Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The condition of the whole Balzac family at the close of 1835 was tragic, M. Henri, back from abroad, and utterly incapable, as Balzac says, of doing anything, talked of blowing out his brains; Madame Surville was ill, Madame Balzac's reason or life was despaired of; and Balzac chose this time to consult a somnambulist about Madame Hanska, and was told the distressing news that she was in anxiety of some sort, and that her heart was enlarged!
Finding at last that no further information was to be gained on this point, I turned the conversation to Montreuil. I found, from Madame de Balzac's very abuse of him, that he enjoyed a great reputation in the country and a great favour at court.
It is sad that the last time we hear of this precious picture in Balzac's lifetime was when he went to Wierzchownia, in 1849; and then it had been relegated to a library which few people visited, and he describes it with his usual energy, as the most hideous daub it is possible to see quite black, from the faulty mixing of the colours; a canvas of which, for the sake of France, he is thoroughly ashamed.
They accepted this in place of Balzac's play, and "L'Ecole des Menages," of which the only copy extant is in the possession of the Vicomte de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, has never been acted. Balzac was in terrible trouble about the rejection of the drama from which he had hoped so much. I shall certainly require rest at Frapesle.
In David, the man of one idea, who yet has room for an honest love and an all-deserved friendship, Balzac could not go wrong. David Sechard takes a place by himself among the sheep of the Comedie. Some may indeed say that this phrase is unfortunate, that Balzac's sheep have more qualities of the mutton than innocence. It is not quite to be denied.
We may well believe that he at the same time enlarged upon his projects and that he aroused Balzac's interest by dwelling upon the magnitude, the novelty and the large remuneration of his enterprise. It was a question of nothing more nor less than the production of an entire library.
Within a very few years, Janin was to bury the hatchet of polemics beside Balzac's grave, and, forgetting the soreness generated in him by the Monography of the Press to constitute himself the dead author's apologist. Besides his continuation of Lucien de Rubempre's story in the Splendour and Wretchedness of Courtezans, Balzac published, in the year 1843, two complete novels, viz.
Balzac's father was born in Languedoc in 1746, and we are told by his son that he had been Secretary, and by Madame Surville, advocate, of the Council under Louis XVI. Both these statements however appear to be incorrect, and may be considered to have been harmless fictions on the part of the old gentleman, as no record of his name can be found in the Royal Calendar, which was very carefully kept.
Either terrorised by the all-powerful Buloz, or jealous of one who insisted on his own abilities and literary supremacy with loud-voiced reiteration, Alexandre Dumas, Roger de Beauvoir, Frederic Soulie, Eugene Sue, Mery, and Balzac's future acquaintance Leon Gozlan, signed a declaration at the instance of Buloz, to the effect that it was the general custom that articles written for the Revue de Paris should be published also in the Revue Etrangere, and should thus avoid Belgian piracy.
The former view is individual, while the latter is impersonal, and may, or may not, involve absorption of individual consciousness. In subsequent chapters we shall again refer to Balzac's Illumination as expressed in his writings, and will now take up the question of man's relation to the universe, as it appears in the light of cosmic consciousness, or liberation.
Word Of The Day