BALZAC (Balzac) Honore de (1799-1850), French writer. The epic "Human Comedy" of 90 novels and stories is connected by a common concept and many characters: the novel "The Unknown Masterpiece" (1831), " Shagreen leather"(1830-31), "Eugenie Grandet" (1833), "Père Goriot" (1834-35), "Cesar Birotteau" (1837), "Lost Illusions" (1837-43), "Cousin Betta" (1846) Balzac's epic is a realistic picture of French society that is grandiose in scope.
BALZAC (Balzac) Honoré de (May 20, 1799, Tours - August 18, 1850, Paris), French writer.
Origin
The writer's father, Bernard François Balssa (who later changed his surname to Balzac), came from a wealthy peasant family, - served in the military supply department. Taking advantage of the similarity of surnames, Balzac at the turn of the 1830s. began to trace his origins to the noble family of Balzac d'Antregues and arbitrarily added the noble particle "de" to his surname. Balzac's mother was 30 years younger than her husband and cheated on him; the writer's younger brother Henri, his mother's "favorite", was the illegitimate son of the owner of a neighboring castle. Many researchers believe that Balzac the novelist’s attention to the problems of marriage and adultery is explained not least by the atmosphere that reigned in his family.
Biography
In 1807-13, Balzac was a boarder at a college in the city of Vendôme; the impressions of this period (intensive reading, a feeling of loneliness among classmates who were distant in spirit) were reflected in the philosophical novel “Louis Lambert” (1832-35). In 1816-19 he studied at the School of Law and served as a clerk in the office of a Parisian solicitor, but then refused to continue his legal career. 1820-29 - years of searching for oneself in literature. Balzac published action-packed novels under various pseudonyms and composed morally descriptive “codes” of social behavior. The period of anonymous creativity ends in 1829, when the novel “Chuany, or Brittany in 1799” is published. At the same time, Balzac is working on short stories from modern French life, which since 1830 have been published in editions under the general title "Scenes privacy". These collections, as well as philosophical novel"Shagreen Skin" (1831) brought Balzac great fame. The writer is especially popular among women, who are grateful to him for his insight into their psychology (in this Balzac was helped by his first lover, a married woman 22 years older than him, Laura de Bernis). Balzac receives enthusiastic letters from readers; one of these correspondents, who wrote him a letter in 1832 signed “Foreigner,” was the Polish countess, Russian subject Evelina Ganskaya (née Rzhevuskaya), who 18 years later became his wife Despite the enormous success that Balzac’s novels enjoyed in the 1830s and 40s ., his life was not calm. The need to pay off debts required intense work; every now and then Balzac started commercial adventures: he went to Sardinia, hoping to buy a silver mine there cheaply, bought country house, for the maintenance of which he did not have enough money, twice founded periodicals that were not commercially successful. Balzac died six months after his main dream came true, and he finally married the widowed Evelina Ganskaya.
"Human Comedy". Aesthetics
Balzac's extensive legacy includes a collection of frivolous short stories in the "Old French" spirit "Naughty Tales" (1832-37), several plays and a huge number of journalistic articles, but his main creation is "The Human Comedy". Balzac began combining his novels and stories into cycles back in 1834. In 1842, he began to publish a collection of his works under the name “Human Comedy”, within which he distinguished sections: “Etudes on Morals”, “Philosophical Etudes” and “Analytical Etudes”. All works are united not only by “through-out” heroes, but also by an original concept of the world and man. Following the example of naturalists (primarily E. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire), who described animal species that differed from each other in external characteristics formed by the environment, Balzac set out to describe social species. He explained their diversity by different external conditions and differences in characters; Each of the people is ruled by a certain idea, passion. Balzac was convinced that ideas are material forces, peculiar fluids, no less powerful than steam or electricity, and therefore an idea can enslave a person and lead him to death, even if his social position is favorable. The story of all Balzac's main characters is the story of a clash between the passion that controls them and social reality. Balzac is an apologist for will; only if a person has a will, his ideas become an effective force. On the other hand, realizing that the confrontation of egoistic wills is fraught with anarchy and chaos, Balzac relies on the family and monarchy - social institutions that cement society.
"Human Comedy". Themes, plots, heroes
The struggle of the individual will with circumstances or another equally strong passion constitutes plot basis all the most significant works of Balzac. “Shagreen Skin” (1831) is a novel about how a person’s selfish will (materialized in a piece of skin that decreases with each fulfilled desire) devours his life. "The Search for the Absolute" (1834) - a novel about the search philosopher's stone, to which the natural scientist sacrifices the happiness of the family and his own. "Père Goriot" (1835) - a novel about fatherly love, "Eugenia Grande" (1833) - about the love of gold, "Cousin Betta" (1846) - about the power of revenge that destroys everything around. The novel “A Thirty-Year-Old Woman” (1831-34) is about love, which has become the lot of a mature woman (the concept of “a woman of Balzac’s age”, which has become entrenched in the mass consciousness, is connected with this theme of Balzac’s work).
In society, as Balzac sees and portrays it, either strong egoists achieve the fulfillment of their desires (such is Rastignac, a cross-cutting character who first appears in the novel “Père Goriot”), or people inspired by love for their neighbor (the main characters of the novels “The Country Doctor”, 1833, "The Country Priest", 1839); weak, weak-willed people, such as the hero of the novels “Lost Illusions” (1837-43) and “The Splendor and Poverty of Courtesans” (1838-47) by Lucien de Rubempre, do not withstand the tests and die.
French epic of the 19th century.
Each work of Balzac is a kind of “encyclopedia” of one or another class, one or another profession: “The History of the Greatness and Fall of Caesar Birotteau” (1837) - a novel about trade; "The Illustrious Gaudissart" (1833) - a short story about advertising; "Lost Illusions" is a novel about journalism; "The Bankers' House of Nucingen" (1838) - a novel about financial scams.
Balzac painted in the “Human Comedy” an extensive panorama of all aspects of French life, all layers of society (thus, “Etudes on Morals” included “scenes” of private, provincial, Parisian, political, military and rural life), on the basis of which later researchers began to classify his work as realism. However, for Balzac himself, more important was the apology of will and strong personality, which brought his work closer to romanticism.
(French Honoré de Balzac, May 20, 1799, Tours - August 18, 1850, Paris) - French writer. His real name was Honore Balzac, the particle “de” meaning belonging to a noble family, he began to use it around 1830.
Biography
Honore de Balzac was born in Tours, into a family of peasants from Languedoc. In 1807–1813 he studied at the College of Vendôme, in 1816–1819 - at the Paris School of Law, and at the same time worked as a scribe for a notary; abandoned his legal career and devoted himself to literature.
Since 1823, he published a number of novels under various pseudonyms in the spirit of “frantic romanticism.” In 1825–28, B. was engaged in publishing, but failed.
In 1829, the first book signed with the name “Balzac” was published - the historical novel “The Chouans” (Les Chouans). Balzac's subsequent works: “Scenes of Private Life” (Scènes de la vie privée, 1830), the novel “The Elixir of Longevity” (L"Élixir de longue vie, 1830–31, a variation on the theme of the legend of Don Juan); the story Gobseck (Gobseck, 1830) attracted widespread attention from readers and critics. In 1831, Balzac published his philosophical novel “Shagreen Skin” and began the novel “La femme de trente ans” in the cycle “Naughty Stories” (Contes drolatiques, 1832–1837). ironically stylized Renaissance novella. The partly autobiographical novel Louis Lambert (Louis Lambert, 1832) and especially the later Seraphîta (1835) reflected B.'s fascination with the mystical concepts of E. Swedenborg and C. de Saint-Martin. His hope of getting rich has not yet been realized (since he is weighed down by a huge debt - the result of his unsuccessful business ventures), but his hope of becoming famous, his dream of conquering Paris and the world with his talent, has not been realized. Success did not turn Balzac's head, as it happened with many of his young contemporaries. . He continued to lead a hard working life, sitting at his desk for 15–16 hours a day; working until dawn, publishing three, four and even five, six books every year.
In those created in the first five to six years of it writing activity his works depict the most diverse areas of contemporary French life: the village, the province, Paris; various social groups: merchants, aristocracy, clergy; various social institutions: family, state, army. Huge number the artistic facts contained in these books required their systematization.
Innovation Balzac
The end of the 1820s and the beginning of the 1830s, when Balzac entered literature, was the period of greatest flowering of the work of romanticism during French literature. Great novel V European literature By the time Balzac arrived, he had two main genres: the novel of the individual - an adventurous hero (for example, Robinson Crusoe) or a self-absorbed, lonely hero (The Sorrows of Young Werther by W. Goethe) and a historical novel (Walter Scott).
Balzac departs from both the novel of personality and the historical novel of Walter Scott. He strives to show the “individualized type”, to give a picture of the whole society, the whole people, the whole of France. Not a legend about the past, but a picture of the present, artistic portrait bourgeois society is at the center of his creative attention.
The standard-bearer of the bourgeoisie is now a banker, not a commander; its shrine is the stock exchange, not the battlefield.
Not a heroic personality and not a demonic nature, not a historical act, but modern bourgeois society, France of the July Monarchy - this is the main literary theme era. In place of the novel, the task of which is to give in-depth experiences of the individual, Balzac puts a novel about social mores, in place historical novels - artistic history post-revolutionary France.
“Studies on Morals” unfolds the picture of France, depicts the life of all classes, all social conditions, all social institutions. The key to this story is money. Its main content is the victory of the financial bourgeoisie over the landed and tribal aristocracy, the desire of the entire nation to serve the bourgeoisie, to become related to it. The thirst for money is the main passion, the highest dream. The power of money is the only indestructible force: love, talent, family honor, family hearth, and parental feelings are submissive to it.
Balzac Honore de (1799 – 1850)
French writer. Born into a family of peasants from Languedoc.
Waltz's original surname was changed by his father, starting his career as an official. The particle “de” was added to the name by the son, claiming noble origin.
Between 1819 and 1824 Balzac published half a dozen novels under a pseudonym.
The publishing and printing business involved him in large debts. For the first time, under his own name, he published the novel “The Last Shuat.”
Period from 1830 to 1848 devoted to an extensive series of novels and stories known to the reading public as the “Human Comedy.” Balzac devoted all his strength to creativity, but he also loved social life with her amusements and travels.
Overwork from colossal work, problems in his personal life and the first signs of a serious illness overshadowed recent years writer's life. Five months before his death, he married Evelina Ganskaya, whose consent to the marriage Balzac had to wait for many years.
His most famous works- “Shagreen Skin”, “Gobsek”, “Unknown Masterpiece”, “Eugenia Grande”, “The Banker's House of Nucingen”, “Peasants”, “Cousin Pono”, etc.
French novelist, considered the father of the naturalistic novel, Honore de Balzac was born on May 20, 1799 in Tours (France). Honore de Balzac's father, Bernard François Balssa (some sources indicate Vals's surname), is a peasant who became rich during the revolution by buying and selling confiscated noble lands, and later became an assistant to the mayor of Tours. Having entered the service in the military supply department and finding himself among officials, he changed his “native” surname, considering it plebeian. At the turn of the 1830s. Honore, in turn, also modified his surname, arbitrarily adding the noble particle “de” to it, justifying this with an invention about his origins from the noble family of Balzac d’Entregues. Honore Balzac’s mother was 30 years younger than his father
which, in part, was the reason for her betrayal: the father of Honore's younger brother, Henri, was the owner of the castle.
The courtyard of the Collège Vendôme, where eight-year-old Honore was sent by his mother. Upbringing here was harsh. He will spend six years in this “dungeon of knowledge”, only meeting his parents twice during this time. Photo library of the Museums of Paris/Balzac House Museum/Spadem, 1995.
In 1807-1813, Honore studied at the college of Vendôme; in 1816-1819 - at the Paris School of Law, while serving as a clerk in a notary's office. The father sought to prepare his son for lawyering, but Honore decided to become a poet. At the family council, it was decided to give him two years to fulfill his dream. Honore de Balzac writes the drama "Cromwell", but the newly convened family council recognizes the work as worthless and the young man is denied financial assistance. This was followed by a period of material adversity. Literary career Balzac's work began around 1820, when he began publishing action-packed novels under various pseudonyms and composing morally descriptive "codes" of secular behavior.
Later, some of the first novels were published under the pseudonym Horace de Saint-Aubin. The period of anonymous creativity ended in 1829 after the publication of the novel “Chouans, or Brittany in 1799.” Honore de Balzac called the novel “Shagreen Skin” (1830) the “starting point” of his work. Since 1830, short stories from modern French life began to be published under the general title “Scenes of Private Life.”
In 1834 the writer decides to connect common heroes already written since 1829 and future works, combining them into an epic later called “The Human Comedy” (La comedie humaine).
Honoré de Balzac considered Moliere, Francois Rabelais and Walter Scott to be his main literary teachers.
From left to right: Victor Hugo, Eugene Sue, Alexandre Dumas and Honore de Balzac. "Condors of Thought and Style." Cartoon by Jérôme Patureau. Photo library of the Museums of Paris/Balzac House Museum/Spadem, 1995.
Twice the novelist tried to make a political career, nominating his candidacy for the Chamber of Deputies in 1832 and 1848, but failed both times. In January 1849, he also failed in the elections to the French Academy.
The writer was popular among women who were grateful to Honore for her emotional descriptions. His first love, Laura de Berni, who was a married woman, and the difference in their ages was twenty-two years, helped a lot in this.
Louise-Antoinette-Laure de Bernis, his first love, whom he called Dilecta. He felt both filial respect and the mad passion of a lover for her. Portrait by Van Gorp. Jean-Loup Charmet.
Honore de Balzac constantly received letters from his readers, and one of these letters changed his life. In 1832, he received a letter from the “Foreigner,” a Polish countess and Russian subject, Evelina Ganskaya, who eighteen years later became his wife.
Balzac bought a mansion on Rue Fortuné in anticipation of the arrival of Ganskaya, who finally agreed to become his wife. Photo library of the Museums of Paris/Balzac House Museum/Spadem, 1995.
Balzac's coffee pot. Photo library of the Museums of Paris/Balzac House Museum/Spadem, 1995.
But fate was not at all kind to the great writer, conqueror women's souls, Honore de Balzac, literally five months after his marriage, on August 18, 1850, while his wife was sleeping in the next room in their Parisian apartment, he died.
Balzac - catchphrases
This is how men are designed: they can resist the smartest arguments and cannot resist one single glance.
To say that it is impossible to always love the same woman is as meaningless as to say that a famous musician needs different violins to play different melodies.
He who can be her lover will not be a woman's friend.
All human skill is nothing but a mixture of patience and time.
To doubt is to lose power.
A woman who laughs at her husband cannot love him anymore.
Everything comes in due time for those who know how to wait.
They don’t hang their beliefs on the wall.
Circumstances change, principles never.
Slander is indifferent to nonentity.
The key to all science is the question mark.
To doubt God is to believe in him.
Our conscience is an infallible judge until we kill it.
A noble heart cannot be unfaithful.
Indifference to the fair sex in old age is a punishment for being too good at pleasing in youth.
Seeking variety in love is a sign of powerlessness.
We recognize as a person only one whose soul dreams in love as much about spiritual pleasure as about bodily pleasure.
Jealousy in a man consists of selfishness driven to hell, pride taken by surprise, and irritated false vanity.
A marriage cannot be happy if the spouses, before entering into a union, do not know each other’s morals, habits and characters perfectly.
Never provide services that are not asked for.
People are afraid of cholera, but wine is much more dangerous than it.
Envy is one of the most effective elements of hatred.
Cruelty and fear shake hands with each other.
Drinking the cup of pleasure to the bottom, we find more gravel than pearls.
Honoré de Balzac, French writer, “father of the modern European novel,” was born on May 20, 1799 in the city of Tours. His parents did not have noble origins: his father came from a peasant background with a good commercial streak, and later changed his surname from Balsa to Balzac. The particle “de”, indicating membership in the nobility, is also a later acquisition of this family.
The ambitious father saw his son as a lawyer, and in 1807 the boy, against his wishes, was sent to the College of Vendôme - educational institution with very strict rules. The first years of study turned into real torment for young Balzac; he was a regular in the punishment cell, then he gradually got used to it, and his internal protest resulted in parodies of teachers. Soon the teenager was overtaken by a serious illness, which forced him to leave college in 1813. The forecasts were the most pessimistic, but after five years the illness receded, allowing Balzac to continue his education.
From 1816 to 1819, living with his parents in Paris, he worked in a judge's office as a scribe and at the same time studied at the Paris School of Law, but did not want to connect his future with jurisprudence. Balzac managed to convince his father and mother that a literary career was exactly what he needed, and in 1819 he took up writing. In the period before 1824, the aspiring author published under pseudonyms, issuing one after another frankly opportunistic stories that did not have much artistic value novels, which he himself later defined as “pure literary disgusting,” trying to remember as rarely as possible.
The next stage of Balzac's biography (1825-1828) was associated with publishing and printing activities. His hopes of getting rich were not justified; moreover, huge debts appeared, which forced the failed publisher to pick up the pen again. In 1829, the reading public learned about the existence of the writer Honore de Balzac: the first novel, “The Chouans,” signed with his real name, was published, and in the same year it was followed by “The Physiology of Marriage” (1829), a manual written with humor for married people men. Both works did not go unnoticed, and the novel “Elixir of Longevity” (1830-1831) and the story “Gobsek” (1830) caused quite a wide resonance. 1830, the publication of “Scenes from Private Life” can be considered the beginning of work on the main literary work– a cycle of stories and novels called “The Human Comedy”.
For several years the writer worked as a freelance journalist, but until 1848 his main thoughts were devoted to writing works for the “Human Comedy,” which included a total of about a hundred works. Balzac worked on the schematic features of a large-scale canvas depicting the life of all social strata of contemporary France in 1834. He came up with the name for the cycle, which was replenished with more and more new works, in 1840 or 1841, and in 1842 the next edition was published with new title. Fame and honor outside his homeland came to Balzac during his lifetime, but he did not even think of resting on his laurels, especially since the amount of debt remaining after the failure publishing activities, was quite impressive. The tireless novelist, correcting the work once again, could significantly change the text and completely redraw the composition.
Despite his busy work, he found time for social entertainment, trips, including abroad, did not ignore earthly pleasures. In 1832 or 1833, he began an affair with Ewelina Hanska, a Polish countess who was not free at that time. The beloved gave Balzac a promise to marry him when she became a widow, but after 1841, when her husband died, she was in no hurry to keep it. Mental anguish, impending illness and enormous fatigue caused by many years of intense activity made the last years of Balzac’s biography not the happiest. His wedding with Ganskaya still took place - in March 1850, but in August the news of the writer’s death spread throughout Paris and then throughout Europe.
Balzac's creative heritage is huge and multifaceted, his talent as a narrator, realistic descriptions, ability to create dramatic intrigue, convey the most subtle impulses human soul placed him among the greatest prose writers of the century. His influence was experienced by both E. Zola, M. Proust, G. Flaubert, F. Dostoevsky, and prose writers of the 20th century.
