Orhis Litterarum 35: 418-433, 2000 Copyright © Munksgaurd 2000 Printed in Denmark . All rights reserved ORBIS “Litterarum Passions of Realism Svend Erik Larsen, Aarhus University Dans Iceuvre de Balzac on trouve une oppostion qui appartient & la fois aux textes littéraires et leur contexte culture! primaire, celui de la ville. C'est l’opposition insurmontable entre I’infinitude des détails pergus et constamment changeants et les différents sy- stémes perceptuels et conceptuels qui, vainement, sont introduits pour rassembler I’infinitude. Ce contraste devient, dans son irré- médiabilité, un principe productif et dynamique dans I’univers tex- tuel de Balzac. A partir des lectures notamment de Facino Cane et l'Avant-Propos mais aussi de La cousine Bette et Modeste Mignon, Yarticle propose la passion comme centre de ce dynamisme. Creating or dissolving the novel? The short text Facino Cane appeared in 1836 in the Revue de Paris and reappeared in 1837 in Etudes Philosophiques only to resurface again in 1843 outside the context of the Comédie humaine in a collective volume, Mystéres de province. Finally, in 1844, it was included in the Comédie in the section Scénes de la vie parisienne. This brief text travelled from province to Paris, from Etudes Philosophiques to Etudes de meurs, from newspaper format to book format and showed thereby, simply by way of its appearance, the open- ended if not entirely arbitrary character of Balzac’s systems and categories and his non-prejudiced use of channels of publication. There is no such thing as an ideal way of publishing good novels, and another for trivial ones. If it works, it is right. No one has put that better than Baudelaire in his description of the novel occasioned by his comments on Théophile Gautier: Le roman et la nouvelle ont un privilége de souplesse merveilleux. Ils s’adaptent @ toutes les natures [i.e. all sorts of authors], enveloppent tous les sujets, et poursuivent a leur guise différents buts. Tantét c'est la recherche de la passion, tantét la recherche du vrai; tel roman parle a la foule, tel autre a des initiés; celui-ci retrace la vie des époques disparues, et celui-la des drames silencieux qui se jouent dans un seul cerveau. Le roman, qui tient une place si importante a cété du podme et de l'histoire, est un genre batard dont le domaine est vrai-Passions of realism 419 ment sans limites. Comme beaucoup d’autres batards, c’est un enfant gaté de la fortune @ qui tout réussit. II ne connait d'autres dangers que son infinie liberté." The arbitrary displacements of Facino Cane I have just pointed to, together with Baudelaire’s observations, might suggest that the novel as such is a post- modern phenomenon exemplifying its alleged anything-goes slogan. However, in the last line of the quote, Baudelaire also mentions that ‘la liberté infinie’ represents ‘des dangers’. What dangers, one may ask. Following Baudelaire one answer would be that the reason for its dissol- ution is the double orientation of the novel, now cultivating ‘les passions’, now ‘le vrai’, now addressing ‘la foule’, now les ‘initiés’. But these options are here listed as clear either-or alternatives, not as ambiguous pitfalls and definitely not as opening the gap of infinitude. Moreover, the ‘batardises’ of the novel are regarded as paving the road to success,” not as potholes in the toad. So, the dangers referred to must be located elsewhere than the novel’s double orientation. With the perspicacity of an empathetic contemporary, Théophile Gautier, the subject of Baudelaire’s analysis, in 1859 in his still stimulating study Honoré de Balzac characterizes Balzac as cet immense cerveau, ce physiologiste si pénétrant, cet observateur si profond, cet esprit si intuitif, [qui] ne possédait pas le don littéraire; chez lui s’ouvrait un abime entre la pensée et la forme. Cet abime, surtout dans les premiers temps, il désespéra de le franchir. Il y jetait sans le combler volume sur volume, veille sur veille, essai sur essai: toute une bibliothéque de livres inavoués y passa [...] Balzac, I’égal de tous comme génie, ne trouvait pas son moyen d’expression, ou ne le trouvait qu’aprés des peines infinies.? The real danger of the infinitude of the genre, according to Gautier, is not the fact that the novel avoids a finite form, but that its infinite possibilities do not represent a liberating force but a mindblowing pressure. The infinitude is not overcome but reinforced and reproduced on all levels of the novel: in the experience it represents, its themes, its style; everything embraced by the novel leaves it with a disturbing and fragmenting mark of infinitude; the clear alternatives listed by Gautier become conflicting and permanently unme- diated poles, a simultaneous both-and. Thus the danger is, from this point of view, that the novel produces a dissolution of the novel itself, a self-defeating process of writing. This is how Baudelaire sees it: “un roman passe dés lors par une série de genéses, oi! se420 Svend Erik Larsen disperse non seulement I’unité de la phrase, mais aussi de I’ceuvre™ - Le chef- d'euvre inconnu generalized, as it were. Thus, in writing his novels, Balzac also addresses the basic problems of the genre as such, its formal, aesthetic and cognitive conditions and possibil- ities. As Mihail Bakhtine states, the novel does not find a form, it keeps the process of finding it open: Of all the major genres only the novel is younger than writing and the book: it alone is organically receptive to new forms of mute perception, that is, to read- ing. But of critical importance here is the fact that the novel has no canon of its own, as do other genres: only individual examples of the novel are histori- cally active, not a generic canon as such.* From another point of view, the conception of Balzac’s writing as an ongoing Process to bridge ‘la pensée et la forme’, as Gautier said, or more broadly speaking, discourse and experience, situates Balzac’s work in the context of early modernism: his work is one large project which is never ended because the character of the project changes together with its realization, both on the discursive side of it - the monstruous accumulation of writing changes its very nature — and on the representational side of it — the urban world which constitutes the basic platform of Balzac’s social experience is first of all a material aggregate in a state of permanent transition, ungraspable in spite of its material massiveness and differentiation. ‘L’abime entre la pensée et la forme’ is kept open by the process that tries to close it. This brings Balzac to the edge of 20th century modernism.° However, Balzac is firmly rooted in the first half of the 19th century.” Therefore, his quasi-modernist project is shaped accordingly; it is not an abandonment of form, but a reinvestment of forms in an attempt that can never really be accomplished. They are transgressed by the facts they are meant to bind together, a transgression which, then, necessitates a renewed investment of various types of forms: aesthetic forms: the multiplicity of genres used eclectically by Balzac (historical novel, sentimental novel, gothic novel, epistolary novel etc.); scientific forms as for example the ideas of Saint- Hilaire, Gall or Lavater; mystic forms such as Messmer’s or Swedenborg’s theories; ideological forms as for example the character typology in the line of la Bruyére or the emphasis on religion, family and monarchy put forward in the Avant-Propos from 1842; social forms such as the money system; and several other forms. In short: a variety of would-be totalizing forms that are thrown out as nets to catch the multiple and bewildering details of actualPassions of realism 421 experience in order to impose some degree of unity to them, details which, nevertheless, escape between the threads of the net, and therefore call for new forms that are introduced without much consideration for the cohesiveness of the system for forms. Who can synthesize Swedenborg with a social analy- sis of the structure of high finance? One example is the more or less homemade tripartion of effects, causes and principles that embraces the whole Comédie as Balzac explained enthusi- astically in a quasi-logical argument to Mme Hanska in december 1834.* But he gave up explaining it in his 1842 Avant-Propos when it came to the prin- ciples in Etudes analytiques, “desquelles je ne dirai rien car il n’en a été publié qu’une seule”,? a reason that normally never restrained Balzac from un- folding his visions as if they were of general value. In this perspective, the confusion Baudelaire points to and the lack of the literary gift, as Gautier has it, are not individual shortcomings which Balzac tries to come to terms with in an indefatigable process of writing. They are basic constitutive aspects of his writing that make it a genuine interpretation of the reality he is confronted with on the one hand and, on the other, a profound experiment with the potentials of the open-ended genre of the novel.'° The French society of which he claims to be the secretary is a society in the making on conditions that are not entirely clear to Balzac — or to anyone else in his day — and with consequences that cannot be spelled out in media-adaptable punchlines. Therefore, the objective and subjective character of this socio-material reality is inextricably mixed. Balzac attempts to grasp the changes that have not yet found a palpable material form or a graspable conceptualization and which, perhaps, are not subject to a form or a concept in any known sense of these words. This is the bedrock of Balzac’s work when we conceive of him as an urban writer with Paris as his primary urban locus. Here is his basic frame of refer- ence which, simultaneously, disrupts the material space and time structure, the social fabric, the individual bodily experience and the mental make-up that constitute it as a reference in the first place. The meticulously listed piles of details are not there to give a comforting sense of familiarity and everyday intimacy, nor to establish an impression of shared public and collective per- ceptuality. They render a sense of the infinity of details and the randomness of what is actually focused upon and which constantly brings the characters and the reader to the edge of the ‘abime entre la forme et la pensée’, or, as Balzac says: “le hasard est le plus grand romancier du monde.”"! The crux is422 ‘Svend Erik Larsen that the material and therefore basically finite universe, when seen in a pro- cess of change, becomes an infinite but not a transcendental universe. With an almost Lukacsian phrasing in the Avant-Propos he explains that society, depicted as he sets out to do it, “devait porter avec elle la raison de son mouvement.”!? To be appointed secretary of such a society gives working hours and working conditions that cannot be determined by any workers" union. And requires an extraordinary consumption of coffee. In Balzac’s work, according to my thesis, the basic productive conflict which is traceable in the texts as well as the urban context, obtains between the unbridgeable poles of the infinity of details and the abortive systems that Tepeatedly and inevitably, but in vain, are introduced to cope with the details without reducing their complexity. To specify and concretize this thesis Ill first read the opening sequence of Facino Cane, then go on to the Avant- Propos and wind up with a brief reference to La cousine Bette (1846) and Modeste Mignon (1844). Facino Cane: The Substituted I The opening of Facino Cane is really not very surprising but proceeds quite in line with so many place-centered descriptive openings. However, with the remarks I have just offered it proves to be more complex. Je demeurais alors dans une petite rue que vous ne connaissez sans doute pas, la ruc de Lesdiguiéres: elle commence a la rue Saint-Antoine, en face d'une fontaine prés de la place de la Bastille ct débouche dans la rue de La Cerisaic. Lamour de la science m’avait jeté dans une mansarde ot je travaillais pen- dant la nuit, et je passais le jour dans une bibliothéque voisine, celle de Mon- sieur. Je vivais frugalement, j’avais accepté toutes les conditions de la vie monas- tique, si nécessaire aux travailleurs. Quand il faisait beau, 4 peine me promenais-je sur le boulevard Bourdon. ‘Une seule passion m’entrainait en dehors de mes habitudes studieuses; mais n’était-ce pas encore de l'étude: j’allais observer les morurs du faubourg, ses habitants et leurs caractéres. Aussi mal vétu que les ouvriers, indifférent au décorum, je ne les mettais point en garde contre moi; je pouvais me méler 4 leurs groupes, les voir concluant leurs marchés, et se disputant a l’heure od ils quittent le travail. Chez moi l’observation était déja devenue intuitive, elle pénétrait I'ame sans négliger le corps; ou plutét elle saisissait si bien les détails extéricurs, qu'elle allait sur-le-champ au dela; elle me donnait la faculté de vivre de la vie de lindividu sur laquelle elle sexergait, en me permettant de me substituer a lui comme le derviche des Mille et Une Nuits prenait le corps et I’ame des per- sonnes sur lesquelles il pronongait certaines paroles.'?Passions of realism 423 The first few lines on streets in Paris seem to be on the same level as the follow- ing ones. They all refer to the everyday life and space of Paris in a not very pres- tigious neighborhood with an echo of revolution, and to the usual activities of the I, Je je. In the paragraph following the above quotation the actual events begin against the background of this sequence. Nothing can be more tra- ditional: from collective space via collective life to individual participation and reflexion and then, finally, a zooming-in on actual events. In fact, this is a fam- iliar discursive form introducing the general as an interpretive backdrop before the singular actions. But, as my reading will show, the details of the entire open- ing sequence dismantle the familiarity of the descriptive strategy. For a closer look the very first paragraph refers to different levels of reality than the rest. It is written from the point of view of the traditional spatial overview, Paris 4 vol d’oiseau as we know from other Paris stories. It refers to Paris as a map: you, that is the reader, do not know the place, so I tell you about the beginning and the ending of the street, which is exactly what one does on a map. The descriptive strategy of zooming-in on the one hand and the map on the other constitute two totalizing form principles, one refer- ring to the discursive process, the other to the space of reference. In the next two paragraphs we lower the point of view to street level: the toom and the activities of the I. He is a student with working hours different from those of the persons living in Fauborg St. Antoine. So he, too, like the reader, does not belong there; hence, he will also be needing the map. The place is unknown both to the I and the reader. The objective space is subjec- tively invested also in the apparently objective references to the unambiguous, mappable facts of the material space. The main activity of the I, therefore, is to explore or observe the space where he lives but does not belong, in mingling anonymously with local people in an operation of ‘as if’ — he dresses as if he is one of them. We are now on the level of the bewildering maze of the material surroundings, no more metaphorically @ vol d’oiseau, but concretely walking where “tout est jambes.”"* Although the overview by the map allows for a de-emotionalized, detached way of locating oneself, the actual location is motivated by ‘l'amour de la science qui m’avait jeté’ and driven by ‘une seule passion’, namely to observe local life and then to turn observation into intuition. On street level the ambiguous passions take over from the deliberately chosen orientation and movement offered by the overview — the subject is thrown, ‘jeté’. This contrast between rational mapping and passionate walking, between424 Svend Erik Larsen tational control above the streets and spontaneous movements in the streets is counterbalanced by a new attempt to create a different order that embraces both the subjective passion and the objective disorganisation on street level. This happens with reference to Arabian Nights, that is to narrative fiction. Here, even more astutely than in most fictitious universe, an actual subject, Shehereszade, is substituted by a story and becomes, in being substituted. part of a large and totalizing symbolic order that links the narrative with her actual survival through the storytelling. Also human and transhuman characters alike, e.g. ‘le derviche’, use disguises with the same purpose: to master the foreign and unknown. In Facino Cane, the I, both as character and narrator, exploits the same strategies to gain control over himself and the surrounding universe. He puts on clothes as a mask in the streets, and as a narrator he organizes all the minute details - even their labyrinthine character becomes meaningful when turned into a text, as we have seen in the opening of the story. It is realistic, in the sense that it gives meaning to a reality otherwise deprived of meaning, but with a clear and observable material presence. The observed is out there but slips through the fingers until it is narrated. This is, I guess, what Adorno refers to in his Balzac-Lektire as “Realismus aus Realitatsverlust”.'> The reference here to Arabian Nights is by no means fortuitous. It explicite- ly becomes part of Facino Cane’s phantasmagoric Venice later in the story, thus making the otherwise contrasting I the twinbrother of Facino. And it is the reference Balzac himself uses in his letter to Mme Hanska from december 1834 when he outlines his vision for the Comédie: “Ainsi, l'homme, la société, Vhumanité seront décrites, jugées, analysées sans répétitions, et dans une quvre qui sera comme les Mille et une nuits”.'© Let me return to the introduction again to reveal the full meaning of this reference. The opening moves from a material overview opening for subjective action and spatial orientation to the actual action and spatial disorientation. However, the actual events do not follow the possibilities offered by the over- view but are performed by a subject who is alien, disguised and partly out of control. Out of the dynamics produced by this tension now emerges a new order different from the map, the symbolic narrative in the mode of Arabian Nights which does not open for action but for understanding and for a necessary subjective involvement in the narrated universe through the narra- tive in the mode of Sheheraszade and ‘le derviche’. It is an attempt to give “une raison [...] 4 cet immense assemblage.”!”Passions of realism 425 This new organizing principle of the narrative enables the I to integrate both the clear overview with the details of the otherwise floating experience and its opposite, the experiencing and otherwise bewildered subject. There- fore, it opens for an investment of both the materialistic and spiritualistic models that support Balzac’s narrative. But this only happens if the I, as he says, substitutes or — to be more radical — annihilates himself in the universe of experience, makes himself an Other. “Les personnages — Balzacs says, also implying himself - [...] ne vivent qu’a la condition d’étre une grande image du présent.”'* In Balzac this condition of art and life opens up for the general fascination and preoccupation in Balzac of the role of death and destruction for the dynamics of life: you have to be an image of something else in order to live as yourself, the non-life of the image is the condition of life. At the end of Facino Cane Facino relates his luring stories of the gold of Venice which he detects with his magic sensibility for the precious metal, Facino, although more radically than the curious I walking in the streets, is living in and by an image of himself. The golden fantasies are real in the sense that they are constitutive of the real life of Facino, but whether or not they refer to hidden treasures in Venice cannot be decided. The fictitious order constantly questions and challenges the boundary between different levels of reality. The I is deeply fascinated, but does not indulge in a golddig- ging excursion to Venice. However, having once seen these conditions of life brought into the open, he cannot return to his own more innocent playing around with images and identity and neither can he tell the plain truth. The suggestion in the end that they may both go to Venice as soon as they can afford it, is a lie disguised as a promise.'? So, Facino Cane both refers to the basic reference point of Balzac’s work, the city, and to the conditions of his artistic creativity. (And maybe, as Lucien Dallenbach has it in La canne de Balzac, the name Cane also refers to the egotistic mythology of Balzac which adds another dimension to the process of substitution).” The paradox of passions The Avant-Propos is penetrated by the same double structure as Facino Cane between series of suggested totalizing forms or models and a strict focusing on observable but stubbornly independent details. The obligation to be “vrai dans les détails”2 is combined with a hope of finding “le magnetisme animal”426 Svend Erik Larsen and “les fluides qui ne se révélent que par leurs effets et dont la substance échappe 4 nos sens”? (Freudian unconscious here anticipated.) More interesting in my context is Balzac’s focus on what mediates between the overall form and the levels of experienced and lived details, something that makes the process unfold as involving both the subject and the world around it without being petrified as a dichotomy. I suggest that this dynamic center is what Balzac calls passion. “La passion est toute l’humanité”, located in “une fantaisie presque orientale ov la Vie elle-méme est peinte aux prises avec le Désir, principe de la Passion”. Here ‘passion’ is an anthropological inner principle of life, an é/an vital, that allows human beings to unfold their inner potential as humans and to individualize themselves in actually reach- ing out toward the world and other humans in a ‘désir’. There is no doubt that ‘désir’ is to be taken in the broad generative and formative sense of Northrop Frye: Civilization is not merely an imitation of nature, but the process of making a total human form out of nature, and it is impelled by the force that we have just called desire. The desire for food and shelter is not content with roots and caves: it produces the human forms of nature that we call farming and architecture. Passion, however, also has another feature. If one reads the picture of society carefully, Balzac says, society as a whole is a symbolic and imaginary text to be read,?> a story presumably told by its secretary. Reading carefully, one will then see that passion is not only an edifying human and social force — ‘un élément social’ - but a destructive force as well, which subverts both the social institutions (Balzac mentions religion, monarchy and family) and the pas- sionate individual: “Quelle puissance les détruit? La passion.” This double structure of building up the individual living subjects and de- stroying the structures they have to live in places passion as the dynamic link between the overall systems and the lives of actual human beings, and thereby as the driving force both in the text and in the social universe anchoring the texts. Passions make the mutual dependence between transhuman order and individual life and between discursive strategy and world of reference an on- going and totalizing process. In Facino Cane the passion for observation drives the I away from his studies, for which he also has a passion, ‘l'amour des sciences’. The vital passion that keeps the subject on the move following different desires is shaped as not just singular, but as conflicting passions. Passion is not a con-Passions of realism 427 cept of a unified emotional or existential state of mind. Facino, on the other hand, is kept alive by a passion for gold that ultimately destroys his life: it forces him into exile, blinds him, makes him indulge in vain fantasies, but also magnifies his life. The passion for something ultimately forces one away from it, or, alternatively, the objects of passion will vanish when hit by its flame. No wonder, then, that intimate love scenes are rare if at all existent in Balzac. There is no balcony scene, but quite a lot in the way of Desdemona’s death. The destructive and constructive aspects of passion are simultaneously working when passions are raging. And they are everywhere. Even the calcu- lating Vautrin cannot control his simultaneous passion for power and for Lucien. Passions, necessary but unbearable A few references from La cousine Bette (1846) can exemplify how diversified passions work in Balzac. In this late novel, passions are used, first, to typolog- ize the characters, that is to include them in a general system of characters. The passion of baronesse Hulot, for example, is the prototype of female passion: “La passion des femmes n'est pas comme le jeu, comme la spécu- lation, ou comme I’avarice, on y voit un terme.”?” Another prototypical case is the Brazilian M. Montés or the Polish artist Wenceslas Stenbock who are both seen as “primitivement sauvages”.”* Finally, the three gentlemen M. Hulot, M. Crevel and M. Marneffe exemplify the passion for youth, for pos- session and for money. But passion also exercises an individualizing effect. M. Hulot is made younger: “la passion ranimée le rajeunissait”, Bette herself “est passionnée vide”, and by passion Adeline adds to her love a “fanatisme” which is par- ticular to her; the vagrancies in Paris of M. Crevel follow “cette route illo- gique [...] tracée par la logique des passions”, a passion that is also labeled “un paroxysme de passion”; and Dalila cutting Samson's hair shows, accord- ing to Mme Marneffe, “la passion qui ruine tout.” In other words, the individualizing effect of passions, in contrast to the typologizing effect, is based on both its destructive and constructive potentials. Passions enable the passionate characters to reach out to others and to the world around them and, hence, passions are ‘I’élément social’, as Balzac says in his Avant-Propos. Passions call for satisfaction outside the individual who gains his or her identity through this outreaching desire. But in searching for428 Svend Erik Larsen or finding their object. passions destroy and reinforce the passionate drives that eventually push the individual towards the brink of destruction of self and others. Passions reinforce themselves as “un excés de passion”®” whether childishly as in the case of M. Hulot, or tragico-heroically, as when they finally turn into ‘une recherche de l’absolu’ carried out, among others. by Balthazar Claés. He is one of the men inspired by “cette passion que sentent tous les hommes vraiment grands pour I’infini” as the narrator states in La fille aux yeux d’or>! Thus, this ultimate form of the passion embraces both its typifying aspect and its individualizing aspect which, as we know from Balthasar Claés, is both destructive and constructive. Complying with the call of the passions is destructive, as in the case of the la cousine Bette “[qui] allait trop loin dans sa vengeance.">? However, repressing the passions once manifested proves equally fatal, as in the case of Adeline Hulot, who almost vanishes restraining herself from actively conquering her beloved husband.*> In this sense, I think that the general structure of the constitutive levels of Balzac’s realism — the dynamic contrast between the totalizing systemic ap- proach and the multifarious individual experiences - are made dynamic exactly by the passions which the characters invest in their attempts to bridge the gap between the two opposite poles: through art, science, love, power or other passion-driven outreaching activitities. This is so because the passions, comprising both a typologizing and an individualizing impact, direct their action toward both poles. Do we learn through passions? Balzac repeats, and also reinterprets, the age-old conceptions of the passions. Since antiquity and at least up to the Renaissance, preoccupied as it was with melancholy, passions were essential elements in a cosmos where the bodily humours and the elements united microcosm and macrocosm through ana- logical more than causal relations. In this universe passions equal suffering, pathos. They stem from external influences that penetrate human beings and disrupt their ideal balance of the humours, thereby forcing the passionate and unbalanced persons to externalize their emotions in actions in a desper- ate attempt to control the otherwise chaotique effect of the suffering. But in doing so they cannot help exposing themselves even more to external influ- ences which ultimately may destroy them. The passionates are thrown out of the order of human existence, like the passionate I in Facino Cane, but, unlikePassions of realism 429 this I, they represent a danger not only to themselves, but to the community and eventually to the entire cosmos. Learning by passions, the basic intention behind the tragic vision of hu- man life, means realizing the value of a balanced temperament governed by reason. Observing the fatal consequences of overstepping the limits of exist- ence will teach you the lesson, as in the example of Oedipus, who brought the entire cosmos out of order.*4 Benevolent passions, like love brought to the excess, may prove as dangerous as malevolent passions like envy or hatred. In later theories, most notably in Jean-Francois Senault’s De I'usage des passions (1641) and René Descartes’s Les passions de I’éme (1646),>5 the re- lation between body and mind changes. Still, passions are not the first cause of mental destabilization. They are produced inside humans by forces from outside, not necessarily outside the individual, as in earlier theories, but at least outside the mind. Body and mind are gradually turned into two inde- pendent systems. The body in itself, without external sufferings being in- flicted upon it, may produce irrational and passionate effects in the mind, which may then be affected solely by the representations or images of bodily phenomena contained in it. In this perspective explanations of causal re- lations between body and mind easily become contradictory, as in the case of Descartes’ theory of passions, and the old analogical explanations are no longer considered sufficient. During the 18th century passions gradually become subjectivized and men- talized as primary internal mental motions that burst out in actions all by themselves as primeval driving forces that define a relation between body and mind. Passions create typical characters and individual lives by the way they are realized. Thus, they lose their cosmic and religious interpretation and are seen as a key to understanding the role of sensual experience. Therefore, passions become an integral part of the reorientation of aesthetics of the 18th century*¢ and, in that capacity, they are mainly seen in their psychological, cognitive and social effect especially as erotic passions.>’ Passions, therefore, in various ways became part of the discussion of aesthetics, the sublime and individual freedom with a very different emphasis in England (e.g. Burke, Richardson), France (e.g. Laclos, Rousseau, de Sade) and Germany (e.g. Schiller, Kant). In France, apart from the libertines, Mme de Staél made an contribution to the debate in her essay De J’influence des passions sur le bonheur des indi- vidus et des nations (1796) with the French revolution as a backdrop. The title430 Svend Erk Larsen indicates that passions are not in the first place linked to suffering, as in ancient times, but to possible happiness, and that their basis is the invidual being. “ce qui se passe au-dedans d’eux”*® Moreover, Mme de Staél claims that the passionless persons in their tranquility only find their place in life by chance because, easy-going as they are, they are never forced to decide but can adapt equally well in all circumstances. Whether they are happy or not is of no general interest because they are not happy by moral choice or any reflection. In passionate persons, however, passions are internal, compulsive energies that may lead humans to sublime actions and discoveries, but also, if virtue is abandoned, to destruction of themselves and others. Passions can neither be avoided nor controlled, but without trying to do so, humans cannot live among other humans. “Tout ce qu'il faut de mouvement a la vie sociale, tout l'élan nécessaire a la vertu existerait sans ce mobile destructeur.”*® Passions may enlarge the individual but represent a menace to society and therefore ultimately to the individual, too. As no object can satisfy them, only individ- ual virtue may control them. The inevitability of passions becomes an existential issue, part of one’s character that one has to live with and live out in a process of individuation. Being an inherent part of one’s personality, passions therefore can never be sat- isfied or appeased in being directed toward an object. (Freud is just around the corner.) But as passions are transgressive powers they cannot help looking for objects and enter in an infinite process of shaping and reshaping of passions and objects. This process will just amplify them and ultimately annihilate both the passionate subject and the object of passion. The passion in Balzac, Pierre Danger rightly claims, “n'a pas d’autre finalité qu’elle-méme.”*' The post-cartesian view constitutes the logic of passions in Balzac’s work, but without the virtuous hopes of Mme de Staél. Passions are primary causes for actions: they form the fundamental potentials inside the individual that may or may not burst through to the surface. Balzac’s characters, in being passionate, are in the midst of the social life of others, but entirely left with their own highly personal compositions of passions to deal with, basically alone — they reach out to others only, nolens volens, to destroy them. But they also show, during this process, an incredible tenacity and sublime beauty that keep them alive and, while they are in the grips of passions, make life worth living for them, in spite of the fact that the passions destroy them and also. indifferently, their fiends and foes.Passions of realism 431 In the late novel Modeste Mignon (1844) the passions of the characters are presented in metaphors related to flying, to birds, to wings, to angels, etc. This semantic cluster gives even the ugliest of them all, the hunchback Butschka, who is hopelessly in love with Modeste, an astounding beauty: “ce que vous croyez une bosse, est !’étui de mes ailes.”4? Even a wounded bird, exemplifying the pervasive power of the metaphor, cannot help producing awkward jumps trying over and over again to get into the air. Unfortunately, passions give life its basic significance in such a way that art is their most adequate medium. Passions are simply this too-much that makes life spill over, makes us refuse accepting the impossibility of happiness and, in spite of everything, also refuse to accept the destruction in the characters, the author and his entire work. Life is impossible, divided as it is between systems we cannot understand and an invididual existence we cannot control. It is too much. Therefore it must go on. This is the message when passions become art in Balzac’s city. NOTES 1, Charles Baudelaire: Théophile Gautier. EEuvres complétes. Paris: Robert Laffont, 1980, p. 502. 2. Baudelaire seems here to have anticipated the view of Balzac’s novel's as melo- dramas, cf. Chrisopher Prendergast: Balzac. Fiction and Melodrama. New York: Holmes and Meyer, 1978, and Peter Brooks: The Melodramatic Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976. 3. Théophile Gautier: Honoré de Balzac. Paris: Le Castor Astral, 1999, p. 42. 4. Charles Baudelaire: Conseils aux jeunes littérateurs. Euvres complétes. Paris: Ro- bert Laffont, 1980, p. 320. 5. Mihail Bakhtine: The Dialogic Imagination. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981, p. 3. Cf. Henry James in the preface to The Awkward Age (1899): “Every- thing, for that matter, becomes interesting from the moment it has closely to consider, for full effect positively to bestride, the law of its kind.” (Henry James: The Art of the Novel. New York: Scribner's Sons, 1962, p. 111.) 6. Cf. Allan Pasco: Balzacian Montage. Configuring La Comédie humaine. Toronto: ‘Toronto University Press, 1991. Also André Vanoncini: Figures de la modernité. Essai d’épistémologie sur l'invention du discours balzacien. Paris: Corti, 1984, p. 178: “Les transformations que Balzac a fait subir aux modéles architextuels du discours autobiographique montrent bien que son écriture, en méme temps qu’exhibition du code, est toujours formulation transgressive de la codification.” 7. Cf. Maurice Bardéche: Balzac, Romancier. Genéve: Slatkin, 1967, and the collec- tions Roland Le Huenen and Paul Perron (eds.): Le roman de Balzac. Montréal: Didier, 1980, Claude Duchet et Isabelle Tournier (eds.): Balzac, Guvres completes.432 Svend Erik Larsen Le Moment de La Comédie humaine. Paris: Presses Universitaires de Vincennes. 1993. 8. Honoré de Balzac: Lettres ¢ Madame Hanska 1. Paris: Delta, 1967, p. 269. 9. Honoré de Balzac: Avant-Propos. La Comédie humaine 1. Paris: Le Seuil, 1965, p. 55. 10. Cf. note 5. 11. Honoré de Balzac: Avant-Propos. La Comédie humaine 1. Paris: Le Seuil. 1965, p. 52. 12. Op. cit., p. 53. 13. Honoré de Balzac: Facino Cane. La Comédie humaine IV. Paris: Le Seuil, 1965, p. 257. 14, Honoré de Balzac: La fille aux yeux d’or. La Comédie humaine IV. Paris: Le Seuil, 1965, p. 106, 15. Theodor W. Adorno: Balzac-Lektire. Notes zur Literatur I, Frank.a.M.: Subrk- amp, 1973, p. 30. Cf. Atle Kittang: La mort - mére du roman. Le travail du négatif dans Les Parents pauvres de Balzac, Revue Romane 29/2, 1994. 16. Honoré de Balzac: Lettres @ Madame Hanska |. Paris: Delta, 1967, p. 270. 17. Honoré de Balzac: Avant-Propos. La Comédie humaine 1. Paris: Le Seuil, 1965, p. 52. Cf. Anne-Marie Baron: Entre la toise du savant et le délire du fou. Robert Mathieu and Franc Shuererwegen (eds.): Balzac ou la tentation de l'impossible. Paris: Sedes, 1998. p. 159-166. 18, Honoré de Balzac: Avant-Propos. La Comédie humaine 1. Paris: Le Seuil, 1965, p. 52. 19. Honoré de Balzac: Facino Cane. La Comédie humaine IV. Paris: Le Seuil. 1965. p. 262. 20. Lucien Dallenbach: La canne de Balzac. Paris: Corti, 1996. 21. Honoré de Balzac: Avant-Propos. La Comédie humaine 1. Paris: Le Seuil, 1965, p. 54. 22. Op. cit., p. 54. 23. Op. cit., p. 54, cf. Une passion dans le désert (1830), the only case where ‘passion’ enters the title. 24. Northrop Frye: Anatomy of Criticism. London: Penguin, 1990, p. 105. A more traditional conception of ‘désir’ is found in Pierre Danger: L'éros balzacien. Struc- ture du désir dans la Comédie humaine. Paris: Corti, 1989. 25. Honoré de Balzac: Avant-Propos. La Comédie humaine 1. Paris: Le Seuil, 1965, p. 54. 26. Honoré de Balzac: La fille aux yeux d’or. La Comédie humaine IV. Paris: Le Seuil, 1965, p. 108. 27. Honoré de Balzac: La cousine Bette. La Comédie humaine V. Paris: Le Seuil, 1965, p. 105. . Op. cit., p. 87, 149. . Op. cit., p. 105, 47, 18, 48, 86, 88. . Op. cit., p. 161. : F . Honoré de Balzac: La fille aux yeux d’or. La Comédie humaine IV. Paris: Le Seuil, 1965, p. 119. 32. Honoré de Balzac: La cousine Bette. La Comédie humaine V. Paris: Le Seuil, 1965, p. 133. 33. More details in Wolfgang Matzat: Diskursgeschichte der Leidenschaft. Zur Affekt- SSRBRPassions of realism 433 Re EA eo Narr: Tubingen, ue Keith Cameron (ed.): The Literary Portrayal of Passion through the Ages. ‘Lewistown: Edwin Mellen Press, 1996, Ruth Padel: In and Out of the Mind. Greek Images of the Tragic Self. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992, Lily B. ‘Campbell: ’s Tragic Heroes. Slaves of Passion. London: Methuen, 1961, Claude Summers & Ted-Larry Pebworth (eds.): Renaissance Discourses of Desire. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1993. 35, Jean-Francois Senault: De /'usage des passions. Paris: Fayard, 1987, René Des- cartes: Les passions de I'dme, Paris: Flammarion, 1996. 36. See for example the informative reader edited by Hermann Wiegmann, Die sthetische Leidenschaft. Hildesheim: Olms, 1987. 37, See Niklas Luhmann: Liebe als Passion. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1994. 38. Germaine de Stati: De l'influence des passions sur le bonheur des individus et des nations. Paris: Ramsay, 1979, p. 60. apes nine 40. Jann Matlock: Scenes of Seduction. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. Robert Smadja: Corps et roman. Paris: Honoré Champion, 1998. 41. Pierre Danger: L’éros balzacien. Structure du désir dans la Comédie humaine. Paris: Corti, 1989, p. 23. 42, Honoré de Balzac: Modeste Mignon. La Comédie humaine I. Paris: Le Seuil, 1965, p. 229. Cf. Svend Erik Larsen: Ville, nature, littérature. Gerhard Boysen and Jern Moestrup (eds.): Etudes de linguistiques et de littérature dédiées 4 Morten Nejgaard @ [occasion de son soixante-cinquiéme anniversaire. Odense: Odense University Press, 1999, p. 247-266. Svend Erik Larsen (b. 1946), dr. phil, Professor at the Department of Comparative Literature, University of Aarhus. He is member of the board of the International literature and culture and its impact on human values and imagination, especially in relation to nature. A major research field is also semiotics. He is author/co-author of Forteelleteori (Narrative Theory) (1975), Sémiologie littéraire (1984), Sprogets Geome- tri 1-2 (The Geometry of Language) (1986), Tegn i brug (Signs in Use) (1994), Na- turen er ligeglad (Nature Doesn't Care) (1996) and editor/co-editor of, among others, Communication et sujet (=Degrés 21) (1980), A l'occasion d’un centenaire. Actualité de Brondal (=Langages 86) (1987), Semiotik in Skandinavien (= Zeitschrift fir Semi- otik XI/4) (1989), City and Nature (1993), The Construction of Nature (1994), Menne- ske og Natur (Humans and Nature) (1995), La rue - espace ouvert (1997), Der Park als kultursemiotische Funktion (=Zeitschrift fir Semiotik XIX/1-2) (1997), Nature: Literature and Its Otherness/La littérature et son autre (August 1997).Copyright © 2003 EBSCO Publishing