Professional Documents
Culture Documents
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
American Association of Teachers of French is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend
access to The French Review.
http://www.jstor.org
303
304
FRENCH REVIEW
305
306
FRENCH
REVIEW
Balzac asked in Ferragus (March-April 1833) why no painter had reproduced the physiognomy of a swarm of Parisians grouped under the damp
porch of a house in a rainy moment. "OAi rencontrer un plus riche
tableau?" (Bg., II, 412). Genestas visits with the doctor of Le Medecin
de campagne (1832-1833), in a scene which produced what Balzac described as "un effet theitral," the death of the "phre de famille" surrounded at the bedside by his children and closest relatives. Men and
women are kneeling and praying, most of those present are weeping
(Bg., VII, 109-110). Few artists besides Greuze or Diderot would have
conceived of such a scene as being worthy of serious art.
In Le Curd de Tours (April 1832), both techniques are repeatedly
used. Balzac prepared the conflict of the novel by the usual descriptions,
character sketches, scattered conversations, and then he editorialized:
"Les ev~nements qui constituent en quelque sorte l'avant-scene de ce
drame bourgeois, mais oii les passions se retrouvent tout aussi violentes
que si elles 6taient excitees par de grands inteirets, exigeaient cette longue
introduction, et il efit ete difficile a un historien exact d'en resserrer les
minutieux deiveloppements" (Bg., VI, 558-559). The story is then completed by a few events, and Balzac excuses himself for then sketching
in a last tableau (p. 611).
In one of his best-known novels, Eugenie Grandet is described as a
celestial type of Mary, who could be used as a painter's model. Her eyes
are meek yet proud, the kind which Raphael had portrayed (Bg., V,
784). The theatrical examples which Balzac followed in this novel were
not only the bourgeois tragedy "a la Diderot," but also the Greek drama,
with the fatal play of destiny. Balzac's realistic eye drew most of the
imposing characters of the entire Comedie humaine on enlarged canvases. He began the description of his most famous figure by suggesting the artistic value of his countenance. "Ce Patiras 6tait l'ancien vermicellier, le pdre Goriot, sur la t&te duquel un peintre aurait, comme
l'historien [Balzac was both], fait tomber toute la lumibre du tableau"
(Bg., IV, 35). Cesar Birotteau, the "drama of a bankruptcy," ends with
the Abbe Loraux saying, " 'Voila la mort du juste,' . . . d'une voix grave
en montrant Cesar par un de ces gestes divins que Rembrandt a su deviner pour son tableau du Christ rappelant Lazare a la vie" (Bg., II,
363).
Whether or not Balzac explicitly labeled his scenes as tableaux, he
often arranged the characters in a domestic group "a la Greuze." The
old man Sechard in Illusions perdues is described in the bedroom of
his family with the grandchildren smiling in their cradles (Bg., IV, 955).
Bette is surrounded on her deathbed by the entire Hulot family in tears
(La Cousine Bette, Bg., IX, 1204). These techniques of painting were a
307
conscious instrument in Balzac's repertory of devices for realistic description. Even the vocabulary of art criticism was useful in defining the
goals of the novel.
When discussing one of Fenimore Cooper's tableaux of nature, Balzac remarked that aside from a very young girl, "ces figures sont nature,
pour employer le mot des ateliers."g The novelist's criteria for a wellconstructed novel can be found in his famous "Etudes sur M. Beyle."
One negative comment in these studies illustrates the mixture of plastic
and fictional criticism. "Figurez-vous que les plans les plus savamment
compliques de Walter-Scott n'arrivent pas a l'admirable simplicit& qui
regne dans le r&cit des ces 6venements si nombreux, si feuillus, pour
employer la c6~lbre expression de Diderot."10 The word feuillus cannot
be found in any of Diderot's works, although feuilles is part of the philosophe's critical art vocabulary." The idea itself was not only used in
the Salons, but was expressed in most of his critical studies on the novel
and particularly on the novel of the seventeenth century. In the Bijoux
indiscrets, the Eloge de Richardson, and Jacques le fataliste, Diderot
opposed the picaresque accumulation of unbelievable, frivolous, and unending adventures, to the simple, direct, and true expression of man's
interests and passions. These were Balzac's criteria. As for the expression feuillus, Diderot had actually created this neologism in a conversation with Rousseau.12 It was eventually handed down to Balzac
through Rousseau and other writers as a well-known symbol, as a crystallization of an extensive literary idea derived from art criticism.
Balzac's interest in art criticism dates from the early 1830's. Le Chef9 Balzac, (Euvres diverses. Eds. Marcel Bouteron and Henri Longnon. (Paris: L.
Conard, 1940), III, 283.
10 Ibid., p. 377.
11 Salon de 1781 (A.-T., XII, 58).
12 Emile Littre in his Suppldment (p. 158), Dictionnaire de la langue franaise, 4
v. and Suppldment (Paris: Hachette, 1863-1872, 1877) cites a passage in the Confessions, book IX of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, then defines feuillu by Diderot's definition.
Here is the entire passage from Rousseau: "I1 y avait pr6s de six mois que je lui
[Diderot] avais envoye les deux premieres parties de Julie pour m'en dire son avis.
Il ne les avait pas encore lues. Nous en luGmesun cahier ensemble. Il trouva tout
cela feuillet, ce fut son terme, c'est-a-dire charg6 de paroles et redondant. Je l'avais
ddjit bien senti moi-meme" (Rousseau, Ecrits autobiographiques, Ed. Jean Massin
[Paris: Le Club frangais du livre, 1959], pp. 518-519). Littr6 received a note from
M. Ch. Berthoud de Gingings (Vaud) who explained that the spelling of feuillet was
the result of a mistake by the copyist Jeanvin. The original text read feuillu and
Balzac was correct, even if many of the subsequent editions of the Confessions remained in error. Rousseau, in a letter to Duclos (November 19, 1760) repeated the
expression: "A la 4e partie [de l'Hdloise] vous trouvez que le style n'est pas feuillu;
tant mieux" (Littr6, Suppldmnent, p. 158).
308
FRENCH REVIEW
309
310
FRENCHREVIEW
out La Religieuse there are many dramatic moments which are preceded
by physical descriptions of the characters as if they were posed by a
stage director and a painter. Domestic and intimate scenes, which would
have pleased Balzac, are appropriately drawn in the Entretien d'un pare
avec ses enfants and Sur l'inconsequence des jugements publics. The
tale which Balzac greatly admired, Ceci n'est pas un conte, has a number of striking (and pathetic) tableaux. Tanid, the deserted lover, pleads
with Mme. Reymer on his knees at the foot of her bed, his lips pressed
to her hand and his face half hidden in the covers. Mme. de La Chaux,
abandoned by Gardeil, throws herself into an armchair, thrusts her arms
forward to Dr. Le Camus, and cries out in despair. Diderot's scenes are
rarely painted in full detail. He generally used a deft and quick brush
stroke to suggest the arrangement of figures, but they were soon animated (as in Balzac) with pantomime, dialogue, and movement. When
Balzac borrowed a literary technique, such as the use of tableaux, he
never did so in a mechanical fashion, for his novels are certainly complex syntheses of many personal demands and devices. Yet even if his
acknowledged masters are kept in mind when comparing fictional techniques, the inescapable conclusion is that Diderot's artistic ideas had a
powerful impact on Balzac's conception of the novel, and consequently
on future generations of writers.
MASSACHUSETTS
INSTITUTE
OF TECHNOLOGY