich, ed. "Forum".

The most recent refusal was N. V. Yudina, vice-rector for scientific work of the VlGGU (Vladimir State University for the Humanities). I waited three hours and left not accepted: the authorities! Why does she need Balzac? He called a month later - maybe she read the floppy disk? No, you need to review with "specialists". Their specialists, from VlGGU. "And what is your degree?" She didn't want to talk to me: Ph.D. n.! Doctor, do you understand? - Doctor of Philology, and who are you? You don't even know the word. If you pay, we will publish. “Let Balzac pay,” I thought, and went online with this. - A. Ivin.

Honore de Balzac. human comedy

This study of the life and work of the classic of French realism Honore de Balzac is undertaken for the first time after a long break. It gives a brief description of the socio-political situation in France in 1800-1850 and a brief outline of Balzac's life. The initial period of his work is considered. The main attention is paid to the analysis of the ideas and characters of the "Human Comedy", in which the writer collected more than eighty of his works written in different years. Due to the small volume, dramaturgy, journalism and epistolary heritage were left outside the study. Balzac's work, if necessary, is compared with other names of contemporary French, English, German and Russian literature. The monograph can be considered as a textbook for high school students and students of humanitarian faculties of universities. Written for the 200th anniversary of the birth of the writer, which was celebrated in 1999.

A Brief Comparative Historical Essay on the Socio-Political Situation in France in 1789-1850

The appearance of significant figures both in the sphere of politics and in the field of art is largely determined by the social situation in the country. The creator of the "Human Comedy" - a comedy of manners in the city, province and countryside - could not appear before these manners flourished and established themselves in bourgeois France of the 19th century.

In our study, natural parallels will continually arise between the work of Honore de Balzac (1799-1850) and the work of the most prominent Russian realists of the 19th century. But from the geopolitical point of view, the state of Russia in the 19th century and the state of France were by no means equivalent. Simply put, Russia became what France was in 1789 only in 1905. This refers to the level of the country's productive forces, the degree of revolutionary ferment of the masses, and the general readiness for fundamental changes. In this regard, the Great October Revolution seems to be prolonged in time and unfolded over a wider space by the Great French bourgeois revolution. In a certain sense, the revolution of 1789, the overthrow of the monarchy of Louis XVI, the Jacobin dictatorship, the struggle of revolutionary France against the intervention of England, Austria and Prussia, and then the Napoleonic campaigns - all this was the same catalyst for social processes for Europe, which was in a similar situation for a vast the space of Russia, the revolution of 1905, the overthrow of the monarchy of Nicholas II, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the struggle of revolutionary Russia against the interventionists of the Entente, and then the civil war. The similarity of revolutionary tasks and revolutionary methods, as well as historical figures, is sometimes simply amazing.

It is enough to recall the main milestones in the history of France in those years - and this statement, which seems disputable in the socio-historical context, will take on more acceptable forms.

The court of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette is not able to satisfy the demands of the bourgeoisie and the common people: they have to part with some powers of authority. On May 5, 1789, the States General gather, which on June 17 are transformed into the National Assembly by the deputies of the third estate. The unlimited monarchy becomes constitutional, which in the case of Russia roughly corresponds to 1905. The storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789 does not significantly change the situation. The bourgeoisie, having drawn up the "Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen", that is, the Constitution, came to power, curtailing the rights of the king. But the people demand blood. The concentration of troops and attempts to escape King Louis only provoke the hungry people. On August 10, 1792, he stormed the royal palace. It is clear that the “gradualists” and reformers are forced to flee. The Jacobins and Girondins are creating a revolutionary Convention, which is in a hurry to satisfy the most pressing demands of the people (the division of the land, the abolition of noble and even bourgeois privileges, the execution of the king), where the forces of interventionists and counter-revolutionaries are gathering towards Paris. In this situation, the Committee of Public Salvation headed by Robespierre, as subsequently the Cheka headed by Dzerzhinsky, unfold terror against the overthrown estates. Jacobin clubs and their branches, revolutionary committees and tribunals, local self-government bodies (something like committees) are being formed. The difference between the "proletarian" revolution of 1917 and the "bourgeois" revolution (English, French and others) has been sucked out of thin air by Soviet historians in a certain sense. The Jacobin dictatorship had all the features of the dictatorship of the proletariat. It turned out that revolutions have much more similarities in completely different planes than class revolutions.

So the revolution wins. But its fruits are used by the restorers of empires, who create a cult of personality for themselves out of the enthusiasm of the liberated masses. By that time, by 1799, the young revolutionary general Bonaparte had already made his Italian campaign and, embarking on ships, moved troops to Egypt and Syria: the enthusiasm of young France had to be given an outlet. Napoleon Bonaparte's father, a lawyer by training, seems to have given his son a good idea of dangers and personal rights. Having lost his entire fleet at the battle of Aboukir, Napoleon returned to Paris just at the moment when the bourgeois government was tottering. And not least because under the very nose of the republic the commander Suvorov acted victoriously. Napoleon realized that it was necessary to overthrow the Thermidorian government, which had overthrown the Jacobins only a few years earlier. In November 1799 (18 Brumaire of the 8th year of the Republic, the year of Balzac's birth), Napoleon, using the guards loyal to him, arrested the government and established a military dictatorship (Consulate). The twenty years that followed were marked by aggressive campaigns.

Napoleon and his generals had no naval successes, because Britain ruled the seas, but as a result of these campaigns, a new division of all of Europe was made. In 1804, the "Civil Code" was completed, which stipulated new land and property rights. By 1807, Napoleon had defeated Prussia and Russia, concluding the Peace of Tilsit, as well as the Holy Roman Empire. Goethe and Hoffmann note the enthusiasm with which Napoleonic soldiers were received in German cities. The campaign in Spain provoked a civil war there. Europe, with the exception of the Turkish Empire and Great Britain, was, in fact, conquered, and Napoleon began to prepare for a campaign against Russia (instead of India, as he had planned before).

The subsequent events - the defeat near Moscow and on the Berezina, the defeat near Leipzig in 1813 and after the "Hundred Days" - near Waterloo in 1815 - are known to everyone. The arrested emperor went to St. Helena, where he died in 1821. Louis XVIII, the brother of the executed king, was replaced in 1830 by Louis-Philippe d'Orléans, a relative of the Bourbons, and in 1848 by Napoleon III, the emperor's nephew. So the struggle throughout all those years was between the legitimate representatives of the monarchy and the usurpers in the face of the "Corsican monster" and his relatives. However, with the exception of the coup of 1815, carried out with the help of the Cossacks, subsequent revolutions were carried out by artisans, petty bourgeois, workers, the Parisian mob and each time were accompanied by abundant blood, barricades, executions and at the same time concessions in the field of law, expansion of rights and freedoms.

It is clear that after such upheavals, there was little left of the feudal privileges that the nobility and clergy had. Neither the Orleanists nor the Bonapartists could resist the power of the wealthy bourgeois (“bourgeois”, “bourg” - city, suburb) any longer. Balzac was and remained a legitimist, that is, a supporter of the power of the legitimate king, but by origin he was a bourgeois and had to fight for all these fifty years, like the entire French bourgeoisie, to get his living blessings. The heroes of his works experience a burning contempt for aristocrats, on the one hand, and burning envy, on the other. His aristocratic characters, like the dreamer Henri de Saint-Simon, could walk the world with an outstretched hand and live on the support of a faithful servant, but they were still legislators, while the bourgeois, albeit with a purse full of money, constantly lacked rights. Due to the fact that French society, as a result of revolutions and wars, was strongly mixed by the beginning of Balzac's literary activity, he only had to keep his social accounting of different social strata: "golden youth", workers, artisans, high society ladies, bankers, merchants, lawyers , doctors, sailors, courtesans, grisettes and lorettes, tillers, usurers, actresses, writers, etc. Everyone, from the emperor to the last beggar. All these types were captured by him in highly artistic images on the pages of the immortal "Human Comedy" (1834-1850).

A short sketch of the biography of Honore de Balzac

Many excellent books, both domestic and translated, filled with rich factual material, have been written about the life and work of Honore de Balzac. Therefore, in our biographical sketch, we will confine ourselves to the most brief and general information that could later be useful in a more detailed analysis of the works of The Human Comedy.

Honore de Balzac was born on May 20, 1799 (I Prairial of the 7th year of the Republic) at 11 am in the French city of Tours on the street of the Italian army at number 25. His father Bernard-Francois Balzac (1746-1829), the son of a peasant, ex officio head of the food supply of the 22nd division, later the second assistant to the mayor, was 32 years older than his wife Anna-Charlotte Laura, nee Salambier (1778-1853), the daughter of a merchant cloth in Paris. Immediately after birth, the boy was given to be raised by a wet nurse in the village of Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire, where he stayed until 1803. A year later, in 1800, on September 29, Balzac's younger and dearly beloved sister, Laura, was born, in the marriage of Surville (1800-1871), and a few years later her younger brother Henri. In the latter case, rumors disputed the paternity of Bernard-Francois, but for his mother, Henri was a favorite.

In the Balzac family (the surname was derived from the common folk Balsa) everyone was or became a bit of a writer over time; the father published pamphlets on the particular problems of his food business, the mother carried on extensive correspondence with the children, the sister Laura published the first biography of the famous brother in 1856: so Honore's abilities were, in a certain sense, genetically predetermined.

In April 1803, he was sent to the Lege boarding house in Tours, where he stayed until 1807. In 1807, Balzac was placed in the Vendôme College of Oratorian monks, a closed educational institution, where he hardly saw his parents, his mother visited him twice in college per year, a meager amount of 3 francs was allocated for expenses. A sleepy, fat and lazy boy indulged in dreams and studied poorly.

Subsequently, Honore could not forgive his mother for this initial abandonment, which was, obviously, the main cause of a nervous teenage illness. On April 22, 1813, the parents were forced to take the sick boy from the college.

At the end of 1814, the family moved to Paris, where Honoré studied first at the monarchist and Catholic boarding school Lepitre, and then at the institution of Hanse and Berelin. In 1816, in agreement with his parents, he chose the profession of a lawyer and entered the Paris School of Law, while working part-time in the law offices of Guillon de Merville and the notary Posse. In 1819, he graduated from the School of Law with the title of "Bachelor of Laws", and, since by that time he already felt a craving for literary work, he obtained from his relatives the right to literary classes for 2 years with support from the family: during this time it was supposed to write a drama or a novel that would glorify the young author. He rents an attic in Paris on Rue Lediguière and, visiting the Arsenal library, gets to work.

The first work, a drama in the classic spirit called Cromwell, was not approved at the family council, but Balzac continued to work. During this time, in collaboration with the business writer L'Agreville, he wrote several novels in the "Gothic" manner, very fashionable in those years (the first publishing agreement dates from January 22, 1822). These novels, which to a certain extent provided a literary income, were, however, imitative and signed with pseudonyms: Lord R'Oon, Horace de Saint-Aubin. On June 9, 1821, Balzac met the mother of a large family, Laura de Berni (1777-1836), who became his lover for many years. The middle of the 1920s marked the acquaintance with the artists Henri Monnier (1805-1877) and Achille Deveria, the journalist and publisher A. Latouche, who also became his friends for many years. Relations are established with the editorial offices of Parisian newspapers - Commerce, Pilot, Corsair, etc., where his first essays, articles and novels are published.

In the summer of 1825, Balzac, together with Kanel, engaged in activities to publish the complete works of Molière and La Fontaine, then he bought a printing house on the Rue Marais Saint-Germain and, finally, a type foundry. All these enterprises, as well as the production of novels for the public, were designed, according to Balzac, to enrich him, to quickly and honestly make a round sum of capital. However, entrepreneurship brought nothing but debts.

In 1826, with his sister Laura Surville, Balzac met her friend Zulma Carro (1796-1889), the wife of an artillery captain, friendship and lively correspondence with whom would mean a lot in his fate. These steps, creative and entrepreneurial, provided Balzac with some fame in the literary world of Paris, attracted to him, as a publisher, authors eager to publish (in particular, he met Alfred de Vigny and Victor Hugo).

Having liquidated the case, Balzac moved to rue Cassini, building 1 and, enriched by experience, decides to take up novelism again - already on a sober-practical basis. In order to collect materials for the novel "The Last Chouan, or Brittany in 1800" ("Chuans") in the fall of 1828, he went to his father's friend, General Pommereil, in the province of Brittany. The following year, the novel was published, signed by the already real name - Balzac and turned out to be the first work that brought him wide fame. In the autumn of 1829, the first novels and stories were published under the general heading "Scenes of Private Life", although the idea of the "Human Comedy", broken down into "Etudes" and "Scenes", was formed somewhat later. Balzac visits literary salons, in particular the salon of Sophia Gay and the salon of Charles Nodier, curator of the library of the Arsenal, is present at the reading of V. Hugo's drama "Marion Delorme" and at the first performance of his "Ernani". With many romantics - Vigny, Musset, Barbier, Dumas, Delacroix - he is friendly, but in articles and reviews he invariably makes fun of them for the implausibility of positions and aesthetic preferences. In 1830, he became close to the artist Gavarni (1804-1866), who would later become one of the illustrators of the first edition of The Human Comedy.

Honore de Balzac

human comedy

EVGENIYA GRANDE

Father Goriot

Honore de Balzac

EVGENIYA GRANDE

Translation from French by Y. Verkhovsky. OCR & SpellCheck: Zmiy

The story “Gobsek” (1830), the novels “Eugene Grandet” (1833) and “Father Goriot” (1834) by O. Balzac, which are part of the “Human Comedy” cycle, belong to the masterpieces of world literature. In all three works, the writer with great artistic power denounces the vices of bourgeois society, shows the detrimental effect of money on the human personality and human relationships.

Your name, the name of the one whose portrait

the best decoration of this work, yes

will be here like a green branch

blessed box, torn

I don't know where, but I'm sure

sanctified religion and renewed in

unchanging freshness pious

hands for storage at home.

de balzac

There are houses in other provincial towns that, by their very appearance, inspire melancholy, similar to that caused by the gloomiest monasteries, the most gray steppes, or the most depressing ruins. In these houses there is something from the silence of the monastery, from the desert of the steppes and the decay of the ruins. Life and movement in them are so calm that they would have seemed uninhabited to a stranger, if he had not suddenly met the eyes of a dull and cold gaze of a motionless creature, whose semi-monastic physiognomy appeared above the windowsill at the sound of unfamiliar steps. These characteristic features of melancholy marked the appearance of the dwelling, located in the upper part of Saumur, at the end of a crooked street that rises up the hill and leads to the castle. On this street, now sparsely populated, it is hot in summer, cold in winter, sometimes dark even during the day; it is remarkable for the sonority of its pavement of small cobblestones, constantly dry and clean, the narrowness of the winding path, the silence of its houses belonging to the old city, over which the ancient city fortifications rise. Three centuries old, these buildings, although wooden, are still strong, and their heterogeneous appearance contributes to the originality that attracts the attention of lovers of antiquity and people of art to this part of Saumur. It is difficult to pass by these houses and not admire the huge oak beams, the ends of which, carved with bizarre figures, crown the lower floors of most of these houses with black bas-reliefs. The crossbeams are slate-covered and streak blue across the dilapidated walls of the building, topped with a wooden peaked roof that has sagged with time, with rotten shingles warped by the alternating action of rain and sun. In some places one can see window sills, worn, darkened, with barely noticeable fine carvings, and it seems that they cannot withstand the weight of a dark clay pot with bushes of carnations or roses grown by some poor toiler. Next, a pattern of huge nail heads driven into the gate, on which the genius of our ancestors inscribed family hieroglyphs, the meaning of which no one can unravel, will catch your eye. Either a Protestant here stated his confession of faith, or some member of the League cursed Henry IV. A certain city dweller carved here the heraldic signs of his eminent citizenship, his long-forgotten glorious title of a merchant foreman. Here is the whole history of France. Side by side with the rickety house, the walls of which are covered with rough plaster that commemorates the work of an artisan, rises the mansion of a nobleman, where, in the very middle of the stone vault of the gate, traces of the coat of arms, broken by the revolutions that shook the country since 1789, are still visible. On this street, the lower floors of merchants' houses are not occupied by shops or warehouses; Admirers of the Middle Ages can here find inviolable storehouse of our fathers in all its frank simplicity. These low spacious rooms without showcases, without elegant exhibitions, without painted glass, are devoid of any decorations, internal and external. The heavy front door is roughly covered with iron and consists of two parts: the upper one leans inward, forming a window, and the lower one, with a bell on a spring, opens and closes every now and then. Air and light enter this kind of damp cave either through a transom carved above the door, or through an opening between the vault and a low, counter-height wall - there strong inner shutters are strengthened in the grooves, which are removed in the morning and put on in the evenings. place and push with iron bolts. Goods are displayed on this wall. And here they do not throw dust in the eyes. Depending on the type of trade, the samples consist of two or three tubs filled to the top with salt and cod, from several bales of sailing cloth, from ropes, from copper utensils suspended from ceiling beams, from hoops placed along the walls, from several pieces of cloth on shelves . Sign in. A neat young girl, full of health, in a snow-white scarf, with red hands, leaves knitting, calls her mother or father. One of them goes out and sells what you need, for two sous or for twenty thousand goods, while acting indifferently, amiably or arrogantly, according to character. You will see a merchant of oak boards sitting at his door and fiddling with his thumbs, talking to a neighbor, and in appearance he only has plain boards for barrels and two or three bundles of shingles; and on the wharf his forest yard supplies all the Angevin coopers; he calculated to a single plank how many barrels he would overpower if the grape harvest was good: the sun - and he was rich, rainy weather - he was ruined; on the same morning wine barrels cost eleven francs, or fall to six livres. In this region, as in Touraine, the vicissitudes of the weather rule over trading life. Vine growers, landowners, timber merchants, coopers, innkeepers, shipmen - all lie in wait for a ray of sunshine; going to bed in the evening, they tremble, as if in the morning they would not find out what was freezing at night; they are afraid of rain, wind, drought, and they want moisture, warmth, clouds - whatever suits them. There is a continuous duel between heaven and earthly self-interest. The barometer alternately saddens, enlightens, illuminates the physiognomy with merriment. From end to end of this street, the ancient Grand Rue of Saumur, the words “Golden day! ” fly from porch to porch. And each responds to a neighbor. “Luidors are pouring from the sky,” realizing what a ray of sun or rain brings him, which arrived in time. In summer, on Saturdays, since noon, not a penny can buy goods from these honest merchants. Everyone has his own vineyard, his own farm, and every day he goes out of town for two days. Here, when everything is calculated - buying, selling, profit - the merchants have ten hours out of twelve for picnics, for all sorts of gossip, incessant peeping at each other. It is impossible for a housewife to buy a partridge without the neighbors later asking her husband if the bird was fried successfully. You can't stick your head out of a window for a girl, so that a bunch of idle people wouldn't see her from all sides. Here, after all, the spiritual life of everyone is in full view, just like all the events taking place in these impenetrable, gloomy and silent houses. Almost the entire life of the townsfolk passes in the free air. Each family sits down at its porch, here they have breakfast, and dinner, and quarrel. Anyone who walks down the street is looked at from head to toe. And in the old days, as soon as a stranger appeared in a provincial town, they began to ridicule him at every door. Hence - amusing stories, hence - the nickname mockingbirds given to the inhabitants of Angers, who were especially distinguished in these gossip.

The ancient mansions of the old city are located at the top of the street, once inhabited by local nobles. The gloomy house where the events described in this story took place was just one such dwelling, a venerable fragment of a bygone age, when things and people were distinguished by that simplicity that French customs are losing every day. Passing along this picturesque street, where each meander evokes memories of the past, and the general impression evokes an involuntary despondent thoughtfulness, you notice a rather dark vault, in the middle of which the door of Monsieur Grandet's house is hidden. It is impossible to understand the full meaning of this phrase without knowing the biography of Mr. Grande.

BALZAC "HUMAN COMEDY"
Balzac is as wide as the ocean. It is a whirlwind of genius, a storm of indignation and a hurricane of passions. He was born in the same year as Pushkin (1799) - only two weeks earlier - but outlived him by 13 years. Both geniuses dared to look into such depths of the human soul and human relations, which no one before them was capable of. Balzac was not afraid to challenge Dante himself, naming his epic by analogy with the main creation of the great Florentine "The Human Comedy". However, with equal justification, it can also be called "Inhuman", because only a titan can create such a grandiose burning.
"The Human Comedy" is the general name given by the writer himself for an extensive cycle of his novels, short stories and short stories. Most of the works combined in the cycle were published long before Balzac picked up an acceptable unifying title for them. The writer himself spoke of his idea in the following way:
In calling "The Human Comedy" a work begun almost thirteen years ago, I consider it necessary to explain its intention, to tell about its origin, to briefly state the plan, and to express all this as if I had no part in it. "..."
The original idea for The Human Comedy came to me like a kind of dream, like one of those impossible ideas that you cherish but fail to grasp; so a mocking chimera reveals its feminine face, but immediately, opening its wings, is carried away into the world of fantasy. However, this chimera, like many others, is embodied: it commands, it is endowed with unlimited power, and one has to obey it. The idea of this work was born from a comparison of humanity with the animal world. “...” In this respect, society is like Nature. After all, the Society creates from man, according to the environment where he acts, as many diverse species as there are in the animal world. The difference between a soldier, a worker, an official, a lawyer, an idler, a scientist, a statesman, a merchant, a sailor, a poet, a pauper, a priest, is just as significant, although more difficult to grasp, as is that which distinguishes a wolf, a lion, a donkey from each other, a crow, a shark, a seal, a sheep, etc. Therefore, there are and always will be species in human society, just as there are species in the animal kingdom.
In essence, in the above fragment from the famous Preface to The Human Comedy, Balzac's credo is expressed, revealing the secret of his creative method. He systematized human types and characters, as botanists and zoologists systematized flora and fauna. At the same time, according to Balzac, "in the great stream of life, Animality breaks into Humanity." Passion is all humanity. Man, the writer believes, is neither good nor evil, but simply born with instincts and inclinations. It remains only to reproduce as accurately as possible the material that Nature herself gives us.
Contrary to traditional canons and even formal-logical rules of classification, the writer distinguishes three "forms of being": men, women and things, that is, people and "the material embodiment of their thinking." But, apparently, it was precisely this "contrary" that allowed Balzac to create a unique world of his novels and stories, which cannot be confused with anything. And you can’t confuse Balzac’s heroes with anyone either. “Three thousand people of a certain era” - this is how the writer himself characterized them, not without pride.
The human comedy, as Balzac conceived it, has a complex structure. First of all, it is divided into three parts of different sizes: "Etudes on Morals", "Philosophical Studies" and "Analytical Studies". In essence, everything important and great (with a few exceptions) is concentrated in the first part. This is where such brilliant works of Balzac as “Gobsek”, “Father Goriot”, “Eugenie Grandet”, “Lost Illusions”, “Shine and Poverty of Courtesans”, etc., enter. In turn, “Etudes on Morals” are divided into “scenes ": "Scenes of Private Life", "Scenes of Provincial Life", "Scenes of Parisian Life", "Scenes of Military Life" and "Scenes of Rural Life". Some cycles remained undeveloped: from the Analytical Studies, Balzac managed to write only the Physiology of Marriage, and from the Scenes of Military Life, the adventurous novel Chouans. But the writer made grandiose plans - to create a panorama of all the Napoleonic wars (imagine the multi-volume "War and Peace", but written from a French point of view).
Balzac claimed the philosophical status of his great brainchild and even singled out a special “philosophical part” in it, which, among others, included the novels “Louis Lambert”, “Search for the Absolute”, “Unknown Masterpiece”, “Elixir of Longevity”, “Seraphite” and the most famous from the "philosophical studies" - "Shagreen leather". However, with all due respect to the Balzac genius, it should be absolutely definitely said that the writer did not turn out to be a great philosopher in the proper sense of the word: his knowledge in this traditional sphere of spiritual life, although extensive, is very superficial and eclectic. There is nothing shameful here. Moreover, Balzac created his own, unlike any other, philosophy - the philosophy of human passions and instincts.
Among the latter, the most important, according to the Balzac gradation, is, of course, the instinct of possession. Regardless of the specific forms in which it manifests itself: in politicians, in a thirst for power; for a businessman - in a thirst for profit; for a maniac - in a thirst for blood, violence, oppression; in a man - in the thirst of a woman (and vice versa). Of course, Balzac groped for the most sensitive string of human motives and actions. This phenomenon in its various aspects is revealed in various works of the writer. But, as a rule, all aspects, as in focus, are concentrated in any of them. Some of them are embodied in unique Balzac heroes, become their carriers and personifications. Such is Gobsek - the main character of the story of the same name - one of the most famous works of world literature.
Gobsek's name is translated as Zhivoglot, but it was in French vocalization that it became a household name and symbolizes the thirst for profit for the sake of profit itself. Gobsek is a capitalist genius, he has an amazing flair and the ability to increase his capital, while ruthlessly trampling on human destinies and showing absolute cynicism and immorality. To the surprise of Balzac himself, this wizened old man turns out to be that fantastic figure that personifies the power of gold - this "spiritual essence of the entire modern society." However, without these qualities, capitalist relations cannot exist in principle - otherwise it will be a completely different system. Gobsek is a romantic of the capitalist element: it gives him real pleasure not so much to receive the profit itself, but to contemplate the fall and distortion of human souls in all situations where he turns out to be the true ruler of people who have fallen into the net of a usurer.
But Gobsek is also a victim of a society dominated by a chistogan: he does not know what a woman's love is, he has no wife and children, he has no idea what it is to bring joy to others. Behind him stretches a train of tears and grief, broken destinies and deaths. He is very rich, but lives from hand to mouth and is ready to bite anyone's throat because of the smallest coin. He is the walking embodiment of wanton miserliness. After the death of the usurer, in the locked rooms of his two-story mansion, a mass of rotten things and rotten supplies was discovered: at the end of his life, being engaged in colonial scams, he received in the form of bribes not only money and jewelry, but all kinds of delicacies, which he did not touch, but locked everything for a feast of worms and mold.
The Balzac story is not a textbook on political economy. The ruthless world of capitalist reality is recreated by the writer through realistic characters and the situations in which they act. But without portraits and canvases painted by the hand of a brilliant master, our understanding of the real world itself would be incomplete and poor. Here, for example, is a textbook characterization of Gobseck himself:
My pawnbroker's hair was perfectly straight, always neatly combed and heavily greyed-ash gray. His features, motionless, impassive, like those of Talleyrand, seemed to be cast in bronze. His eyes, small and yellow, like those of a ferret, and almost without eyelashes, could not stand bright light, so he protected them with a large visor of a tattered cap. The sharp tip of a long nose, pitted with mountain ash, looked like a gimlet, and the lips were thin, like those of alchemists and ancient old men in the paintings of Rembrandt and Metsu. This man spoke quietly, softly, never got excited. His age was a mystery “…” He was some kind of automaton who was wound up daily. If you touch a woodlice crawling on paper, it will instantly stop and freeze; in the same way, this man, during a conversation, suddenly fell silent, waiting until the noise of the carriage passing under the windows subsided, as he did not want to strain his voice. Following the example of Fontenelle, he saved his vital energy, suppressing all human feelings in himself. And his life flowed as silently as sand pours in a stream in an old hourglass. Sometimes his victims were indignant, raised a frantic cry, then suddenly there was dead silence, as in a kitchen when a duck is slaughtered in it.
A few touches to the characterization of one hero. And Balzac had thousands of them - several dozen in each novel. He wrote day and night. And yet he did not have time to create everything that he intended. The Human Comedy was left unfinished. She burned the author himself. In total, 144 works were planned, but 91 were not written. If you ask yourself the question: which figure in the Western literature of the 19th century is the most ambitious, powerful and inaccessible, there will be no difficulty in answering. This is Balzac! Zola compared The Human Comedy to the Tower of Babel. The comparison is quite reasonable: indeed, there is something primordial-chaotic and prohibitively grandiose in Balzac's Cyclopean creation. There is only one difference:
The Tower of Babel has collapsed, and The Human Comedy, built by the hands of a French genius, will stand forever.

The work of Honore de Balzac. The Human Comedy" was written in 1997, on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the birth of the French classic. But in those years the author failed to publish it. Chapters from the book were published in the newspaper "Literature" (supplement to the pedagogical newspaper "September 1").

Honore de Balzac. human comedy

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The following excerpt from the book Honore de Balzac. Human comedy (Aleksey Ivin, 2015) provided by our book partner - the company LitRes.

Created in the intellectual publishing system Ridero.ru

The book was also rejected:

G. M. Stepanenko, Ch. editor of the Moscow State University publishing house (“we didn’t order!”),

Z. M. Karimova, ed. "Knowledge",

V. A. Milchin, ed. "Knowledge",

V. P. Zhuravlev, ed. "Education",

L. N. Lysova, ed. "School-Press",

I. K. Husemi, “Lit. Newspaper",

M. A. Dolinskaya, ed. "Knowledge" (do not sell!),

S. I. Shanina, IMA-Press,

L. M. Sharapkova, SCREAMS,

A. V. Doroshev, Ladomir,

I. V. Kozlova, "School-Press",

I. O. Shaitanov, Russian State University for the Humanities,

N. A. Shemyakina, Moscow Department of Education,

A. B. Kudelin, IMLI,

A. A. Anshukova, ed. "Academic project" (we publish Gachev, and who are you?),

O. B. Konstantinova-Weinstein, Russian State University for the Humanities,

E. P. Shumilova, RGGU (Russian State University for the Humanities), extract from the minutes of the meeting No. 6 dated April 10, 1997

T. Kh. Glushkova, ed. Bustard (accompanied the refusal with exhortations),

Yu. A. Orlitsky, Russian State University for the Humanities,

E. S. Abelyuk, MIROS (Institute for the Development of Educational Systems),

Ph.D. n. O. V. Smolitskaya, MIROS (both great "specialists", but how arrogant!),

Ya. I. Groisman, Nizhny Novgorod ed. "Dekom",

S. I. Silvanovich, ed. "Forum".

Honore de Balzac. human comedy

A Brief Comparative Historical Essay on the Socio-Political Situation in France in 1789–1850

In our study, natural parallels will continually arise between the work of Honore de Balzac (1799–1850) and the work of the most prominent Russian realists of the 19th century. But from the geopolitical point of view, the state of Russia in the 19th century and the state of France were by no means equivalent. Simply put, Russia became what France was in 1789 only in 1905. This refers to the level of the country's productive forces, the degree of revolutionary ferment of the masses, and the general readiness for fundamental changes. In this regard, the Great October Revolution seems to be prolonged in time and unfolded over a wider space by the Great French bourgeois revolution. In a certain sense, the revolution of 1789, the overthrow of the monarchy of Louis XVI, the Jacobin dictatorship, the struggle of revolutionary France against the intervention of England, Austria and Prussia, and then the Napoleonic campaigns - all this was the same catalyst for social processes for Europe, which was in a similar situation for a vast the space of Russia, the revolution of 1905, the overthrow of the monarchy of Nicholas II, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the struggle of revolutionary Russia against the interventionists of the Entente, and then the civil war. The similarity of revolutionary tasks and revolutionary methods, as well as historical figures, is sometimes simply amazing.

It is enough to recall the main milestones in the history of France in those years - and this statement, which seems disputable in the socio-historical context, will take on more acceptable forms.

The subsequent events - the defeat near Moscow and on the Berezina, the defeat near Leipzig in 1813 and after the "Hundred Days" - near Waterloo in 1815 - are known to everyone. The arrested emperor went to St. Helena, where he died in 1821. Louis XU111, the brother of the executed king, was replaced in 1830 by Louis-Philippe d'Orléans, a relative of the Bourbons, and in 1848 by Napoleon 111, the emperor's nephew. So the struggle throughout all those years was between the legitimate representatives of the monarchy and the usurpers in the face of the "Corsican monster" and his relatives. However, with the exception of the coup of 1815, carried out with the help of the Cossacks, subsequent revolutions were carried out by artisans, petty bourgeois, workers, the Parisian mob and each time were accompanied by abundant blood, barricades, executions and at the same time concessions in the field of law, expansion of rights and freedoms.

A short sketch of the biography of Honore de Balzac

Honore de Balzac was born on May 20, 1799 (I Prairial of the 7th year of the Republic) at 11 am in the French city of Tours on the street of the Italian army at number 25. His father Bernard-Francois Balzac (1746–1829), the son of a peasant, ex officio manager supplying food to the 22nd division, later second assistant to the mayor, was 32 years older than his wife Anne-Charlotte Laura, née Salambier (1778–1853), daughter of a cloth merchant in Paris. Immediately after birth, the boy was given to be raised by a wet nurse in the village of Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire, where he stayed until 1803. A year later, in 1800, on September 29, Balzac's younger and beloved sister, Laura, was born, Surville (1800–1871), and a few years later her younger brother Henri. In the latter case, rumors disputed the paternity of Bernard-Francois, but for his mother, Henri was a favorite.

The first work, a drama in the classic spirit called Cromwell, was not approved at the family council, but Balzac continued to work. During this time, in collaboration with the business writer L'Agreville, he wrote several novels in the "Gothic" manner, very fashionable in those years (the first publishing agreement dates from January 22, 1822). These novels, which to a certain extent provided a literary income, were, however, imitative and signed with pseudonyms: Lord R'Oon, Horace de Saint-Aubin. On June 9, 1821, Balzac met the mother of a large family, Laura de Berni (1777–1836), who became his lover for many years. The middle of the 1920s marked the acquaintance with the artists Henri Monnier (1805–1877) and Achille Deveria, the journalist and publisher A. Latouche, who also became his friends for many years. Relations are established with the editorial offices of Parisian newspapers - Commerce, Pilot, Corsair, etc., where his first essays, articles and novels are published.

Having liquidated the case, Balzac moved to rue Cassini, building 1 and, enriched by experience, decides to take up novelism again - already on a sober-practical basis. In order to collect materials for the novel "The Last Chouan, or Brittany in 1800" ("Chuans") in the fall of 1828, he went to his father's friend, General Pommereil, in the province of Brittany. The following year, the novel was published, signed by the already real name - Balzac and turned out to be the first work that brought him wide fame. In the autumn of 1829, the first novels and stories were published under the general heading "Scenes of Private Life", although the idea of the "Human Comedy", broken down into "Etudes" and "Scenes", was formed somewhat later. Balzac visits literary salons, in particular the salon of Sophia Gay and the salon of Charles Nodier, curator of the library of the Arsenal, is present at the reading of V. Hugo's drama "Marion Delorme" and at the first performance of his "Ernani". With many romantics - Vigny, Musset, Barbier, Dumas, Delacroix - he is friendly, but in articles and reviews he invariably makes fun of them for the implausibility of positions and aesthetic preferences. In 1830 he became close to the painter Gavarni (1804-1866), who would later become one of the illustrators of the first edition of The Human Comedy.

Already in the same year, "Scenes of Private Life" was published in two volumes, and in the summer Balzac traveled through French cities and provinces in the company of Madame de Berni. By that time, the acquaintance with F. Stendhal dates back. Later, Balzac found it possible to support this writer, having analyzed his novel The Parma Convent in his article “A Study on Bale” and pointed out to the short-sighted Parisian public this brilliant man, whose work was stubbornly hushed up.

In the early 1930s, Balzac began writing Mischievous Tales, which was supposed to be published 10 under one cover annually. By this time, the writing of such works as The Cursed Child, The Red Hotel, Maitre Cornelius, The Unknown Masterpiece, Shagreen Skin, The Thirty-Year-Old Woman, acquaintance with George Sand, with whom Balzac will be connected by mutual friendly respectful relationship. Since then, Balzac will often visit the estate of Sasha, in his native Touraine, with his friend Margonne, where many beautiful pages will be written.

February 28, 1832 Balzac receives the first letter from the Stranger - the Polish aristocrat Evelina Ganskaya, the owner of vast estates in the Kyiv province, who "through mutual correspondence" and meetings at the end of his life will become his wife. So far, however, she is only interested in making herself known to a European-famous writer, which is most likely generated by the vanity of a clairvoyant pani. Balzac in those years already had many readers and admirers, he received many letters, he was received in the aristocratic salons of Paris and the provinces. During these years, there is a passion for the Marquise de Castries, with whom he is staying at her estate in Aix (Savoie). The novels Serafita, Modesta Mignon, Ferragus, and The Village Doctor are dedicated to Evelina Ganskaya. The first meeting with Hanska, who was married at that time, took place on September 22 in Switzerland, in the town of Neuchâtel. The first Russian-language translations of Balzac belong to this time: the novel "Shagreen Skin" in the "Northern Archive" and in "Son of the Fatherland".

In 1834, through Hector Berlioz, Balzac met Heinrich Heine. Balzac already had a well-developed plan for The Human Comedy with its subdivisions into Etudes: Etudes on Morals, Philosophical Etudes, Analytical Etudes. However, no matter how much he writes, no matter how overtired from work, he does not manage to get rid of debts; so, fleeing from creditors, he moves to the suburb of Bataille, where he secretly rents an apartment in a false name. In 1835, he travels to Vienna for a secret meeting with Hanska, and at the end of the year he buys shares in the Parisian newspaper Kronik de Paris and invites Theophile Gauthier (1811–1872) to work in it. The next year, for refusing to be in the National Guard, he is imprisoned for several days. He is in a lawsuit with the publisher of the Revue de Paris, to whom he owes a novel (the money is spent). In the summer of 1836, his newspaper was liquidated, and the publisher himself, and almost the only author, left for Italy. Balzac experiences constant ailments due to increased work, and his new acquaintance Countess Guidoboni-Visconti, an Englishwoman, organizes this trip for him on her hereditary affairs. The following year, a second trip was made to Italy, where he was well received and where he met Silvio Pellico and A. Manzoni.

In 1837, Balzac bought the Jardi estate near the city of Sèvres, which, however, he did not manage to complete (the estate was sold, causing many jokes of fellow writers and their secret hostility). In the winter of 1838, Balzac visits J. Sand and her estate in Nogent, and in the spring he makes a difficult trip to the island of Sardinia, where he was eager to start a business to develop silver mines, abandoned since the days of Roman rule. All these years, Balzac does not stop working, but he is deprived of enrichment or any kind of stable life, living out of mercy with rich friends. In order to earn some money, he begins to write for the theater, but, despite his friendship with F. Lemaitre and some successful scenes, he also fails to achieve the laurels of a playwright and fees; some of his plays, in particular The School of Marriage, were first published and staged only in the 20th century. Of the prominent Russian artists, Balzac met A. I. Turgenev and S. P. Shevyrev, a professor at Moscow University, on their initiative.

Being widely known in France and abroad, Balzac twice put forward his candidacy for the French Academy, but the first time he withdrew the application due to the fact that V. Hugo claimed the same place, and was later voted out (probably as a familyless a man and an insolvent debtor with highly unstable incomes) in favor of the Duc de Noailles. His social activities were associated with publicistic speeches in the Parisian periodicals and with the Society of Writers.

In 1842, a 16-volume book was published, which collected most of the works of the Human Comedy written by that time. Sculptor David d'Angers sculpts a marble bust of the writer. By that time, from the immoderate consumption of coffee, Balzac showed the first signs of heart disease, he was constantly tormented by headaches.

July 18, 1843 Balzac leaves for Russia from the port of Dunkirk on the ship "Devonshire". In St. Petersburg, he lives on Bolshaya Millionnaya, behind him a tacit supervision is established. Monarchist circles are not averse to using him so that he openly, in the press, came out against the Marquis de Custine, a French writer who, after visiting Russia, published a talented pamphlet. In connection with his matrimonial interests, Balzac is forced to show loyalty to the Russian emperor. He feels completely sick. In 1844, upon his return to Paris, he was diagnosed with liver disease. This year, Balzac's oldest friend, Charles Nodier, died. In Russia, the journal "Repertoire and Pantheon" publishes a translation of "Eugene Grande" by F. M. Dostoevsky.

In spring and summer, having recovered a little, Balzac makes a trip to the cities of Germany together with the family of E. Ganskaya. On May 1, he was awarded the Order of the Legion of Honor. Since that time, meetings with Ganskaya have become frequent and lengthy; in fact, this is a threesome marriage, which lasted until the death of Wenceslas of Ghana. In 1846, Balzac bought a house at 12 Rue Fortuné (now Balzac Street), which he improved with the expectation of a future marriage. However, his mother lives there during the international wanderings of his son. An old friend of Balzac, writer Hippolyte Castile publishes a major article about his work - "Mr. Honore de Balzac."

1847 dates back to the last manuscript of Balzac - "The reverse side of modern history." All this year, the writer travels along the Rhine with E. Hanska, and in September, through Brussels - Krakow - Berdichev, he goes to her Verkhovnya estate, where he lives until February 1848. In February, in Paris, immediately after Balzac's arrival there, a bourgeois revolution takes place: the people took possession of the Tuileries Palace, Louis-Philippe fled. In the summer, the bourgeois revolution ended with a workers' uprising, which was put down by General Cavaignac. Balzac, being ill, almost did not take part in these events, although he ran for deputies of the National Assembly. The age of his beloved aristocrats has passed, not even the bourgeoisie, but workers, artisans and small traders dictated their laws. In the autumn of 1848, he again leaves for Verkhovnya and spends the whole next year there as a legal groom. The Kyiv authorities and the Ganskaya family are trying to entertain him, but he feels very bad: he has hypertrophy of the heart, vomiting, shortness of breath, and vision is weakening. All year long he wanders around idle in a huge estate, does not write anything. On March 14 at 7 o'clock in the morning in Berdichev, his wedding took place with Evelina Ganskaya. At the end of April - in May, the couple take a joint trip to Paris. The trip lasts a whole month.

Having reached his marital "nest" in Paris on the Rue Fortune, Balzac no longer leaves it. On June 20, Theophile Gauthier receives a letter from him, written by E. Hanska: “I can neither read nor write.” On July 11, he developed peritonitis, in August he suffers from dropsy, and on August 17, gangrene of his leg began. August 18 at 9 pm Victor Hugo visits the dying writer. Two and a half hours later, at 11.30 pm, Balzac died.

The funeral took place on August 21 at the Pere Lachaise cemetery. The coffin was accompanied by V. Hugo, G. Courbet, G. Berlioz, A. Dumas, David d'Angers, A. Monnier, F. Lemaitre, Ch. Sainte-Bev and others, there was a Russian chargé d'affaires. The farewell speech was delivered by Victor Hugo, in his usual, slightly pompous style: “Mr. de Balzac was one of the first among the great, one of the best among the elect /… / Without knowing it, whether he wanted it or not, whether he would agree with this or no - the author of this huge and bizarre creation was from a mighty breed of revolutionary writers.

Balzac set an example of selfless service to literature. His efficiency amazed his contemporaries and continues to amaze us. In total, as part of the Human Comedy, he conceived 143 works, wrote 95. In addition to this main composition, we have several early novels, a large number of stories, plays, essays, articles, and an extensive epistolary heritage. This incessant work undermined his strength, deprived him of many of the simple joys of life, but it also brought him fame as the greatest French novelist.

Early works

Using the comparative method and comparing Western European and Russian literature, you are constantly surprised by one circumstance: all Western artists, even the most brilliant ones, were commensurate with their era and published enough during their lifetime, while many Russian and, in particular, Soviet writers were “ahead of their time” , were published with difficulty and did not deserve recognition during their lifetime. One has only to wonder why this is so, and not otherwise, why only a broken Russian writer is finally awarded recognition, or even dies, having unpublished works in his desk drawer? This mystery is great and implies the difference in the social status of the Western and Russian artist. The Russian, as a rule, is a prophet and treats him as the crowd should treat a prophet, while the Western one is just a producer. And if his works are good, then the manufacturer himself does not remain at a loss.

It’s amazing how many novels the young man Balzac wrote before he was finally noticed, but it’s even more amazing that all his things were served hot and piping, like fresh baker’s pies, and - which is absolutely incredible - were paid. They did not lie on the table, waiting for the death of the author, but were published in a typographical way, so that the young writer, seeing his "dirty" (Balzac's expression about one of his novels), could rethink his merits.

Before the Chouans, which opened the Human Comedy, Balzac wrote the tragedy Cromwell, the novels The Heir of Pirague Castle, Jean-Louis, Clotilde of Lusignan, The Vicar of Arden, The Last Fairy, The Old Man, "Van Chlor, or Pale-faced Jen." In his development, he accurately illustrated the Darwinian theory of natural selection, according to which a person in his development goes through approximately the same stages as the society in which he was born. Indeed, what is the drama "Cromwell" if not backward movement, the lessons of classicism? And the fact that he was a diligent student of classicism is evidenced by one of his letters to his sister: “Crébillon reassures me, Voltaire scares me, Corneille delights, and Racine makes me quit my pen.” From this last complaint it follows that all the twenties passed under the sign of imitation of authorities. Starting as a classicist, he then went over to the camp of the "black novel" and "Udolphian secrets", and from the middle of the decade he was firmly imitating Walter Scott, from whom he was in inescapable delight. The idea, again expressed in a letter to Sister Laura, that he writes for the sake of money (indeed: for the first novel he received 800 livres, for the subsequent - from one and a half to two thousand!) - this idea is nothing more than an attempt by a young talent to be useful, to work in the field he has chosen. He is very well aware that he is not a genius, and yearns for a greater touch on the essence of life. “I daily bless the happy independence of the profession that I have chosen for myself /…/ If I were calm about my financial situation, I would begin to work on serious things,” he writes in 1822.

In fact: his early prose bears the stamp of all the trends that existed at that time: the classic novel of Diderot and Voltaire, the sentimentalism of Richardson, Stern and Rousseau, Madame Anna Radcliffe's "Gothic horror and mystery novel", the enlightenment studies of W. Godwin and the "Wackfield Priest and, finally, the romanticism of Walter Scott. The “negligent student” of the Vendôme College of the Oratory Brothers read so much and haphazardly that he fell ill and had to live with his parents for some time to calm his nerves

"The Human Comedy" Preface, "The House of the Ball Cat", "Vendetta", "Sub-Family", "Abandoned Woman"

The preface to The Human Comedy was written by Balzac much later than the early works following it, in 1842, while the above stories date from 1830–1832, and only the Secondary Family was completed in the same 1842, the year of the first edition. "The Human Comedy", undertaken by the publishing house Furn. It is believed that the name itself arose, as it were, in opposition to the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri.

In the preface, Balzac indicates that his "Studies on manners" consist of six sections: the first - "Scenes of private life", the second - "Scenes of provincial life", the third - "Scenes of Parisian life", the fourth - "Scenes of military life", the fifth - "Scenes of political life" and, finally, the sixth - "Scenes of rural life."

In the conception of The Human Comedy, an active role was played by the teachings of the natural philosophers Cuvier and Saint-Hilaire, who compared man and animals by virtue of their organic unity. It seems that not without the influence of the infamous philosopher La Mettrie, the author of the treatises “Man-machine”, “Man-plant”, who reduced the functions of man to simple biologism. (True, we note in brackets that this was done at one time in defiance of religion, the bogey of all enlighteners). Be that as it may, Balzac writes the following remarkable phrase in the preface: “The difference between a soldier, a worker, an official, a lawyer, an idler, a scientist, a statesman, a merchant, a sailor, a poet, a poor man, a priest is just as significant, although it is more difficult to grasp, as well as what distinguishes from each other a wolf, a lion, a donkey, a crow, a shark, a seal, a sheep, etc. ”

In the family of Evelina Ganskaya on October 26, 1834, Balzac outlines the general plan of The Human Comedy as follows:

"The foundation of The Human Comedy - "Etudes of Morals" - will depict all social phenomena, so that not one life situation, not one physiognomy, not one character, male or female, not one way of life, not one profession, not one of the strata of society , not a single French province, nothing of childhood, old age, adulthood, politics, justice, war, will be forgotten.

Then the second tier will follow - “Philosophical Studies”, because after the investigation it is necessary to show the reasons: in “Etudes of Morals” I will depict feelings and their play, life and its movements. In "Philosophical Studies" I will reveal the cause of feelings, the basis of life, what are the limits, what are the conditions outside of which neither society nor man can exist; and after I have surveyed society in order to describe it, I will survey it in order to judge it.

Later, after effects and causes, the turn of the Analytical Studies (of which the "Physiology of Marriage" is a part) will come, for after effects and causes, the beginnings of things must be determined. Morals are the spectacle, causes are the backstage and the mechanism of the stage. The beginning is the author, but as the work reaches the heights of thought, it, like a spiral, shrinks and condenses. If twenty-four volumes are needed for Studies in Morals, only fifteen are needed for Philosophical Studies, and only nine for Analytical Studies. Thus, a person, society, humanity will be described without repetition, called to judgment, investigated in a work that will be similar to the "Thousand and One Nights" of the West.

From this letter it follows with all evidence that Balzac already in 1834 knew what he wanted. Its most important task is striking in its scale even for the era in which such prolific French authors as Dumas père and Zola lived and worked.

Over the years, Balzac grew serious and wiser; his path - from imitation of the classicists and romantics, through tabloid novels and works created solely for the sake of earning money, under which he sometimes did not even put his name - inevitably led to a system, to a cycle, to systematization of what has been achieved and plans for the future. These plans are worthy of a genius, which, obviously, Balzac considered himself to be not without reason. The cross-section of humanity is preferably given on the basis of France, but France is humanity in miniature, it is the center of civilization, it contains everything that is interesting in the world, just like a nut is enclosed in a shell.

On the example of the life and work of Balzac, one can trace what artistic creativity is in general. This is, first of all, work and self-organization. This Prometheus of the word, as it were, consistently threw off the narrow and decrepit clothes of discipleship, appearing each time in a renewal of originality, strength and power. His potential was inexhaustible. It was as if life and creativity were inseparable for him, because every work, every page, every novella, even if it was written for the needs and to be eaten by creditors, consistently outlived, creatively transformed the day in which they were created. And if you imagine that the work went on day and night, then you can imagine what spiritual and bodily power was required from the author. Even Dumas, the father, who wrote an unthinkable number of novels, had numerous secretaries and assistants, co-authors and tipsters, while Balzac basically created his things himself and resorted to co-authorship only in the initial period.

The trouble, however, is that with such a super-task, there was only one way out and result - to burn yourself without a trace, like Prometheus, as Stefan Zweig defined it; in this way, a life conceived and painted could be realized only through endless self-sacrifice, in which the author himself consciously refuses simple human joys - family, bourgeois prosperity, unplanned communication with nature and nice people. Everything went exactly according to the scenario in which life was burned by a huge fire in the wind of the 19th century. The royalist reader, the bourgeois reader, the proletarian reader, the peasant reader demanded more and more sacrifices, and Balzac had enough fuel to keep the burning high and powerful. You should not think that it was a social order, as they would say in Russia in the seventies of the twentieth century. No, it was also life – the life of a man to whom “it was given in abundance,” as the Holy Scriptures say. Balzac was guided not only by the French reading public. He also had an end in himself. It was not for nothing that in his office there was a statuette of Napoleon (the same conqueror) with an inscription in Balzac's hand: "What he could not complete with a sword, I will accomplish with a pen." Thus, the author himself set the task of conquering the whole world. The difference between a genius and a graphomaniac probably lies in the fact that the genius copes with the task, achieves the goal, no matter how grandiose it may look, he keeps the situation under control, while the graphomaniac is not even able to come close to understanding his own goals. For all its grandiosity, Balzac's goal is, in essence, simple and clear, and after the example of Napoleon Bonaparte, it is already simply real. Let us recall that a little later, in the person of Emile Zola's Rougon-Macquarts, the natural school also provided an excellent example of physiological systematization, and the author of this cycle of novels is even more grounded, even more biological than Balzac.

It must be taken into account that inspiration was not a constant companion of the writer. A year later, in 1835, when he went to Vienna for a short time to see his longtime friend and confessor E. Ganskaya, he complained: “My life consists of one monotonous work, which is again diversified by work.”

If Buffon painted nature so colorfully and competently, why not do the same in relation to society, asks Balzac. “The French society itself was to be the historian, I had only to be its secretary.”

During the more than ten years that the ingredients of the "Human Comedy" were published, each for a person, Balzac managed to receive many reproaches for the immorality of his works, their excessive scientific nature, mysticism, etc. Defending himself in this preface from accusations of immorality, Balzac refers for example, Christ and Socrates, who were also accused in their time of arrogance and lack of authority and authority to judge other people. The writer's focus on the two greatest prophets of antiquity is remarkable in itself. Of course, she smacks of boasting and arrogance, like much else in the work and personality of the writer, but we must understand that to some extent these qualities are part of the actual national character of the French. Such “applications” and gigantic quirks come from Balzac from an excess of strength, from a stormy civil temperament, from that quality of the French, which is so wonderfully embodied in Francois Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel, in Alphonse Daudet’s Tartarin of Tarrascon, in the heroes of Dumas father and Romain Rolland.

Since, says Balzac, there are thousands of characters in his Comedy, he was forced to break it up into "Studies", and the "Studies", in turn, into "Scenes". In passing, he reproaches George Sand for the fact that she was going to write a preface to the works collected here, but she never did, and he has to do it himself.

Already in the first work included in the Human Comedy, in the Study of Morals, Balzac appears before us as the canonical writer of realism - critical realism. In the story “The House of the Cat Playing Ball”, everything is built according to the laws of realism: an extensive exposition is given, in which the time and place of the action are surveyed, portraits of the characters are given. This is similar to the values proclaimed by Boileau, with the difference, however, that they are applied to the epic, narrative genre. The story has everything: a well-seasoned introduction, the plot of the action and its development, the climax, the denouement. Clothmaker Guillaume has two marriageable daughters - twenty-eight-year-old Virginia and eighteen-year-old Augustine. He is not averse to passing off the overripe tall Virginia for the most intelligent of his clerk Loeb, but the youngest of his daughters, little Augustine, likes him. But then the fashionable, young and beautiful artist Theodore Somervier appears on the stage, and the roles are finally sorted out: beauty and art must intermarry, as well as another couple - Leba and Virginia, full of family virtues and business qualities. So it happens to mutual satisfaction: Guillaume takes his clerk as a share, and both pairs of happy newlyweds get married at the same time. From that moment on, people of action fade into the background, and people of art come to the fore.

The fact is that after the birth of a child, Somervier cools off towards his wife. Poor Augustine, in order to save her family, consults with her father and mother, with her older sister and son-in-law, and even, like a fairy-tale naive fool, before whom all secret gates open, she goes to her rival, the duchess, to find out why her husband was so special seduced. . Unobtrusively, a moral is introduced into the mind of the reader: "a gifted person often makes his wife unhappy." The Duchess teaches her to dominate her husband, just like Onegin - Tatiana. Naive, animated and very smart young Augustine is the prettiest image of the work. Upon learning of this visit, Theodore Somervier is furious, but the duchess, having withdrawn herself, forces him to take care of his own wife, to appreciate her dignity and her love. The house, above the portal of which a cat playing with a ball is depicted, is the true refuge for simple hearts. Indeed: a private life, a case of the most private life.

Nevertheless, Balzac was not a consistent realist even at the age of thirty. In any case, in the choice of subjects. Because the plot of the story "Vendetta", its characters, artistic techniques, performance - everything is permeated with romanticism. Say what you like, but in 1830 romanticism was the strongest movement in Western European and Russian literature. Such a plot, with such passions and exceptional characters, could have been chosen by Stendhal, who paid so much attention to the ardent Italians, but not by Balzac. But we have what we have: a romantic story about fatal passions and lofty souls.

Briefly, the essence of the matter is as follows: the Corsican Bartolomeo, having committed a bloody vendetta over the Porta family, comes to Emperor Napoleon and his brother Lucien and atones for sin by hiring himself in the ranks of the valiant conquering army. 10 years pass, and in 1815, when the Hundred Days of Emperor Napoleon end and the persecution of the Bonapartists begins, his daughter Ginevra Piombo, who studies at the Cervin school of painting, meets the wounded officer Luigi there. Old Bartolomeo, himself a once-Napoleonic favorite, however, is resolutely against the union of his daughter with the disgraced young man. Especially when he finds out that he is one of the same Ports that he once exterminated. Ginevra, a flint girl, goes against her father's wishes, falling in love with her family's enemy. Old Bartolomeo simply overlooked, allowing his daughter's feelings to nestle deep. In the confrontation of hot Italian passions, things will not end well. And indeed: the father tries to kill his daughter, and when he fails, he renounces her. The young people get married, but then, when the valiant officer is forced to deal with the correspondence of government papers, and Ginevra becomes an artist working to order, and a disastrous gap is revealed between the ideal and reality, between ideal love and the real grip of poverty. The cruel old man never forgave his daughter. He allows their child to die of hunger, and then she herself. Still: his vendetta did not end, she now turned to this scoundrel Luigi and to those who intermarried with him against his will. After the child, the mother also dies of hunger. Theodore brings his daughter's scythe to his father-in-law and dies himself. Thus ends this tragic story.

It should be noted that Balzac's romanticism, which was later reflected in his philosophical novels Shagreen Skin and The Search for the Absolute, dedicated to people of art and science, is very peculiar. This romanticism is well rooted in real soil. In this early story, the contradiction between the absolute of human claims and the insignificance of its embodiment in reality is already outlined. In the image of the artist, who was ruined by her ardent passion, no, no, and even the shadow of Raphael Valentine from Shagreen Leather or the scientist Claes, obsessed with his scientific research, will flash.

The story "Sub-Family" (another name is "The Virtuous Woman") was also written mainly in 1830. This and the next three years were especially fruitful in the work of Balzac. Conventionally, it can be divided into two parts, with an epilogue written in 1842. The first part is sustained in the spirit of high romanticism. The poor dowry girl Carolina Krochar, who lives on the damp and dark Rue Turnique-Saint-Jean under the supervision of her old mother, is busy with embroidery. She and her mother are poor and virtuous, all their entertainment comes down to watching street passers-by from the window. The “black gentleman” named Roger, little by little, imperceptibly falls in love with this wonderful girl and begins to help her financially, even throws up a wallet to help pay off the landlord for renting an apartment. At first, all this is similar in tone and color to “Poor People” by F. M. Dostoevsky, especially when Roger, carefully taking care of the girl, teaches her to have fun, dance, rents an apartment for her in the city center, which loving hearts gradually turn into a cozy corner of Hymen . Six years later, a boy and a girl are already growing up here, and the happy Carolina Crochar, who does not lead a secular lifestyle, has not learned anything about her Roger for all this time. And only her mother, Madame Crochard, confides before her death the name of her daughter's seducer to the stern priest Fontenon.

From the second part of the story, after plot retardation, we learn that Roger at the time of his acquaintance with Caroline was already married to a rich woman and childhood friend Angelique Bonton. Here is such a bisexual. However, Balzac is not going to condemn the hero. On the contrary, it turns out that the solution he found is the most logical, because Angelica is an overly religious lady, a recluse, a fasting woman, she hangs out with priests and even writes a letter to the pope in the Vatican to find out firsthand whether a wife can decollete, attend balls and theaters without ruining the soul. It is clear that family life with a saint is not easy, which is why Roger eventually got a side family where he is happy not out of obligation. The union of a high-born saint with an official of the judicial department turned out to be unhappy. Confessor Fontenon, to whom the old woman Crochard blurts out the name of the seducer before her death, informs Angelica about her husband. The case ends with Roger left without both families, gray-haired and unhappy, because Caroline, in her turn, fled to a younger lover.

The pathos of the story is in its anti-clericalism. Balzac's relationship with the church was never easy, even in those days when, for the sake of the monarchical persons, he became a legitimist and sang to the mute of aristocrats. In this sense, he was the successor of the French Enlightenment.

"Provincial muse"

And yet in the work of Balzac there is a feature that cannot be called fruitful - tedious verbosity. With Balzac, it is excusable and comes partly from the information that overwhelmed him, partly from haste, because what he wrote immediately went into typesetting and in payment of money debts, partly as an atavistic rudiment of those years when, for the needs of the public, one after another wrote “black novels" in the hope of earning money and strengthening their position. But it is precisely this feature - verbosity - that was badly reflected in the concept of "socialist realism", as it was created by Soviet literary critics. Such writers as M. Gorky of the post-revolutionary years, K. Fedin, L. Leonov, F. Panferov, F. Gladkov, and in France A. Barbusse and R. Rolland gradually began to consider him their forerunner. "Socialist realism" was naturally derived from critical realism, of which Honore de Balzac was the most basic figure. In assessments, it has become customary to refer to A. Frans, V. Belinsky and M. Gorky. Let's quote these three. Anatole France wrote: "A perspicacious historian of the society of his time, he reveals all the secrets better than anyone else, he explains to us the transition from the old regime to the new." V. G. Belinsky drew the attention of Russian readers to the diversity of human faces in the works of Balzac: “how much this man wrote, and despite the fact that there is at least one character in his stories, at least one face that would somehow resemble another ". M. Gorky noted: “Balzac’s books are most dear to me for that love for people, that wonderful knowledge of life, which I always felt in his work with great strength and joy.”

However, idle talk and individual self-repetitions in some of Balzac's works have a completely different basis (an excess of strength, haste, the ability to work simultaneously on several works without resorting to the services of a secretary), and most importantly, a completely different nature than empty talk, say, "Bruskov" or " Walking through the torments. Balzac is so bursting with the content of life, ideas, images, thoughts that he simply does not have time to utter them; words pile up above the content, in bulk, suppress it; Balzac, due to his hot temperament, sometimes does not have time to agree to the essence of the problem, while the verbosity of the pillars of socialist realism is intended, first of all, to drape the emptiness, toothlessness, lack of a bright thought or a strong image. The word of Gladkov or K. Simonov often glides over the surface of meaning. The fear of speaking out in a definite way is what primarily explains the colossal volumes of the multi-volume epics of socialist realism. Balzac is different. Like constantly drifting ice floes, separate parts of his "Human Comedy" are not completely adjusted, they diverge far or, on the contrary, pile up in hummocks, pushing each other. It must always be borne in mind when considering The Human Comedy that it has matured over the course of a decade, and its very concept arose already in the process of working on it. It must also be taken into account that this grandiose architectural structure, this giant building was not completed: it remained like that, like the Colosseum, with failures and landslides in separate places.

The novel "Provincial Muse", completed in 1844, is one of those that do not belong to the top achievements of the author. And, however, it is soundly made and fully meets the tasks of depicting "provincial" life.

Balzac had the longest and most lasting relationships only with married women, and the novel reflected one of these relationships - with the glorious and intelligent Zelma Carro, who became his friend for many years. The beautiful and clever Dina Piedefer alarmed the provincial town of Sencer with independent behavior, a collection of art objects and a wealthy dwarf hubby, de La Baudre, who at first is exclusively occupied with his estate and who is 27 years older than his wife. Around Dina, the provincial nobility immediately gathers, as well as two local natives, residents of Paris, the journalist Lusteau and the physician Horace Bianchon, who also appear in other Balzac novels. Around these heroes, subtle, well-psychologically motivated relationships are established. The Baron de la Baudre still does not die in order to untie the hands of the loving Diné and Lousteau, on the contrary, he is getting healthier and aiming for the peerage of France, so that the journalist, obsessed, as we know from the biography, with the Balzac mania proper (to marry a rich and noble aristocrat), finally retreats, deciding on a marriage of convenience to Mademoiselle Cardot. Having heard about that, Dina comes from Sencer to Paris, and then their happy life begins, which is poisoned, on the one hand, by Lusteau's bride and Dina's husband, and on the other, by Dina's admirer, the prosecutor of Clagny. The relationship ends with Lusteau, chasing two hares, two chimeras, ruined and begging, and Dina, an eternal provincial, wisely returns to her husband. Thus ends the romance of a provincial muse and a journalist from the capital. “There is no great talent without great will,” the author sums up, watching the fall of the hero. “These two twin powers are necessary to build the edifice of glory.”

In the "Provincial Muse" there is a type of woman of that age (between thirty and forty), who will later receive the nickname "Balzac". Balzac is already so far from the theme of "black", violent novels, written in his youth to order, that he allows himself to be a little ironic over them in the scene where the guests of the provincial salon tell each other "terrible stories".

The musty atmosphere of a provincial town does not contribute to spiritual development, destroys even outstanding talents, the writer concludes, tracing the fate of another beautiful “thirty-year-old woman”, Dina de la Baudre. In an atmosphere of gossip, mutual surveillance and denunciations, idleness and meager interests, even the lofty love feeling withers. It degrades to an elementary struggle for existence, when each step is determined by the thickness of your wallet. The virtuous are here reproached with pride, and the fallen with sin. Dina was both, her experience ended in nothing. Perhaps only one thing makes sense - to work, achieving ambitious goals, as the indefatigable worker and puny healthy Baron de la Baudree does.

"Beatrice"

In "Scenes of Private Life" ("Scene de la vie privee"), Balzac achieves great skill in developing a sensual theme. The characters of his "private" novels are not numerous, and the relationship of the characters is built around a love affair. As he stated in the Preface to The Human Comedy, in articles and letters from the period when the idea was ripening, all the writer's efforts were thrown into developing the sensual side of life and female characters. From now on, you can’t confuse him, Balzac’s women with any other: plunging into a pool of feelings, they reveal the most hidden corners of their hearts, becoming either vengeful, or sacrificial, or restrainedly cold-blooded, or recklessly open.

This is also characteristic of the three-part novel "Beatrice", written, apparently, not in one step between 1838 and 1844: all three parts have clear stylistic differences, differ significantly in tone. The development of the love theme here becomes so refined that in some places it resembles lace weaving, beading. It looks like ladies' needlework. However, mentioning George Sand, Madame de Stael and making his heroine Felicite de Touche a writer working under the pseudonym Camille Maupin, Balzac does not hide that he is going to outdo the mentioned ladies in the sophistication. Indeed, in France, by the time of Balzac, there was already a well-developed system of romance, and many plots in this field were cultivated by ladies writing. The many references to Benjamin Constant's famous novel Adolphe are also significant. The heroes here seemed to set out to compete with each other in terms of self-sacrifice. This is not yet the dialectic of feelings that Leo Tolstoy would later master, and not the density of analysis that would be characteristic of Flaubert and Maupassant. Balzac most often uses direct characterizations and filigree descriptions. What is one multi-page portrait of Fanny O'Brien, mother of Calliste du Genik, the protagonist of the novel, worth! The camp, shoulders, chest, neck, back, eyes, whites of the eyes, skin, teeth, eyelids are described in detail, meticulously, with knowledge of the matter. And if we take into account that this detailed description, made with taste and artistic pleasure, soon flows into an equally detailed description of another heroine, Felicite, and a little further of Beatrice, it becomes clear where the contemporaries got their view of Balzac as a connoisseur of the female soul. Women must have been fascinated by such attention to their experiences in love. And this was confirmed by a large number of letters from fans that Balzac received.

End of introductory segment.

100 Great Books Demin Valery Nikitich

66. BALZAC "THE HUMAN COMEDY"

66. BALZAC

"HUMAN COMEDY"

Balzac is as wide as the ocean. It is a whirlwind of genius, a storm of indignation and a hurricane of passions. He was born in the same year as Pushkin (1799) - only two weeks earlier - but outlived him by 13 years. Both geniuses dared to look into such depths of the human soul and human relations, which no one before them was capable of. Balzac was not afraid to challenge Dante himself, naming his epic by analogy with the main creation of the great Florentine "The Human Comedy". However, with equal justification, it can also be called "Inhuman", because only a titan can create such a grandiose burning.

"The Human Comedy" is the general name given by the writer himself for an extensive cycle of his novels, short stories and short stories. Most of the works combined in the cycle were published long before Balzac picked up an acceptable unifying title for them. The writer himself spoke of his idea in the following way:

In calling "The Human Comedy" a work begun almost thirteen years ago, I consider it necessary to explain its intention, to tell about its origin, to briefly state the plan, and to express all this as if I had no part in it. "..."

The original idea for The Human Comedy came to me like a kind of dream, like one of those impossible ideas that you cherish but fail to grasp; so a mocking chimera reveals its feminine face, but immediately, opening its wings, is carried away into the world of fantasy. However, this chimera, like many others, is embodied: it commands, it is endowed with unlimited power, and one has to obey it. The idea of this work was born from a comparison of humanity with the animal world. “...” In this respect, society is like Nature. After all, the Society creates from man, according to the environment where he acts, as many diverse species as there are in the animal world. The difference between a soldier, a worker, an official, a lawyer, an idler, a scientist, a statesman, a merchant, a sailor, a poet, a pauper, a priest, is just as significant, although more difficult to grasp, as is that which distinguishes a wolf, a lion, a donkey from each other, a crow, a shark, a seal, a sheep, etc. Therefore, there are and always will be species in human society, just as there are species in the animal kingdom.

In essence, in the above fragment from the famous Preface to The Human Comedy, Balzac's credo is expressed, revealing the secret of his creative method. He systematized human types and characters, as botanists and zoologists systematized flora and fauna. At the same time, according to Balzac, "in the great stream of life, Animality breaks into Humanity." Passion is all humanity. Man, the writer believes, is neither good nor evil, but simply born with instincts and inclinations. It remains only to reproduce as accurately as possible the material that Nature herself gives us.

Contrary to traditional canons and even formal-logical rules of classification, the writer distinguishes three "forms of being": men, women and things, that is, people and "the material embodiment of their thinking." But, apparently, it was precisely this "contrary" that allowed Balzac to create a unique world of his novels and stories, which cannot be confused with anything. And you can’t confuse Balzac’s heroes with anyone either. “Three thousand people of a certain era” - this is how the writer himself characterized them, not without pride.

The human comedy, as Balzac conceived it, has a complex structure. First of all, it is divided into three parts of different sizes: "Etudes on Morals", "Philosophical Studies" and "Analytical Studies". In essence, everything important and great (with a few exceptions) is concentrated in the first part. This is where such brilliant works of Balzac as “Gobsek”, “Father Goriot”, “Eugenie Grandet”, “Lost Illusions”, “Shine and Poverty of Courtesans”, etc., enter. In turn, “Etudes on Morals” are divided into “scenes ": "Scenes of Private Life", "Scenes of Provincial Life", "Scenes of Parisian Life", "Scenes of Military Life" and "Scenes of Rural Life". Some cycles remained undeveloped: from the Analytical Studies, Balzac managed to write only the Physiology of Marriage, and from the Scenes of Military Life, the adventurous novel Chouans. But the writer made grandiose plans - to create a panorama of all the Napoleonic wars (imagine the multi-volume "War and Peace", but written from a French point of view).

Balzac claimed the philosophical status of his great brainchild and even singled out a special “philosophical part” in it, which, among others, included the novels “Louis Lambert”, “Search for the Absolute”, “Unknown Masterpiece”, “Elixir of Longevity”, “Seraphite” and the most famous from "philosophical studies" - "Shagreen leather". However, with all due respect to the Balzac genius, it should be absolutely definitely said that the writer did not turn out to be a great philosopher in the proper sense of the word: his knowledge in this traditional sphere of spiritual life, although extensive, is very superficial and eclectic. There is nothing shameful here. Moreover, Balzac created his own, unlike any other, philosophy - the philosophy of human passions and instincts.

Among the latter, the most important, according to the Balzac gradation, is, of course, the instinct of possession. Regardless of the specific forms in which it manifests itself: in politicians - in a thirst for power; for a businessman - in a thirst for profit; for a maniac - in a thirst for blood, violence, oppression; in a man - in the thirst of a woman (and vice versa). Of course, Balzac groped for the most sensitive string of human motives and actions. This phenomenon in its various aspects is revealed in various works of the writer. But, as a rule, all aspects, as in focus, are concentrated in any of them. Some of them are embodied in unique Balzac heroes, become their carriers and personifications. Such is Gobsek - the main character of the story of the same name - one of the most famous works of world literature.

Gobsek's name is translated as Zhivoglot, but it was in French vocalization that it became a household name and symbolizes the thirst for profit for the sake of profit itself. Gobsek is a capitalist genius, he has an amazing flair and the ability to increase his capital, while ruthlessly trampling on human destinies and showing absolute cynicism and immorality. To the surprise of Balzac himself, this wizened old man, it turns out, is that fantastic figure that personifies the power of gold - this "spiritual essence of the whole of today's society." However, without these qualities, capitalist relations cannot exist in principle - otherwise it will be a completely different system. Gobsek is a romantic of the capitalist element: it is not so much the receipt of the profit itself that gives him real pleasure, but the contemplation of the fall and distortion of human souls in all situations where he turns out to be the true ruler of people who have fallen into the net of a usurer.

But Gobsek is also a victim of a society dominated by a chistogan: he does not know what a woman's love is, he has no wife and children, he has no idea what it is to bring joy to others. Behind him stretches a train of tears and grief, broken destinies and deaths. He is very rich, but lives from hand to mouth and is ready to bite anyone's throat because of the smallest coin. He is the walking embodiment of wanton miserliness. After the death of the usurer, in the locked rooms of his two-story mansion, a mass of rotten things and rotten supplies was discovered: at the end of his life, being engaged in colonial scams, he received in the form of bribes not only money and jewelry, but all kinds of delicacies, which he did not touch, but locked everything for a feast of worms and mold.

The Balzac story is not a textbook on political economy. The ruthless world of capitalist reality is recreated by the writer through realistic characters and the situations in which they act. But without portraits and canvases painted by the hand of a brilliant master, our understanding of the real world itself would be incomplete and poor. Here, for example, is a textbook characterization of Gobseck himself:

My pawnbroker's hair was perfectly straight, always neatly combed and with a lot of graying - ash gray. His features, motionless, impassive, like those of Talleyrand, seemed to be cast in bronze. His eyes, small and yellow, like those of a ferret, and almost without eyelashes, could not stand bright light, so he protected them with a large visor of a tattered cap. The sharp tip of a long nose, pitted with mountain ash, looked like a gimlet, and the lips were thin, like those of alchemists and ancient old men in the paintings of Rembrandt and Metsu. This man spoke quietly, softly, never got excited. His age was a mystery “…” He was some kind of automaton who was wound up daily. If you touch a woodlice crawling on paper, it will instantly stop and freeze; in the same way, this man, during a conversation, suddenly fell silent, waiting until the noise of the carriage passing under the windows subsided, as he did not want to strain his voice. Following the example of Fontenelle, he saved his vital energy, suppressing all human feelings in himself. And his life flowed as silently as sand pours in a stream in an old hourglass. Sometimes his victims were indignant, raised a frantic cry, then suddenly there was dead silence, as in a kitchen when a duck is slaughtered in it.

A few touches to the characterization of one hero. And Balzac had thousands of them - several dozen in each novel. He wrote day and night. And yet he did not have time to create everything that he intended. The Human Comedy was left unfinished. She burned the author himself. In total, 144 works were planned, but 91 were not written. If you ask yourself the question: what figure in the Western literature of the 19th century is the most ambitious, powerful and inaccessible, there will be no difficulty in answering. It's Balzac! Zola compared The Human Comedy to the Tower of Babel. The comparison is quite reasonable: indeed, there is something primordial-chaotic and prohibitively grandiose in Balzac's Cyclopean creation. There is only one difference:

The Tower of Babel has collapsed, and The Human Comedy, built by the hands of a French genius, will stand forever.

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66. BALZAC "THE HUMAN COMEDY"