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Translator: David Desmond

Translated and produced by David Desmond

HONOR? DE BALZAC BY TH?OPHILE GAUTIER

REVISED AND EXPANDED EDITION

PARIS POULET-MALASSIS ET DE BROISE BOOKSELLERS-PUBLISHERS 9, rue des Beaux-Arts 1859

Translated by David Desmond

Around 1835, I lived in two small rooms in the Impasse du Doyenn?, not far from the current location of the Pavillon Mollien. Although it was located in the center of Paris facing the Tuilleries and just a few steps from the Louvre, the location was deserted and wild, and it required a certain persistence for me to be found. However, one morning a young man with a distinguished look and a cordial and spiritual air approached my front door and excused himself while making his introduction; he was Jules Sandeau: he had come to recruit me on behalf of Balzac for La Chronique de Paris, a weekly journal that one will certainly remember, but which had not been as financially successful as it deserved. Balzac, Sandeau told me, had read Mademoiselle de Maupin, then very recently published, and he had very much admired its style; thus he wished to request my collaboration on the journal that he sponsored and directed. A date was set for us to get together, and from that date forward there was between us a friendship that only death could break.

If I have told this story, it is not because it is flattering for me, but because it honors Balzac, who, already famous, sought out a young, obscure writer to collaborate in a spirit of of camaraderie and complete equality. At that time, it's true, Balzac was not yet the author of La Com?die Humaine, but he had completed, besides several novellas, La Physiologie du Mariage, La Peau de Chagrin, Louis Lambert, Seraphita, Eug?nie Grandet, l'Histoire des Treize, Le M?decin de Campagne, P?re Goriot, that is to say, in ordinary times, enough to solidify five or six reputations. His nascent glory, strengthened each month with new rays, shined with all of the splendors of the aurora; certainly he shined brightly like his contemporaries Lamartine, Victor Hugo, de Vigny, de Musset, Sainte-Beuve, Alexandre Dumas, M?rim?e, George Sand, and many others; but at no time in his life did Balzac carry himself as the Grand Lama of literature, and he was always good company; he had pride, but he was entirely free of vanity.

He lived at that time at the end of the Jardin du Luxembourg, near the Observatoire, on a little frequented road given the name of Cassini, without doubt because of its astronomical neighbor. On the garden wall which occupied almost the entire side, and at the end of which was found the house in which Balzac lived, one read: Labsolu, brick merchant. That strange sign, which is still there, if I am not wrong, is very striking; La Recherche de l'Absolu can have no other inspiration. This fateful name probably suggested to the author the idea of Balthasar Cla?s in the pursuit of his impossible dream.

When I saw him for the first time, Balzac, one year older than the century, was around thirty-six, and his face was one of those that one would never forget. In his presence, one is reminded of Shakespeare's lines about Julius Caesar: "Before him, nature stands up boldly and says to the world, 'This is a man!'"

My heart beat strongly because never had I approached without trembling a master of thought, and all the speeches I had prepared on the way stayed in my throat, allowing nothing to pass other than a stupid phrase like this: "The temperature is nice today." Heinrich Heine, when he went to visit Goethe, could find nothing to say except that the plums that have fallen from the trees on the route from I?na to Weimar are excellent for thirst, which made the Jupiter of German poetry laugh gently. Balzac, seeing my embarrassment, soon put me at my ease, and during breakfast I became calm enough to examine him in detail.

He wore, in the form of a dressing gown, a robe of white cashmere or flannel held at the waist by a cord, in which, some time later, he was painted by Louis Boulanger. What whim had pushed him to choose, ahead of any other, this costume that he never took off? Could it be that it symbolized in his eyes the cloistered life to which his labors condemned him, and, Benedictine of the novel, he had thus taken the robe? This robe always suited him marvelously. He boasted, showing me the intact sleeves, to have never sullied its purity with the least stain of ink, "because," he said, "the true writer should always be neat while at his work."

His robe, thrown back, revealed the neck of an athlete or a bull, round as a section of a column, without apparent muscles, and of a satiny whiteness which contrasted with the deeper hue of his face. At this time, Balzac, in the prime of his life, gave the impression of a robust health, little in harmony with the romantic pallors then in fashion. The pure Tourainian blood left his cheeks a bright purple and warmly colored his lips, thick and sinuous, easy to laugh; a light mustache and a small beard just below his lower lip accentuated the contours of his mouth, without concealing them; the nose, square at the end, divided into two lobes, pierced by very open nostrils, of a character entirely original and unique; Balzac, in posing for his bust, told the sculptor, David d'Angers, "Be careful about my nose, my nose is a world!" The forehead was beautiful, vast, noble, much whiter than the face, with no creases other than a perpendicular furrow along the ridge of the nose; there was a very pronounced ridge above the eyebrows; the hair, abundant, long, strong and black, stood up in back like a lion's mane. As for the eyes, there have never existed anything comparable. They had a life, a light, an inconceivable magnetism. Despite the nightly vigils, their whites were pure, limpid, bluish, like that of a child or a virgin, and encased two black diamonds that shined at times with rich reflections of gold: they were eyes to make eagles avert their gaze, to penetrate walls and hearts, to strike down a furious wild beast, the eyes of the sovereign, the seer, the conqueror.

Mme. Emile de Girardin, in her novel entitled La Canne de M. de Balzac, speaks of these shining eyes:

"Tancred then perceived at the front of the club, turquoise, gold, marvelous carvings; and behind all of that two large black eyes more brilliant than the stones."

Those extraordinary eyes, once one had met their gaze, made it difficult to notice other features that might have been trivial or irregular.

The habitual expression of the face was a sort of powerful hilarity, a Rabelaisian and monkish joy -- the robe no doubt contributing to the birth of this idea -- which made you think of Brother Jean des Entommeures, but it was enlarged and elevated by a mind of the first order.

According to his habit, Balzac had risen at midnight, and had written until my arrival. His features betrayed no fatigue, aside from a slight darkening beneath the eyelids, and during the entire breakfast he demonstrated a wild gaiety. Little by little the conversation drifted toward literature, and he complained of the enormous difficulties of the French language. Style preoccupied him a great deal, and he sincerely believed that he had none at all. It is true that he was then generally thought to be lacking this quality. The school of Victor Hugo, in love with the sixteenth century and the Middle Ages, specialized in patterns, in rhythms, in structure, rich in words, breaking prose with the gymnastics of verse, and modeling itself on a master confident in his methods, would do nothing other than that which was well written, that is to say worked and toned beyond measure, and found the portrayal of modern manners to be useless, conventional, and lacking in lyricism. Balzac, despite the popularity that he had begun to enjoy among the public, was not admitted among the gods of Romanticism, and he knew it. While devouring his books, people did not pause to regard their serious side, and even for his admirers, he remained for a long time the most productive of our novelists and nothing else; this surprises today, but I can vouch for the truth of my assertion. He tortured himself in trying to achieve a style, and, in his anxiety to make corrections, he consulted people who were a hundred times his inferiors. Before signing his name to anything, he had written under different pseudonyms one hundred volumes just "to free his hand." However he already possessed a style of his own without being conscious of it.

But let me return to our breakfast. While talking, Balzac played with his knife or his fork, and I noted that his hands were of a rare beauty, the true hands of a prelate, white, with fingers both slender and plump, and nails that were pink and shiny; he was proud of them and smiled with pleasure as I looked at them. He considered his hands to be evidence of breeding and aristocratic birth. Lord Byron, in a note, says with evident satisfaction, that Ali Pacha complimented him on the smallness of his ears, and inferred from them that he was a true gentleman. A similar remark upon his hands would have equally flattered Balzac, even more than the praise of one his books. He had a sort of prejudice against those whose extremities lacked finesse. The meal was rather fine, a pat? de foie gras was part of it, but this was a deviation from his habitual frugality, as he remarked while laughing, and that for "this solemn occasion" he had borrowed his silver plates from his library!

I retired after having promised some articles for La Chronique de Paris, where Le Tour en Belgique, La Morte Amoureuse, La Chaine d'Or, and other literary works had appeared. Charles de Bernard, who had also been called by Balzac, contributed La Femme de Quarante Ans, La Rose Jaune, and some new work since collected into volumes. Balzac, as one knows, had invented the woman of thirty years; his imitator added ten years to that already venerable age and his heroine obtained no less success.

Before going further, let's pause for a moment and give some details of Balzac's life prior to my acquaintance with him. My authorities will be Madame de Surville, his sister, and himself.

Balzac was born in Tours, May 16, 1799, on the day of the celebration of Saint Honor? who gave him his name, which sounded good and augured well. Little Honor? was not a child prodigy; he did not announce prematurely that he would write La Com?die Humaine. He was a fresh, rosy, healthy boy, fond of play, with gentle, sparkling eyes, but in no way distinguished from other boys of his age, at least upon casual observation. At seven, upon leaving a day school in Tours, he attended a secondary school in Vend?me run by the Oratoriens, where he was thought to be a very mediocre student.

The first part of Louis Lambert contains curious information regarding this period of Balzac's life. Dividing his own personality, he describes himself as an old classmate of Louis Lambert, sometimes speaking in his name, and sometimes lending his own sentiments to this person who is imaginary, yet very real, since he is a sort of lens into the writer's very soul.

"Situated in the middle of the town, upon the little river Loire that bathes its walls, the college forms a vast enclosure containing the establishments necessary for an institution of this kind: a chapel, a theater, an infirmary, a bakery, some streams of water. This college, the most celebrated seat of instruction of the central provinces, is populated by those provinces and by our colonies. The distance does not allow parents to come here often to see their children; the rules forbid vacations away from the institution. Once they have entered, the pupils do not leave the college until the end of their studies. With the exception of walks taken outside under the supervision of the Fathers, everything had been planned to give to this house all of the advantages of monastic discipline. In my time, the corrector was still a living memory, and the leather strap played with honor its terrible role."

It is in this way that Balzac described this formidable college, which left in his imagination such persistent memories.

It would be intriguing to compare the novella titled William Wilson, in which Edgar Allen Poe describes, with the strange exaggerations of childhood, the old building from the time of Queen Elizabeth where his hero was raised with a companion who was no less strange than Louis Lambert; but this is not the place to make this comparison, thus I must content myself only to point it out.

Balzac suffered prodigiously in this college, where his tendency to daydream was assaulted every instant by some inflexible rule. He neglected his studies; but, benefitting from the tacit complicity of a tutor of mathematics, who was at the same time a librarian and occupied in studies that were outside of the realm of ordinary experience, he did not take his lessons and borrowed all of the books he wished. He passed all of his time in secret reading. Soon he became the most punished student in the class. Extra work and detentions occupied his recreation time.

For certain schoolchildren, punishments inspire a sort of stoic rebellion, and they oppose the exasperated professors with the same disdainful impassivity that captive savage warriors display toward the enemy who tortures them. Isolation, starvation, and the leather strap will not elicit the least complaint; there are thus between the master and the student some horrible conflicts, unknown to the parents, in which the steadfastness of the martyrs and the skills of the executioner are found equally. Some nervous teachers cannot bear the expressions full of hate, scorn, and threat with which a child of eight or ten years defies them.

Let us consider here some characteristic details that, under the name of Louis Lambert, also describe Balzac. "Accustomed to the open air, the independence of an education left to chance, the tender care of an old man who cherished him, and thinking while being warmed by the rays of the sun, it was very difficult for him to conform to the rules of the college, to march in line, to live within the four walls of a room in which twenty-four young boys were silent, seated on a wooden bench, each before his desk. His senses possessed a perfection which gave them an exquisite fragility, and they all suffered from this communal life; the exhalations that left the air corrupted, mixed with the odor of a class that was always dirty and encumbered by the remains of our lunches and our snacks, affected his sense of smell, that sense which, connected more directly than the others to the cerebral system, should cause by its derangements some unavoidable shocks to the organ of thought; apart from these atmospheric corruptions, he found in our study halls some spots where each would put his booty, pigeons killed for the feast days or plates stolen from the refectory. Finally our rooms contained an immense stone on which two buckets of water rested where on a rotating basis we went each morning to wash our face and hands, in the presence of the master. Washed only once each day before our awakening, our premises were always dirty. Then, despite the number of windows and the height of the door, the air was always fouled by the emanations of the wash house, the garbage dump, by the thousand activities of every schoolboy, without counting our eighty bodies when assembled. This kind of a collective humidity, when combined with the dirt that we would carry back from our travels, resulted in an unbearable stench. The deprivation of air that was pure and scented with the countryside in which he had until then lived, the change in his routines, and the discipline all saddened Lambert. His head always leaning on his left hand and his arm supported by his desk, he passed his study time by looking at the foliage of the trees or the clouds in the sky. He seemed to be studying his lessons; but seeing his pen immovably fixed and his page remaining blank, the professor would cry out to him: 'You are doing nothing, Lambert.'"

To this vivid and truthful description of the miseries of life at school, let me add an extract in which Balzac characterizes himself as a duality under the double sobriquet Pythagoras and the Poet, one carried by the half of himself personified in Louis Lambert and the other by the half of himself that was his true identity, and which explains admirably why he was seen by his teachers as being an incapable child:

"Our independence, our illicit occupations, our apparent indolence, the torpor in which we remained, our constant punishments, our repugnance toward homework and chores, won us the reputation of being useless and incorrigible boys: our masters despised us, and we similarly fell into the most terrible discredit among our classmates, from whom we concealed our contraband studies for fear of their mockeries. This double low regard, unjust on the part of the Fathers, was a natural sentiment on the part of our classmates; we didn't know how to play ball, run, or walk on stilts on those days of amnesty when by chance we obtained a moment of freedom; we didn't take part in any of the amusements then in style at the school; strangers to the pleasures of our comrades, we remained alone, seated sadly under a tree in the courtyard. The Poet and Pythagoras were an exception, living a life separate from that of the community. The penetrating instinct, the fragile self-regard of schoolboys, gave them a greater sensitivity with regard to minds that were higher or lower than their own; from there, for some, was hatred of our mute aristocracy; for others, scorn for our uselessness. We held these sentiments between us without our full knowledge, and it's possible that I didn't understand them until today. We lived therefore exactly like two rats skulking in the corner of the room that held our desks, bound there equally during the hours of study and during those of recreation."

The result of these hidden labors, of these meditations which used up study time, was the famous Trait? de la Volont? about which he spoke many times in La Com?die Humaine. Balzac always regretted the loss of this first work that he describes in Louis Lambert, and he speaks with an emotion that time has not diminished of the confiscation of the box that held the precious manuscript; some jealous schoolmates tried to snatch the box that two friends fiercely defended: "Suddenly, attracted by the noise of the battle, Father Haugoult roughly intervened and quieted the dispute. This terrible Haugoult ordered us to give the box to him; Lambert handed him the key, the teacher took the papers and flipped through them; then he said while confiscating them: 'So this is the foolishness for which you neglect your work!' Large tears fell from Lambert's eyes, caused as much by the consciousness of his offended sense of moral superiority as by the gratuitous insult and the betrayal that overwhelmed him. Father Haugoult probably sold the Trait? de la Volont? to a grocer of Vend?me without knowing the importance of the scientific treasures whose seeds were left to die in ignorant hands."

After this passage he adds, "It was in memory of the catastrophe that had happened to Louis's book that in the work with which these studies begin I used for a piece of fiction the title truly invented by Lambert, and that I ave the name of a woman who was dear to him to a young girl who was full of devotion."

In effect, if I open La Peau de Chagrin, I find in the confession of Raphael the following words: "You alone admired my Th?orie de la Volont?, that long work for which I learned the Oriental languages, anatomy, physiology, and to which I dedicated the greatest part of my time, work which, if I am not mistaken, will complete the studies of Mesmer, of Lavater, of Gall, of Bichat, by opening a new path to the human science; there stops my beautiful life, this sacrifice of all of those days, this silkworm's work, unknown to the world, and whose only compensation could be in the work itself; since the end of childhood until the day that I finished my Theori?, I have observed, learned, written, read without rest, and my life has seemed like a long chore; a gentle lover of Oriental idleness, enthralled with my dreams, sensual, I have always worked, denying myself the delights of Parisian life; a gourmand, I have been temperate; fond of hikes and journeys on the water, hoping to visit foreign countries, still finding a child's pleasure in skipping stones on the water, I stayed constantly seated with pen in hand; talkative, I went to listen in silence to the public courses at the library and the museum; I slept in my solitary bunk like a devotee of the order of Saint Benedict, and women were however my only fantasy, a fantasy that I caressed but which always escaped me!"

If Balzac regretted the Trait? de la Volont?, he was less sensitive to the loss of his epic poem on the Incas, which began thusly:

Oh Inca, oh ill-fated and unhappy king!

This unfortunate inspiration earned him, for all of the remaining time that he stayed at the school, the derisory nickname of poet. Balzac, it must be confessed, never had a gift for poetry, at least for meter; his complex thoughts rebelled against rhythm.

From these intense meditations, from these truly prodigious intellectual efforts of a child of twelve or fourteen years, there resulted a bizarre malady, a nervous fever, a sort of coma entirely inexplicable for the professors, who were not in on the secret of the readings and the works of young Honor?, who appeared to be so lazy and stupid. No one at the school suspected this precocious excess of intelligence, no one knew that in the cell in which he caused himself to be put daily so as to be at liberty, this student who was thought to be lazy had absorbed an entire library of serious books that were beyond the typical understanding of his age.

Let me here tie together several curious lines related to the reading ability attributed to Louis Lambert, that is to say, Balzac:

"In three years, Louis had assimilated the substance of the books in his uncle's library that deserved to be read. His absorption of ideas by reading had become a curious phenomenon: his eye took in seven or eight lines at a time, and his mind appreciated their meaning at an equal speed. Often a single word in a phrase sufficed for him to appreciate its substance. His memory was prodigious. He remembered with the same fidelity the thoughts acquired by reading as those which reflection or conversation had suggested to him. Ultimately he retained all of those memories: those of places, of names, of words, of things, of figures; not only did he recall objects at will, but he remembered them again lit and colored as they were at the moment that he first perceived them. This power applied equally to the most imperceptible elements of understanding. He remembered not only the placement of thoughts in the book from which he had derived them, but even the disposition of his soul at those distant times."

Balzac retained this marvelous gift of his youth throughout his life, even in larger measure as the years passed, and it is through this that his immense work can be explained, truly the work of Hercules.

The anxious teachers wrote to Balzac's parents to come for him as soon as possible. His mother hurried to him and picked him up to take him back to Tours. The astonishment of the family was great when they saw the thin and sickly child that the school had returned to them in place of the cherub it had received, and it was distressing for Honor?'s grandmother. Not only had he lost his beautiful colors and his youthful sturdiness, but, struck by a congestion of ideas, he appeared to be an imbecile. His manner was that of an ecstatic, of a somnambulist who sleeps with his eyes open: lost in a profound reverie, he did not hear that which was said to him, or his mind, returning from afar, arrived too late to respond. But the open air, rest, the nurturing environment of the family, the recreations they forced him to take and the vigorous juices of adolescence soon triumphed over this sickly state. The tumult caused in that young brain by the whirring of ideas diminished. Little by little, the muddled readings became organized; abstractions came to be blended into real images, observations made silently on life; while walking and playing, he studied the pretty landscapes of the Loire, the provincial types, the cathedral of Saint-Gatien and the characteristic physiognomies of the priests and canons; many of the images which later served in the grand fresco of the Com?die were sketched during this period of fruitful inaction. However, the intelligence of Balzac was not perceived or understood any more in his family than at school. Even if something clever escaped his lips, his mother, despite being a superior woman, would say to him: "Without a doubt, Honor?, you don't understand what you are saying." And Balzac would laugh, without further explanation, that wonderful laugh that he had. Balzac's father, who shared qualities at that time with Montaigne, Rabelais, and Uncle Toby, by his philosophy, his originality, and his goodness , had a little better opinion of his son, believing due to certain genetic theories that he held that a child created by himself could not be stupid: nevertheless, he had no suspicion of the great man that he would become in the future.

Balzac's family having returned to Paris, he was entered into the boarding school of Monsieur Lepitre, Rue Saint-Louis, and Messieurs Sganzer and Beuzelin, Rue Thoringy in the Marais. There as at the school in Vend?me, his genius did not reveal itself, and he remained in the midst of the troop of ordinary students. No prefect exclaimed to him: "You will be Marcellus!" or "Thus you shall go to the stars!"

His classes finished, Balzac gave himself that second education which is the true one; he studied, perfected himself, attended the courses of the Sorbonne, and studied law while working with an attorney and a notary. This time, apparently lost, since Balzac became neither an attorney, nor a notary, nor a lawyer, nor a judge, gave him a personal acquaintance with the personnel of the Bazoche and led him to later write what I might call the litigations of La Com?die Humaine in the style of a man marvelously versed in that profession.

The examinations passed, the great question of which career to select presented itself. His family wanted to make a notary of Balzac; but the future great writer, who, even though no one believed in his genius, had a consciousness of it himself, refused in a most respectful manner, although they had organized a position on the most favorable terms. His father gave him two years to prove himself, and as the family had returned to the provinces, Madame Balzac installed Honor? in a garret, allowing him a stipend sufficient for only his most pressing needs, hoping that a little hardship would make him wiser.

This garret was perched on the Rue de Lesdigui?res, number nine, near the Arsenal, whose library offered its resources to the young laborer. Without a doubt, to pass from an abundant and luxurious house to a miserable hovel would be difficult at any age other than 21, which was the age of Balzac; but if the dream of every child is to have boots, that of every young man is to have a room, a room all to himself, whose key he carries in his pocket, although he can stand upright only at its center: a room, it's the trappings of virility, it's independence, personality, love!

Behold then master Honor? perched near the sky, seated before his table, and trying to create a work that would justify the indulgence of his father and disprove the unfavorable predictions of his friends. It is a remarkable thing that Balzac debuted with a tragedy, with a Cromwell! Around that same time, Victor Hugo also put the last touches on his Cromwell, whose preface became the manifesto of all young dramatists.

In attentively rereading La Com?die Humaine when one has known Balzac personally, one finds there scattered curious details with regard to his character and his life, particularly in his first works, where he has not yet separated out his own personality, and, due to a lack of subjects, observes and dissects himself. I have said that he began his rude apprenticeship for the literary life in a garret on the Rue Lesdigui?res, near the Arsenal. The novel Facino Cane, published in Paris in March, 1836, and dedicated to Louise, contains some precious information regarding the life that this young aspirant for glory led in his aerial nest.

"I lived then in a street which without doubt you do not know, the Rue Lesdigui?res: it begins at the Rue Saint-Antoine, opposite a fountain, near the Place de la Bastille, and leads into the Rue de la Cerisaie. The love of science had thrown me into an attic where I wrote all night, and I passed the day in a neighboring library, that of Monsieur; I lived frugally, I had accepted all of the conditions of the monastic life, so necessary for laborers. When the weather was fine, I allowed myself a walk on the Boulevard Bourbon. One sole passion enticed me from my studious habits; but wasn't this also studying? I went to observe the manners of the neighborhood, its inhabitants and their characters. As ill clad as the workers, indifferent to decorum, I did not put them on their guard against me: I could mingle in their groups, see them conclude their deals, and hear them argue about the time that they would stop working. For me, observation had already become intuitive, it penetrated the soul without neglecting the body; in other words it so thoroughly grasped exterior that it transcended it immediately; it gave me the ability to live the life of the individual on which I was focused and permitted me to substitute myself for him, like the dervish of the Thousand and One Nights seized the body and the soul of persons over whom he pronounced certain words.

"When, between eleven o'clock and midnight, I met a workman and his wife returning from the Ambigu-Comique, I amused myself by following them from the Boulevard Pont-aux-Choux to the Boulevard Beaumarchais. These good people would at first speak of the play that they had just seen; next they would address their personal affairs; the mother would pull the child by the hand without listening to either his complaints or his questions. The married couple would count up the money that would be paid to them the next day. They would spend it in twenty different ways. They would then move on to household matters, complaints over the excessive price of potatoes or the length of the winter and the rise in the cost of butter, energetic discussions on how much was owed to the baker, and finally onto discussions where each of them became irritated and demonstrated his character with picturesque words. In listening to these people, I could connect with their life, I felt their rags upon my back, I walked with my feet in their tattered shoes; their desires, their needs, all passed into my soul, and my soul passed into theirs; it was the dream of an awakened man. I became exasperated with them against the workshop foremen who tyrannized them or against the unfair practice that made them return many times without providing them with their pay. To abandon habits, to become another through this intoxication of the moral faculties and to play this game at will, such was my entertainment. To what do I owe this gift? Is it an extrasensory perception? Is it one of those qualities whose abuse would lead to madness? I have never sought the sources of this power; I possess it and I use it, that is all."

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