Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 02.djvu/516

BALZAC. rice, and perhaps his greatest novel. No wonder that in January, 1834, Balzac complains that he is "dazed with ideas and hungry for rest." Yet this year produced Père Goriot, thought by many to be his best novel; La Duchesse de Langeais, Le recherche de l'absolu, part of Séraphita, and many revisions of older work. Balzac now begins to suffer, naturally, from neuralgia, but in 1835 writes a fine study of remorse, Une drame au bord de la mer; an inferior one, Melmoth Réconcilié; the weirdly sensuous La fille aux Yeux d'Or; and that subtly humorous 'bride's breviary,' Le Contrat de Mariage. His one long novel of the year, Séraphita, is an exquisitely mystic poem in prose, a hymn to the purification of human passion by a sublime aspiration for the divorce of sentiment from sense, first and best product of that love of his for Madame Hanska, which almost immediately became a distraction and a hindrance to his genius.

With 1836 we enter on a period of arrested development, although that year offers the charming Messe d'Athée; the ultra romantic Lys dans la Vallée; the admirable last part of L'Enfant Maudit; a classic study of La Vieille Fille, the French School for Scandal; L'Interdiction, a legal romance, and some less significant work. Les Employés marks in 1837 the lowest ebb of the mature Balzac. Gambara, César Birotteau, and the Contes Drôlatiques complete the work of that year; and 1838 is as relatively insignificant, with Le Cabinet des Antiques, La Maison Nucingen, Une Fille d'Eve, and the first part of what was to become a great novel, Les Splendeurs et Misères des Courtisanes. In this year he bought a country house, 'Les Jardies,' where Gambetta met his death, and where Balzac did most of his work until, in 1843, he bought and fitted up, in long-deferred hope of marriage, the city house in which he died. His country life lent a passing freshness to Le Curé de Village (1839) and to the early parts of Béatrix, a curious study of the instinct of social conformity common to all phases of feminine affection — the platonic, the cerebral, and the venal. To 1830 belongs also Massimilla Doni, and 1840 brought Le Secret de la Princesse de Cadignan, the fine Seconde étude de Femme, Pierrette, La Muse du Département, part of Les Illusions Perdues, with some very inferior work. Then something of his old exuberance returns, and 1841 sees Une Ténébreuse Affaire, the terrible Bachelor Housekeeping (La Rabouilleuse), Ursule Mirouet, Les Mémoires de deux jeunes Mariées, La Fausse Maitresse, and Le Martyr Calviniste. The year 1842 is unimportant in production, but memorable for the first collected publication of the Human Comedy under that title, with its evolutionist preface, and for additions and revisions to which this gave occasion. In 1843 Balzac spins copy in Honorine, finishes La Muse du Departement and Les Illusions Perdues, a satire on French journalism, his longest novel, and by the number of its characters and the ramifications of its plot, one of the chief radiating points in the study of the psychology of La Comédie Humaine. He visited Madame Hanska, now a widow, this year in Russia, and in 1845 and 1846 twice in Italy and once in Germany; but he now worked, as he says, "with a fury more than French — Balzacian." In 1844 he printed the playfully romantic Modeste Mignon, completed Béatrix and Les Petits Bourgeois (printed, 1854), and published all that appeared during his lifetime of Les Paysans, the most sternly realistic of his novels. The years 1845 and 1846 produced only trivial work; but he was working on four great novels that were to crown his genius, La Cousine Bette, Cousin Pons, Les Splendeurs et Misères des Courtisanes, and L'Envers de l'Histoire Contemporaine, that was to close the Human Comedy with its noblest conception of Christian womanhood. Sickness made his last years unfruitful; and his posthumous Député d'Arcis is largely by his literary executor, Charles Ribou. Balzac's attempts in drama, except possibly Mercadet (first acted in 1831), are not significant.

Balzac died in Paris, August 18, 1850, at the height of his fame; but he was hardly appreciated at his true value until the epoch-making study of Taine (1865) showed him to be truly classic, one of the world's greatest creators in imaginative literature. The dominant trait in his style, imagination, and thought is exuberant virility. He has the animal and the intellectual intemperance of a romantic realist. He observes with minute accuracy, but it is with a poet's vision. He is of his world, yet he dominates it. No depths, no heights, of human nature seem foreign to him. His qualities become his defects. He is embarrassed at once by his wealth of ideas and of words. At his best his style is admirable, but it often staggers and occasionally falls under over-elaboration. In construction the stories lack proportion, but in character-drawing he stands next to Shakespeare. Here are the money-grubbers and the money-spenders, studied realistically and in symbolic types; cynics who mock the pleasures they pursue; parasites of social disease; fresh young girls; restless 'women of thirty'; poor relatives; philanthropists; saints — a social microcosm. Here is a novelist who tried to see life steadily and whole, to correlate all the material, moral, and social factors of modern society. With Shakespeare and Saint-Simon, says Taine, Balzac is "the greatest storehouse of documents that we have on human nature."

Balzac's works: 24 vols, fiction separately; Human Comedy, 47 vols.; Droll Stories, 3 vols.; Drama, 2 vols.; Correspondence, 2 vols.; Letters to Madame Hansha, 1 vol. The youthful Works are published in 10 vols.

The more essential books for a studv of Balzac are Louvenjoul, Histoire des Œuvres de Honoré de Balzac (Paris, 1886); Cerfbeer and Christophe, Répertoire de la Comedie Humaine (Paris, 1887), a dictionary of characters. For abstracts of plots consult Barrière, L'Œuvre de Balzac (Paris, 1890); for criticism, Louvenjoul, La Genèse d'un roman de Balzac: Les Paysans (Paris, 1901); the essays of Taine, Sainte-Beuve, Faguet, Zola, Paul Flat, Doumic, and Wells, Century of French Fiction; for biography: Wormley, Memoir of Balzac (Boston, 1892; defective); Ferry, Balzac et ses Amis (Paris, 1888); Lemer, Balzac, sa Vie et ses Œuvres (Paris, 1892). Translations, fairly complete and satisfactory, of the Human Comedy are published in London, Boston, Philadelphia, and New York. The last contains valuable editorial and critical comment by W. P. Trent. Saltus, Balzac (Boston, 1888) has a good bibliography.