Balzac: The Greatest Novelist of Them All?
On a warm morning in June of 1828, a young man of 29 years of age, 5 feet 3 inches inheight, fat, poorly dressed, with greasy hair and sagging stockings, stood on the PlaceVendome in Paris. He had recently incurred fifty thousand francs of debt attempting to run afailed printing company, and had two mistresses (one a duchess), both old enough to be hismother. With dozens of potboilers of no literary merit whatsoever, all published under various pseudonyms, to his credit, he stood staring up at Napoleon’s column. After a few momentscontemplating his hero, he remarked to a man who was probably the only friend he had,“Some day soon, I, too, will conquer the world.” The young man was Honore de Balzac.Balzac may or may not be the greatest novelist of them all. I’ll have no definitive answer onthat point, though I will present evidence in support of that contention. However, he was oneof the most important writers in the history of literature and of the novel, as you will see.Balzac was also one of the most interesting characters of the 19
th
century and lived, in the 50years allotted to him, three or four life spans crammed into one. He was a lover of women(mostly rich and many of them with titles), a man of business (who never once had anunqualified success either in investments or management), and a public figure (who wasfollowed, harassed, and ridiculed in a way comparable to how Michael Jackson is today). As anovelist, he wrote 30 failed and virtually forgotten novels before even beginning the work for which he is famous, the uncompleted cycle of 100 fictional works that intended to depictcomprehensively all aspects of French society, rural and urban. The work we know as
The Human Comedy
.French biographer Andre Maurois titled his work on Balzac, “Prometheus, The Life of Balzac.” Prometheus, the mortal who fooled Zeus, then stole fire from the gods and gave it toman, is an archetype of the bringer of new things, and Balzac certainly deserves thatdescription as well.There are a number of “firsts” to his credit. Balzac was the original “starving artist in hisgarret,” whose parents, hardly penniless, gave him a pauper’s pension for two years and set2
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