Why are Balzac's works related to each other? General characteristics of 19th century realism in France

Honoré de Balzac (French Honoré de Balzac [ɔnɔʁe də balˈzak]; May 20, 1799, Tours - August 18, 1850, Paris) - French writer, one of the founders of realism in European literature.

Balzac's largest work is the series of novels and stories “The Human Comedy,” which paints a picture of the life of contemporary French society. Balzac's work was very popular in Europe and, during his lifetime, earned him a reputation as one of the greatest prose writers of the 19th century. Balzac's works influenced the prose of Dickens, Dostoevsky, Zola, Faulkner and others.

Balzac's father became rich by buying and selling confiscated noble lands during the revolution, and later became an assistant to the mayor of Tours. No relation to the French writer Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac (1597-1654). Father Honore changed his last name and became Balzac, and later bought himself the particle “de”. Mother was the daughter of a Parisian merchant.

The father prepared his son to become a lawyer. In 1807-1813, Balzac 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; however, he abandoned his legal career and devoted himself to literature. The parents did not do much with their son. He was placed at the Collège Vendôme against his will. Meetings with family were prohibited there all year round, with the exception of the Christmas holidays. During the first years of his studies, he had to be in a punishment cell many times. In the fourth grade, Honore began to come to terms with school life, but did not stop ridiculing teachers... At the age of 14, he fell ill, and his parents took him home at the request of the college authorities. For five years Balzac was seriously ill; it was believed that there was no hope of recovery, but soon after the family moved to Paris in 1816, he recovered.

After 1823, he published several novels under various pseudonyms in the spirit of “frantic romanticism.” Balzac strove to follow literary fashion, and later he himself called these literary experiments “sheer literary swinishness” and preferred not to remember them. In 1825-1828 he tried to engage in publishing, but failed.

Balzac wrote a lot. The Human Comedy alone contains over ninety works. This is a real encyclopedia of bourgeois society, the whole world, created by the artist’s imagination in the image and likeness of the real world. Balzac has his own social hierarchy: noble and bourgeois dynasties, ministers and generals, bankers and criminals, notaries and prosecutors, priests and cocottes of all ranks, great writers and literary jackals, barricade fighters and police officers. There are about two thousand characters in The Human Comedy, many of them move from novel to novel, constantly returning to the reader’s field of view. But, despite such a variety of characters and situations, the theme of Balzac's works is always the same. He depicts the tragedy of the human personality under the yoke of the inexorable antagonistic laws of bourgeois society. This theme and the corresponding method of depiction are Balzac’s independent discovery, his real step forward in the artistic development of mankind. He understood the originality of his literary position. In the preface to the collection of his works of 1838, Balzac sets it out as follows: “The author expects other reproaches, among them there will be a reproach of immorality; but he has already clearly explained that he is obsessed with the obsession to describe society as a whole, as it is: with its virtuous, honorable, great, shameful sides, with the confusion of its mixed classes, with the confusion of principles, with its new needs and old contradictions... He thought that there was nothing more surprising left except the description of the great social disease, and it could only be described together with society, since the patient is the disease itself"

Realism and Balzac's "Human Comedy". Features of the writer's artistic style. “The Human Comedy” is a series of works by the French writer Honore de Balzac, compiled by himself from his 137 works and including novels with real, fantastic and philosophical plots depicting French society during the period of the Bourbon Restoration and the July Monarchy (1815-1848). The French writer Honore de Balzac (1799 - 1850) is the largest representative of critical realism (it is generally accepted that critical realism reveals the conditionality of the circumstances of a person’s life and his psychology by the social environment (novels by O. Balzac, J. Eliot) in Western European literature. “Human Comedy” , which, according to the brilliant writer’s plan, was to become the same encyclopedia of life that Dante’s “Divine Comedy” was for his time, unites about a hundred works. Balzac sought to capture “the entire social reality, without neglecting a single situation of human life.” " opens philosophical novel "Shagreen leather“, which was, as it were, a prelude to it. “Shagreen skin” is the starting point of my business,” wrote Balzac. Behind the allegories of Balzac's philosophical novel there was hidden a deep realistic generalization. The search for artistic generalization and synthesis determines not only the content, but also the composition of Balzac’s works. Many of them are built on the development of two plots of equal importance. In monetary relations, Balzac saw the “nerve of life” of his time, “the spiritual essence of the entire current society.” A new deity, a fetish, an idol - money distorted human lives, took children from parents, wives from husbands... Behind individual episodes of the story "Gobsek" there are all these problems, Anastasi, who pushed the body of her dead husband out of bed to find his business papers, was for Balzac the embodiment of destructive passions generated by monetary interests. The main feature of Balzac's portraits is their typicality and clear historical specification. Balzac wrote his work in defense of truly human relationships between people. But the world he saw around him showed only ugly examples. The novel "Eugenia Grande" was an innovative product precisely because it showed without embellishment "what such life is like." In his political views, Balzac was a supporter of the monarchy. By exposing the bourgeoisie, he idealized the French "patriarchal" nobility, which he considered unselfish. Balzac's contempt for bourgeois society led him, after 1830, to collaborate with the legitimist party - supporters of the so-called legitimate, that is, legitimate, dynasty of monarchs overthrown by the revolution. Balzac himself called this party disgusting. He was by no means a blind supporter of the Bourbons, but still took the path of defending this political program, hoping that France would be saved from the bourgeois “knights of profit” by an absolute monarchy and an enlightened nobility who were aware of their duty to the country. The political ideas of Balzac the legitimist were reflected in his work. In the preface to The Human Comedy, he even misinterpreted his entire work, declaring: “I write in the light of two eternal truths: monarchy and religion.” Balzac's work did not, however, turn into a presentation of legitimist ideas. This side of Balzac's worldview was overcome by his uncontrollable desire for truth.

16. Biography of Stendhal. Participation in Napoleonic campaigns. Treatise "On Love".

Biography of Stendhal

The treatise “On Love” is devoted to the analysis of the emergence and development of feelings. Here Stendhal offers a classification of the varieties of this passion. He sees passion-love, passion-ambition, passion-attraction, physical passion. The first two are especially significant. The first is true, the second was born of the hypocritical 19th century. Stendhal’s psychologism is built on the principle of correlating passions and reason, their struggle. In his hero, as in himself, two faces seemed to be united: one acts, and the other watches him. Observing, he makes the most important discovery, which he himself would not have been able to fully realize: “The soul has only states, it has no stable properties.” We are talking about the dialectic of the soul of Tolstoy’s character, but S., forcing his heroes to go through a painful path of knowledge, to change their judgments under the influence of circumstances, is already approaching Tolstoy’s type. Julien Sorel's inner monologues testify to his intense mental life. For S., a student of the Enlightenment, what interests a person more in the mental life is the movement of thought. The passions of the heroes are permeated with thoughts. True, sometimes Stendhal still reproduces the actions of the heroes under the influence of passion, for example, Julien’s attempt to kill Madame Renal. However, here Stendhal avoids exploring states. He sometimes conveys the subconscious actions of the characters, the decisions that unexpectedly came to them, which he also does not explore, but only indicates their existence. Stendhal's psychologism is a new stage in the development of literary research on personality. Its materialistic basis leads to the fact that the writer, familiar with the experience of Constant, the author of “Adolphe,” not only depicts the dual personality, the unexpectedness of the character’s actions, but also strives both to describe them himself and to enable the reader to independently assess the situation or character trait. Therefore, Stendhal draws actions, depicts the various reactions of a character or a number of characters to them, showing how different people are, how unexpected their reactions are. About what his means of expression are, in a letter to Balzac he noted: “I try to write 1 - truthfully, 2 - clearly about what is happening in a person’s heart.”

The formation of French realism, starting with the work of Stendhal, occurred in parallel with the further development of romanticism in France. It is significant that the first who supported and generally positively assessed the realistic searches of Stendhal and Balzac were Victor Hugo (1802-1885) and Georges Sand (1804-1876) - prominent representatives of French romanticism of the era of the Restoration and the Revolution of 1830.
In general, it should be especially emphasized that French realism, especially during its formation, was not a closed and internally complete system. It arose as a natural stage in the development of the world literary process, as an integral part of it, widely using and creatively interpreting the artistic discoveries of previous and contemporary literary movements and directions, in particular romanticism.
Stendhal’s treatise “Racine and Shakespeare”, as well as the preface to Balzac’s “Human Comedy”, outlined the basic principles of realism, which was rapidly developing in France. Revealing the essence of realistic art, Balzac wrote: “The task of art is not to copy nature, but to express it.” In the preface to “Dark Business,” the writer also put forward his concept of an artistic image (“type”), emphasizing, first of all, its difference from any real personality. Typicality, in his opinion, reflects the most important features of the general thing in a phenomenon, and for this reason alone “type” can only be “the creation of the artist’s creative activity.”
“The poetry of fact”, “the poetry of reality” became fertile ground for realist writers. The main difference between realism and romanticism also became clear. If romanticism in creating the otherness of reality was based on inner world writer, expressing the inner aspiration of the artist’s consciousness, directed towards the world of reality, then realism, on the contrary, was based on the realities of the surrounding reality. It was this significant difference between realism and romanticism that George Sand drew attention to in her letter to Honore de Balzac: “You take a person as he appears to your eyes, but I feel a calling in myself to portray him as I would like to see.”
Hence the different understanding by realists and romantics of the image of the author in a work of art. For example, in “The Human Comedy” the image of the author, as a rule, is not highlighted as a person at all. And this is the fundamental artistic decision of Balzac the realist. Even when the image of the author expresses his own point of view, he only states facts. The narrative itself, in the name of artistic verisimilitude, is emphatically impersonal: “Although Madame de Lange did not trust her thoughts to anyone, we have the right to assume...” (“Duchess de Lange”); “Perhaps this story brought him back to the happy days of his life...” (“Facino Cane”); “Each of these knights, if the data is accurate...” (“Old Maid”).
The French researcher of the “Human Comedy,” a contemporary of the writer A. Wurmser, believed that Honore de Balzac “can be called Darwin’s predecessor,” because “he develops the concept of the struggle for existence and natural selection.” In the writer’s works, the “struggle for existence” is the pursuit of material values, and “natural selection” is the principle according to which in this struggle the strongest wins and survives, the one in whom cold calculation kills all living human feelings.
At the same time, Balzac's realism, in its emphases, differs significantly from the realism of Stendhal. If Balzac, as the “secretary of French society,” “first of all paints its customs, morals and laws, not shying away from psychologism,” then Stendhal, as an “observer of human characters,” is first and foremost a psychologist.
The core of the composition of Stendhal's novels is invariably the story of one person, and this is where his favorite “memoir-biographical” narrative unfolding originates. In Balzac's novels, especially late period, the composition is “event-based”; it is always based on an incident, which unites all the characters, involving them in a complex cycle of actions, one way or another connected with this incident. Therefore, Balzac the narrator covers with his mind's eye vast spaces of social and moral life his heroes, getting to the bottom of the historical truth of his century, to those social conditions that shape the characters of his heroes.
The originality of Balzac's realism was most clearly manifested in the writer's novel “Père Goriot” and in the story “Gobsek,” which is related to the novel by some common characters.

Essay on literature on the topic: Realism of O de Balzac

Other writings:

But it is no coincidence that they say: Balzac’s realism turned out to be smarter than Balzac himself. A wise person is one who evaluates a person not according to his political views, but according to his moral qualities. And in the works of Balzac, thanks to the efforts to objectively depict life, we see honest republicans - Read More ......
The works of Balzac are those works to which a person will return more than once throughout his life and perceive them as something new and rediscovered for himself. According to Seneca, life is measured not by length, but by content. Apparently, the same criteria Read More......
Stendhal's work belongs to the first stage in the development of French critical realism. Stendhal brings into literature the fighting spirit and heroic traditions of the just finished revolution and Enlightenment. His connection with educators preparing their heads for the upcoming revolution can be observed in the works of Read More......
The writer, like his parents, spontaneously added the aristocratic particle “de” to his surname. Correspondence between O. de Balzac and E. Hanska covers five volumes. It was published under the general title “Letters to a Foreigner” (this is how she signed her first letters to the writer Read More ......
At one time, Dostoevsky heard a lot of reproaches addressed to him: why does he depict life in such sharp collisions, conflicts, even disasters, is he too cruel in his perception of reality, are there many elements of chance and Read More ... ...
There is always room for exploits in life. M. Gorky The formation and development of realism in Russian literature was undoubtedly influenced by trends arising in the general mainstream European literature. However, Russian realism differs significantly from French, English, German and in the time of its emergence, Read More......
The restored Bourbon monarchy collapsed in 1830. After the July Revolution, financiers, bankers, and money tycoons came to power in France. They placed a king on the throne. Louis Philippe, they distributed ministerial portfolios and stock exchange shares, they dictated laws and directed the political course Read More......
The novel “The Last Chouan, or Brittany in 1799” (in subsequent editions Balzac called it shorter - “Chouans”) was published in March 1829. Balzac published this work under his real name. He managed to convey the air in this novel Read More......

Realism of O de Balzac

The originality of realism as a method occurs in the period when romantics play a leading role in the literary process. Next to them, in the mainstream of romanticism, Merimee, Stendhal, and Balzac began their writing journey. All of them are close to the creative associations of the romantics and actively participate in the struggle against the classicists. It was the classicists of the first half of the 19th century, sponsored by the monarchical Bourbon government, who were the main opponents of the emerging realistic art in these years. Almost simultaneously published, the manifesto of the French romantics - “Preface” to the drama “Cromwell” by V. Hugo and Stendhal’s aesthetic treatise “Racine and Shakespeare” have a common critical focus, being two decisive blows to the already outdated set of laws of classicist art. In these most important historical and literary documents, both Hugo and Stendhal, rejecting the aesthetics of classicism, advocated for expanding the subject of depiction in art, for the abolition of forbidden subjects and themes, for presenting life in all its fullness and contradictions. Moreover, for both, the highest example that should be oriented toward when creating new art is the great master of the Renaissance, Shakespeare (perceived, however, by both Hugo and Stendhal in different ways). Finally, the first realists of France and the romantics of the 20s are brought together by a common socio-political orientation, revealed not only in the opposition to the Bourbon monarchy, but also in the critical perception of the bourgeois relations that were establishing themselves before their eyes.

After the revolution of 1830, which was a significant milestone in the development of France, the paths of realists and romantics diverged, which, in particular, was reflected in the polemics of the 30s (for example, Balzac’s critical reviews of Hugo’s drama “Ernani” and his article “Romantic Akathists” ). However, after 1830, contacts between yesterday's allies in the fight against the classicists remained. Remaining true to the fundamental methods of their aesthetics, the romantics will successfully master the experience of the realists (especially Balzac), supporting them in almost all the most important endeavors. Realists, in turn, will also be interested in following the work of the romantics, greeting each of their victories with constant satisfaction (this, in particular, was the relationship between J. Sand and Hugo with Balzac).

Realists of the second half of the 19th century will reproach their predecessors for the “residual romanticism” found in Mérimée, for example, in his cult of exoticism (the so-called exotic short stories), and in Stendhal for his predilection for depicting bright individuals and exceptional passions (“Italian Chronicles”). , Balzac’s craving for adventurous plots and the use of fantastic techniques in philosophical stories (“Shagreen Skin”). These reproaches are not without foundation, and this is one of the specific features - there is a subtle connection between realism and romanticism, which is revealed, in particular, in the inheritance of techniques or even themes and motifs characteristic of romantic art (the theme of lost illusions, the motif of disappointment).

The great realists see their task as the reproduction of reality as it is, in the knowledge of its internal laws that determine the dialectics and diversity of forms. “The historian itself was supposed to be French society; I could only be its secretary,” writes Balzac in the Preface. But an objective image is not a passive mirror reflection of this world, for sometimes, as Stendhal notes, “nature reveals unusual spectacles, sublime contrasts” and they may remain incomprehensible to the unconscious mirror. Taking up Stndahl's thought, Balzac argues that the task is not to copy nature, but to express it. That is why the most important of the attitudes - the reconstruction of reality - for Balzac, Stendhal, Mérimée does not exclude such techniques as allegory, fantasy, grotesque, symbolism.

Realism of the second half of the 19th century, represented by the work of Flaubert, differs from the realism of the first stage. A final break with the romantic tradition occurs, officially declaimed already in Madame Bovary (1856). And although the main object of depiction in art still remains bourgeois reality, the scale and principles of its depiction are changing. The bright individualities of the heroes of the novel of the 30s and 40s are replaced by ordinary people, not much remarkable. The multicolored world of truly Shakespearean passions, cruel fights, heartbreaking dramas, captured in Balzac’s “Human Comedy”, the works of Stendhal and Mérimée, gives way to a “mildew-colored world”, the most remarkable event of which is adultery.

Fundamental changes are noted, in comparison with the realism of the first stage, in the artist’s relationship with the world in which he chooses the image as an object. If Balzac, Merimee, Stendhal showed an ardent interest in the destinies of this world and constantly, according to Balzac, “felt the pulse of their era, saw its illnesses,” then Flaubert declares a fundamental detachment from the unacceptable reality for him, which he draws in his works. Obsessed with the idea of solitude in an ivory castle, the writer is chained to modernity, becoming a stern analyst and an objective judge. However, with all the paramount importance that critical analysis acquires, one of the most important problems of the great masters of realism remains the problem positive hero, because “vice is more spectacular...virtue, on the contrary, shows only unusually thin lines to the artist’s brushes.” Virtue is indivisible, but vice is manifold

The late 1820s and early 1830s, when Balzac entered literature, were the period of greatest flowering of Romanticism in French literature. The great novel in European literature at the time of Balzac had two main genres: the novel of personality - adventurous hero(“Robinson Crusoe” by D. Defoe) or a self-absorbed, lonely hero (“The Sorrows of Young Werther” by W. Goethe) and a historical novel (“Waverley” by W. Scott).

Realism is a direction that strives to depict reality. In his work, Balzac moves away from both the novel of personality and historical novel Walter Scott.

The formation of French realism, starting with the work of Stendhal, occurred in parallel with the further development of romanticism in France. It is significant that the first who supported and generally positively assessed the realistic searches of Stendhal and Balzac were Victor Hugo (1802-1885) and Georges Sand (1804-1876) - prominent representatives of French romanticism of the era of the Restoration and the Revolution of 1830.

In general, it should be especially emphasized that French realism, especially during its formation, was not a closed and internally complete system. It arose as a natural stage in the development of the world literary process, as an integral part of it, widely using and creatively interpreting the artistic discoveries of previous and contemporary literary movements and directions, in particular romanticism.

Stendhal's treatise "Racine and Shakespeare", as well as the preface to Balzac's "Human Comedy" outlined the basic principles of realism, which was rapidly developing in France. Revealing the essence of realistic art, Balzac wrote: “The task of art is not to copy nature, but to express it.” In the preface to “Dark Business,” the writer also put forward his concept of an artistic image (“type”), emphasizing, first of all, its difference from any real personality. Typicality, in his opinion, reflects the most important features of the general thing in a phenomenon, and for this reason alone “type” can only be “the creation of the artist’s creative activity.”

on the contrary, he started from the realities of the surrounding reality. It was this significant difference between realism and romanticism that George Sand drew attention to in her letter to Honore de Balzac: “You take a person as he appears to your eyes, but I feel a calling within myself to portray him as I would like to see him.”

Hence the different understanding by realists and romantics of the image of the author in a work of art. And this is the fundamental artistic decision of Balzac the realist.

The work of Balzac.

Honoré de Balzac (May 20, 1799, Tours - August 18, 1850, Paris) - French writer. Real name - Honore Balzac, the particle “de” means belonging to noble family, began to be used around 1830.

In 1829, the first book signed with Balzac’s name was published: “The Chouans”. The following year he wrote seven books, among them Family World, Gobsek, which attracted wide attention from readers and critics. In 1831 he published his philosophical novel “Shagreen Skin” and began the novel “A Woman of Thirty.” These two books elevate Balzac high above his literary contemporaries.

1832 - record for fertility: Balzac publishes nine complete works, III and IV chapters of his masterpiece: “A Woman of Thirty” and triumphantly enters literature. Readers, critics and publishers pounce on each of his new books. If his hope of becoming rich has not yet been realized (since he is burdened by a huge debt - the result of his unsuccessful commercial ventures), then his hope of becoming famous, his dream of conquering Paris and the world with his talent, has been realized. Success did not turn Balzac's head, as it did with many of his young contemporaries. He continues to lead a hard working life, sitting at his desk for 15-16 hours a day; Working until dawn, he publishes three, four and even five or six books every year. However, one should not think that Balzac wrote with particular ease. He rewrote and revised many of his works.

The works (over thirty) created in the first five or six years of his systematic writing activity depict the most diverse areas of contemporary French life: the village, the province, Paris; various social groups. The huge amount of artistic facts contained in these books required systematization. Artistic analysis had to give way to artistic synthesis. In 1834, Balzac conceived the idea of creating a multi-volume work - a “picture of morals” of his time, a huge work, which he later entitled “The Human Comedy”. According to Balzac, The Human Comedy was supposed to be artistic history and the artistic philosophy of France as it developed after the revolution.

Balzac worked on this work throughout his entire subsequent life; he included most of the already written works in it, and revised them specifically for this purpose. He outlined this huge literary publication in the following form:

Balzac reveals his plan in the following way: “The “study of morals” gives the whole of social reality, without omitting a single situation in human life, not a single type, not a single male or female character, not a single profession, not a single form of life, not a single social group, not a single one French region, no childhood, no old age, no adulthood, no politics, no law, no military life. The basis is the history of the human heart, the history of social relations. Not made-up facts, but what happens everywhere.”

Having established the facts, Balzac proposes to show their reasons. The Inquiry into Morals will be followed by the Philosophical Inquiries. In “A Study of Morals” Balzac depicts the life of society and gives “typical individuals”; in “philosophical studies” he judges society and gives “individualized types”. The establishment of facts (“Studies on Morals”) and the clarification of their causes (“Philosophical Studies”) will be followed by a justification of the principles by which life should be judged. “Analytical Research” will serve this purpose. Thus, man, society, humanity will be described, judged, analyzed in a work that will represent the “Thousand and One Nights” of the West.

The formation of French realism, starting with the work of Stendhal, occurred in parallel with further development in France of Romanticism. It is significant that the first who supported and generally positively assessed the realistic searches of Stendhal and Balzac were Victor Hugo (1802-1885) and Georges Sand (1804-1876) - prominent representatives of French romanticism of the era of the Restoration and the Revolution of 1830.

In general, it should be especially emphasized that French realism, especially during its formation, was not a closed and internally complete system.

It arose as a natural stage in the development of the world literary process, as an integral part of it, widely using and creatively interpreting the artistic discoveries of previous and contemporary literary movements and directions, in particular romanticism.

Stendhal’s treatise “Racine and Shakespeare”, as well as the preface to Balzac’s “Human Comedy”, outlined the basic principles of realism, which was rapidly developing in France. Revealing the essence of realistic art, Balzac wrote: “The task of art is not to copy nature, but to express it.” In the preface to “Dark Business,” the writer put forward his concept artistic image(“type”), emphasizing, first of all, its difference from any other real personality.

Typicality, in his opinion, reflects the most important features of the general thing in a phenomenon, and for this reason alone “type” can only be “the creation of the artist’s creative activity.”

“The poetry of fact”, “the poetry of reality” became fertile ground for realist writers. The main difference between realism and romanticism also became clear. If romanticism, in creating the otherness of reality, started from the inner world of the writer, expressing the inner aspiration of the artist’s consciousness, aimed at the world of reality, then realism, on the contrary, started from the realities of the surrounding reality. It was this significant difference between realism and romanticism that George Sand drew attention to in her letter to Honore de Balzac: “You take a person as he appears to your eyes, but I feel a calling in myself to portray him as I would like to see.”

Hence the different understanding by realists and romantics of the image of the author in work of art. For example, in “The Human Comedy” the image of the author, as a rule, is not highlighted as a person at all. And this is the fundamental artistic decision of Balzac the realist. Even when the image of the author expresses his own point of view, he only states facts.

The narrative itself, in the name of artistic verisimilitude, is emphatically impersonal: “Although Madame de Lange did not trust her thoughts to anyone, we have the right to assume...” (“Duchess de Lange”); “Perhaps this story brought him back to the happy days of his life...” (“Facino Cane”); “Each of these knights, if the data is accurate...” (“Old Maid”).

The French researcher of the “Human Comedy,” a contemporary of the writer A. Wurmser, believed that Honore de Balzac “can be called Darwin’s predecessor,” because “he develops the concept of the struggle for existence and natural selection.” In the writer’s works, the “struggle for existence” is the pursuit of material values, and “natural selection” is the principle according to which in this struggle the strongest wins and survives, the one in whom cold calculation kills all living human feelings.

At the same time, Balzac's realism, in its emphases, differs significantly from the realism of Stendhal. If Balzac, as the “secretary of French society,” “first of all paints its customs, morals and laws, not shying away from psychologism,” then Stendhal, as an “observer of human characters,” is first and foremost a psychologist.

The core of the composition of Stendhal's novels is invariably the story of one person, and this is where his favorite “memoir-biographical” narrative unfolding originates. In Balzac’s novels, especially of the late period, the composition is “event-based”; it is always based on an incident, which unites all the characters, involving them in a complex cycle of actions, one way or another connected with this incident. Therefore, Balzac the narrator covers with his mind's eye the vast spaces of the social and moral life of his heroes, getting to the bottom of the historical truth of his century, to those social conditions that shape the characters of his heroes.

The originality of Balzac's realism was most clearly manifested in the writer's novel “Père Goriot” and in the story “Gobsek,” which is related to the novel by some common characters.

(No Ratings Yet)

Each of us becomes acquainted with the works of Honore Balzac at different ages. That's why they are perceived differently. Some people imagine shagreen skin like a child and perceive the work as a fairy tale from their grandmother’s lips, while others imagine the life of French society already in their teenage years. But the works of Balzac are those works to which a person will turn […]...
Born in the ancient French city of Tours. As a sixteen-year-old boy, Balzac came to Paris to study law. The young man was unable to study law for a long time: he realized his purpose and declared that he wanted to become a writer. To begin with, he tried himself in the field of theater. Balzac's first play, Oliver Cromwell, was a failure when staged. The angry father deprived his son of moral and material support. […]...
Small in volume, written in the form of a story within a story, the story “Gobsek” is directly related to the novel “Père Goriot”. In this story we again meet some of the “returning heroes” of Honore de Balzac’s “Human Comedy”. Among them are the Countess de Resto, the eldest daughter of Father Goriot, as well as the moneylender Gobsek and the lawyer Derville, who are mentioned in the novel “Father Goriot”. […]...
Each of us becomes acquainted with the works of Honore Balzac at different ages. That's why they are perceived differently. After all, it is possible to comprehend all the complexities of human life only with time. However, Balzac’s “Human Comedy” belongs to those works of human genius that concern, first of all, eternal values. “The Human Comedy” by Honoré de Balzac was and still remains barely [...]
If romanticism began with theory, then the path to the formation of classical realism was different. The term itself (from the Latin “bodily”, “concrete”, “material”, “material”) will appear only at the end of the 19th century, when realism had already reached the heights of its development. Great realists of the 19th century (Stendhal, Balzac, Dickens, Thackeray) did not call themselves realists. There is a problem related to the timing of the emergence of realism. When he […]...
Honore de Balzac is a French novelist, born in the town of Tours. Balzac is one of the great masters of novels. Belonging to a noble family, he himself later added the particle “de” to his name. Without taking care of the child’s education in childhood, his parents sent him to a gymnasium in Tours and then to the College of Vendôme, where he was a weak student, [...]
Honore de Balzac was born on May 20, 1799 in Tours. His grandfather, a farmer, had the surname Balsa, but his father, having become an official, changed it to the aristocratic one - Balzac. From 1807 to 1813, Balzac studied at the College of Vendôme, and it was here that his love for literature manifested itself. Having moved with his father to Paris in 1814, [...]
Realism is a literary and artistic movement that finally took shape around the middle of the 19th century. and developed the principles of analytical understanding of reality and its life-like representation in a work of art. Realism revealed the essence of life phenomena through the depiction of heroes, situations and circumstances, “taken from reality itself.” Writers of this direction explored external (specific socio-historical) and internal (psychological) factors of the events they described, […]...
Stendhal's work belongs to the first stage in the development of French critical realism. Stendhal brings into literature the fighting spirit and heroic traditions of the just finished revolution and Enlightenment. His connection with the enlighteners who are preparing their heads for the upcoming revolution can be observed both in the writer’s work and in his philosophy and aesthetics. In my understanding of art and the role of the artist [...]
Having finished the novel “Père Goriot” in 1834, Balzac came to a fundamentally important decision: he decided to create a grandiose artistic panorama of the life of French society in the post-revolutionary period, consisting of interconnected novels, novellas and short stories. For this purpose, he includes previously written works, after appropriate processing, in “The Human Comedy” - a unique epic cycle, concept and title […]...
The story “Gobsek” was written in 1830. Later, in 1835, Balzac edited it and included it in the “Human Comedy”, connecting it with the novel “Père Goriot” using the so-called “transitional character”. Thus, the beautiful Countess Anastasi de Resto, one of the debtors of the moneylender Gobsek, turns out to be the daughter of a bankrupt manufacturer, the “noodle maker” Goriot. Both in the story and in the novel [...]
“Human Comedy” by Balzac. Ideas, concept, implementation The monumental set of works by Honore de Balzac, united by a common concept and title - “The Human Comedy”, consists of 98 novels and short stories and is a grandiose history of the morals of France in the second quarter of the 19th century. It represents a kind of social epic in which Balzac described the life of society: the process of formation and enrichment of the French bourgeoisie, the penetration […]...
The first work created according to the general plan of the epic, the novel “Père Goriot” (1834), was a great success among readers. This is perhaps the most main novel Balzac. And because here for the first time several dozen characters meet, who will then travel through the pages of “The Human Comedy”; and because the plot of subsequent events is created here; and because the plot centers on a typical [...]
In 1831, the novel “Shagreen Skin” was published, which brought Honore de Balzac real fame. Shagreen - the fantastic skin of an onager donkey - has become the same symbol in the imagination of readers as fairy-tale images of living and dead water. Fantastic elements were intertwined with a realistic story about the young scientist Raphael, who tried to conduct experiments, overcoming his shortcomings. Driven into a dead end, [...]
The principle of cross-cutting characters. Honore Balzac is the son of a notary who became rich during the Napoleonic wars. His novels became, as it were, the standard of realism of the first half of the 19th century. Writer of the bourgeoisie, master of a new life. That’s why he turned away from V. Hugo’s statement that “reality in art is not reality in life,” and saw the task of his great work in showing not […]...
Laura d'Abrantes (née Permon) (1784-1838), Balzac's lover, "A Woman Abandoned" was dedicated to Laura d'Abrantes in August 1835. Balzac apparently met the Duchess d'Abrantes, the widow of General Junot, in 1829 at Versailles. Not accepted at the Bourbon court and not respected in society, the duchess was hopelessly mired in debt. She's peddling her memoirs. Soon she is without [...]
The most perfect examples from Balzac are the novels “Lost Illusions” and “The Peasants”. In these works, society itself truly becomes the historian. In “Lost Illusions,” for the first time, the writer and the literature of that time began to see the “self-movement” of society: in the novel they began to live independently, showing their needs, their essence, and the most diverse social strata. The provincial bourgeoisie, represented by the Cuente brothers and Father Sechard, was able to […]...
There is always room for exploits in life. M. Gorky The formation and development of realism in Russian literature was undoubtedly influenced by trends emerging in the general mainstream of European literature. However, Russian realism differs significantly from French, English, German both in the time of its emergence, and in the pace of development, and in structure, and in its significance in the national public life. […]...
The image of a stingy person and a hoarder is not new in world literature. A similar type is depicted in the drama “The Merchant of Venice” by W. Shakespeare in the comedy “The Miser” by J. B. Moliere. The author was led to the creation of the image of Gobsek by observations of the life of bourgeois society; certain moments of the story are autobiographical. Balzac's hero studies at the Faculty of Law at the Sorbonne and works as a clerk in a solicitor's office, where […]...
The novel “The Last Chouan, or Brittany in 1799” (in subsequent editions Balzac called it shorter - “Chouans”) was published in March 1829. Balzac published this work under his real name. He managed to convey in this novel both the air of the era and the colors of the area. The writer found himself and entered a time of creative maturity. In 1830 […]...
Honore Balzac entered world literature as an outstanding realist writer. Balzac was the son of a petty bourgeois, the grandson of a peasant; he did not receive the upbringing and education that nobles give their children (the particle “de” was assigned to them). The writer set the main goal of his work “to reproduce the features of the grandiose face of his century through the depiction of the characters of its representatives.” He created hundreds, thousands […]...
MEETING ON THE WAY (1972) Anna Zegers (1900-1983) is a striking example of a writer in her work socialist realism, constantly searching for and experiencing new forms of aesthetic exploration of reality. Over the years, she turned to the parable form of storytelling (for example, “Three Trees”, 1940), and used various elements of fantasy, allegories, and various symbolism. Having introduced into the literature of the GDR classical examples of wide-ranging epic artistic canvases (“The Dead [...]
REALISM is a creative method and literary direction in Russian and foreign literature XIX-XX centuries. The main feature of realism is social analysis, artistic understanding of the interactions between the individual and society, the desire to artistically master the patterns of social development. Therefore, realism is especially characterized by the depiction of typical characters and typical circumstances (see Type, Typical). A variety of writers belonged to realism, so artistic [...]
Reference. Zulma Carro (1796-1889) – friend of Balzac. The novel “The Bankers' House of Nucingen” was dedicated to her in 1838. In the dedication, the following lines are addressed to her: “To you, whose sublime and incorruptible mind is a treasure for friends, to you, who for me is both the public and the most indulgent of sisters.” When the writer’s short relationship with the Duchess d’Abrantes was just beginning, [...]
Philosophical sketches give an idea - the most general - about the author’s attitude to creativity (“Unknown Masterpiece”), passions and the human mind (“Search for the Absolute”), reflections on the “social mover of all events” (“Shagreen Skin”). Scenes of customs in the forms of life itself are recreated reality, revealing her true nature. Due to his biased portrayal of modernity, critics often called Balzac an immoral writer, to which [...]
The image of the miser and hoarder is not new in world literature. A similar type is depicted in the drama “The Merchant of Venice” by W. Shakespeare and in the comedy “The Miser” by J. B. Moliere. The author was led to the creation of the image of Gobsek by observations of the life of bourgeois society; certain moments of the story are autobiographical. Balzac's hero studies at the Faculty of Law at the Sorbonne and works as a clerk in a lawyer's office, […]...
On May 20, 1799, in the ancient French city of Tours, on the street of the Italian Army, in the house of the assistant mayor and trustee of charitable institutions, Bernard-Frarcois, who changed his plebeian surname Balsa to the noble manner of de Balzac, a boy was born. The mother of the future writer, Laura Salambier, who came from a family of wealthy businessmen, named the baby Honore and... entrusted him with a wet nurse. Balzac recalled: […]...
In “Père Goriot,” completed in forty days of frantic work, so much content was concentrated that its three main characters seemed cramped in the relatively small space of this novel. A former flour merchant who passionately and blindly loves his two daughters; they sold him crumbs of their daughter's attention while he could still pay, then threw him out; they tormented him “like […]...
The authors of the underground (or “underground”) set the requirements for themselves. In choosing topics and searching for a new aesthetic, they did not have to adapt to the requirements of editors. The writers have one very significant thing in common. They are sharply polemical in relation to Soviet reality and to all, without exception, recommendations of socialist realism on how to portray this reality, first of all […]...
The originality of Dickens's realism, for example, in comparison with Flaubert's realism, lies in the attempt to combine the ethical and aesthetic ideals of the writer into some kind of organic whole. This desire of the writer is due, first of all, to the originality of the formation and development of realism in England. If in French literature realism took shape as an independent movement after the era of romanticism, then in English literature romanticism and […]...
Chapter 1. Characteristics of European literature of the 17th century 1.2. Literary process: Renaissance realism of the 17th century continues to implement Renaissance traditions in literature in a changing historical painting peace. Renaissance realism did not form into an independent movement in the 17th century, but it had a significant influence on the artistic worldview of writers of Baroque and Classicism. In contrast to the humanism of the Renaissance, Renaissance realism [...]
Balzac is one of the greatest novelists of the 19th century. The most important feature of his work is that he wrote not just a large number of novels, but also the history of an entire society. Characters his works - doctors, solicitors, statesmen, moneylenders, society ladies, courtesans - look in such a way that the tangibility and authenticity of the world created by Balzac is created. In 1834 […]...
Features of a realistic story in Balzac’s work “Gobsek”. Question – The idea of writing “Gobsek”. According to the author’s plan, the story “Gobsek” was to be included in the large cycle of novels “The Human Comedy”, on which Honore de Balzac worked throughout his life. By creating “The Human Comedy,” the author sought to depict contemporary society as it was. This determined the style of writing stories and […]...
Reference. Henriette de Castries (1796-1861), marquise, then duchess, beloved of Balzac, “The Illustrious Gaudissart” (1843) is dedicated to her. If we take Balzac's own testimony on faith, his story with Madame de Castries was a tragedy that left him with incurable wounds. “I hate Madame de Castries, she ruined my life by not giving me a new loan,” he wrote. And to the unknown correspondent [...]
Balzac is a genius, Balzac is a titan, the Prometheus of literature. The personality of the great French writer constantly excites the imagination of descendants. What was the creator of “The Human Comedy” really like? What gave him the impetus for creativity? How did Balzac manage under the constant hail of everyday adversity, under the burden of ever-growing financial debts, personal troubles, in an atmosphere of offensive misunderstanding on the part of a significant part of the critics […]...
During these same years, the idea of the purpose of creativity also changed. This means that they inevitably change and artistic media, the nature of the image. In Balzac's prose, from year to year, there was less and less space for convention, symbolism, and fantasy; there became more and more lifelikeness, precise details of everyday life, and social authenticity. French writers The next generation, and above all Émile Zola, will name such a literary method based on [...]
The story “Gobsek” is a very important link in the ideological and thematic core of the entire “Human Comedy”. The story “Gobsek” is more comedic from the outside than other works of Balzac: in terms of scope vital material, but also more symptomatic, demonstrative, “visual”. It contains a concentrated characteristic of stinginess, and not only realistically, everyday, but, above all, psychological. Main character story Gobsek - millionaire, moneylender, one of the shadow […]...
The description of events in Lermontov's novels and other works became the subject of in-depth research during the poet's lifetime. Confirmation of this is two large articles by V. G. Belinsky (1840-1841), dedicated to the novel “A Hero of Our Time” and Lermontov’s lyrics. Many scientists have studied Lermontov’s work; hundreds of articles and books are dedicated to him. It is interesting that since Belinsky noted [...]
These words belong to one of Honore Balzac’s heroes - Gobsek. Gobsek is the hero of the short story of the same name. His name became a household name, as a symbol of the unbridled desire for hoarding. The passion for hoarding led Gobsek to near insanity at the end of his life. Lying on his deathbed, he hears gold coins rolling somewhere nearby and tries to find them. “Zhivoglot”, “bill man”, “golden [...]
DEPICTION OF THE CORRUPTIONAL POWER OF MONEY IN HONORE DE BALZAC’S NOVEL “FATHER GORIO” “All his works form a single book, full of life, bright, deep, where our entire modern civilization moves and operates, embodied in very real images, but shrouded in confusion and horror, wrote V. Hugo about “The Human Comedy” by O. de Balzac. And further: – An amazing book that [...]

We move on to a new chapter in the literature of the 19th century, to French realism XIX century. To French realism, which began its activity somewhere on the threshold of the 1830s. We will talk about Balzac, Stendhal, Prosper Merime. This is a special galaxy of French realists - these three writers: Balzac, Stendhal, Merimee. They by no means exhaust the history of realism in French literature. They just started this literature. But they are a special phenomenon. I would call them that: the great realists of the romantic era. Think about this definition. The entire era, until the thirties and even the forties, mainly belongs to romanticism. But against the background of romanticism, writers of a completely different orientation, a realistic orientation, appear. There is still controversy in France. French historians very often consider Stendhal, Balzac, and Merimee as romantics. For them, these are romantics of a special type. And they themselves... For example, Stendhal. Stendhal considered himself a romantic. He wrote essays in defense of romanticism. But one way or another, these three that I named - Balzac, Stendhal, and Merimee - are realists of a very special nature. It shows in every possible way that they are the offspring of a romantic era. Without being romantics, they are still the creations of the romantic era. Their realism is very special, different from the realism of the second half of the 19th century. In the second half of the 19th century we are dealing with a purer culture of realism. Clean, free from impurities and impurities. We see something similar in Russian literature. It is clear to everyone what the difference is between the realism of Gogol and Tolstoy. And the main difference is that Gogol is also a realist of the romantic era. A realist who arose against the background of the romantic era, in its culture. By the time of Tolstoy, romanticism had wilted and left the stage. The realism of Gogol and Balzac was equally nourished by the culture of romanticism. And it is often very difficult to draw any kind of dividing line.

One should not think that romanticism existed in France, then it left the stage and something else came. It was like this: romanticism existed, and at some time realists came onto the scene. And they didn't kill romanticism. Romanticism was still played out on stage, although Balzac, Stendhal, and Merimee existed.

So, the first one I will talk about is Balzac. Great writer France Honore de Balzac. 1799-1850 - dates of his life. This is the most grandiose writer, perhaps the most significant writer that France has ever produced. One of the main figures of literature of the 19th century, a writer who left extraordinary traces in the literature of the 19th century, a writer of enormous prolificacy. He left behind hordes of novels. A great worker of literature, a man who worked tirelessly on manuscripts and proofs. A night worker who spent whole nights in a row working on the layout of his books. And this enormous, unheard-of productivity - it partly killed him, this night work on typographic sheets. His life was short. He worked with all his strength.

He generally had this manner: he did not finish manuscripts. But the real finishing for him already began in the galleys, in the layout. Which, by the way, is impossible in modern conditions, because now there is a different way of typing. And then, with manual typing, this was possible.

So, this work on manuscripts, mixed with black coffee. Nights with black coffee. When he died, his friend Théophile Gautier wrote in a remarkable obituary: Balzac died, killed by the number of cups of coffee he drank at night.

But what’s remarkable is that he was not only a writer. He was a man of very intense life. He was passionate about politics, political struggle, and social life. Traveled a lot. He was engaged, though always unsuccessfully, but with great ardor he was engaged in commercial affairs. Tried to be a publisher. At one time he set out to develop silver mines in Syracuse. Collector. He collected a magnificent collection of paintings. And so on, and so on. A man of a very broad and unique life. Without this circumstance, he would not have had the food for his vast novels.

He was a man of the most humble origins. His grandfather was a simple farmer. My father had already become a popular man and was an official.

Balzac - this is one of his weaknesses - was in love with the aristocracy. He would probably exchange many of his talents for good birth. The grandfather was simply Balsa, a purely peasant surname. My father had already started calling himself Balzac. "Ak" is a noble ending. And Honoré arbitrarily added the particle “de” to his last name. So from Bals, after two generations, de Balzac turned out.

Balzac was a huge innovator in literature. This is a man who discovered new territories in literature that had never been truly explored by anyone before him. In what area did he primarily innovate? Balzac created a new theme. Of course, everything in the world has predecessors. Nevertheless, Balzac created a completely new theme. His thematic field has never been treated with such breadth and boldness by anyone before him.

What was this new topic? How to define it, almost unprecedented in literature on such a scale? I would say this: Balzac's new theme is the material practice of modern society. On some modest domestic scale, material practice has always entered into literature. But the fact is that in Balzac material practice is presented on a colossal scale. And incredibly diverse. This is the world of production: industry, agriculture, trade (or, as they preferred to say under Balzac, commerce); any kind of acquisition; creation of capitalism; the history of how people make money; history of wealth, history of monetary speculation; notary office where transactions are made; all kinds of modern careers, the struggle for life, the struggle for existence, the struggle for success, for material success above all. This is the content of Balzac's novels.

I said that, to some extent, all these themes had been developed in literature before, but never on Balzac’s scale. All of France, contemporary to him, creating material values - all of this France was rewritten by Balzac in his novels. Plus also political and administrative life. He strives for encyclopedicism in his novels. And when he realizes that some industry modern life has not yet been displayed to him, he immediately rushes to fill in the gaps. Court. The trial is not yet in his novels - he is writing a novel about the courts. There is no army - a novel about the army. Not all provinces are described - missing provinces are introduced into the novel. And so on.

Over time, he began to introduce all his novels into a single epic and gave it the name “Human Comedy.” Not a random name. The “human comedy” was supposed to cover the entire French life, starting (and this was especially important for him) from its lowest manifestations: agriculture, industry, trade - and rising higher and higher...

Balzac has appeared in literature, like all people of this generation, since the 1820s. His real heyday was in the thirties, like the romantics, like Victor Hugo. They walked side by side. The only difference is that Victor Hugo far outlived Balzac. It’s as if everything I said about Balzac separates him from romanticism. Well, what did the romantics care about industry, about trade? Many of them disdained these items. It is difficult to imagine a romantic for whom the main nerve is trade as such, for whom merchants, sellers, and company agents would be the main characters. And with all this, Balzac in his own way gets closer to the romantics. He was highly characterized by the romantic idea that art exists as a force fighting reality. Like a force competing with reality. The Romantics saw art as a competition with life. Moreover, they believed that art stronger than life: Art wins this competition. Art takes away from life everything that lives life, according to the romantics. In this regard, the short story of the remarkable American romantic Edgar Allan Poe is significant. This sounds a little strange: American romanticism. Where romanticism doesn't belong is America. However, in America there was a romantic school and there was such a wonderful romantic as Edgar Allan Poe. He has a short story, “The Oval Portrait.” This is the story of how one young artist began to draw his young wife, with whom he was in love. They started making an oval portrait of her. And the portrait was a success. But here's what happened: the further the portrait moved, the clearer it became that the woman with whom the portrait was being painted was withering and wasting away. And when the portrait was ready, the artist’s wife died. The portrait began to live, and the living woman died. Art has conquered life, taken away all the strength from life; absorbed all her strength. And it canceled life, made it unnecessary.

Balzac had this idea of competition with life. Here he is writing his epic, The Human Comedy. He writes it in order to cancel reality. All of France will turn into his novels. There are famous jokes about Balzac, very typical jokes. His niece came to visit him from the provinces. He, as always, was very busy, but went out with her for a walk in the garden. He was writing “Eugene Grande” at that time. She told him, this girl, about some uncle, auntie... He listened to her very impatiently. Then he said: enough, let's get back to reality. And he told her the plot of “Eugenia Grande.” This was called a return to reality.

Now the question is: why was all this huge theme of modern material practice adopted in literature by Balzac? Why wasn’t it in literature before Balzac?

You see, there is such a naive view, which our criticism, unfortunately, still adheres to: as if absolutely everything that exists can and should be represented in art. Anything can be the theme of art and all arts. They tried to depict the meeting of the local committee in ballet. The local committee is a respectable phenomenon - why shouldn’t the ballet depict a meeting of the local committee? Serious political topics are developed in puppet theater. They lose all seriousness. In order for this or that phenomenon of life to ENTER art, certain conditions are needed. This is not done in a direct way at all. How do they explain why Gogol began to portray officials? Well, there were officials, and Gogol began to portray them. But before Gogol there were officials. This means that the mere presence of a fact does not mean that this fact can become a topic of literature.

I remember once I came to the Writers' Union. And there is a huge announcement hanging there: The Union of Counter Workers is announcing a competition for the best play from the life of counter workers. In my opinion, it is impossible to write a good play about the life of counter workers. And they believed: we exist, therefore, a play can be written about us. I exist, therefore I can be made into art. And this is not at all true. I think that Balzac with his new themes could have appeared precisely at this time, only in the 1820-1830s, during the era of the unfolding of capitalism in France. In the post-revolutionary era. A writer like Balzac in the 18th century is unthinkable. Although in the 18th century there was agriculture, industry, trade, etc. There were notaries and merchants, and if they were depicted in literature, it was usually under a comic sign. But in Balzac they are expressed in the most serious sense. Let's take Moliere. When Moliere portrays a merchant or a notary, he is a comedic character. But Balzac has no comedy. Although, for special reasons, he called his entire epic “The Human Comedy.”

So, I ask why this sphere, this huge sphere of material practice, why does it become the property of literature in this particular era? And the answer is this. Of course, the whole point is in those revolutions, in that social revolution and in those individual revolutions that the revolution produced. The revolution removed all kinds of shackles, all kinds of forced guardianship, all kinds of regulations from the material practice of society. This was the main content of the French Revolution: the struggle against all the forces that limit the development of material practice and hold it back.

In fact, imagine how France lived before the revolution. Everything was under state supervision. Everything was controlled by the state. The industrialist had no independent rights. The merchant who produced cloth was prescribed by the state what type of cloth he should produce. There was a whole army of overseers, government controllers, who ensured that these conditions were observed. Industrialists could only produce what was provided for by the state. In quantities provided by the state. Let's say you couldn't develop production indefinitely. Before the revolution, you were told that your enterprise should exist on a strictly defined scale. How many pieces of cloth you can throw into the market - this was all prescribed. The same applied to trade. Trade was regulated.

Well, what about farming? Agriculture was serf farming.

The revolution abolished all this. It gave industry and trade complete freedom. She freed the peasants from serfdom. In other words, the French Revolution introduced the spirit of freedom and initiative into the material practice of society. And therefore material practice began to sparkle with life. She acquired independence, individuality and therefore was able to become a property of art. For Balzac, material practice is imbued with the spirit of powerful energy and personal freedom. Behind the material practice, people are visible here. Personalities. Free individuals guiding it. And in this area, which seemed to be hopeless prose, a kind of poetry now appears.

Only that which comes out of the realm of prose, from the realm of prosaism, in which poetic meaning appears, can enter literature and art. Some phenomenon becomes the property of art because it exists with poetic content.

And the individuals themselves, these heroes of material practice, changed a lot after the revolution. Merchants, industrialists - after the revolution they are completely different people. New practice, free practice requires initiative. First of all and most of all - initiatives. Free material practice requires talent from its heroes. You have to be not only an industrialist, but a talented industrialist.

And you look - these heroes of Balzac, these millionaires, for example old Grande - after all, these are talented individuals. Grande does not inspire sympathy for himself, but he is a big man. This is talent, intelligence. He is a true strategist and tactician in his viticulture. Yes, character, talent, intelligence - that’s what was required of these new people in all areas.

But people without talents in industry or trade - they die in Balzac.

Remember Balzac's novel "The History of the Greatness and Fall of Cesar Birotteau"? Why couldn't Cesar Birotteau stand it, couldn't cope with life? But because he was mediocre. And Balzac's mediocrity perishes.

What about Balzac's financiers? Gobsek. This is an extremely talented person. I'm not talking about its other properties. This is a talented person, this is an outstanding mind, isn’t it?

They tried to compare Gobsek and Plyushkin. This is very instructive. We in Russia did not have the soil for this. Plyushkin - what kind of Gobsek is this? No talent, no intelligence, no will. This is a pathological figure.

Old Goriot is not as mediocre as Birotteau. But still, old Goriot is wrecked. He has some commercial talents, but they are not sufficient. Here Grande, old Grande, is a grandiose personality. You can’t say that old Grande is vulgar and prosaic. Although he is only busy with his calculations. This miser, this callous soul - after all, he is not prosaic. I would say about him this way: he is a major robber... Isn’t that true? He can compete in some significance with Byron's Corsair. Yes, he is a corsair. A special corsair of warehouses with wine barrels. Corsair on a merchant ship. This is a very large breed person. Like others... Balzac has many such heroes...

The liberated material practice of post-revolutionary bourgeois society speaks in these people. She made these people. She gave them scale, gave them talents, sometimes even genius. Some of Balzac's financiers or entrepreneurs are geniuses.

Now the second one. What did the bourgeois revolution change? The material practice of society, yes. You see, people work for themselves. A manufacturer, a merchant - they work not for state taxes, but for themselves, which gives them energy. But at the same time they work for society. For some specific social values. They work with some vast social horizon in mind.

A peasant cultivated a vineyard for his master - this was the case before the revolution. The industrialist carried out a state order. Now all this has disappeared. They work for an uncertain market. To society. Not on individuals, but on society. So this is, first of all, the content of the “Human Comedy” - in the liberated element of material practice. Remember, we constantly told you that the romantics glorify the elements of life in general, the energy of life in general, as Victor Hugo did. Balzac differs from the romantics in that his novels are also filled with elements and energy, but this element and energy receives a certain content. This element is the flow of material things that exist in entrepreneurship, in exchange, in commercial transactions, and so on, and so on.

Moreover, Balzac makes one feel that this element of material practice is an element of paramount importance. Therefore, there are no comics here.

Here's a comparison for you. Moliere has a predecessor, Gobsek. There is Harpagon. But Harpagon is a funny, comic figure. And if you remove everything funny, you get Gobsek. He may be disgusting, but he's not funny.

Moliere lived in the depths of another society, and this making of money could seem to him a comical activity. Balzac - no. Balzac understood that making money is the basis of the fundamentals. How could this be funny?

Fine. But the question arises: why is the whole epic called “The Human Comedy”? Everything is serious, everything is significant. Still, it's a comedy. After all, it's a comedy. In the end of all things.

Balzac comprehended the great contradiction of modern society. Yes, all these bourgeois whom he portrays, all these industrialists, financiers, traders and so on - I said - they work for society. But the contradiction is that it is not social force that works for society, but individuals. But this material practice is not socialized itself, it is anarchic, individual. And this is the great antithesis, the great contrast that Balzac captures. Balzac, like Victor Hugo, knows how to see antitheses. Only he sees them more realistically than is typical of Victor Hugo. Victor Hugo does not grasp such basic antitheses of modern society like a romantic. And Balzac grasps it. And the first and greatest contradiction is that it is not social force that is working on society. Disparate individuals work for society. Material practice is in the hands of isolated individuals. And these disparate individuals are forced to wage a fierce struggle with each other. It is well known that in bourgeois society the general phenomenon is competition. Balzac perfectly depicted this competitive struggle, with all its consequences. Competition. Animal relations between some competitors and others. The struggle is aimed at destruction, at suppression. Every bourgeois, every figure in material practice is forced to achieve a monopoly for himself, to suppress the enemy. This society is captured very well in one letter from Belinsky to Botkin. This letter is dated December 2-6, 1847: “The merchant is by nature a vulgar, trashy, low, despicable creature, for he serves Plutus, and this god is more jealous than all other gods and has the right to say more than them: whoever is not for me is against me. He demands everything for himself, without division, and then generously rewards him; He throws incomplete adherents into bankruptcy, and then into prison, and finally into poverty. A merchant is a creature whose purpose in life is profit; it is impossible to set limits to this profit. It is like sea water: it does not satisfy thirst, but only irritates it more. A trader cannot have interests that do not belong to his pocket. For him, money is not a means, but a goal, and people are also a goal; he has no love or compassion for them, he is fiercer than a beast, more inexorable than death.<...>This is not a portrait of a trader in general, but of a trader-genius.” It is clear that Belinsky had read Balzac by that time. It was Balzac who suggested to him that the merchant could be a genius, Napoleon. This is Balzac's discovery.

So what should be highlighted in this letter? It is said that the pursuit of money in modern society has no and cannot have measures. In the old, pre-bourgeois society, a person could set limits for himself. And in the society in which Balzac lived, measure - any measure - disappears. If you only earned money for a house and a garden, then you can be sure that in a few months your house and garden will be sold under the hammer. A person should strive to expand his capital. This is no longer a matter of his personal greed. Moliere's Harpagon loves money. And this is his personal weakness. Disease. And Gobsek cannot help but adore money. He must strive for this endless expansion of his wealth.

This is the game, this is the dialectic that Balzac constantly reproduces in front of you. The revolution liberated material relations, material practice. She began by making man free. And it leads to the fact that material interest, material practice, the pursuit of money consumes a person to the end. These people, liberated by the revolution, turn in the course of things into slaves of material practice, into its captives, whether they want it or not. And this is the real content of Balzac's comedy.

Things, material things, money, property interests eat people up. Real life in this society belongs not to people, but to things. It turns out that dead things have a soul, passions, will, and a person turns into a thing.

Remember old Grande, the arch-millionaire who was enslaved by his millions? Remember his monstrous stinginess? A nephew arrives from Paris. He almost treats him to crow broth. Remember how he raises his daughter?

The dead - things, capital, money become masters in life, and the living die. This is the terrible human comedy depicted by Balzac.

Why are Balzac's works related to each other? General characteristics of 19th century realism in France

Essay on literature on the topic: Realism of O de Balzac

Other writings:

Related posts: