Part 4
For in this labyrinth and whirl of things, in this heat and hurry of observation and imagination, the special intoxication of Balzac consists. Every great artist has his own means of producing this intoxication, and it differs in result like the stimulus of beauty or of wine. Those persons who are unfortunate enough to see in Balzac little or nothing but an ingenious piler-up of careful strokes--a man of science taking his human documents and classing them after an orderly fashion in portfolio and deed-box--must miss this intoxication altogether. It is much more agreeable as well as much more accurate to see in the manufacture of the _Comedie_ the process of a Cyclopean workshop--the bustle, the hurry, the glare and shadow, the steam and sparks of Vulcanian forging. The results, it is true, are by no means confused or disorderly--neither were those of the forges that worked under Lipari--but there certainly went much more to them than the dainty fingering of a literary fretwork-maker or the dull rummagings of a realist _a la Zola_.
In part, no doubt, and in great part, the work of Balzac is dream-stuff rather than life-stuff, and it is all the better for that. What is better than dreams? But the coherence of his visions, their bulk, their solidity, the way in which they return to us and we return to them, make them such dream-stuff as there is all too little of in this world. If it is true that evil on the whole predominates over good in the vision of this "Voyant," as Philarete Chasles so justly called him, two very respectable, and in one case very large, though somewhat opposed divisions of mankind, the philosophic pessimist and the convinced and consistent Christian believer, will tell us that this is at least not one of the points in which it is unfaithful to life. If the author is closer and more faithful in his study of meanness and vice than in his studies of nobility and virtue, the blame is due at least as much to his models as to himself. If he has seldom succeeded in combining a really passionate with a really noble conception of love, very few of his countrymen have been more fortunate in that respect. If in some of his types--his journalists, his married women, and others--he seems to have sacrificed to conventions, let us remember that those who know attribute to his conventions such a power if not altogether such a holy influence that two generations of the people he painted have actually lived more and more up to his painting of them.
And last of all, but also greatest, has to be considered the immensity of his imaginative achievement, the huge space that he has filled for us with vivid creation, the range of amusement, of instruction, of (after a fashion) edification which he has thrown open for us all to walk in. It is possible that he himself and others more or less well-meaningly, though more or less maladroitly, following his lead, may have exaggerated the coherence and the architectural design of the _Comedie_. But it has coherence and it has design; nor shall we find anything exactly to parallel it. In mere bulk the _Comedie_ probably, if not certainly, exceeds the production of any novelist of the first class in any kind of fiction except Dumas, and with Dumas, for various and well-known reasons, there is no possibility of comparing it. All others yield in bulk; all in a certain concentration and intensity; none even aims at anything like the same system and completeness. It must be remembered that owing to shortness of life, lateness of beginning, and the diversion of the author to other work, the _Comedie_ is the production, and not the sole production, of some seventeen or eighteen years at most. Not a volume of it, for all that failure to reach the completest perfection in form and style which has been acknowledged, can be accused of thinness, of scamped work, of mere repetition, of mere cobbling up. Every one bears the marks of steady and ferocious labor, as well as of the genius which had at last come where it had been so earnestly called and had never gone away again. It is possible to overpraise Balzac in parts or to mispraise him as a whole. But so long as inappropriate and superfluous comparisons are avoided and as his own excellence is recognized and appreciated, it is scarcely possible to overestimate that excellence in itself and for itself. He stands alone; even with Dickens, who is his nearest analogue, he shows far more points of difference than of likeness. His vastness of bulk is not more remarkable than his peculiarity of quality; and when these two things coincide in literature or elsewhere, then that in which they coincide may be called, and must be called, Great, without hesitation and without reserve.
GEORGE SAINTSBURY.
APPENDIX
THE BALZAC PLAN OF THE COMEDIE HUMAINE
The form in which the Comedie Humaine was left by its author, with the exceptions of _Le Depute d'Arcis_ (incomplete) and _Les Petits Bourgeois_, both of which were added, some years later, by the Edition Definitive.
The original French titles are followed by their English equivalents. Literal translations have been followed, excepting a few instances where preference is shown for a clearer or more comprehensive English title.
[Note from Team Balzac, the Etext preparers: In some cases more than one English translation is commonly used for various translations/editions. In such cases the first translation is from the Saintsbury edition copyrighted in 1901 and that is the title referred to in the personages following most of the stories. We have added other title translations of which we are currently aware for the readers' convenience.]
COMEDIE HUMAINE
SCENES DE LA VIE PRIVEE
SCENES FROM PRIVATE LIFE
La Maison du Chat-qui Pelote At the Sign of the Cat and Racket
Le Bal de Sceaux The Ball at Sceaux
La Bourse The Purse
La Vendetta The Vendetta
Mme. Firmiani Madame Firmiani
Une Double Famille A Second Home
La Paix du Menage Domestic Peace
La Fausse Maitresse The Imaginary Mistress Paz
Etude de femme A Study of Woman
Autre etude de femme Another Study of Woman
La Grande Breteche La Grand Breteche
Albert Savarus Albert Savarus
Memoires de deux Jeunes Mariees Letters of Two Brides
Une Fille d'Eve A Daughter of Eve
La Femme de Trente Ans A Woman of Thirty
La Femme abandonnee The Deserted Woman
La Grenadiere La Grenadiere
Le Message The Message
Gobseck Gobseck
Le Contrat de Mariage A Marriage Settlement A Marriage Contract
Un Debut dans la vie A Start in Life
Modeste Mignon Modeste Mignon
Beatrix Beatrix
Honorine Honorine
Le Colonel Chabert Colonel Chabert
La Messe de l'Athee The Atheist's Mass
L'Interdiction The Commission in Lunacy
Pierre Grassou Pierre Grassou
SCENES DE LA VIE PROVINCE
SCENES FROM PROVINCIAL LIFE
Ursule Mirouet Ursule Mirouet
Eugenie Grandet Eugenie Grandet
Les Celibataires: The Celibates: Pierrette Pierrette
Le Cure de Tours The Vicar of Tours
Un Menage de Garcon A Bachelor's Establishment The Two Brothers The Black Sheep La Rabouilleuse
Les Parisiens en Province: Parisians in the Country: L'illustre Gaudissart Gaudissart the Great The Illustrious Gaudissart
La Muse du departement The Muse of the Department
Les Rivalites: The Jealousies of a Country Town: La Vieille Fille The Old Maid
Le Cabinet des antiques The Collection of Antiquities
Le Lys dans la Vallee The Lily of the Valley
Illusions Perdues:--I. Lost Illusions:--I. Les Deux Poetes The Two Poets
Un Grand homme de province a Paris, 1re partie A Distinguished Provincial at Paris, Part 1
Illusions Perdues:--II. Lost Illusions:--II. Un Grand homme de province, 2e p. A Distinguished Provincial at Paris, Part 2
Eve et David Eve and David
SCENES DE LA VIE PARISIENNE
SCENES FROM PARISIAN LIFE
Splendeurs et Miseres des Courtisanes: Scenes from a Courtesan's Life: Esther heureuse Esther Happy
A combien l'amour revient aux vieillards What Love Costs an Old Man
Ou menent les mauvais Chemins The End of Evil Ways
La derniere Incarnation de Vautrin Vautrin's Last Avatar
Un Prince de la Boheme A Prince of Bohemia
Un Homme d'affaires A Man of Business
Gaudissart II. Gaudissart II.
Les Comediens sans le savoir The Unconscious Humorists The Unconscious Comedians
Histoire des Treize: The Thirteen: Ferragus Ferragus
La Duchesse de Langeais The Duchesse de Langeais
La Fille aux yeux d'or The Girl with the Golden Eyes
Le Pere Goriot Father Goriot Old Goriot
Grandeur et Decadence de Cesar Birotteau The Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau
La Maison Nucingen The Firm of Nucingen
Les Secrets de la princesse de Cadignan The Secrets of a Princess The Secrets of the Princess Cadignan
Les Employes The Government Clerks Bureaucracy
Sarrasine Sarrasine
Facino Cane Facine Cane
Les Parents Pauvres:--I. Poor Relations:--I. La Cousine Bette Cousin Betty
Les Parents Pauvres:--II. Poor Relations:--II. Le Cousin Pons Cousin Pons
Les Petits Bourgeois The Middle Classes The Lesser Bourgeoise
SCENES DE LA VIE POLITIQUE
SCENES FROM POLITICAL LIFE
Une Tenebreuse Affaire The Gondreville Mystery An Historical Mystery
Un Episode sous la Terreur An Episode Under the Terror
L'Envers de l'Histoire Contemporaine: The Seamy Side of History: The Brotherhood of Consolation: Mme. de la Chanterie Madame de la Chanterie
L'Initie Initiated The Initiate
Z. Marcas Z. Marcas
Le Depute d'Arcis The Member for Arcis The Deputy for Arcis
SCENES DE LA VIE MILITAIRE
SCENES FROM MILITARY LIFE
Les Chouans The Chouans
Une Passion dans le desert A Passion in the Desert
SCENES DE LA VIE DE CAMPAGNE
SCENES FROM COUNTRY LIFE
Le Medecin de Campagne The Country Doctor
Le Cure de Village The Country Parson The Village Rector
Les Paysans The Peasantry Sons of the Soil
ETUDES PHILOSOPHIQUES
PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES
La Peau de Chagrin The Magic Skin
La Recherche de l'Absolu The Quest of the Absolute The Alkahest
Jesus-Christ en Flandre Christ in Flanders
Melmoth reconcilie Melmoth Reconciled
Le Chef-d'oeuvre inconnu The Unknown Masterpiece The Hidden Masterpiece
L'Enfant Maudit The Hated Son
Gambara Gambara
Massimilla Doni Massimilla Doni
Les Marana The Maranas Juana
Adieu Farewell
Le Requisitionnaire The Conscript The Recruit
El Verdugo El Verdugo
Un Drame au bord de la mer A Seaside Tragedy A Drama on the Seashore
L'Auberge rouge The Red Inn
L'Elixir de longue vie The Elixir of Life
Maitre Cornelius Maitre Cornelius
Sur Catherine de Medicis: About Catherine de' Medici Le Martyr calviniste The Calvinist Martyr
La Confidence des Ruggieri The Ruggieri's Secret
Les Deux Reves The Two Dreams
Louis Lambert Louis Lambert
Les Proscrits The Exiles
Seraphita Seraphita
AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION
In giving the general title of "The Human Comedy" to a work begun nearly thirteen years since, it is necessary to explain its motive, to relate its origin, and briefly sketch its plan, while endeavoring to speak of these matters as though I had no personal interest in them. This is not so difficult as the public might imagine. Few works conduce to much vanity; much labor conduces to great diffidence. This observation accounts for the study of their own works made by Corneille, Moliere, and other great writers; if it is impossible to equal them in their fine conceptions, we may try to imitate them in this feeling.
The idea of _The Human Comedy_ was at first as a dream to me, one of those impossible projects which we caress and then let fly; a chimera that gives us a glimpse of its smiling woman's face, and forthwith spreads its wings and returns to a heavenly realm of phantasy. But this chimera, like many another, has become a reality; has its behests, its tyranny, which must be obeyed.
The idea originated in a comparison between Humanity and Animality.
It is a mistake to suppose that the great dispute which has lately made a stir, between Cuvier and Geoffroi Saint-Hilaire, arose from a scientific innovation. Unity of structure, under other names, had occupied the greatest minds during the two previous centuries. As we read the extraordinary writings of the mystics who studied the sciences in their relation to infinity, such as Swedenborg, Saint-Martin, and others, and the works of the greatest authors on Natural History--Leibnitz, Buffon, Charles Bonnet, etc., we detect in the _monads_ of Leibnitz, in the _organic molecules_ of Buffon, in the _vegetative force_ of Needham, in the correlation of similar organs of Charles Bonnet--who in 1760 was so bold as to write, "Animals vegetate as plants do"--we detect, I say, the rudiments of the great law of Self for Self, which lies at the root of _Unity of Plan_. There is but one Animal. The Creator works on a single model for every organized being. "The Animal" is elementary, and takes its external form, or, to be accurate, the differences in its form, from the environment in which it is obliged to develop. Zoological species are the result of these differences. The announcement and defence of this system, which is indeed in harmony with our preconceived ideas of Divine Power, will be the eternal glory of Geoffroi Saint-Hilaire, Cuvier's victorious opponent on this point of higher science, whose triumph was hailed by Goethe in the last article he wrote.
I, for my part, convinced of this scheme of nature long before the discussion to which it has given rise, perceived that in this respect society resembled nature. For does not society modify Man, according to the conditions in which he lives and acts, into men as manifold as the species in Zoology? The differences between a soldier, an artisan, a man of business, a lawyer, an idler, a student, a statesman, a merchant, a sailor, a poet, a beggar, a priest, are as great, though not so easy to define, as those between the wolf, the lion, the ass, the crow, the shark, the seal, the sheep, etc. Thus social species have always existed, and will always exist, just as there are zoological species. If Buffon could produce a magnificent work by attempting to represent in a book the whole realm of zoology, was there not room for a work of the same kind on society? But the limits set by nature to the variations of animals have no existence in society. When Buffon describes the lion, he dismisses the lioness with a few phrases; but in society a wife is not always the female of the male. There may be two perfectly dissimilar beings in one household. The wife of a shopkeeper is sometimes worthy of a prince, and the wife of a prince is often worthless compared with the wife of an artisan. The social state has freaks which Nature does not allow herself; it is nature _plus_ society. The description of social species would thus be at least double that of animal species, merely in view of the two sexes. Then, among animals the drama is limited; there is scarcely any confusion; they turn and rend each other--that is all. Men, too, rend each other; but their greater or less intelligence makes the struggle far more complicated. Though some savants do not yet admit that the animal nature flows into human nature through an immense tide of life, the grocer certainly becomes a peer, and the noble sometimes sinks to the lowest social grade. Again, Buffon found that life was extremely simple among animals. Animals have little property, and neither arts nor sciences; while man, by a law that has yet to be sought, has a tendency to express his culture, his thoughts, and his life in everything he appropriates to his use. Though Leuwenhoek, Swammerdam, Spallanzani, Reaumur, Charles Bonnet, Muller, Haller and other patient investigators have shown us how interesting are the habits of animals, those of each kind, are, at least to our eyes, always and in every age alike; whereas the dress, the manners, the speech, the dwelling of a prince, a banker, an artist, a citizen, a priest, and a pauper are absolutely unlike, and change with every phase of civilization.
Hence the work to be written needed a threefold form--men, women, and things; that is to say, persons and the material expression of their minds; man, in short, and life.
As we read the dry and discouraging list of events called History, who can have failed to note that the writers of all periods, in Egypt, Persia, Greece, and Rome, have forgotten to give us a history of manners? The fragment of Petronius on the private life of the Romans excites rather than satisfies our curiosity. It was from observing this great void in the field of history that the Abbe Barthelemy devoted his life to a reconstruction of Greek manners in _Le Jeune Anacharsis_.
But how could such a drama, with the four or five thousand persons which society offers, be made interesting? How, at the same time, please the poet, the philosopher, and the masses who want both poetry and philosophy under striking imagery? Though I could conceive of the importance and of the poetry of such a history of the human heart, I saw no way of writing it; for hitherto the most famous story-tellers had spent their talent in creating two or three typical actors, in depicting one aspect of life. It was with this idea that I read the works of Walter Scott. Walter Scott, the modern troubadour, or finder (_trouvere=trouveur_), had just then given an aspect of grandeur to a class of composition unjustly regarded as of the second rank. Is it not really more difficult to compete with personal and parochial interests by writing of Daphnis and Chloe, Roland, Amadis, Panurge, Don Quixote, Manon Lescaut, Clarissa, Lovelace, Robinson Crusoe, Gil Blas, Ossian, Julie d'Etanges, My Uncle Toby, Werther, Corinne, Adolphe, Paul and Virginia, Jeanie Deans, Claverhouse, Ivanhoe, Manfred, Mignon, than to set forth in order facts more or less similar in every country, to investigate the spirit of laws that have fallen into desuetude, to review the theories which mislead nations, or, like some metaphysicians, to explain what _Is_? In the first place, these actors, whose existence becomes more prolonged and more authentic than that of the generations which saw their birth, almost always live solely on condition of their being a vast reflection of the present. Conceived in the womb of their own period, the whole heart of humanity stirs within their frame, which often covers a complete system of philosophy. Thus Walter Scott raised to the dignity of the philosophy of History the literature which, from age to age, sets perennial gems in the poetic crown of every nation where letters are cultivated. He vivified it with the spirit of the past; he combined drama, dialogue, portrait, scenery, and description; he fused the marvelous with truth--the two elements of the times; and he brought poetry into close contact with the familiarity of the humblest speech. But as he had not so much devised a system as hit upon a manner in the ardor of his work, or as its logical outcome, he never thought of connecting his compositions in such a way as to form a complete history of which each chapter was a novel, and each novel the picture of a period.
It was by discerning this lack of unity, which in no way detracts from the Scottish writer's greatness, that I perceived at once the scheme which would favor the execution of my purpose, and the possibility of executing it. Though dazzled, so to speak, by Walter Scott's amazing fertility, always himself and always original, I did not despair, for I found the source of his genius in the infinite variety of human nature. Chance is the greatest romancer in the world; we have only to study it. French society would be the real author; I should only be the secretary. By drawing up an inventory of vices and virtues, by collecting the chief facts of the passions, by depicting characters, by choosing the principal incidents of social life, by composing types out of a combination of homogeneous characteristics, I might perhaps succeed in writing the history which so many historians have neglected: that of Manners. By patience and perseverance I might produce for France in the nineteenth century the book which we must all regret that Rome, Athens, Tyre, Memphis, Persia, and India have not bequeathed to us; that history of their social life which, prompted by the Abbe Barthelemy, Monteil patiently and steadily tried to write for the Middle Ages, but in an unattractive form.
This work, so far, was nothing. By adhering to the strict lines of a reproduction a writer might be a more or less faithful, and more or less successful, painter of types of humanity, a narrator of the dramas of private life, an archaeologist of social furniture, a cataloguer of professions, a registrar of good and evil; but to deserve the praise of which every artist must be ambitious, must I not also investigate the reasons or the cause of these social effects, detect the hidden sense of this vast assembly of figures, passions, and incidents? And finally, having sought--I will not say having found--this reason, this motive power, must I not reflect on first principles, and discover in what
## particulars societies approach or deviate from the eternal law of truth
and beauty? In spite of the wide scope of the preliminaries, which might of themselves constitute a book, the work, to be complete, would need a conclusion. Thus depicted, society ought to bear in itself the reason of its working.
The law of the writer, in virtue of which he is a writer, and which I do not hesitate to say makes him the equal, or perhaps the superior, of the statesman, is his judgment, whatever it may be, on human affairs, and his absolute devotion to certain principles. Machiavelli, Hobbes, Bossuet, Leibnitz, Kant, Montesquieu, _are_ the science which statesmen apply. "A writer ought to have settled opinions on morals and politics; he should regard himself as a tutor of men; for men need no masters to teach them to doubt," says Bonald. I took these noble words as my guide long ago; they are the written law of the monarchical writer. And those who would confute me by my own words will find that they have misinterpreted some ironical phrase, or that they have turned against me a speech given to one of my actors--a trick peculiar to calumniators.
As to the intimate purpose, the soul of this work, these are the principles on which it is based.
Man is neither good nor bad; he is born with instincts and capabilities; society, far from depraving him, as Rousseau asserts, improves him, makes him better; but self-interest also develops his evil tendencies. Christianity, above all, Catholicism, being--as I have pointed out in the Country Doctor (_le Medecin de Campagne_)--a complete system for the repression of the depraved tendencies of man, is the most powerful element of social order.
In reading attentively the presentment of society cast, as it were, from the life, with all that is good and all that is bad in it, we learn this lesson--if thought, or if passion, which combines thought and feeling, is the vital social element, it is also its destructive element. In this respect social life is like the life of man. Nations live long only by moderating their vital energy. Teaching, or rather education, by religious bodies is the grand principle of life for nations, the only means of diminishing the sum of evil and increasing the sum of good in all society. Thought, the living principle of good and ill, can only be trained, quelled, and guided by religion. The only possible religion is Christianity (see the letter from Paris in "Louis Lambert," in which the young mystic explains, _a propos_ to Swedenborg's doctrines, how there has never been but one religion since the world began). Christianity created modern nationalities, and it will preserve them. Hence, no doubt, the necessity for the monarchical principle. Catholicism and Royalty are twin principles.