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Balzac's human comedy is a general characteristic. The Human Comedy by Balzac

Balzac's human comedy is a general characteristic. The Human Comedy by Balzac

03.11.2019

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Introduction

Conclusion

Introduction

By the end of the 20s of the XIX century, more and more noticeable and significant shifts were outlined in the literary process of the largest countries of Europe, which at the beginning of the third decade already defined themselves quite clearly.

If we characterize these changes in the most general terms, then their essence boils down to the fact that romanticism, having achieved major conquests from the end of the 18th century by this time, ends the first phase of its development, ceases to be a “school” or direction, while retaining its great role in the historical and literary process. At the same time, in the depths of romanticism, and partly independently, new principles of artistic vision and reflection of reality are being formed, which in literary criticism began to be called critical realism.

In connection with the national identity of each individual literature in European countries, the process of replacing romanticism with critical realism took place in different chronological frames, and, nevertheless, the turn of the early 30s is more or less defined in almost every country. comedy balzac monarchy

Critical realism of the 19th century - an artistic direction that puts forward the concept that the world and man are imperfect, the way out is non-resistance to evil by violence and self-improvement.

In the 19th century, the philosophical and aesthetic foundations of critical realism were formed. German classical philosophy and aesthetics (especially Hegel) became the theoretical foundation of critical realism. Hegel's idea that everything real is reasonable, and everything reasonable is real, oriented rapidly developing Europe towards historical stability.

Critical realism does not create gigantic universal characters, but goes deeper into the spiritual world of the individual, which has become more complex and absorbs reality, penetrating into the core of the psychological process.

Critical realism has been rapidly developing in Europe since the 20s of the 19th century: in France - Balzac, Stendhal, in England - Dickens.

1. The Human Comedy by Honore de Balzac

The French writer Honore de Balzac (1799-1850) is the greatest representative of critical realism in Western European literature. The "Human Comedy", which, according to the ingenious writer's plan, was to become the same encyclopedia of life as Dante's "Divine Comedy" was for his time, unites about a hundred works. Balzac sought to capture "the entire social reality, without bypassing a single situation of human life."

Balzac was born in the south of France, studied at a Catholic educational institution. Balzac received his secondary education in Paris. The writer's father was a peasant, during the years of the empire he became a military official. Balzac decided to test his literary talent. Leaving his family, he went to Paris.

The turbulent life of Paris, exciting with its contrasts, passionately attracted the writer. Parisian life predetermined his creative development. In the story "Facino Canet" Balzac recalls that already in the days of his youth he began to "study the mores of the suburbs, its inhabitants, their characters." Getting into the crowd of workers of the Parisian suburbs, he "felt their rags on his back, walked in their wooden shoes." “I already knew,” remarks Balzac, “for what need the suburb can serve—this practical school of revolutions.”

The "human comedy" opens with the philosophical novel Shagreen Skin, which was, as it were, a prelude to it. "Shagreen leather" is the starting point of my business, "wrote Balzac. The author tells how the hero of the novel Raphael, desperate to succeed with the honest work of a young scientist, decided to commit suicide. Balzac introduces a fantastic "character" into the novel - pebbled skin.Usually this is a special dressing skin, reminiscent of a donkey's pattern.Raphael decided to take it from an antique dealer, having learned from an ancient inscription on pebbled leather that it has a mysterious power to fulfill the desires of its owner.The inscription indicated that the skin and life of whoever wants to experience its power will be reduced with the fulfillment of each desire.But this did not stop Raphael: he preferred to sell his life for the benefits that the talisman promised.

Thus, a deep realistic generalization was hidden behind the allegories of Balzac's philosophical novel. The search for artistic generalization, synthesis, determines not only the content, but also the composition of Balzac's works. Many of them are built on the development of two plots of equal significance. For example, in the novel "Father Goriot" both old Goriot and Rastignac dispute the right to be the main character. Balzac's best story, Gobsek, is just as complex in composition. Balzac tells in Gobsek about many very different people at the same time. In the background of the story, as if in the shadows, are the daughter of the Viscountess de Granlie - Camille and the impoverished aristocrat Ernest de Resto. Lawyer Derville sympathizes with their love. Sitting in Madame de Grandlier's living room, Derville tells the girl's mother unknown details about the sad history of the Comte de Resto family and the role played in this story by the usurer Gobsek.

Ernest's father, Count de Resto, at one time married the daughter of Papa Goriot, Anastasi. She was a woman from a bourgeois environment, a beauty with a decisive character. Anastasi, having married an aristocrat during the years of the Restoration, ruined her husband, blowing away all his fortune for the sake of a secular dandy and adventurer. Derville, who at that time was just beginning his legal practice, managed with difficulty to save part of the Comte de Resto's property for his son. Such, it would seem, is the plot of the story. But in fact, her story is not limited to this. The main character of Balzac in this work is Gobsek, a living personification of the power of gold over people.

Gobsek, imbued with confidence in Derville, shared his thoughts with him. He had a consistent system of views, but frightening in its frankness and cynicism, in which we can easily discover the worldly philosophy of the entire bourgeois world. "Of all earthly blessings," said Gobsek, "there is only one that is reliable enough to make it worth a man to chase after it. It is ... gold."

Gobsek did not believe in the decency of people. "A person is the same everywhere: everywhere there is a struggle between the poor and the rich, everywhere. And it is inevitable. So it's better to push yourself than to allow others to push you."

To Derville, who at that time was largely naive, Gobsek's words seemed blasphemous. He believed in human nobility, he himself recently fell in love with the seamstress Fanny Malvo. By the way, she turns out to be one of Gobsek's random "clients". From Gobsek, Derville learned the truth about the cruel struggle of interests that determines the life of bourgeois society, just as the young Rastignac learns this truth in the novel "Father Goriot" from the convict Vautrin. The scenes connected with the ruin of the Resto family, which he witnessed, seemed all the more tragic to Derville.

The moral fall of a person, selfish interests, predatory habits - that's what Derville learned when he met Gobsek. Watching Crookshanks (the Dutch name "Gobsek" - in French "Zhivoglot"), with cynical frankness plundering his clients, Derville understood the ominous reason for Gobsek's dominance over many people. He also understood the true reason for their tragedies, which always had a common basis: one took money from the other. "Does it all come down to money?" he exclaims. This is exactly what Balzac wanted to say with his work.

In monetary relations, Balzac saw the "nerve of life" of his time, "the spiritual essence of the whole of today's society." A new deity, a fetish, an idol - money distorted human lives, took children from their parents, wives from their husbands ... All these problems are behind the individual episodes of the story "Gobsek", Anastasi, who pushed the body of her deceased husband out of bed to find his business papers , was for Balzac the embodiment of destructive passions generated by monetary interests.

The ending of the story is interesting - the death of Gobsek. Crookshanks, in his maniacal attachment to money, which turned "on the threshold of Gobsek's death into some kind of madness," did not want to "part with the smallest particle of his wealth." His house became a warehouse of rotting products... The old man knew how to weigh everything, take into account, he never compromised his own benefit, but he "did not take into account" only one thing, that hoarding cannot be the goal of a reasonable human life.

Balzac will return to this important problem many more times in the novel "Eugenie Grande", and in "The History of the Greatness and Fall of Caesar Birotto", and in the novel "Peasants". Following Balzac, writers of the 20th century will also develop this theme. But it is noteworthy that Balzac pronounced the verdict on bourgeois society at the time of its heyday.

In Gobsek, other features of Balzac's talent also appeared. He created different characters. The speech of his characters is individualized. When Balzac says that in the evenings, satisfied with the day he spent, Gobsek "rubbed his hands, and from the deep wrinkles that furrowed his face, as if a haze of gaiety rose," he achieves such a picturesque expressiveness that can only be compared with the paintings of the old masters.

In the novel "Eugene Grande" the most characteristic features of Balzac's monumental prose appeared. The novel is built on meticulous portrait sketches of the inhabitants of the French town of Saumur. In terms of volume, the ability to reveal the characteristic portraits of Balzac, contemporaries compared with the paintings of Rembrandt, when they wanted to emphasize their picturesqueness. When it came to the satirical features of Balzac's talent, he was compared with Daumier's engravings.

The main feature of Balzac's portraits is their typicality and clear historical concretization. "Good-natured" Grande is the same kind of accumulator as Gobsek. But this is a man still connected with the land, in the past a winegrower and cooper. He became rich by buying up the estates of the clergy during the revolution of 1789. Like Gobsek, gold "warmed" the old man's soul, became for him the only measure of things, the highest value of life. In this sense, Grandet, according to Balzac, was a typical representative of his time. "The misers do not believe in a future life, for them everything is in the present. This thought throws a terrible light on the modern era, when, more than at any other time, money rules over laws, politics and mores" - we read in a novel.

The monotonous course of the provincial life of the old man Grando, his wife and daughter is interrupted by the arrival from Paris of Charles Grandet, Eugenia's cousin, who at that moment lost his father and went bankrupt in financial transactions. Charles represents the least mercantile branch of the family. He is spoiled by his parents, revels in social success. Unlike Eugenia, who has a strong character, Charles has already "unwound" "a grain of pure gold thrown into his heart by his mother."

Eugenie's sudden love for Charles, his departure to the West Indies, his marriage after returning to Paris to the daughter of the Marquis d'0brion - such is the plot of the novel.

However, the novel describes not only the drama of love, fidelity and inconstancy. The writer is mainly attracted by the drama of property relations, which, as Balzac shows, rule people. Eugenia Grande is not only a victim of her father's tyranny. The pursuit of wealth took away from her and Charles, who did not disdain the slave trade in the West Indies. Charles, returning, trampled on Eugenie's love, that love that, over the seven years of Charles' wanderings, became the "fabric of life" of the recluse from Saumur. In addition, Charles also "cheapened", since Eugenia, the only heiress of her father, was many times richer than Charles's new bride.

Balzac wrote his work in defense of truly human relationships between people. But the world he saw around him showed only ugly examples. The novel "Eugene Grande" was an innovative one produced precisely because it shows without embellishment "what such a life happens to be."

Many of the major writers who followed him learned from Balzac the image of the environment, the ability to slowly and thoroughly tell a story. F. M. Dostoevsky, before turning to his own creative ideas, was the first to translate the novel Eugene Grande into Russian in 1843.

In his political views, Balzac was a supporter of the monarchy. Exposing the bourgeoisie, he idealized the French "patriarchal" nobility, which he considered disinterested. Balzac's contempt for bourgeois society led him, after 1830, to cooperate with the Legitimist party - supporters of the so-called legitimate, that is, legal, dynasty of monarchs overthrown by the revolution. Balzac himself called this party disgusting. He was by no means a blind supporter of the Bourbons, but nevertheless embarked on the path of defending this political program, hoping that France would be saved from the bourgeois "knights of profit" by an absolute monarchy and an enlightened nobility who was aware of their duty to the country.

The political ideas of Balzac the Legitimist were reflected in his work. In the preface to The Human Comedy, he even misinterpreted his entire work, declaring: "I write in the light of two eternal truths: monarchy and religion."

Balzac's work did not, however, turn into an exposition of legitimist ideas. Over this side of Balzac's worldview, his irrepressible desire for truth won.

2. Structure and main ideas of The Human Comedy

Most of the novels that Balzac intended from the very beginning for The Human Comedy were created between 1834 and the late 40s. However, when the idea was finally formed, it turned out that the earlier things are organic for the general author's idea, and Balzac includes them in the epic. Subordinate to a single "super task" - to comprehensively cover the life of society of that time, to give an almost encyclopedic list of social types and characters - "The Human Comedy" has a clearly defined structure and consists of three cycles, representing, as it were, three interconnected levels of social and artistic and philosophical generalizations of phenomena.

The first cycle and the foundation of the epic is "Studies on Morals" - the stratification of society, given through the prism of the private life of contemporaries. These include the bulk of the novels written by Balzac, and he introduced six thematic sections for him:

1. "Scenes of private life" ("Gobsek", "Colonel Chabert", "Father Goriot", "The Marriage Contract", "The Atheist's Mass", etc.);

2. "Scenes of provincial life" ("Eugenia Grande", "The Illustrious Godissard", "The Old Maid", etc.);

3. "Scenes of Parisian life" ("History of the greatness and fall of Caesar" Birotto "," Nucingen banking house "," Shine and poverty of courtesans "," Secrets of the Princess de Cadignan "," Cousin Betta "and" Cousin Pons "etc. );

4. "Scenes of political life" ("Episode of the era of terror", "Dark matter", etc.);

5. "Scenes of military life" ("Chuans");

6. "Scenes of village life" ("Village doctor", "Village priest", etc.).

The second cycle, in which Balzac wanted to show the causes of phenomena, is called "PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES" and includes: "Shagreen leather", "Elixir of longevity", "Unknown masterpiece", "Search for the absolute", "Drama on the seaside", "Reconciled Melmoth" and other works.

And, finally, the third cycle is "ANALYTICAL STUDIES" ("Physiology of marriage", "Small hardships of married life", etc.). In it, the writer tries to determine the philosophical foundations of human existence, to reveal the laws of society. Such is the external composition of the epic.

Balzac refers to parts of his epic as "etudes". In those years, the term "etude" had two meanings: school exercises or scientific research. There is no doubt that the author had in mind the second meaning. As a researcher of modern life, he had every reason to call himself a "doctor of social sciences" and a "historian". Thus, Balzac argues that the work of a writer is akin to the work of a scientist who carefully examines the living organism of modern society from its multi-layered, constantly moving economic structure to the high spheres of intellectual, scientific and political thought.

Already one list of works included in the "Human Comedy" speaks of the grandeur of the author's intention. “My work,” wrote Balzac, “should incorporate all types of people, all social situations, it must embody all social changes, so that not a single life situation, not a single person, not a single character, male or female, no one's views ... have been forgotten."

Before us is a model of French society, almost creating the illusion of a full-fledged reality. In all the novels, the same society is depicted, as it were, similar to the real France, but not completely coinciding with it, since this is its artistic embodiment. The impression of an almost historical chronicle is reinforced by the second plan of the epic, where real historical figures of that era act: Napoleon, Talleyrand, Louis XNUMX, real marshals and ministers. Together with fictional authors, characters corresponding to the typical characters of the time, they play the performance of the "Human Comedy".

The effect of the historical authenticity of what is happening is supported by an abundance of details. Paris and provincial towns are given in a wide range of details, ranging from architectural features to the smallest details of the business life and everyday life of heroes belonging to different social strata and estates. In a certain sense, the epic can serve as a guide for a specialist historian who yearns for that time.

The novels of the "Human Comedy" are united not only by the unity of the era, but also by the method of passing characters found by Balzac, both main and secondary. If one of the heroes of any novel falls ill, the same doctor Bianchon is invited, in case of financial difficulties they turn to the usurer Gobsek, on a morning walk in the Bois de Boulogne and in Parisian salons we meet the same faces. In general, the division into secondary and main characters for the characters of the "Human Comedy" is rather arbitrary. If in one of the novels the protagonist is on the periphery of the narrative, then in the other he and his story are brought to the fore (such metamorphoses occur, for example, with Gobseck and Nucingen).

One of the fundamentally important artistic techniques of the author of The Human Comedy is openness, the flow of one novel into another. The history of one person or family ends, but the general fabric of life has no end, it is in constant motion. Therefore, in Balzac, the denouement of one plot becomes the beginning of a new one or echoes previous novels, and the cross-cutting characters create the illusion of the authenticity of what is happening and emphasize the basis of the idea. It consists in the following: the protagonist of the "Human Comedy" is society, therefore private destinies are not interesting to Balzac in themselves - they are only details of the whole picture.

Since an epic of this type depicts life in constant development, it is fundamentally not completed, and could not be completed. That is why previously written novels (for example, Shagreen Skin) could be included in the epic, the idea of which arose after their creation.

With this principle of building an epic, each novel included in it is at the same time an independent work and one of the fragments of the whole. Each novel is an autonomous artistic whole that exists within the framework of a single organism, which enhances its expressiveness and the drama of the events experienced by its characters.

The innovation of such an idea and the methods of its implementation (a realistic approach to depicting reality) sharply separate Balzac's work from his predecessors, the romantics. If the latter put the single, exceptional at the forefront, then the author of The Human Comedy believed that the artist should display the typical. Feel for the common connection and meaning of phenomena. Unlike the romantics, Balzac does not look for his ideal outside of reality; he was the first to discover the boiling of human passions and truly Shakespearean drama behind the everyday life of French bourgeois society. His Paris, populated by the rich and the poor, fighting for power, influence, money, and simply for life itself, is a breathtaking picture. Behind the private manifestations of life, starting from the unpaid bill of the poor to the landlady and ending with the story of the usurer who unjustly made his fortune, Balzac tries to see the whole picture. The general laws of the life of bourgeois society, manifested through the struggle, fate and characters of its characters.

As a writer and artist, Balzac was almost fascinated by the drama of the picture that opened up to him, as a moralist, he could not help but condemn the laws that were revealed to him in the study of reality. In Balzac's Human Comedy, besides people, there is a powerful force that has subjugated not only private, but also public life, politics, family, morality and art. And this is money. Everything can become the subject of monetary transactions, everything is subject to the law of purchase and sale. They give power, influence in society, the opportunity to satisfy ambitious plans, just to burn life. To enter the elite of such a society on an equal footing, to achieve its location in practice means a rejection of the basic precepts of morality and morality. To keep your spiritual world pure means to give up ambitious desires and prosperity.

Almost every hero of Balzac's Studies on Morals experiences this collision common to the "Human Comedy", almost everyone endures a small battle with himself. At the end of it, either the way up and souls sold to the devil, or down - to the margins of public life and all the tormenting passions that accompany the humiliation of a person. Thus, the morals of society, the characters and destinies of its members are not only interconnected, but also interdependent, Balzac argues in The Human Comedy. His characters - Rastignac, Nucingen, Gobsek confirm this thesis.

There are not many worthy exits - honest poverty and the comforts that religion can give. True, it should be noted that Balzac is less convincing in depicting the righteous than in those cases when he explores the contradictions of human nature and the situation of a difficult choice for his heroes. Salvation sometimes becomes loving relatives (as in the case of the aged and burned-out Baron Hulot), and the family, but it is also affected by corruption. In general, the family plays a significant role in The Human Comedy. Unlike the romantics, who made the individual the main subject of artistic consideration, Balzac makes the family such. From the analysis of family life, he begins the study of the social organism. And with regret he is convinced that the breakup of the family reflects the general trouble of life. Along with single characters in The Human Comedy, dozens of various family dramas take place in front of us, reflecting various versions of the same tragic struggle for power and gold.

Conclusion

It should be noted that the contradictions of the writer are reflected in the "Human Comedy". Along with a deep thought about the "social engine", about the laws governing the development of society, it also outlines the author's monarchical program, expresses views on the social benefits of religion, which, from his point of view, was an integral system for suppressing the vicious aspirations of man and was " the greatest basis of social order." Balzac's fascination with mystical teachings, popular in the French society of that time, was also manifested - especially the teachings of the Swedish pastor Swedenborg.

Balzac's worldview, his sympathies for the materialistic science of nature and society, his interest in scientific discoveries, his passionate defense of free thought and enlightenment, are sharply at odds with these provisions, indicating that the writer was the heir and successor of the work of the great French enlighteners.

"Human Comedy" Balzac gave two decades of intense creative life. The first novel of the cycle - "Chuans" dates from 1829, the last - "The reverse side of modern life" in the form of notes.

From the very beginning, Balzac understood that his idea was exceptional and grandiose, and would require many volumes. As the plans come to fruition, the estimated volume of The Human Comedy grows more and more. Already in 1844, compiling a catalog that included what had been written and what was to be written, Balzac, in addition to 97 works, would name 56 more. existing as notes.

List of used literature

1. Foreign literature./ Ed. S. V. Turaeva. - M., 1985.

2. History of foreign literature of the XIX century. / Ed. Dmitrieva A. S. - M., 1983.

3. History of foreign literature of the XVIII century. European countries and USA. / Ed. Neustroeva V.P. - M., 1994.

4. Creativity Balzac. / Ed. B. G. Reizova. - L., 1939.

5. Honore Balzac. / Ed. D. D. Oblomievsky. - M., 1967.

6. Inhuman comedy. / Ed. A. Versmer. - M., 1967.

7. History of foreign literature of the XIX century. - M., 1982.

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The monumental collection of works by Honore de Balzac, united by a common idea and title - "The Human Comedy", consists of 98 novels and short stories and is a grandiose history of the morals of France in the second quarter of the 19th century. It is a kind of social epic in which Balzac described the life of society: the process of formation and enrichment of the French bourgeoisie, the penetration of upstarts and nouveaux riches into the aristocratic environment of the Parisian high society, their way up, life, customs and philosophy of people who profess faith in only one god - money. He gave a dramatic picture of human passions generated by wealth and poverty, the lust for power and complete lack of rights and humiliation.

Most of the novels that Balzac intended from the very beginning for The Human Comedy were created between 1834 and the end of the 40s. However, when the idea was finally formed, it turned out that the earlier things are organic for the general author's idea, and Balzac includes them in the epic. Subordinate to a single "super task" - to comprehensively cover the life of society of that time, to give an almost encyclopedic list of social types and characters - "The Human Comedy" has a clearly defined structure and consists of three cycles, representing, as it were, three interconnected levels of social and artistic and philosophical generalization of phenomena .

"Scenes of Private Life" ("Gobsek", "Colonel Chabert", "Father Goriot", "Marriage Contract", "Lust of the Atheist", etc.);

"Scenes of Provincial Life" ("Eugenia Grande", "The Illustrious Godissard", "The Old Maid", etc.);

"Scenes of Parisian life" ("History of the greatness and fall of Caesar "? irotto", "The banking house of Nucingen", "Shine and poverty of the courtesans", "Secrets of the Princess de Cadignan", "Cousin Betta" and "Cousin Pons", etc.) ;

"Scenes of political life" ("Episode of the era of terror", "Dark matter", etc.);

"Scenes of military life" (Shuans ");

"Scenes of Village Life" ("Village Doctor". Village Priest" and others).

And finally, the third cycle - "ANALYTICAL STUDIES" ("Physiology of marriage", "Small hardships of married life", etc.). In it, the writer tries to determine the philosophical foundations of human existence, to reveal the laws of society. Such is the external composition of the epic.

The effect of the historical authenticity of what is happening is supported by an abundance of details. Paris and provincial towns are given in a wide range of details, ranging from architectural features to the smallest details of the business life and everyday life of heroes belonging to different social strata and estates. In a sense, the epic can serve as a guide for a specialist historian who studies that time.

The novels of the "Human Comedy" are united not only by the unity of the epoch, but also by the method of transitional characters found by Balzac, both major and minor. If one of the heroes of any novel falls ill, the same doctor Bianchon is invited, in case of financial difficulties they turn to the usurer Gobsek, on a morning walk in the Bois de Boulogne and in Parisian salons we meet the same faces. In general, the division into secondary and main characters for the characters of the "Human Comedy" is rather arbitrary. If in one of the novels the protagonist is on the periphery of the narrative, then in the other he and his story are brought to the fore (such metamorphoses occur, for example, with Gobseck and Nucingen).

One of the fundamentally important artistic techniques of the author of The Human Comedy is the openness, the flow of one novel into another. The history of one person or family ends, but the general fabric of life has no end, it is in constant motion. Therefore, in Balzac, the denouement of one plot becomes the beginning of a new one or echoes previous novels, and the cross-cutting characters create the illusion of the authenticity of what is happening and emphasize the basis of the idea. It consists in the following: the protagonist of the "Human Comedy" is society, therefore private destinies are not interesting to Balzac in themselves - they are only details of the whole picture.

The innovation of such an idea and the methods of its implementation (a realistic approach to depicting reality) sharply separate Balzac's work from his predecessors - the romantics. If the latter put the single, exceptional at the forefront, then the author of The Human Comedy believed that the artist should display the typical. Feel for the common connection and meaning of phenomena. Unlike the romantics, Balzac does not look for his ideal outside of reality; he was the first to discover the boiling of human passions and truly Shakespearean drama behind the everyday life of French bourgeois society. His Paris, populated by the rich and the poor, fighting for power, influence, money, and simply for life itself, is a breathtaking picture. Behind the private manifestations of life, starting from the unpaid bill of the poor to the landlady and ending with the story of the usurer who unjustly made his fortune, Balzac tries to see the whole picture. The general laws of the life of bourgeois society, manifested through the struggle, fate and characters of its characters.

Almost every hero of Balzac's Studies on Morals experiences this collision common to the "Human Comedy", almost everyone endures a small battle with himself. At the end of it, either the way up and the souls sold to the devil, or down - to the sidelines of public life and all the tormenting passions that accompany the humiliation of a person. Thus, the morals of society, the characters and destinies of its members are not only interconnected, but also interdependent, Balzac argues in The Human Comedy. His characters - Rastignac, Nucingen, Gobsek confirm this thesis.

There are not many worthy exits - honest poverty and the comforts that religion can give. True, it should be noted that Balzac is less convincing in depicting the righteous than in those cases when he explores the contradictions of human nature and the situation of a difficult choice for his heroes. Salvation sometimes becomes loving relatives (as in the case of the aged and burned-out Baron Hulot), and the family, but it is also affected by corruption. In general, the family plays a significant role in The Human Comedy. Unlike the romantics, who made the individual the main subject of artistic consideration, Balzac makes the family such. From the analysis of family life, he begins the study of the social organism. And with regret he is convinced that the breakup of the family reflects the general trouble of life. Along with single characters in The Human Comedy, dozens of various family dramas take place in front of us, reflecting various variants of the same tragic struggle for power and gold.

Having finished the novel “Father Goriot” in 1834, Balzac comes to a fundamentally important decision: he decided to create a grandiose artistic panorama of the life of French society in the post-revolutionary period, consisting of novels, short stories and short stories connected with each other. For this purpose, the works written earlier, after appropriate processing, he includes in the "Human Comedy" - a unique epic cycle, the idea and title of which finally matured by the beginning of 1842.

Calling the cycle of works “The Human Comedy”, Honore de Balzac, firstly, wanted to emphasize that his creation has the same meaning for the contemporary French writer as Dante’s “Divine Comedy” had for medieval Europe. Secondly, it is quite probable that in the earthly, human life with its "chilling cold" Balzac saw analogues of the allegorical circles of Dante's hell.

The embodiment of this grandiose plan falls on the most fruitful period of the writer's work - between 1834 and 1845. It was during this decade that most of the novels and stories of the "Human Comedy" were created, creating which, Balzac strove for "the integrity of the epic action." To this end, he deliberately divides the "Human Comedy" into three main sections: "Etudes of manners", "Philosophical episodes", "Analytical studies".

"Etudes of Morals", in turn, are divided into six subsections:

“Scenes of private life” (“Gobsek”, “Father Goriot”, “Thirty-year-old woman”, “Marriage contract”, “Colonel Chabert”, etc.).
« Scenes of provincial life»(“Eugenia Grande”, “Museum of Antiquities”, the first and third parts of “Lost Illusions”, etc.).
“Scenes of Parisian Life” (“Caesar Biroto”, “Nyusingen Trading House”, “Shine and Poverty of Court-Tizans”, etc.).
"Scenes of political life" ("Dark business").
"Scenes of military life" ("Chuans").
"Scenes of Village Life" ("Peasants", "Village Doctor", "Village Priest").

In total, Balzac conceived 111 novels for the Studies in Morals, but managed to write 72.

The section "Philosophical studies" is not subdivided. For this section, Balzac conceived 27 novels and short stories, and wrote 22 (“Shagreen Skin”, “In Search of the Absolute”, “Unknown Masterpiece”, “Elixir of Longevity”, “Gambara”, etc.).

For the third section of the epic - "Analytical Studies" - the writer conceived five novels, but only two were written: "The Physiology of Marriage" and "The Unfortunate Years of Married Life".

In total, 143 works were to be created for the epic "The Human Comedy", and 95 were written.

Honoré de Balzac's "Human Comedy" has 2,000 characters, many of which "live" on the pages of the epic according to the principle of cyclicity, moving from one work to another. The lawyer Derville, Dr. Bianchon, Eugene de Rastignac, the convict Vautrin, the poet Lucien de Rubempre and many others are "returning" characters. In some novels, they appear to readers as the main characters, in others - as secondary ones, in others, the author mentions them in passing.

Balzac depicts the evolution of the characters of these heroes at different stages of their development: pure in soul and reborn under the pressure of circumstances, which often turn out to be stronger than Balzac's heroes. We see them young, full of hope, mature, aged, wiser by life experience and disappointed in their ideals, defeated or victorious. Sometimes, in a particular novel, Honore de Balzac tells us very little about the past of this or that hero, but the reader of The Human Comedy already knows the details of their life from other works of the writer. For example, the abbe Carlos Herrera in the novel "The Brilliance and Poverty of the Courtesans" is the convict Vautrin, with whom the reader is already familiar from the novel "Father Goriot", and the successful secular trickster Rastignac, who on the pages of the novel "Lost Illusions" is full of hope and faith in people, teaches the young Lucien de Rubempre, in the novel "Father Goriot" is reborn as a prudent and cynical frequenter of secular salons. Immediately we meet Esther, who is in love with Lucien, who turns out to be the great-niece of the usurer Gobsek, the hero of the story of the same name. material from the site

In The Human Comedy, the banker's house and the squalid slums, the mansion of the aristocrat and the commercial office, the high-society salon and the gambling house, the artist's studio, the scientist's laboratory, the poet's attic and the editorial office of the newspaper, like a robber's den, turned out to be invisible threads. On the pages of The Human Comedy, readers are presented with political tycoons, bankers, businessmen, usurers and convicts, poets and artists, as well as boudoirs and bedrooms of secular beauties, closets and cheap boarding houses in which destitute people doomed to poverty huddle.

In the preface to The Human Comedy, Honore de Balzac wrote: “In order to earn the praise that any artist should strive for, I needed to study the foundations or one common basis of these social phenomena, to grasp the hidden meaning of a huge gathering of types, passions, events ... My work has its own geography, as well as its genealogy, its families, its localities, its setting, characters and facts, it also has its armorial, its nobility and bourgeoisie, its artisans and peasants, politicians and dandies, their army, in a word, the whole world.

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Honore de Balzac

human comedy

EVGENIYA GRANDE

Father Goriot

Honore de Balzac

EVGENIYA GRANDE

Translation from French by Y. Verkhovsky. OCR & SpellCheck: Zmiy

The story “Gobsek” (1830), the novels “Eugene Grande” (1833) and “Father Goriot” (1834) by O. Balzac, which are part of the “Human Comedy” cycle, belong to the masterpieces of world literature. In all three works, the writer with great artistic power denounces the vices of bourgeois society, shows the detrimental effect of money on the human personality and human relationships.

Your name, the name of the one whose portrait

the best decoration of this work, yes

will be here like a green branch

blessed box, torn

I don't know where, but I'm sure

sanctified religion and renewed in

unchanging freshness pious

hands for storage at home.

de balzac

There are houses in other provincial towns that, by their very appearance, inspire melancholy, similar to that caused by the gloomiest monasteries, the most gray steppes, or the most depressing ruins. In these houses there is something from the silence of the monastery, from the desert of the steppes and the decay of the ruins. Life and movement in them are so calm that they would have seemed uninhabited to a stranger, if he had not suddenly met the eyes of a dull and cold gaze of a motionless creature, whose semi-monastic physiognomy appeared above the window sill at the sound of unfamiliar steps. These characteristic features of melancholy marked the appearance of the dwelling, located in the upper part of Saumur, at the end of a crooked street that rises up the hill and leads to the castle. On this street, now sparsely populated, it is hot in summer, cold in winter, sometimes dark even during the day; it is remarkable for the sonority of its pavement of small cobblestones, constantly dry and clean, the narrowness of the winding path, the silence of its houses belonging to the old city, over which the ancient city fortifications rise. Three centuries old, these buildings, although wooden, are still strong, and their heterogeneous appearance contributes to the originality that attracts the attention of lovers of antiquity and people of art to this part of Saumur. It is difficult to pass by these houses and not admire the huge oak beams, the ends of which, carved in bizarre figures, crown the lower floors of most of these houses with black bas-reliefs. The crossbeams are slate-covered and streak blue across the dilapidated walls of the building, topped with a wooden peaked roof that has sagged with time, with rotten shingles warped by the alternating action of rain and sun. In some places one can see window sills, worn, darkened, with barely noticeable fine carvings, and it seems that they cannot withstand the weight of a dark clay pot with bushes of carnations or roses grown by some poor toiler. Next, a pattern of huge nail heads driven into the gate, on which the genius of our ancestors inscribed family hieroglyphs, the meaning of which no one can unravel, will catch your eye. Either a Protestant here stated his confession of faith, or some member of the League cursed Henry IV. A certain city dweller carved here the heraldic signs of his eminent citizenship, his long-forgotten glorious title of a merchant foreman. Here is the whole history of France. Side by side with the shaky house, the walls of which are covered with rough plaster, immortalizing the work of an artisan, rises the mansion of a nobleman, where, in the very middle of the stone vault of the gate, traces of the coat of arms, broken by the revolutions that shook the country since 1789, are still visible. On this street, the lower floors of merchants' houses are not occupied by shops or warehouses; Admirers of the Middle Ages can here find inviolable storehouse of our fathers in all its frank simplicity. These low spacious rooms without showcases, without elegant exhibitions, without painted glass, are devoid of any decorations, internal and external. The heavy entrance door is roughly covered with iron and consists of two parts: the upper one leans inward, forming a window, and the lower one, with a bell on a spring, opens and closes every now and then. Air and light penetrate this kind of damp cave either through a transom carved above the door, or through an opening between the vault and the low wall, the height of the counter, - there strong internal shutters are strengthened in the grooves, which are removed in the morning and put on in the evenings. place and push with iron bolts. Goods are displayed on this wall. And here they do not throw dust in the eyes. Depending on the type of trade, the samples consist of two or three tubs filled to the top with salt and cod, from several bales of sailing cloth, from ropes, from copper utensils suspended from ceiling beams, from hoops placed along the walls, from several pieces of cloth on shelves . Sign in. A neat young girl, full of health, in a snow-white scarf, with red hands, leaves knitting, calls her mother or father. One of them goes out and sells what you need, for two sous or for twenty thousand goods, while being indifferent, amiable or arrogant, according to character. You will see a merchant of oak boards sitting at his door and fiddling with his thumbs, talking to a neighbor, and in appearance he only has plain boards for barrels and two or three bundles of shingles; and on the wharf his forest yard supplies all the Angevin coopers; he calculated to a single plank how many barrels he would overpower if the grape harvest was good: the sun - and he was rich, rainy weather - he was ruined; on the same morning wine barrels cost eleven francs, or fall to six livres. In this region, as in Touraine, the vicissitudes of the weather rule over trading life. Vine growers, landowners, timber merchants, coopers, innkeepers, shipmen - all lie in wait for a ray of sunshine; going to bed in the evening, they tremble, as if in the morning they would not find out what was freezing at night; they are afraid of rain, wind, drought and want moisture, warmth, clouds - whatever suits them. There is a continuous duel between heaven and earthly self-interest. The barometer alternately saddens, enlightens, illuminates the physiognomy with merriment. From end to end of this street, the ancient Grand Rue of Saumur, the words “Golden day! ” fly from porch to porch. And each responds to a neighbor. “Luidors are pouring from the sky,” realizing what a ray of sun or rain brings him, arriving in time. In summer, on Saturdays, since noon, not a penny can buy goods from these honest merchants. Everyone has his own vineyard, his own farm, and every day he goes out of town for two days. Here, when everything is calculated - buying, selling, profit - the merchants have ten hours out of twelve for picnics, for all sorts of gossip, incessant peeping at each other. It is impossible for a housewife to buy a partridge without the neighbors later asking her husband if the bird was fried successfully. You can't stick your head out of a window for a girl, so that a bunch of idle people wouldn't see her from all sides. Here, after all, the spiritual life of everyone is in full view of everyone, just like all the events taking place in these impenetrable, gloomy and silent houses. Almost the entire life of the townsfolk passes in the free air. Each family sits down at its porch, here they have breakfast, and dinner, and quarrel. Anyone who walks down the street is looked at from head to toe. And in the old days, as soon as a stranger appeared in a provincial town, they began to ridicule him at every door. Hence the amusing stories, hence the nickname mockingbirds given to the inhabitants of Angers, who were especially distinguished in these gossip.

The ancient mansions of the old city are located at the top of the street, once inhabited by local nobles. The gloomy house where the events described in this story took place was just one of such dwellings, a venerable fragment of a bygone age, when things and people were distinguished by that simplicity that French customs are losing every day. Passing along this picturesque street, where each meander evokes memories of antiquity, and the general impression evokes an involuntary dull pensiveness, you notice a rather dark vault, in the middle of which the door of Monsieur Grandet's house is hidden. It is impossible to understand the full meaning of this phrase without knowing the biography of Mr. Grande.

Monsieur Grandet enjoyed a special reputation in Saumur, and it will not be fully understood by those who have not lived at least a short time in the provinces. Monsieur Grandet, still called by some "Papa Grandet", although the number of such old men was noticeably decreasing, was in 1789 a simple cooper, but with great prosperity, he could read, write and count. When the French Republic put on sale the lands of the clergy in the Saumur district, the cooper Grandet, who was then forty years old, had just married the daughter of a wealthy timber merchant. With his own cash and his wife's dowry in hand, and only two thousand louis, Grandet went to the main city of the district, where, thanks to a bribe of two hundred doubloons offered by his father-in-law to a stern republican in charge of the sale of national property, he acquired for nothing, if not quite legally, then legally, the best vineyards in the area, an old abbey and several farms. The Saumur townsfolk were little revolutionary, and Grande's father was considered a brave man, a republican, a patriot, a smart head, committed to new ideas, while the cooper was simply attached to the vineyards. He was elected a member of the administration of the Saumur district, and there his peaceful influence was reflected both politically and commercially. In politics, he patronized the former people and opposed the sale of the estates of emigrants with all his might; in commerce. - he supplied the republican armies with a thousand or two thousand barrels of white wine and managed to get paid for them with magnificent meadows from the possessions of a convent, the last to be left for sale. At the Consulate, the good-natured Grandet became mayor, ruled well, and harvested grapes even better; during the Empire he had already become lord of Grande. Napoleon did not like Republicans; Mr. Grandet, who was reputed to be a man sporting a red cap, he replaced with a large landowner, who bore a surname with the particle "de", the future baron of the Empire. M. Grandet parted with municipal honors without the slightest regret. He had already managed to lay excellent roads "for the benefit of the city" that led to his own possessions. The house and estates of Grande, very favorably valued for him by the land list, were taxed moderately. Thanks to the constant care of the owner, his vineyards have become the “head of the region” - a technical expression for vineyards that produce wine of the highest quality. He could have asked for the cross of the Legion of Honor. This is what happened in 1806. M. Grande was then fifty-seven years old, and his wife about thirty-six. Their only daughter, the fruit of legitimate love, was then ten years old. Monsieur Grandet, whom Providence no doubt wished to reward for his disgrace, received three successive legacies this year: from Madame de la Godinière, born de la Bertelière, Madame Grandet's mother; then - from the old man de la Bertelier, father of the late mother-in-law; and also from Madame Gentillet, her maternal grandmother, three inheritances, the extent of which no one knew. The stinginess of these three old men turned into such a strong passion that for a long time they kept their money in chests to secretly admire them. The old man de la Bertelliere called any placement of money in circulation a waste, finding more joy in the contemplation of gold than in the income from usury. The city of Saumur supposedly determined Mr. Grandet's savings from his estate. At that time, Grande acquired that lofty title that our insane passion for equality will never destroy: he became the first county taxpayer. He had one hundred arpans of the vineyard, which in good years gave him from seven hundred to eight hundred barrels of wine. He also owned thirteen farms, an old abbey, where, out of thrift, he plastered the windows, arches and stained-glass windows, which preserved them; moreover, one hundred and twenty-seven arpan meadows, where three thousand poplars, planted in 1793, grew and increased in volume. Finally, the house where he lived was his property. This was how the size of his fortune was determined, obvious to everyone. As for his capitals, only two persons could have had a vague idea of their size: one of these persons was the notary Cruchot, M. Grandet's constant attorney for placement in the growth of his capitals; to another, M. de Grassin, the richest banker in Saumur, in whose operations and profits the winemaker had a share by secret agreement. Although old Cruchot and Monsieur de Grassin knew how to keep a secret, which is trustworthy in the provinces and is beneficial to business, yet both of them very frankly paid such great respect to Monsieur Grandet that observant people could guess the impressive size of the capital of the former mayor in obsequious fawning, the subject of which he was. Everyone in Saumur was sure that Monsieur Grandet had a whole treasure hidden away, that he had a cache full of louis, and there he gave himself unspeakable pleasure at night, contemplating a heap of accumulated gold. The misers felt some confidence in this, looking into the eyes of the old man Grandet, to whom the yellow metal seemed to transfer its colors. The look of a person who is accustomed to extracting huge profits from his capital, like the look of a voluptuary, gambler or courtier, inevitably acquires some indefinable skills, expressing fluent, greedy, mysterious movements of feelings that do not escape from fellow believers. This secret language forms a sort of freemasonry of the passions. So, Monsieur Grandet inspired everyone with respect, like a man who never owed anything to anyone, like an old cooper and an old winemaker, who determined with astronomical accuracy whether a thousand barrels or only five hundred should be prepared for the grape harvest; how a man who did not miss a single speculation, always had barrels to sell when a barrel was worth more than the wine itself, could hide all his new vintage wine in cellars and wait for an opportunity to sell a barrel for two hundred francs when small winemakers give up their five gold. His famous collection of 1811, prudently hidden, slowly sold, brought him more than two hundred and forty thousand livres. In commerce, Monsieur Grandet was like a tiger and a boa: he knew how to lie down, curl up into a ball, stare at his prey for a long time and rush at it; then he opened the mouth of his purse, swallowed another share of the ecu, and calmly laid down like a snake digesting food; he did all this dispassionately, coldly, methodically. As he passed through the streets, everyone looked at him with a sense of respectful admiration and fear. Everyone in Saumur experienced the polite grip of his steel claws: such and such a notary Cruchot got money from him to buy an estate, but from eleven percent; M. de Grassin accepted the bill for this, but at a terrible discount rate. There were few days when M. Grandet's name was not mentioned either in the market or in the evenings in the conversation of the townsfolk. For others, the wealth of the old winemaker was a matter of patriotic pride. And not one merchant, not one innkeeper used to say to visitors with some boastfulness:

- Yes, sir, here we have two or three commercial enterprises worth millions. As for Monsieur Grandet, he himself does not know how to count his money.

In 1816, the most skilful accountants of Saumur valued the landed estates of old Grandet at almost four millions; but since, according to the average calculation, during the period from 1793 to 1817 he had to earn from his possessions one hundred thousand francs annually, it could be assumed that he had an amount in cash almost equal to the value of his real estate. And when, after a game in Boston, or some conversation about the vineyards, Mr. Grande was mentioned, smart people would say:

“Papa Grande? Papa Grande has six or seven million faithful.

“You are smarter than me. I have never been able to find out the total amount, answered Monsieur Cruchot or Monsieur de Grassin, if they heard such a conversation.

When a visiting Parisian spoke of the Rothschilds or M. Lafitte, the people of Saumur asked if they were as rich as M. Grandet. If the Parisian gave a positive answer with a dismissive smile, they looked at each other and shook their heads in disbelief. Such a huge fortune threw a golden veil over all the actions of this person. Formerly, some of the oddities of his life gave rise to ridicule and jokes, but now both ridicule and jokes have dried up. Whatever M. Grandet did, his authority was indisputable. His speech, his clothes, his gestures, the blinking of his eyes were the law for the whole neighborhood, where everyone, having previously studied him, as a naturalist studies the actions of instinct in animals, could know all the deep and silent wisdom of his most insignificant movements.

“It will be a harsh winter,” people said, “papa Grande put on fur gloves. We need to harvest the grapes.

- Papa Grande takes a lot of barrel boards - to be guilty this year.

M. Grandet never bought meat or bread. His exploiting farmers brought him every week an ample supply of capons, chickens, eggs, butter, and wheat. He had a mill; the tenant was obliged, in addition to the contractual payment, to come for a certain amount of grain, grind it and bring flour and bran. Naneta the giant, his only servant, although she was no longer young, baked bread for the family every Saturday. Mr. Grandet arranged with his gardeners to supply him with vegetables. And as for fruit, he collected so many of them that he sent a significant part to sell on the market. For firewood he cut dead wood in his hedges, or used old, half-rotten stumps, uprooting them along the edges of his fields; his farmers brought him firewood already sawn to the city free of charge, out of courtesy they put it in a barn and received verbal thanks. He spent money, as everyone knew, only on consecrated bread, on clothes for his wife and daughter and on paying for their chairs in church, on lighting, on Nanet’s salary, on tinning pots, on taxes, on repairing buildings and expenses for his enterprises. . He had six hundred arpans of wood, recently bought; Grande entrusted the supervision of him to a neighbor's watchman, promising him a reward for this. Only after the acquisition of forest lands, game began to be served at his table. In address, he was extremely simple, spoke little and usually expressed his thoughts in short, instructive phrases, pronouncing them in an insinuating voice. Ever since the revolution, when Grande had attracted attention, he began to stutter in the most tiresome way, as soon as he had to speak for a long time or endure an argument. The tongue-tied tongue, the incoherence of speech, the flow of words in which he drowned his thought, the obvious lack of logic attributed to the lack of education - all this was emphasized by him and will be adequately explained by some of the incidents of this story. However, four phrases, precise as algebraic formulas, usually helped him to think and resolve all sorts of difficulties in life and trade: “I don’t know. I can not. I do not want. Let's see". He never said yes or no and never wrote. If anything was said to him, he listened in cold blood, supporting his chin with his right hand and leaning his elbow on the palm of his left hand, and formed an opinion about every matter, which he did not change. He thought about even the smallest deals for a long time. When, after a cunning conversation, the interlocutor, confident that he was holding him in his hands, gave him the secret of his intentions, Grandet answered:

“I can’t decide anything until I consult my wife.

His wife, reduced by him to complete slavery, was the most convenient screen for him in business. He never went to anyone and did not invite him to his place, not wanting to arrange dinner parties; never made any noise and seemed to save on everything, even movement. With strangers, he did not touch anything because of the reverence for property that had taken root in him. Nevertheless, in spite of the insinuation of his voice, in spite of his cautious manner, the expressions and manners of a cooper broke through, especially when he was at home, where he restrained himself less than in any other place. In appearance, Grande was a man five feet tall, stocky, stocky, with calves twelve inches in circumference, with knotty joints and broad shoulders; his face was round, clumsy, pockmarked; the chin is straight, the lips without any curve, and the teeth are very white; the expression of the eyes is calm and predatory, which the people attribute to the basilisk; a forehead dotted with transverse wrinkles, not without characteristic bumps, hair - reddish with gray - gold and silver, as some of the youth said, not yet knowing what it meant to play a trick on Monsieur Grandet. On his nose, thick at the end, was a lump with blood veins, which the people, not without reason, considered a sign of deceit. This face betrayed dangerous cunning, cold honesty, the selfishness of a man accustomed to concentrating all his feelings on the pleasures of miserliness; only one creature was at least a little dear to him - the daughter of Eugene, his only heir. His demeanor, manners, gait - everything in him testified to the self-confidence that comes from the habit of success in all your undertakings. Monsieur Grandet, who appeared to be of an easygoing and gentle disposition, had an iron character. He was always dressed the same and in appearance was still the same as in 1791. His rough shoes were tied with leather laces; at all seasons he wore felted woolen stockings, short trousers of thick brown cloth with silver buckles, a double-breasted velvet waistcoat with yellow and dark brown stripes, a loose, chestnut-coloured, long-brimmed frock coat, always tightly buttoned up, a black tie, and a Quaker hat. Gloves, strong as those of the gendarmes, served him for twenty months, and, in order not to get dirty, he put them with a habitual movement on the brim of his hat, always in the same place. Saumur knew nothing more about this man.

Of all the inhabitants of the city, only six enjoyed the right to visit the house of M. Grandet. The most significant of the first three was M. Cruchot's nephew. From the day of his appointment as president of the Saumur court of first instance, this young man added de Bonfont to the Cruchot family and tried with all his might to make Bonfon prevail over Cruchot. He already signed: C. de Bonfon. The slow-witted plaintiff, who called him "Mr. Cruchot", soon at the court session guessed about his oversight. The judge made peace with those who called him "Monsieur President", and distinguished with the most benevolent smiles of the flatterers who called him "Monsieur de Bonfon". The chairman was thirty-three; he owned the estate of Bonfon; (Boni fontis), which gave seven thousand livres of income; he was waiting for an inheritance after his uncle, a notary, and after his other uncle, the Abbé Cruchot, a high-ranking member of the chapter of Saint-Martin de Tours, both were considered quite rich. These three Cruchots, supported by a fair number of relatives, connected with twenty families in the city, formed a kind of party, as the Medici once did in Florence; and like the Medicis, Cruchot had his Pazzi. Madame de Grassin, the father of a twenty-three-year-old son, came without fail to Madame Grandet to play cards for her, hoping to marry her dear Adolphe to Mademoiselle Eugenie. The banker de Grassin greatly assisted his wife's intrigues by constant services, which he secretly rendered to the old miser, and always appeared on the battlefield in time. These three de Grassins also had their adherents, their relatives, their faithful allies.

On Cruchot's side, the old abbot, Talleyrand of this family, supported by his notary brother, cheerfully challenged the banker's position and tried to secure a rich inheritance for his nephew, the president of the court. The secret battle between Cruchot and the Grassins, in which the hand of Eugenie Grandet was the reward, passionately occupied various circles of Saumur society. Will Mademoiselle Grandet marry Monsieur President or Monsieur Adolphe de Grassin? Some solved this problem in the sense that M. Grandet would not give his daughter to either one or the other. The former cooper, consumed by ambition, they said, is looking for a son-in-law of some peer of France, whom three hundred thousand livres of income will force to reconcile with all the past, present and future casks of the House of Grandet. Others objected that the de Grassin spouses were both of noble birth and very rich, that Adolf was a very nice gentleman, and, unless the nephew of the pope himself wooed Eugene, such a union would have satisfied a man who had come out of a low rank, a former cooper, whom all Saumur was seen with a brace in his hands and, moreover, wearing a red cap in his time. The more sensible pointed out that for Monsieur Cruchot de Bonfond the doors of the house were open at all times, while his rival was received only on Sundays. Some argued that Madame de Grassin was more closely connected than Cruchot with the ladies of the Grande family, had the opportunity to inspire certain ideas in them, and therefore, sooner or later, she would achieve her goal. Others objected that the Abbé Cruchot was the most insinuating man in the world and that a woman against a monk was an equal game. “Two boots are a pair,” said a certain Saumur wit.

Local old-timers, more knowledgeable, believed that Grande was too careful and would not let the wealth out of the hands of the family, Eugenie Grande from Saumur would marry the son of Parisian Grande, a wealthy wholesale wine merchant. To this both the Kryushotins and the Grassenists answered:

- First of all, in thirty years the brothers have not seen each other twice. And then the Parisian Grande aims high for his son. He is the mayor of his district, deputy, colonel of the national guard, member of the commercial court. He does not recognize the Saumur Grandes and intends to intermarry with the family of some duke by the grace of Napoleon.

What was not said about the heiress of this fortune, she was judged and dressed up for twenty leagues around and even in stagecoaches from Angers to Blois inclusive! At the beginning of 1819, the Kryushotins clearly gained the upper hand over the Grassenists. Just then the estate of Froifon, remarkable for its park, delightful castle, farms, rivers, ponds, forests, was put up for sale, an estate worth three millions; the young Marquis de Froifon needed money and decided to sell his real estate. The notary Cruchot, the president Cruchot, and the abbe Cruchot, with the help of their adherents, managed to prevent the sale of the estate in small plots. The notary made a very good deal with the marquis, assuring him that it would be necessary to engage in endless lawsuits with individual buyers before they paid for the plots, it would be much better to sell the whole estate to M. Grandet, a man of wealth and, moreover, ready to pay in cash. The fine marquisate of Froiton was escorted down the throat of Monsieur Grandet, who, to the great surprise of all Saumur, after the necessary formalities, taking into account the interest, paid for the estate in chistogan. This event created a stir both in Nantes and in Orleans. Monsieur Grandet went to see his castle, taking advantage of the opportunity - in a cart that was returning there. With a masterly glance over his property, he returned to Saumur, confident that the money he had spent would bring five percent, and with the bold idea of rounding off the marquisate of Froiton by annexing all his possessions to it. Then, in order to replenish his almost empty treasury, he decided to cleanly cut down his groves and forests, and also to sell poplars in his meadows.

Now it is easy to understand the full meaning of the words: "the house of Monsieur Grande", - a gloomy-cold, silent house, located in the high part of the city and covered with the ruins of the fortress wall. The two pillars and the deep arch under which the gate was located were, like the rest of the house, built of sandstone, the white stone that abounds on the Loire coast, so soft that its strength hardly lasts an average of two hundred years. Many uneven, oddly arranged holes, the result of a changeable climate, gave the arch and jambs of the entrance a characteristic look of French architecture, as if they were worm-eaten, and a certain resemblance to prison gates. Above the arch rose an oblong bas-relief of strong stone, but the allegorical figures carved on it - the four seasons - had already weathered and completely blackened. A cornice protruded above the bas-relief, on which grew several plants that had accidentally fallen there - yellow walls, dodder, bindweed, plantain and even a young cherry, already quite tall. The massive oak gate, dark, withered, cracked at all ends, dilapidated in appearance, was firmly supported by a system of bolts that made up symmetrical patterns. In the middle of the gate, in the gate, a small square hole was cut, covered with a frequent grating with iron bars browned with rust, and it served, so to speak, as the basis for the existence of a door knocker, attached to it by a ring and hitting the crooked, flattened head of a large nail. This oblong-shaped mallet of what our ancestors called "jacmar" looked like a fat exclamation point; examining him carefully, the antiquarian would have found in him some signs of the characteristic buffoonish physiognomy, which he once depicted; she was worn out from long use of the hammer. Looking through this latticed window, intended during the civil wars to distinguish between friends and enemies, the curious could see a dark greenish vault, and at the back of the courtyard several dilapidated steps leading up to the garden, picturesquely fenced with thick walls, oozing moisture and completely covered skinny tufts of greens. These were the walls of the city fortifications, above which the gardens of several neighboring houses rose on earthen ramparts.

On the lower floor of the house, the most important room was the hall - the entrance to it was arranged under the arch of the gate. Few understand the significance of the hall in the small families of Anjou, Touraine and Berry. The hall is at the same time a front, living room, study, boudoir and dining room, is the main place of home life, its focus; here the local barber came twice a year to cut Monsieur Grandet's hair; farmers, the parish priest, the sub-prefect, the miller's assistant were received here. In this room, with two windows looking out onto the street, the floor was of plank; from top to bottom it was paneled in ancient gray; the ceiling consisted of bare beams, also painted gray, with gaps stuffed with white, yellowed tow. The mantelpiece, built of roughly carved white stone, was adorned with old brass clocks inlaid with horn arabesques; there was also a greenish mirror on it, the edges of which were beveled to show its thickness, they were reflected by a light strip in an old dressing table set in a steel frame with a gold notch. A pair of gilded copper girandoles, placed at the corners of the fireplace, served two purposes: if you remove the roses that served as rosettes, a large branch of which was attached to a stand of bluish marble trimmed with old copper, then this stand could serve as a candlestick for small family receptions. Scenes from La Fontaine's fables were woven on the upholstery of the old-fashioned chairs, but one had to know this in advance in order to make out their plots - with such difficulty one could see the faded colors and the images worn to holes. At the four corners of the hall were placed corner cupboards like cupboards with greasy shelves on the sides. In the wall between two windows was placed an old card table, the top of which was a chessboard. Above the table hung an oval black-rimmed barometer, adorned with gilt-wood bands, but so infested with flies that the gilding could only be guessed at. On the wall opposite the fireplace were two portraits, which were supposed to represent Madame Grandet's grandfather, old M. de la Berthelière, in the uniform of a lieutenant of the French guards, and the late Madame Gentillet in the costume of a shepherdess. Two of the windows had red groudethur curtains, intercepted with silk cords with tassels at the ends. This sumptuous furnishings, so little in keeping with Grandet's habits, was acquired by him with the house, as well as a dressing table, clocks, tapestry-upholstered furniture, and rosewood corner cupboards. By the window closest to the door was a straw chair with legs propped up so that Madame Grandet could see the passers-by. A simple cherrywood work table occupied the entire niche of the window, and next to it stood a small armchair by Eugenia Grande. For fifteen years from April to November, all the days of mother and daughter passed peacefully in this place in constant work; On the first of November, they could move to the winter position - to the fireplace. Only from that day on did Grande allow a fire to be lit in the fireplace and order it to be extinguished on the thirty-first of March, regardless of the spring and autumn frosts. A foot warmer with hot coals from the kitchen stove, which Nanetta the Hulk skillfully saved for her mistresses, helped them endure the cold mornings or evenings in April and October. Mother and daughter sewed and mended linen for the whole family, both conscientiously worked all day long, like day laborers, and when Eugenia wanted to embroider a collar for her mother, she had to snatch time from the hours appointed for sleep, deceive her father, using furtively candles. For a long time, the miser of the bill had given out candles to his daughter and Naneta, just as he distributed bread and provisions for daily consumption in the morning.

The Human Comedy is a cycle of works by the cult French writer Honore de Balzac. This grandiose work became the most ambitious literary idea of the 19th century. Balzac included in the cycle all the novels he wrote during his twenty-year creative career. Despite the fact that each component of the cycle is an independent literary work, The Human Comedy is a single whole, as Balzac said, "my great work ... about man and life."

The idea for this large-scale creation originated with Honoré de Balzac in 1832, when Shagreen Skin was completed and successfully published. Analyzing the works of Bonnet, Buffon, Leibniz, the writer drew attention to the development of animals as a single organism.

Drawing a parallel with the animal world, Balzac determined that society is like nature, since it creates as many human types as the nature of animal species. The material for human typology is the environment in which this or that individual is located. Just as in nature a wolf differs from a fox, a donkey from a horse, a shark from a seal, in society a soldier does not look like a worker, a scientist does not look like an idler, an official does not look like a poet.

The uniqueness of Balzac's idea

In world culture, there are a lot of dry factographs dedicated to the history of various countries and eras, but there is no work that would cover the history of the mores of society. Balzac undertook to investigate the mores of French society in the 19th century (to be precise, the period from 1815 to 1848). He had to create a large work with two or three thousand characters typical of this particular era.

The idea was, of course, very ambitious, the publishers sarcastically wished the writer a "long life", but this does not stop the great Balzac - along with his talent, he had amazing endurance, self-discipline and hard work. By analogy with Dante's Divine Comedy, he calls his work The Human Comedy, emphasizing the realistic method of interpreting modern reality.

Structure of The Human Comedy

Honore de Balzac divided his "Human Comedy" into three structural and semantic parts. Visually, this composition can be depicted as a pyramid. The largest part (it is also the base) is called "Etudes of Morals" and includes thematic subsections / scenes (private, provincial, military, rural life and the life of Paris. "Etudes of Morals" was planned to include 111 works, Balzac managed to write 71.

The second tier of the "pyramid" is "Philosophical Studies", in which 27 works were planned and 22 were written.

The top of the "pyramid" - "Analytical studies". Of the five conceived, the author managed to complete only two works.

In the preface to the first edition of The Human Comedy, Balzac deciphers the themes of each part of the Etudes of Morals. Thus, Scenes of private life depict childhood, youth, and the delusions of these periods of human life.

Balzac really likes to “spy” on the private life of his characters and find the typical, epochal in the everyday life of the characters appearing on the pages of his works. Accordingly, the Scenes of Private Life have become one of the most extensive sections; it includes works written in the period from 1830 to 1844. These are “The House of a Cat Playing Ball”, “A Ball in So”, “Memoirs of Two Young Wives”, “Vendetta”, “Imaginary Mistress”, “Thirty-Year-Old Woman”, “Colonel Chabert”, “The Godless Mass”, the cult “Father Goriot", "Gobsek" and other works".

So, the short novel "The House of the Cat Playing Ball" (alternative title "Glory and Sorrow") tells the story of a young married couple - the artist Theodore de Somervieux and the merchant's daughter Augustine Guillaume. When the dope of love passes, Theodore realizes that a pretty wife is not able to appreciate his work, to become a friend in spirit, a comrade-in-arms, a muse. At this time, Augustine continues to naively and selflessly love her husband. She suffers greatly, seeing how her beloved moves away, how she finds solace in the company of another woman - an intelligent, educated, sophisticated Madame de Carigliano. No matter how hard the poor thing tries, she fails to save the marriage and return her husband's love. One day, Augustine's heart breaks down - it is simply torn from grief and lost love.

The novel "Memoirs of two young wives" is interesting. It is presented in the form of correspondence between two graduates of the convent, friends Louise de Cholier and René de Mocombe. Leaving the walls of the holy monastery, one girl ends up in Paris, the other - in the provinces. Line by line on the pages of girls' letters, two completely different destinies grow.

The cult "Father Goriot" and "Gobsek" tell the story of the lives of two of the greatest misers - the "incurable father" Goriot, painfully adoring his daughters, and the usurer Gobsek, who does not recognize any ideals except the power of gold.

In contrast to private life, the scenes of provincial life are devoted to maturity and its inherent passions, ambitions, interests, calculations, and ambition. This section contains ten novels. Among them are "Eugenia Grande", "Museum of Antiquities", "The Old Maid", "Lost Illusions".

So, the novel "Eugenia Grande" tells about the provincial life of the wealthy Grande family - a stingy tyrant father, a resigned mother and their young beautiful daughter Eugenia. The novel was very fond of the domestic public, was repeatedly translated into Russian and even filmed at the Soviet film studio in 1960.

In contrast to the provincial, Balzac creates Scenes of Parisian life, where, first of all, the vices that the capital gives rise to are exposed. This section includes "Duchess de Lange", "Caesar Birotto", "Cousin Betta", "Cousin Pons" and others. Balzac's most famous "Parisian" novel is "The Brilliance and Poverty of the Courtesans".

The work tells the tragic fate of the provincial Lucien de Rubempre, who made a brilliant career in Paris thanks to the patronage of Carlos Herrera, the abbot. Lucien is in love. His passion is the former courtesan Esther. The imperious abbot forces the young protégé to give up his true love in favor of a more profitable party. Lucien reluctantly agrees. This decision sets off a chain of tragic events in the fates of all the characters in the novel.

Politics, war and the countryside

Politics stands apart from private life. Scenes of political life tell about this original sphere. In the section Scenes of political life, Balzac included four works:

"A Case from the Time of Terror" about a group of disgraced monarchist aristocrats;
"Dark Deed" about the conflict of aristocratic adherents of the royal Bourbon dynasty and the government of Napoleon;
"Z. Markas";
"Deputy from Arsi" about "fair" elections in the provincial town of Arcy-sur-Aube.

Scenes of military life depict heroes in a state of the highest moral and emotional tension, whether it be defense or conquest. This, in particular, included the novel "Chuans", which brought Balzac, after a series of literary failures and the collapse of the publishing business, the long-awaited glory. "Chuans" is dedicated to the events of 1799, when the last major uprising of royalist rebels took place. The rebels, led by monarchical-minded aristocrats and clergy, were called shuans.

Balzac called the atmosphere of rural life "the evening of a long day." This section presents the purest characters that are formed in the embryo of other areas of human life. Four novels were included in Scenes of Rural Life: The Peasants, The Rural Doctor, The Rural Priest, and Lily of the Valley.

A deep dissection of characters, an analysis of the social drivers of all life events, and life itself in a fight with desire are shown in the second part of the "Human Comedy" - "Philosophical Studies". They included 22 works written between 1831 and 1839. These are "Jesus Christ in Flanders", "Unknown Masterpiece", "Cursed Child", "Maitre Cornelius", "Red Hotel", "Elixir of Longevity" and many others. The bestseller of "Philosophical Studies" is undoubtedly the novel "Philosophical Skin".

The protagonist of Shagreen Skin, the poet Raphael de Valentin, unsuccessfully tries to make a career in Paris. One day he becomes the owner of a magical artifact - a piece of shagreen, which grants any wish, spoken aloud. Valentine immediately becomes rich, successful, loved. But soon the other side of the magic opens up to him - with each wish fulfilled, the shagreen decreases, and with it the life of Raphael himself. When the pebbled skin is gone, he will be gone too. Valentine will have to choose between a long existence in constant deprivation or a bright but short life full of pleasures.

Analytical studies

The result of the monolithic "history of the morals of modern mankind" was "Analytical studies". In the preface, Balzac himself notes that this section is under development, and therefore, at this stage, the author is forced to abandon meaningful comments.

For Analytical Studies, the writer planned five works, but completed only two - these are The Physiology of Marriage, written in 1929, and Minor Adversities of Married Life, published in 1846.