La Comédie humaine
A pioneer of the modern novel, Balzac describes the totality of reality as he understood it, and shows aspects of life hitherto ignored in literature, because they were ugly or vulgar.
Balzac’s world is grounded in sociology, not theology, where love and friendship are of prime importance and which highlights the complexity of people and the deep immorality of a social mechanism where the weak are crushed while the crooked banker and the venal politician triumph.
Some of his characters are so vivid that they have become archetypes, such as Rastignac, the ambitious young provincial, Grandet, the miserly domestic tyrant, or Father Goriot, the icon of fatherhood.
The three sections were: In this letter, Balzac went on to say that the "Etudes de Moeurs" would study the effects of society and touch on all genders, social classes, ages and professions of people.
By 1836, the "Etudes de Moeurs" was already divided into six parts: In 1839, in a letter to his publisher, Balzac mentioned for the first time the expression Comédie humaine, and this title is in the contract he signed in 1841.
[7] Balzac then gives an extensive list of writers and works that influenced him, including Sir Walter Scott, François Rabelais and Miguel de Cervantes.
In the last half of his preface, Balzac explains the Comédie humaine's different parts (which he compares to "frames" and "galeries"), and which are more or less the final form of the collection (see below).
The historical novel was a European phenomenon in the first half of the 19th century — largely through the works of Sir Walter Scott, James Fenimore Cooper and, in France, Alexandre Dumas, père and Victor Hugo.
Balzac's first novel Les Chouans was inspired by this vogue and tells of the rural inhabitants of Brittany during the revolution with Cooper-like descriptions of their dress and manners.
His use of the magical ass' skin in La Peau de chagrin for example becomes a metaphor for diminished male potency and a key symbol of Balzac's conception of energy and will in the modern world.
Several of Balzac's characters, particularly Louis Lambert, traverse mystical crises and/or develop syncretic spiritual philosophies about human energy and action that are largely modelled on the life and work of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772).
As depicted in his works, Balzac's spiritual philosophy suggests that individuals have a limited quantity of spiritual energy and that this energy is dissipated through creative or intellectual work or through physical activity (including sex), and this is made emblematic in his philosophical tale La Peau de chagrin, in which a magical wild ass's skin confers on its owner unlimited powers, but shrinks each time it is used in science.
The opening section of The Secrets of the Princess Cadignan provides an explanation of why the title of prince is not prevalent nor coveted in France (compared to contemporary Germany or Russia).
Both are talented but poor youths from the provinces, both attempt to achieve greatness in society through the intercession of women and both come into contact with Vautrin, but only Rastignac succeeds while Lucien de Rubempré ends his life by his own hand in a jail in Paris.
At the other end of the scale we have 0% maternal involvement – as depicted by the upbringing of Ursule Mirouët by four men: her half-uncle-in-law (an atheist and republican), the local priest (saintly), the district judge (learned) and a retired soldier (worldly).
Balzac's final plan (1845) of the Comédie Humaine is as follows (projected works are not included; dates are those of initial publication, whether or not the work was initially conceived as part of the Comédie Humaine): In French, the series is more often published according to the plan of the posthumous "Definitive Edition" that was prepared by Charles Rabou, Balzac's chosen literary executor who he even entrusted to complete some of his unfinished works in the series: Rabou's "definitive" revisions and additions were generally panned by literary critics, and that has left Balzac's final ordering more common in English translation than Rabou's.
