Honoré de Balzac - famous French novelist, born May 20, 1799 in Tours, died August 18, 1850 in Paris. For five years he was sent to an elementary school in Tours, and at the age of 7 he entered the Jesuit College of Vendôme, where he stayed for 7 years. In 1814, Balzac moved with his parents to Paris, where he completed his education - first in private boarding schools, and then in Sorbonne where he enthusiastically listened to lectures Gizo, Cousin, Willeman. At the same time, he was studying law to please his father, who wanted to make him a notary.
Honore de Balzac. Daguerreotype 1842
Balzac's first literary experience was the tragedy in verse "Cromwell", which cost him a lot of work, but turned out to be worthless. After this first failure, he abandoned tragedy and turned to romance. Motivated by material need, he began to write one after another very bad novels, which he sold for several hundred francs to various publishers. Such work because of a piece of bread was extremely burdensome for him. The desire to get out of poverty as soon as possible involved him in several commercial enterprises that ended in complete ruin for him. He had to liquidate the business, taking on more than 50,000 francs of debt (1828). Subsequently, thanks to new loans to pay interest and other financial losses, the amount of his debts increased with various fluctuations, and he languished under their burden all his life; only shortly before his death did he finally manage to get rid of his debts. In the early 1820s, Balzac met and became close friends with Madame de Berny. This woman was the good genius of his youth in the most difficult years of struggle, deprivation and uncertainty. By his own admission, she had a huge influence both on his character and on the development of his talent.
Balzac's first novel, which was a resounding success and put him forward among other novice writers, was The Physiology of Marriage (1829). Since then, his fame has been growing continuously. His fertility and tireless energy are truly amazing. In the same year, he published 4 more novels, the next - 11 ("Thirty-year-old Woman"; "Gobsek", "Shagreen Skin", etc.); in 1831 - 8, including the "Country Doctor". Now he works even more than before, with extraordinary care he finished his works, several times redoing what he had written.
Geniuses and villains. Honore de Balzac
Balzac was more than once tempted by the role of a politician. In his political views, he was strict legitimist. In 1832, he put forward his candidacy for deputies in Angouleme and on this occasion expressed the following program in one private letter: “The destruction of all nobility, with the exception of the chamber of peers; separation of the clergy from Rome; the natural frontiers of France; complete equality of the middle class; recognition of true superiority; cost savings; increasing revenues through better distribution of taxes; education for all".
Having failed in the elections, he took up literature with new zeal. 1832 11 new novels were published, among other things: "Louis Lambert", "Abandoned Woman", "Colonel Chabert". At the beginning of 1833, Balzac entered into a correspondence with Countess Hanska. From this correspondence arose a romance that lasted 17 years and ended in marriage a few months before the death of the novelist. A monument to this novel is the voluminous volume of Balzac's letters to Mrs. Ganskaya, later published under the title Letters to a Stranger. During these 17 years, Balzac continued to work tirelessly, and in addition to novels, he wrote various articles in magazines. In 1835 he began publishing the Paris Chronicle himself; this edition lasted for a little over a year and as a result brought him 50,000 francs of a net deficit.
From 1833 to 1838 inclusive, Balzac published 26 stories and novels, among them "Eugenia Grande", "Father Goriot", "Seraphite", "Lily of the Valley", "Lost Illusions", "Caesar Biroto". In 1838 he again left Paris for a few months, this time for a commercial purpose. He dreams of a brilliant enterprise that can immediately enrich him; he goes to Sardinia, where he is going to exploit the silver mines, known since the days of Roman rule. This venture ends in failure, as a more dexterous businessman took advantage of his idea and interrupted his path.
Until 1843, Balzac lived almost without a break in Paris, or in his estate Les Jardies, near Paris, which he bought in 1839 and turned into a new source of constant expenses for him. In August 1843, Balzac went to St. Petersburg for 2 months, where Mrs. Ganskaya was at that time (her husband owned vast estates in Ukraine). In 1845 and 1846 he twice traveled to Italy, where she spent the winter with her daughter. Urgent work and various urgent obligations forced him to return to Paris and all his efforts were aimed at finally paying off his debts and arranging his affairs, without which he could not fulfill his cherished dream of his life - to marry his beloved woman. To a certain extent, he succeeded. Balzac spent the winter of 1847 - 1848 in Russia, at the estate of Countess Hanskaya near Berdichev, but a few days before the February Revolution, money matters called him to Paris. However, he remained completely alien to the political movement and in the autumn of 1848 he again went to Russia.
In 1849 - 1847, 28 new novels by Balzac appeared in print (Ursula Mirue, The Country Priest, Poor Relatives, Cousin Pons, etc.). Since 1848, he has been working little and publishing almost nothing new. The second trip to Russia turned out to be fatal for him. His body was exhausted by “excessive work; this was joined by a cold that fell on the heart and lungs and turned into a long drawn-out illness. The harsh climate also had a detrimental effect on him and interfered with his recovery. This state, with temporary improvements, dragged on until the spring of 1850. On March 14, the marriage of Countess Ganskaya with Balzac finally took place in Berdichev. In April, the couple left Russia and went to Paris, where they settled in a small hotel bought by Balzac a few years before and decorated with artistic luxury. The health of the novelist, however, was deteriorating, and finally, on August 18, 1850, after a severe 34-hour agony, he died.
The significance of Balzac in literature is very great: he expanded the scope of the novel and, being one of the main founders realistic and naturalistic trends, showed him new paths, along which in many ways he went until the beginning of the 20th century. His basic view is purely naturalistic: he looks at every phenomenon as the result and interaction of certain conditions, a known environment. According to this, Balzac's novels are not only an image of individual characters, but also a picture of the entire modern society with the main forces that govern it: the general pursuit of the blessings of life, the thirst for profit, honors, position in the world, with all the various struggles of large and small passions. At the same time, he reveals to the reader the entire behind-the-scenes side of this movement in the smallest detail, in its everyday life, which gives his books the character of burning reality. When describing characters, he highlights one main, predominant feature. According to Fai, for Balzac every person is nothing more than "some kind of passion, which is served by the mind and organs and which is counteracted by circumstances." Thanks to this, his heroes receive extraordinary relief and brightness, and many of them have become household names, like the heroes of Molière: thus, Grande became synonymous with stinginess, Goriot - fatherly love, etc. Women occupy a large place in his novels. With all his merciless realism, he always puts a woman on a pedestal, she always stands above the environment, and is a victim of the egoism of a man. His favorite type is a woman of 30-40 years old (“Balzac age”).
The complete works of Balzac were published by himself in 1842 under the general title " human comedy”, with a preface where he defines his task as follows: “to give a history and at the same time a criticism of society, an investigation of its ailments and an examination of its beginnings.” One of the first translators of Balzac into Russian was the great Dostoevsky (his translation of "Eugenie Grande", made even before hard labor).
(For essays on other French writers, see the "More on the topic" section below the text of the article.)
* This work is not a scientific work, is not a final qualifying work and is the result of processing, structuring and formatting the collected information, intended to be used as a source of material for self-preparation of educational work.
Honore de Balzac, famous French writer. Born 8 (20) May 1799 in Tours, died 6 (18) August 1850 in Paris. Not only by the features of his work, but also by his very personality and literary career, he represents a bright type of writer, who developed under the influence of the wide successes of natural science and positive philosophy, amid severe struggle and fierce competition caused by the growth of industry. His life is the story of a worker who, with tireless energy, strives to break forward, by all means to win fame and fortune for himself. His work is imbued with the desire to transfer the methods of modern natural science to fiction, to erase the line separating literature from science. His father was a vulgar materialist and left a number of writings on social issues; above all, he set the task of the physical improvement of the human race and, with the help of the conclusions of natural science, dreamed of solving the social and moral problems of his time.
Balzac inherited his father's worldview, his health and iron will. Having received his initial education, first in a provincial, then in a Parisian college, Balzac remained in the capital when his father left for the provinces with his family. Deciding, against the will of his father, to devote himself to literature, he was almost deprived of support from his family. As his letters to his sister Laura show, this did not prevent him from being full of energy and ambitious plans. In his miserable closet, he dreamed of influence, fame and fortune, of conquering a great city. He writes under a pseudonym a number of novels, devoid of literary significance and subsequently not included by him in the complete collection of his works.
At the same time, a projector and an entrepreneur wake up in him. Anticipating the idea of cheap editions, which was widely adopted later, Balzac was the first to start one-volume editions of the classics and publish (1825 - 1826) with his own notes by Molière and Lafontaine. But his publications were not successful. Just as unsuccessfully did the printing house and word castings he started, which he had to concede to his companions, go.
Balzac's trip to Sardinia ended even more sadly, where he dreamed of discovering the silver left there by the ancient Romans in the mines they were developing. As a result of all these enterprises, Balzac found himself in unpayable debts, forcing him to hard literary work. He writes stories, brochures on various issues, collaborates in the magazines Caricature and Silhouette.
Balzac's fame begins with the appearance in 1829 of his novel Le dernier Chouane ou la Bretagne en 1800. From that moment on, Balzac almost does not leave the path he has entered. One after another, his novels appear, in which he outlines all aspects of French life, displays an endless string of the most diverse types, constitutes "the greatest collection of documents on human nature." He is a typical craft writer. Like Zola and in contrast to the romantics, the prophetic poets, he does not wait for inspiration. He works 15 to 18 hours a day, sits down at the table after midnight and hardly leaves a pen until six o'clock the next evening, interrupting work only for a bath, breakfast, and especially for coffee, which maintains energy in himself and which he carefully prepared and used in large quantities.
The novels Shagreen Skin, The Thirty-Year-Old Woman, and especially Eugene Grande (1833), which appeared in the early thirties, brought him great fame, and Balzac no longer had to chase publishers. However, he fails to fulfill his dream of wealth, despite his extraordinary fertility; he sometimes publishes several novels a year.
Of his many novels, the most famous are: The Country Doctor, In Search of the Absolute, Father Goriot, Lost Illusions, The Country Priest, The Bachelor's Household, The Peasants, Cousin Pons, Cousin Betta ".
Perhaps the influence of the scientific spirit of the times on Balzac was not so pronounced in anything as in his attempt to combine his novels into one whole. He collected all the published novels, added a number of new ones to them, introduced common heroes into them, connected individuals with family, friendship and other ties and, thus, created, but did not complete the grandiose epic, which he called "The Human Comedy", and which was supposed to serve as a scientific and artistic material for studying the psychology of modern society.
In the preface to The Human Comedy, he himself draws a parallel between the laws of development of the animal world and human society. Different types of animals represent only a modification of a general type, arising depending on environmental conditions; so, depending on the conditions of upbringing, the environment, etc. - the same modifications of a person as a donkey, a cow, etc. - species of a general animal type.
For the purpose of scientific systematization, Balzac broke all this huge number of novels into series. In addition to novels, Balzac wrote a number of dramatic works; but most of his dramas and comedies were not successful on the stage.
In 1833, Balzac received a letter from an unknown Polish aristocrat Hanska, nee Countess Rzhevusskaya. Correspondence began between the novelist and an admirer of his talent (published on the centenary of the birth of Balzac). Balzac subsequently met Ganskaya several times, among other things, in St. Petersburg, where he came in 1840. When Ganskaya became a widow, she accepted Balzac's proposal, but for several more years, for various reasons, their wedding could not take place. Balzac carefully finished the apartment for himself and his wife, but when, finally, in March 1850, the wedding took place in Berdichev, death was already waiting for him, and Balzac had only a few months left to enjoy family happiness and a relatively secure existence.
Balzac is generally recognized as the father of realism and naturalism. The development of realism in literature was a reflection of the general scientific spirit of the 19th century, just as the triumph of positivism in philosophy and the successes of natural science. The famous dispute between Cuvier and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire made a great impression on the minds of the time. Cuvier recognized several separate types in the animal kingdom, between which there is no connection; Saint-Hilaire defended the principle of the unity of organic structure in all animals. Balzac was a student of Saint-Hilaire and transferred his method to the realm of the novel.
Depicting "social varieties" Balzac strives for an accurate scientific classification and shows the observation characteristic of a botanist or zoologist. He studied with amazing accuracy the features inherent in one or another "variety". He knows the habits, turns of speech, techniques, movement, gait, gestures, even the little things of the situation, the details of the costume, characteristic of this or that hero. Just as Cuvier guesses the structure of an entire animal organism from a found tooth or bone, so Balzac determines the entire psyche of a given social type from a single gesture or word. The correspondence that Cuvier discovered between the parts of the body, Balzac seeks to establish between the manifestations of the human psyche. That is why he follows his characters so carefully, depicts in detail the arrangement of rooms in the apartment, trinkets on the dressing table, knows exactly to the centime the amount of money in the purse of the character. He has a deep respect for the fact.
Like a true scientist, he seems to be aware that his psychological conclusions will be justified only when they embrace a multitude of facts, and Balzac strives with unparalleled zeal to collect as many documents as possible. For him, as well as for the natural scientist, facts play a paramount role along with classification. Balzac is striking in the abundance of material he collected. Ministers, bankers and businessmen, journalists, critics and poets, artists and scientists, a courtesan, usurers, representatives of the old aristocracy and bourgeoisie, the capital and the provinces, political struggle and private life - Balzac collects everything in his "comedy". The same scientific direction of Balzac's creativity explains the mixture of artistic, scientific and journalistic elements in his novels. Along with the depiction of feelings and passions, we will find in them detailed information of a business nature about banking operations, about a return account, about making cheap paper, reasoning of a journalistic nature about marriage, morality, about political and social issues, etc.
Balzac merges with his heroes, he almost physically clearly experiences their sorrows and joys with them, he languishes and suffers when his hero finds himself in a difficult situation, from which he cannot show him a way out; he despairs when he cannot find among his heroes a suitable bridegroom for some heroine, he makes every effort to promote the moral rebirth of a degraded person or to keep an inexperienced youth from moral decline, and sincerely mourns when his efforts fail. It seems to him that he is facing living people and real conflicts that develop according to certain laws, beyond his power.
Balzac's worldview, as it turns out from his novels, is pessimistic. He is objective in depicting his characters and in this respect does not deviate from the general scientific spirit of his work. He does not pursue satirical purposes. Its task is to collect documents about a person and classify them. And yet, it is impossible not to see that, in general, his Comedy is a grave indictment against the French society of the Restoration era and the July Monarchy, and against man in general. Perhaps no one has embodied in such vivid images the heartless egoism that reigns in the bourgeois world. This egoism, engendered by the frenzied pursuit of the blessings of life, of pleasure and wealth, appears to Balzac as the main driving force of society.
Balzac's favorite theme is the fierce struggle of gifted ambitious people making their way in the big city. A pure young man who finds himself in a big city and makes a career at the cost of his moral death is Balzac's favorite image. Such is Rastignac ("Father Goriot"), such is Lucien Chardon ("Lost Illusions"). His women are in most cases such cold egoists as the daughters of Goriot, who easily sell both toilets and showers. His men are mostly lustful animals. If he brings out a pure girl, like Eugenia Grande, then, it seems, only to show how in the terrible atmosphere of modern social life the most sensitive and tender heart hardens, sincere feelings and touching love are etched out.
Balzac belongs to one of the best types of miser known in literature. In the person of old Grandet, he brought out the modern genius of profit, the millionaire who turned speculation into art. Grande renounced all the joys of life, withered the soul of his daughter, deprived the happiness of all those close to him, but made millions. His satisfaction is in successful speculations, in financial conquests, in commercial victories. He is a kind of disinterested servant of "art for art's sake", since he himself is personally unpretentious and is not interested in those benefits that are given by the millions.
Balzac comprehended the power of money. His money is the main reason for events. He was able to show how his age had exchanged everything for hard cash, from basic necessities to talent, inspiration, and the most tender and holy feelings.
Representatives of the noblest professions - doctors, priests, publicists, artists, poets - have become hired servants of those who have capital.
This pessimism corresponds to the general materialistic direction of Balzac's creativity. Ideal images are less successful for him than those figures in which the material direction of the 19th century was reflected.
Balzac's view of the meaning of modern life, of the factors that govern modern man, can best be formulated in the words that he puts into the mouth of the convict Vautrin, who instructs a young student: “To jump out into the people - this is the task that 50,000 young people in your position are striving to solve. . And you are one in this sum. Think what efforts will be required from you, what a fierce struggle lies ahead! You will devour each other like spiders! There are no principles, but there are events; and there are no laws, but only circumstances that an intelligent person adjusts to in order to trade them in his own way. Vice is now in force, and talents are rare. Honesty is no good. You have to crash into this crowd like a bomb, or sneak into it like a plague.
Life appears to Balzac as a cruel struggle of appetites, a heartless fratricidal war of all against all because of pleasures and wealth. The objective scientific method was applied by Balzac to the study of the inner world of a woman. In contrast to most poets and romantics, who liked to portray the delights of first love and the first kiss and lowered the curtain over the history of a woman after the period of her naive attitude to life ended, Balzac traced the history of the female soul from youth to old age and made the central moment of his attention to that period of a woman's life when she reaches full maturity, gains wide experience, reaches the peak of her physical and spiritual powers. The 30-year-old age of a woman Balzac preferred her youth, since at this age she is free from illusions, from a naive understanding of life; she gives her heart consciously, knows how to choose and distinguish people, and therefore her love has more value, gives more happiness and comfort.
These are the main features of Balzac's work and the main features of his worldview. His novels will forever remain the greatest collection of documents about the 19th century - a collection in which all corners of the life of this industrial and materialistic age are vividly illuminated.
Bibliography:
"Honore de Balzac". Under. ed. P.F. Aleshkin. Ed. "Voice". 1992
"Balzac". Stefan Zweig. Ed. Saransk. 1981
Stendhal: The scene of the Battle of Waterloo is of particular importance in the Parma Cloister. At first glance, it seems that this is just an inserted episode, but it is of decisive importance for the subsequent course of the plot of the novel.
The description of the battle in the "Parma Monastery" is truthful, brilliant in its realism. Balzac praised the magnificent description of the battle, which he dreamed of for his scenes of military life.
The Battle of Waterloo is the beginning of the action in the novel, the protagonist immediately wants to accomplish a heroic deed, to participate in a historical battle. Like Julien, Fabrizio is convinced that heroism is possible only on the battlefield. Julien fails to make a military career, Fabrizio is given such an opportunity.
The romantic hero, longing for a feat, experiences the most severe disappointment. The author describes in detail the adventures of Fabrizio on the battlefield, reveals step by step the collapse of his illusions. No sooner had he appeared at the front than he was mistaken for a spy and imprisoned, he escaped from there.
Disappointment:
the path of his horse is blocked by the corpse of a soldier (dirty-terrible). Cruelty cuts the guy's eyes;
does not recognize Napoleon: he rushes to the field, but does not even recognize his hero Napoleon when he passes by (when Napoleon and Marshal Ney rode past him, they did not have any divine sign that distinguishes them from mere mortals);
once on the battlefield, Fabrizio cannot understand anything - neither where is the enemy, nor where are his own. In the end, he gives himself up to the will of his horse, which rushes him to no one knows where. Illusions are shattered by reality.
It is no coincidence that Stendhal draws a parallel between the historical battle and the experiences of the hero. Historical events take on a symbolic meaning in the novel: the Battle of Waterloo was the political grave of Napoleon, his complete defeat. A roll call with Fabrizio's "lost illusions", the collapse of all his dreams of a great heroic deed.
Fabrizio fails to "liberate his homeland" - the collapse of not only personal hopes, these are the "lost illusions" of a whole generation. After the battle, heroism, romance, courage remain Fabrizio's personal traits, but acquire a new quality: they are no longer directed towards achieving common goals.
Thackeray: Thackeray's main feature is that he did not depict, did not describe the battle itself, the battle itself. He only showed the consequences, the echoes of the battle. Thackeray specifically describes the scene of George Osborne's farewell to Emilia, when Napoleon's troops cross the Sambre. A few days later he will die in the Battle of Waterloo. Before that, he still sends a letter to Emilia from the front that everything is fine with him. Then the wounded are brought to the city from the battlefield, Emilia takes care of them, not knowing that her husband is lying alone, wounded, on the field and dying. Thus, Thackeray describes the battle in volume, on a large scale, showing everything "before and after" the event.
9. The theme of "disillusionment" in Balzac's Human Comedy.
Lucien Chardon. Rastignac.
"Lost illusions" - to harbor illusions - the fate of the provincials. Lucien was handsome and a poet. He was noticed in his city by the local queen = Madame de Bargeton, who gave a clear preference to a talented young man. His lover constantly told him that he was a genius. She told him that only in Paris would they be able to appreciate his talent. It is there that all doors will open for him. It sunk into his soul. But when he arrived in Paris, his mistress abandoned him because he looked like a poor provincial compared to society dandies. He was abandoned and left alone, therefore, all doors were closed to him. The illusion he had in his provincial town (about fame, money, etc.) disappeared.
In "Shagreen Skin" - a new stage in the evolution of Rastignac. Here he is already an experienced strategist who has long said goodbye to all sorts of illusions. This is an outright cynic
The theme of "disillusionment" in Flaubert's novel "Education sensibilities".
The theme of disillusionment in this novel is connected with the life and development of the personality of the protagonist Frederic Moreau. It all starts with the fact that he comes by boat to Nogent on the Seine to his mother after a long study at a law college. The mother wants her son to become a big man, wants to arrange him in an office. But Ferederic wants to go to Paris. He goes to Paris, where he meets, firstly, with the Arnoux family, and secondly, with the Dambrez family (influential). He hopes that they will help him get settled. At first, he continues to study in Paris with his friend Deslauriers, he meets different students - the artist Pellerin, the journalist Ussonet, Dussardier, Regembard and so on. Gradually, Feredric loses this desire for a high goal and a good career. He enters French society, begins to attend balls, masquerades, he has love affairs. All his life he has been haunted by love for one woman, Madame Arnoux, but she does not allow him to get close to her, so he lives, hoping for a meeting. One day he learns that his uncle has died and left him a relatively large fortune. But Feredric is already at the stage when his position in this French society becomes the main thing for him. Now he is not worried about his career, but how he is dressed, where he lives or dine. He begins to spend money, invests it in shares, burns out, then for some reason helps Arn, he does not repay his debt, Frederick himself begins to live in poverty. Meanwhile, a revolution is being prepared. A republic is proclaimed. All of Frederick's friends are at the barricades. But he doesn't care about public opinion. He is more busy with his personal life and its arrangement. He is drawn by the proposal to Louise Rokk, a potential bride with a good dowry, but a country girl. Then the whole story with Rosanette, when she is pregnant from him and a child is born, who soon dies. Then an affair with Madame Dambrez, whose husband dies and leaves her nothing. Frederick is sorry. Meets Arna again, realizes that they are even worse. As a result, he is left with nothing. Somehow he copes with his position without making a career. Here they are, the lost illusions of a man who was sucked into Parisian life and made him completely unambitious.
The image of Etienne Lousteau in Balzac's novel "Lost Illusions".
Etienne Lousteau is a failed writer, corrupt journalist, who introduces Lucien to the world of unscrupulous, lively Parisian journalism, cultivating the profession of "hit killer of ideas and reputations." Lucien masters this profession.
Etienne is weak-willed and careless. He himself was once a poet, but he failed - he threw himself with bitterness into the maelstrom of literary speculation.
His room is dirty and desolated.
Etienne plays a very important role in the novel. It is he who is the seducer of Lucien from the path of virtue. He reveals to Lucien the venality of the press and the theatre. He is a conformist. For him, the world is "hellish torment", but one must be able to adapt to them, and then, perhaps, life will improve. Acting in the spirit of the times, he is doomed to live in eternal discord with himself: the duality of this hero is manifested in his objective assessments of his own journalistic activities and contemporary art. Lucien is more self-confident than Lousteau, and therefore quickly grasps his concept, and fame quickly rises to him. After all, he has talent.
The evolution of the image of the financier in the "Human Comedy" by Balzac.
Just like the antiquarian in Shagreen Skin, Gobsek appears to be a disembodied, dispassionate person, indifferent to the world around him, religion and people. He is far from his own passions, because he constantly observes them in people who come to him for bills. He reviews them, and he himself is in constant calm. In the past, he experienced many passions (traded in India, was deceived by a beautiful woman), and therefore left it in the past. Conversing with Derville, he repeats the formula of shagreen leather: “What is happiness? This is either a strong excitement that undermines our life, or a measured occupation. He is so stingy that in the end, when he dies, there is a pile of goods, food, moldy from the stinginess of the owner.
Tragedy of Eugenie Grande in Balzac's novel of the same name.
The problem is money, gold and the all-consuming power that it acquires in the life of capitalist society, determining all human relations, the fate of individuals, the formation of social characters.
Old Man Grande is a modern money-making genius, a millionaire who has turned speculation into an art. Grande renounced all the joys of life, withered the soul of his daughter, deprived the happiness of all those close to him, but made millions.
The theme is the decay of the family and the individual, the fall of morality, the insult of all intimate human feelings and relationships under the rule of money. It was precisely because of her father's wealth that the unfortunate Evgenia was perceived by others as a way of making a solid capital. Between the Kruchotins and the Grassenists, the two opposition camps of the inhabitants of Saumur, there was a constant struggle for the hand of Eugenia. Of course, old Grandet understood that the frequent visits to his house by Grassins and Cruchot were completely insincere expressions of respect for the old cooper, and therefore he often said to himself: “They are here for my money. They come here to miss me for my daughter. Haha! My daughter will not get either one or the other, and all these gentlemen are just hooks on my fishing rod!
The fate of Eugenie Grande is the most mournful story told by Balzac in his novel. The unfortunate girl, as if in prison, languishing for many years in the house of her miserly father, is attached to her cousin Charles with all her heart. She understands his grief, understands that no one in the world needs him and that his closest person now, his own uncle, will not help him for the same reason that Evgenia has to be content with bad food and miserable clothes all her life. And she, pure in heart, gives him all her savings, courageously enduring the terrible wrath of her father. For many years she has been waiting for his return ... And Charles forgets his savior, under the influence of public sentiment, he becomes the same Felix Grande - an immoral accumulator of wealth. He prefers the titled ugly girl, Mademoiselle D'Aubrion, to Eugenie, because he is now driven by purely selfish interests. Thus, Evgenia's faith in love, faith in beauty, faith in unshakable happiness and peace was cut short.
Evgenia lives with her heart. Material values for her are nothing compared to feelings. Feelings constitute the true content of her life, in them for her is the beauty and meaning of being. The inner perfection of her nature is also revealed in her external appearance. For Eugenia and her mother, who throughout their lives had the only joy of those rare days when their father allowed them to heat the stove, and who saw only their dilapidated house and everyday knitting, money had absolutely no meaning.
Therefore, while everyone around was ready to acquire gold at any cost, for Evgenia, the 17 million inherited after the death of her father turned out to be a heavy burden. Gold will not be able to reward her for the emptiness that formed in her heart with the loss of Charles. And she doesn't need money. She does not know how to deal with them at all, because if she needed them, it was only in order to help Charles, thereby helping herself and her own happiness. But, unfortunately, the only treasure that exists for her in life - kindred affection and love - is inhumanly trampled, and she lost this only hope in the prime of life. At some point, Evgenia realized all the irreparable misfortune of her life: for her father, she was always only the heiress of his gold; Charles preferred a wealthier woman to her, spitting on all the holy feelings of love, affection and moral duty; the Somyurs looked and continue to look at her only as a rich bride. And the only ones who loved her not for her millions, but for real - her mother and the maid Nanon - were too weak and powerless where old Grande reigned supreme with his pockets stuffed with gold. She lost her mother, now she has already buried her father, who stretches out his hands to gold even in the very last minutes of his life.
Under such conditions, a deep alienation inevitably arose between Eugenia and the world around her. But it is unlikely that she herself was clearly aware of what exactly was the cause of her misfortunes. Of course, just name the reason - the unbridled domination of money and monetary relations, which stood at the head of bourgeois society, which crushed the fragile Eugenia. She is deprived of happiness and well-being, despite the fact that she is infinitely rich.
And her tragedy is that the life of people like her turned out to be absolutely useless and useless to anyone. Her capacity for deep affection fell on deaf ears.
Having lost all hope for love and happiness, Evgenia suddenly changes and marries the chairman de Bonfon, who was just waiting for this moment of good luck. But even this selfish man died very soon after their marriage. Eugenia was left alone again with even more wealth, which had been inherited from her late husband. This was probably a kind of bad luck for the unfortunate girl, who became a widow at thirty-six. She never gave birth to a child, that hopeless passion that Evgenia lived all these years.
And yet, at the end, we learn that "money was destined to communicate its cold coloring to this heavenly life and instill in a woman who was all feeling, distrust of feelings." It turns out, in the end, Evgenia became almost the same as her father. She has a lot of money, but she lives in poverty. She lives this way, because she is used to living this way, and another life is no longer amenable to her understanding. Eugenia Grande is a symbol of human tragedy, expressed in crying into a pillow. She has come to terms with her condition, and she can no longer conceive of a better life. The only thing she wanted was happiness and love. But not finding this, she came to complete stagnation. And a significant role here was played by monetary relations that prevailed at that time in society. If they were not so strong, Charles would most likely not succumb to their influence and retain his devoted feelings for Eugenia, and then the plot of the novel would develop more romantically. But it would no longer be Balzac.
The theme of "violent passion" in the work of Balzac.
Balzac has a violent passion for money. These are both accumulators and images of usurers. This theme is close to the theme of the image of the financier, because it is they who live this frantic passion for hoarding.
Gobsek appears to be a disembodied, impassive person, indifferent to the world around him, religion and people. He is far from his own passions, because he constantly observes them in people who come to him for bills. He reviews them, and he himself is in constant calm. In the past, he experienced many passions (traded in India, was deceived by a beautiful woman), and therefore left it in the past. Conversing with Derville, he repeats the formula of shagreen leather: “What is happiness? This is either a strong excitement that undermines our life, or a measured occupation. He is so stingy that in the end, when he dies, there is a pile of goods, food, moldy from the stinginess of the owner.
Two principles live in him: a miser and a philosopher. Under the power of money, he becomes dependent on them. Money becomes magic for him. He hides gold in his fireplace, and after his death, he does not bequeath his fortune to anyone (a relative, a fallen woman). Gobsek is a live-eater (translation).
Felix Grande is a slightly different type: a modern money-making genius, a millionaire who has turned speculation into art. Grande renounced all the joys of life, withered the soul of his daughter, deprived the happiness of all those close to him, but made millions. His satisfaction is in successful speculations, in financial conquests, in commercial victories. He is a kind of disinterested servant of "art for art's sake", since he himself is personally unpretentious and is not interested in those benefits that are given by the millions. The only passion - the thirst for gold - knows no boundaries, killed all human feelings in the old cooper; the fate of his daughter, wife, brother, nephew interests him only from the point of view of the main issue - their relationship to his wealth: he starves his daughter and sick wife, brings the latter to the grave with his stinginess and heartlessness; he destroys the personal happiness of his only daughter, since this happiness would require Grande to give up part of the accumulated treasures.
The fate of Eugene de Rastignac in Balzac's The Human Comedy.
The image of Rastignac in The Human Comedy is the image of a young man who wins his own personal well-being. His path is the path of the most consistent and steady ascent. Loss of illusions, if it occurs, is relatively painless.
In Père Goriot, Rastignac still believes in goodness and is proud of his purity. My life is "clear as a lily". He is of noble aristocratic origin, comes to Paris to make a career and enter the law faculty. He lives at Madame Vaquet's boarding house on the last of his money. He has access to the salon of the Vicomtesse de Beauseant. Socially, he is poor. Rastignac's life experience is made up of the collision of two worlds (the convict Vautrin and the viscountess). Rastignac considers Vautrin and his views to be higher than aristocratic society, where crimes are small. “Nobody needs honesty,” Vautrin says. "The colder you count, the further you'll get." Its intermediate position is typical for that time. With the last money, he arranges a funeral for the poor Goriot.
Soon he realizes that his position is bad, will lead to nothing, that he must give up honesty, spit on pride and go to meanness.
The novel The Banker's House tells of Rastignac's first business successes. With the help of the husband of his mistress, Delphine, daughter of Goriot, Baron de Nucingen, he makes his fortune through a clever game of stocks. He is a classic fitter.
In "Shagreen Skin" - a new stage in the evolution of Rastignac. Here he is already an experienced strategist who has long said goodbye to all sorts of illusions. This is an outright cynic who has learned to lie and be hypocritical. He is a classic fitter. In order to prosper, he teaches Raphael, one must forge ahead and compromise all moral principles.
Rastignac is a representative of that army of young people who did not follow the path of open crime, but the path of adaptation carried out by means of a legal crime. Financial policy is a robbery. He is trying to adapt himself to the bourgeois throne.
Diatribe as a way to identify the most acute problems of our time in Balzac's story "The Banker's House of Nucingen".
Diatribe- discourse on moral themes. An angry accusatory speech (from Greek) The conversation permeates the entire novel "The Banker's House of Nucingen", with the help of the conversation, the negative sides of the characters are revealed.
The artistic style of the late Balzac. Dilogy about "Poor Relatives".
Positive heroes and the role of a happy ending in the work of Dickens.
Dickens and Romanticism.
Images of financiers in the works of Balzac and Flaubert.
Balzac: Almost every Human Comedy novel on our list has an image of a financier in Balzac. Basically, these are usurers living on the frantic passion of money, but also some other representatives of the bourgeoisie.
Creating the image of his usurer, Balzac included him in the context of the most complex social era, contributing to the disclosure of various aspects of this image.
Just like the antiquarian in Shagreen Skin, Gobsek appears to be a disembodied, dispassionate person, indifferent to the world around him, religion and people. He is far from his own passions, because he constantly observes them in people who come to him for bills. He reviews them, and he himself is in constant calm. In the past, he experienced many passions (traded in India, was deceived by a beautiful woman), and therefore left it in the past. Conversing with Derville, he repeats the formula of shagreen leather: “What is happiness? This is either a strong excitement that undermines our life, or a measured occupation. He is so stingy that in the end, when he dies, there is a pile of goods, food, moldy from the stinginess of the owner.
Two principles live in him: a miser and a philosopher. Under the power of money, he becomes dependent on them. Money becomes magic for him. He hides gold in his fireplace, and after his death, he does not bequeath his fortune to anyone (a relative, a fallen woman). Gobsek is a live-eater (translation).
Felix Grande is a slightly different type: a modern money-making genius, a millionaire who has turned speculation into art. Grande renounced all the joys of life, withered the soul of his daughter, deprived the happiness of all those close to him, but made millions. His satisfaction is in successful speculations, in financial conquests, in commercial victories. He is a kind of disinterested servant of "art for art's sake", since he himself is personally unpretentious and is not interested in those benefits that are given by the millions. The only passion - the thirst for gold - knows no boundaries, killed all human feelings in the old cooper; the fate of his daughter, wife, brother, nephew interests him only from the point of view of the main issue - their relationship to his wealth: he starves his daughter and sick wife, brings the latter to the grave with his stinginess and heartlessness; he destroys the personal happiness of his only daughter, since this happiness would require Grande to give up part of the accumulated treasures.
Papa Goriot is one of the pillars of The Human Comedy. He is a baker, a former pasta maker. He carried through his life only love for his daughters: that's why he spent all the money on them, and they used it. So he went bankrupt. This is the opposite of Felix Grande. He demands from them only love for him, for this he is ready to give them everything. At the end of his life, he deduces a formula: money gives everything, even daughters.
David Séchard's father: stinginess begins where poverty begins. The father began to be greedy when the printing house was dying. He went so far as to determine the cost of a printed sheet by eye. They were owned only by selfish interests. He placed his son in the school only in order to prepare a successor for himself. This is the type of Felix Grande who wanted David to give him everything while he was alive. When David was on the verge of ruin, he came to his father to ask for money, but his father did not give him anything, remembering that he once gave him money for education.
Rastignac (in the "Banking House of Nucingen"). This novel tells of Rastignac's early business successes. With the help of the husband of his mistress, Delphine, daughter of Goriot, Baron de Nucingen, he makes his fortune through a clever game of stocks. He is a classic fitter. “The more I take out loans, the more they believe me,” he says in Shagreen Skin.
Flaubert: In Madame Bovary, the image of the financier is M. Leray, a usurer in Yonville. He is a cloth merchant, and since this commodity is expensive, he makes a lot of money with it and keeps a lot of the inhabitants of the city in debt. He appears in the novel at the moment when the Bovary arrive in Yonville. Emma Jali's dog escapes and he sympathizes with her, talking about his troubles with lost dogs.
To unwind, Emma buys new clothes from Leray. He takes advantage of this, realizing that this is the only consolation for the girl. Thus, she falls into a debt hole with him, without saying anything to her husband. And Charles one day borrows 1,000 francs from him. Leray is a clever, flattering and cunning businessman. But he, unlike Balzac's heroes, actively acts - he turns his wealth, lending.
The Problem of the Realist Hero in Flaubert's Madame Bovary.
Flaubert wrote Madame Bovary from 1851 to 1856.
Emma was brought up in a monastery, where girls of average condition were usually brought up at that time. She is addicted to reading novels. These were romantic novels with ideal characters. After reading such literature, Emma imagined herself the heroine of one of these novels. She imagined her happy life with a wonderful person, a representative of some wonderful world. One of her dreams came true: already being married, she went to the ball to the Marquis Vaubiesar in the castle. For the rest of her life, she left a vivid impression, which she constantly recalled with pleasure. (She met her husband by chance: the doctor Charles Bovary came to treat Papa Rouault, Emma's father).
Emma's real life is far from her dreams.
Already on the first day after her wedding, she sees that everything she dreamed about does not happen - she has a miserable life in front of her. And all the same, at first she continued to dream that Charles loved her, that he was sensitive and gentle, that something should change. But her husband was boring and uninteresting, he was not interested in the theater, he did not arouse passion in his wife. Slowly, he began to irritate Emma. She loved to change the situation (when she went to bed for the fourth time in a new place (monastery, Toast, Vaubiesart, Yonville), she thought that a new era was beginning in her life. When they arrived in Yonville (Home, Leray, Leon - assistant notary - Emma's lover), she felt better, she was looking for something new, but just as quickly everything turned into a boring routine. Leon went to Paris to receive further education and Emma again fell into despair. Her only pleasure was buying fabrics from Leray. Her lovers in general (Leon, Rodolphe, 34 years old, landowner) were vulgar and deceitful, none of them has anything to do with the romantic heroes of her books. Rodolphe sought his own benefit, but did not find it, he is mediocre. His dialogue with Madame Bovary is characteristic during an agricultural exhibition - the dialogue is mixed through a phrase with satirically described cries of the exhibition host about manure (mixing high and low) Emma wants to leave with Rodolphe, but in the end he does not want to take on the burden (her and the child - Berta ).
Emma's last drop of patience with her husband disappears when he decides to operate on the sick groom (on the foot), proving that he is an excellent doctor, but then the groom develops gangrene and dies. Emma realizes that Charles is good for nothing.
In Rouen, Emma meets with Leon (she goes with her husband to the theater after an illness - 43 days) - a few delightful days with him.
The desire to escape from this boring prose of life leads to the fact that it is more and more addictive. Emma gets into a big debt with the moneylender Leray. All life now rests on deceit. She deceives her husband, she is deceived by her lovers. She begins to lie even when there is no need for her. More and more confused, sinking to the bottom.
Flaubert exposes this world not so much by opposing the heroine to it, but by means of an unexpected and bold identification of seemingly opposing principles - depoetization and deheroization become a sign of bourgeois reality, extending both to Charles and Emma, both to the bourgeois family and to passion, for love that destroys the family.
An objective manner of narration - Flaubert surprisingly realistically shows the life of Emma and Charles in the cities, the failures that accompany this family during certain moral foundations of society. Flaubert describes Emma's death especially realistically when she poisons herself with arsenic - groans, wild cries, convulsions, everything is described in great detail and realistically.
The social panorama of England in Thackeray's novel "Vanity Fair" and the moral position of the writer.
Double title. A novel without a hero. By this, the author wanted to say that in the bazaar of worldly vanity he depicts, all the heroes are equally bad - all are greedy, greedy, deprived of elementary humanity. It turns out that if there is a hero in the novel, then he is an anti-hero - this is money. In this duality, in my opinion, the movement of the author's intention was preserved: he was born to a humorist writing for magazines, hiding behind a false name, and then, reinforced in his seriousness by biblical associations, the memory of Bunyan's moral intransigence, demanded that the writer speak on his own behalf.
The subtitle is probably to be taken literally: it is a novel without a romantic hero. Thackeray himself suggests such an interpretation in the sixth chapter, when, just approaching the first important events in the novel, he reflects on how to give them a turn and what style of narration to choose. He offers the reader a variant of a romantic crime or a variant in the spirit of secular novels. But the style chosen by the author does not correspond to literary recommendations that guarantee success, but follows the author’s life experience: “Thus, you see, gracious madams, how our novel could be written if the author so desired; because, to tell the truth , he is as familiar with the customs of Newgate prison as with the palaces of our respectable aristocracy, for he observed both of them only from the outside. (W. Thackeray Vanity Fair. M., 1986. P. 124.).
"Anti-romantic details" are seen throughout the novel. For example, what color is the heroine's hair? According to romantic canons, Rebecca would have to be a brunette ("villain type"), and Emilia - a blonde ("blonde innocence type"). In fact, Rebecca has golden, reddish hair, while Emilia is brown-haired.
In general, "... The famous Becky doll showed extraordinary flexibility in the joints and turned out to be very agile on the wire; the Emilia doll, although it won a much more limited circle of admirers, is nevertheless finished by the artist and dressed up with the greatest diligence ..." Thackeray the puppeteer takes the reader to his theatrical stage, to his fair, where you can see "the most diverse spectacles: bloody battles, majestic and magnificent carousels, scenes from high society life, as well as from the life of very modest people, love episodes for sensitive hearts, as well as comic, in a light genre - and all this is furnished with suitable scenery and generously illuminated with candles at the expense of the author.
Puppeteer motif.
Thackeray himself has repeatedly emphasized that his book is a puppet comedy in which he is just a puppeteer directing the game of his puppets. He is both a commentator, and a detractor, and himself a participant in this "bazaar of worldly vanity." This point emphasizes the relativity of any truth, the absence of absolute criteria.
The tradition of picaresque and romance in Vanity Fair.
Counterpoint of Rebecca Sharp and Amelia Sedley.
Counterpoint is a point upon point when storylines are interspersed in a novel. In Thackeray's novel, the storylines of two heroines intersect, representatives of two different classes, social environments, so to speak, Emilia Sedley and Rebecca Sharp. It is better to start comparing Rebecca and Emilia from the very beginning.
Both girls were in Miss Pinkerton's boarding house. True, Rebecca also worked there, taught the kids French, but still she and Emilia could be considered equal at the moment when they left their children's (adolescent) "shelter". Miss Amelia Sedley is recommended to her parents "as a young lady, quite worthy to take her rightful place in their chosen and refined circle. All the virtues that distinguish a noble English young lady, all the perfections befitting her origin and position, are inherent in dear Miss Sedley."
Rebecca Sharp, on the other hand, had the sad feature of the poor - premature maturity. And, of course, her life as a poor pupil, taken from mercy, left alone in this world, did not resemble the dreams of rich Emilia, who had a reliable rear; and Rebecca's relationship with Miss Pinkerton showed that in this embittered heart there is only room for two feelings - pride and ambition.
So, one boarder was waiting for tender, loving, and, not least, wealthy parents, the other - an invitation to stay with dear Emilia for a week before going to a strange family as a governess. Therefore, it is not surprising that Becky decided to marry this "fat dandy", Amelia's brother.
Life divorced "dear friends": one remained at home, at the piano, with her fiancé and two new Indian scarves, the other went, and one wants to write "to catch happiness and ranks", to catch a rich husband or patron, wealth and independence, with a gift worn Indian shawl.
Rebecca Sharp is a conscientious actress. Her appearance is often accompanied by a theatrical metaphor, the image of the theater. Her meeting with Emilia after a long separation, during which Becky honed her skills and claws, took place in a theater where "no dancer has shown such perfect art of pantomime and could not match her antics." And Rebecca's highest rise in her secular career is a role in a charade, performed with brilliance, like the actress's farewell exit to the big stage, after which she will have to play on a more modest provincial stage.
So, the collapse, which for a smaller or weaker person (for example, Emilia) would mean a complete collapse, the end, for Becky, it’s just a change of role. And a role that has already become boring. After all, during her social successes, Becky admits to Lord Stein that she is bored and that it would be much more fun "to put on a sequined suit and dance at the fair in front of a booth!" And in this dubious company that surrounds her in The Restless Chapter, she really has more fun: maybe here she finally found herself, finally happy.
Becky is the strongest personality of the novel, and only before one manifestation of human feelings does she give in - before humanity. She, an egoist, simply does not understand the act of Lady Jane, who first bought Rawdon from creditors, and then took him and his son under her protection. She does not understand Rodon, who threw off the masks of an officer-reveler and a cuckold husband, and acquired a face in his caring love for his son, in his deceived trust, he towered over Becky, who would remember and regret more than once "about his honest, stupid, constant love and fidelity."
Becky looks unseemly in the scene of farewell to Rodon before he leaves for the war. This fool showed so much sensitivity and concern for her future, he even left her his new uniform, and he went on a campaign "almost with a prayer for the woman he left."
About Emilia, it seems to me, it is impossible to speak in such strong and excited tones. She has some kind of “jelly” life, and she always cries, always complains, always hangs on the elbow of her husband, who no longer knows how to breathe more freely.
Thackeray believed that "Emilia would yet show herself" because "she would be saved by love." Some pages about Emilia, especially about her love for her son, are written in a tearful Dickenian vein. But the Vanity Fair is probably arranged in such a way that kindness, love, loyalty not only lose their value, but also lose something in themselves, becoming companions of awkwardness, weakness, narrow-mindedness. And vain, vain self-love: who, after all, was Emilia, "if not a careless little tyrant"? A piece of paper was able to extinguish the fiery, "true" love for ... her dream, and it was Becky who helped Emilia find her stupid, "goose" happiness.
And Becky? Since childhood, cynical, shameless. Thackeray in the course of the novel insistently emphasizes that she is no worse and no better than others, and that adverse circumstances have made her what she is. Her image is devoid of softness. She is shown to be incapable of much love, even the love of her own son. She loves only herself. Her life path is a hyperbole and a symbol: the image of Rebecca helps to understand the whole idea of the novel. Vain, she seeks glory in the wrong ways, and in the end comes to vice and misfortune.
Goebbel's dramatic trilogy "Nibelungen" and the problem of "myth" in realism.
At the end of his life Gobbel wrote The Nibelungen. This is the last completed major dramatic work. He wrote it for five years (from 1855 to 1860). The well-known medieval epic "The Song of the Nibelungs" arranged in a modern way for the writer was dedicated to his wife Christina, whom he saw playing in a theatrical production of Raupach's drama "The Nibelungs", Goebbel's predecessor. In general, it must be said that the theme of this epic was reworked by many writers. The forerunners of the Goebbel tragedy were Delamotte Fouquet, Ulat ("Siegfried"), Geibel ("Kriemhild"), Raupach, and after Goebbel Wagner created his famous trilogy "The Ring of the Nibelungs".
The main difference between the "Nibelungs" by Goebel and the "Song of the Nibelungs" is the deep psychologism of the tragedy, a stronger sounding Christian theme, a more mundane text and the emergence of new motives. New motives are the love of Brynhild and Siegfried, which was not so clearly visible in the last epic, the introduction of a new character Frigga (Brynhild's nurse) into the tragedy, and most importantly, a new interpretation of the myth of cursed gold, sounded in Volker's song: "Children played - one killed another; gold appeared from the stone, which gave rise to strife among the peoples.
Revolution of 1848 and the aesthetics of "pure art".
The revolution took place in many European countries: Germany, Italy, France, Hungary.
The government of Louis Philippe had a series of setbacks in foreign policy, leading to the rise of both parliamentary and non-parliamentary opposition. In 1845-46 there were crop failures, food riots.
1847: The aftermath of a general commercial and industrial crisis in England. The French government did not want reforms, and the broad masses understood the dissatisfied riots. In February 1848, a demonstration took place in defense of electoral reform, which resulted in a revolution. The overthrown party was replaced by more reactionary forces. There was a second republic (bourgeois). The workers were unarmed, there was no question of any concessions to the working class. Then Napoleon, President of the Republic, staged a coup d'état and became Emperor of France (Second Empire).
The whole course of the bourgeois revolution was its defeat and the triumph of reactionary forces. The remnants of pre-revolutionary traditions and the results of social relations perished.
The revolution of 1848 is perceived with a "Hurrah!" intelligentsia. All intellectuals are at the barricades. But the revolution bogs down and turns into a dictatorial coup. The worst that could have been expected by those who aspired to this revolution has happened. Faith in a humanistic future and in progress collapsed with the collapse of the revolution. A regime of bourgeois vulgarity and general stagnation was established.
At that moment, it was necessary to create the appearance of prosperity and success. This is how pure art was born. Behind him - decadence, Parnassian group (Gaultier, Lille, Baudelaire).
The theory of pure art is the denial of any usefulness of art. The glorification of the principle of "art for art's sake". Art has one goal - the service of beauty.
Art is now a way of leaving the world, pure art does not interfere in social relations.
The trinity of truth, goodness, beauty - theory of pure art.
The theory of pure art arises as a form of escape from the hated reality. Theorists of pure art also tend to outrageous (to express themselves, to shock).
Pantheism arises - multi-belief, many heroes, opinions, thoughts. History and natural science become the muses of the modern era. Flaubert's pantheism is a modern cascade: he explained the languor of the spirit by the state of society. “We are worth something only because of our suffering.” Emma Bovary is a symbol of the era, a symbol of vulgar modernity.
The theme of love in Baudelaire's poetry.
The poet Baudelaire himself is a man with a difficult fate. A break with his family (when he is sent to a colony in India, and he flees back to Paris), he lived alone for a long time. Lived in poverty, earned some money with a pen (reviews). Many times in his poetry, he turned to forbidden topics (also a kind of shocking).
Of the French, his teachers were Sainte-Beuve and Theophile Gauthier. The first taught him to find beauty in what poetry rejected, in natural landscapes, suburban scenes, in the phenomena of ordinary and rough life; the second endowed him with the ability to turn the most ignoble material into pure gold of poetry, the ability to create phrases broad, clear and full of restrained energy, with all the diversity of tone, the richness of vision.
The coup and revolution undermined many idealistic thoughts in Baudelaire.
The life position of the poet is outrageous: constant rejection of what is official. He did not share ideas about human progress.
The theme of love in his work is very complex. It does not fit into any framework that was previously put on this topic by various poets. This is a special love. Rather, love for nature is more than for a woman. Very often the motive of love for the endless expanses, for him, for the endless distance of the sea sounds.
Muse Baudelaire is sick, like his soul. Baudelaire spoke of the vulgarity of the world in everyday language. Rather, it was dislike.
Even his beauty is terrible - "a hymn to beauty."
His main themes were pessimism, skepticism, cynicism, decay, death, collapsed ideals.
“You would attract the whole world to your bed,
Oh woman, oh creature, how evil you are from boredom!
"With a frenzied Jewess stretched out on the bed,
Like a corpse next to a corpse, I'm in stuffy darkness
Woke up and to your sad beauty
From this - bought - desires flew.
This is his understanding of love.
The theme of rebellion in Baudelaire's Flowers of Evil.
The Flowers of Evil was published in 1857. Caused a lot of negative feedback, the book was condemned, was not accepted by bourgeois France. The court ruled: "Crude and insulting to shame realism." Since then, Baudelaire has become a "damned poet."
The theme of rebellion in this collection is very bright. There is even a separate part called "rebellion" or "mutiny". It included three poems: “Cain and Abel”, “The Denial of St. Peter” and “Litanies to Satan” (Oh, the best among the forces reigning in Heaven, offended by fate, and poor in praise). In this cycle, the rebellious, anti-church directions of the poet were most clearly revealed. He glorifies Satan, and St. Peter, who renounced Christ and is well done in this. The sonnet “Cain and Abel” is very important: the family of Abel is the family of the oppressed, the family of Cain is the family of the oppressors. And Baudelaire worships the race of Cain: “Arise from hell and throw the Almighty from heaven!”). He was an anarchist by nature.
He described God as a bloody tyrant who could not get enough of the torments of mankind. For Baudelaire, God is a mortal man who dies in terrible agony.
His rebellion is not only in this. The revolt against boredom is also the revolt of Baudelaire. In all his poems, there is an atmosphere of despondency, irresistible boredom, which he called spleen. This boredom was born of the world of endless vulgarity, Baudelaire rises just against it.
The path of Baudelaire is the path of painful reflection. Through his negation, he breaks through to reality, to those questions that poetry has never touched.
His cycle of "Paris Pictures" is also a kind of rebellion. He describes here the city slums, ordinary people - a drunken scavenger, a red-haired beggar. He sympathizes with these little people without pity. He puts them as equals to himself and thereby rebels against unfair reality.
On August 18, 1850, in Paris, the classic of French literature, the brilliant writer Honore de Balzac, died, not having lived even six months from the moment the main dream of his life came true - marrying his beloved woman, widowed Evelina Ganskaya.
A great writer working 15-16 hours a day published at least 5-6 books a year. And what books! Each is a detailed description in the smallest detail of a particular class, profession, which Balzac undertook to tell about in this work. In his famous Human Comedy cycle, composed of 137 novels, Balzac left to posterity a vast panorama of French society (Parisian, provincial, military, rural) during the Bourbon Restoration and the July Monarchy.
A great connoisseur of hidden and obvious human motives, virtues and vices, he created vivid characters, forcing his heroes either to fight with hostile circumstances or with their own passions. And survive, win in the works of the master, as a rule, two categories of people: strong, strong-willed, capable of everything in order to achieve goals, and those who have love for their neighbor as their goal. It's just that the weak and weak-willed in Balzac's novels are doomed. They have no place in the hard world created by the great realist writer.
We have a great opportunity to read quotes from the works of Honore de Balzac to find out how, in the opinion of his heroes, it was possible to become a person capable of taking a worthy place in society two centuries ago.
"Father Goriot"
(A novel, 1835, about a father's boundless love for his children, whose ingratitude drives an unfortunate parent to the grave.)
with those who hurts you quite consciously, you continue to meet and, perhaps, are afraid of them, and if a person inflicts a wound, not knowing its full depth, then they look at such a fool, at a simpleton, incapable of benefiting from anything and everyone treats him with contempt.
Do you want to create position, I will help you. Explore the depths of the depravity of women, measure the degree of the miserable vanity of men. I carefully read the book of light, but it turned out that I did not notice some pages. Now I know everything: the more coolly you calculate, the further you will go. Strike mercilessly and you will be trembled. Look at men and women as mail horses, drive without regret, let them die at every station, and you will reach the limit in the fulfillment of your desires. Remember that you will be nothing in the world if you don't have a woman to take part in you. And you need to find one that combines beauty, youth, wealth. If a genuine feeling arises in you, hide it like a jewel so that no one even suspects its existence, otherwise you are lost. When you stop being an executioner, you become a victim. If you love, keep your secret sacred! Do not believe it until you truly know the one to whom you open your heart. You do not yet have such love, but you must protect it in advance, so learn not to trust the light.
Do you know how making their way here? The brilliance of genius or the art of bribery. It is necessary to crash into this human mass with a cannonball or penetrate like a plague. Honesty achieves nothing. They bow before the power of a genius and hate him, they try to denigrate him because a genius takes everything without division, but as long as he stands firm, they exalt him - in short, they worship him, kneeling down when they cannot trample him into the mud. Corruption is everywhere, talent is rare. Therefore, venality has become the weapon of mediocrity, which has flooded everything, and you will feel the edge of its weapon everywhere.
I will never finish, if I take it into my head to tell you what deals are made for the sake of rags, lovers, children, for household needs or out of vanity, but, you can be sure, rarely - for good intentions. That is why an honest man is the enemy of all. But what do you think an honest person is? In Paris, an honest man is one who acts in silence and does not share with anyone. I leave aside the miserable helots, who drag the line everywhere, never receiving a reward for their labors; I call them the Brotherhood of God's Fools. There is virtue in all the bloom of its stupidity, but there is also need. From here I can see what kind of face these righteous people will have if God plays a cruel joke with them and suddenly cancels the Last Judgment. So, if you want to quickly make a fortune, you must either already be rich or appear to be. To get rich, you need to play the game with big jackpots, and if you are stingy in the game - write wasted! When ten people have quickly achieved success in the field of one hundred professions available to you, the public immediately calls them thieves. Draw a conclusion from here. Here is life as it is. All this is no better than the kitchen - the stink is just as much, and if you want to cook something, get your hands dirty, only then be able to wash off the dirt well; that is the whole morality of our age.
Success in Paris Everything is a pledge of power. As soon as women admit that you have talent and intelligence, men will believe it if you do not dissuade them yourself. Then everything will become available to you, you will be able to move everywhere. Then you will know that the world is made up of deceivers and simpletons. Do not join either one or the other. Don't get lost in this maze...
"Marriage contract"
(History of the weak-willed Paul de Manerville, 1835)
Man at under any circumstances, he must be able to approach the matter in such a way as to present it to himself from various points of view - otherwise he is mediocre, weak-willed and may perish.
Those who have exalted soul, prefer solitude; weak and sensitive natures leave the scene, only strong ones remain, like boulders, capable of withstanding the pressure of the sea of \u200b\u200blife, which beats them against each other, grinds them, but cannot destroy them.
The whole secret social alchemy, my friend, is to take as much as possible from life, no matter what age we are, to pluck all the greenery in the spring, all the flowers in the summer, and all the fruits in the fall.
Outstanding envy induces a person to competition, pushes him to great deeds; in the case of insignificant people, envy turns into hatred.
Fear my dear, is one of the foundations of society and an excellent means to achieve success, especially for those who do not lower their eyes to anyone. I have never experienced fear and value life no more than a cup of donkey's milk; but I noticed, my dear, the striking influence of this feeling on modern mores. Some are afraid of losing the pleasures that have become familiar to them, others are afraid of the prospect of parting with the woman they love. The bold morals of the past, when life was tossed around like a worn shoe, have long since disappeared. The courage of most people is nothing more than a subtle calculation based on the fact that their opponents will be seized by fear.
run Doesn't that mean letting gossip take over? A player who rushes for money in order to continue the game will lose for sure.
What do they mean money compared to our grand designs? Sheer nonsense, trifle! What does woman mean? Are you going to be a student forever? What does life become, my dear, if everything is concentrated in a woman? In a ship not controlled by anyone, given to the will of all winds, obedient to a magnetic needle directed towards the pole of madness, in a real galley in which a man is serving hard labor, obeying not only the laws of society, but also the unpunished arbitrariness of the overseer. Ugh!
"Shagreen leather"
(A novel, 1831, about how a person's egoism, materialized in a piece of shagreen leather, devours his life with the fulfillment of each subsequent desire).
Worth the young a man to meet a woman who does not love him, or a woman who loves him too much, and his whole life is distorted.
Error gifted people is that they waste their youth, wanting to become worthy of the mercy of fate. While the poor are accumulating strength and knowledge so that in the future it will be easy to bear the burden of power that eludes them, intriguers, rich in words and devoid of thoughts, snoop around, hooking on the bait of fools, get into the confidence of simpletons; some study, others advance; those are modest - these are resolute; a man of genius hides his pride, an intriguer flaunts it, he will certainly succeed. Those in power have such a strong need to believe in merit that strikes the eye, insolent talent, that on the part of a true scientist it would be childish to hope for human gratitude. Of course, I am not going to repeat the commonplaces about virtue, that song of songs that unrecognized geniuses forever sing; I just want to logically deduce the reason for the success that mediocre people so often achieve.
"Gobsek"
(A story, 1830, about the usurer Gobsek - the “golden idol”)
I am you now Let me summarize human life. Whether you are a vagabond traveler, whether you are a homebody and do not part for a century with your fire and with your wife, the age will still come when all life is just a habit to your favorite environment. And then happiness consists in the exercise of one's abilities in relation to everyday reality. And besides these two rules, all the rest are false.
No on earth nothing lasting, there are only conventions, and in each climate they are different. For someone who willy-nilly applied to all social standards, all your moral rules and beliefs are empty words. Only one single feeling, embedded in us by nature itself, is unshakable: the instinct of self-preservation. In the states of European civilization, this instinct is called self-interest. Here you live with me, you will learn that of all earthly blessings there is only one reliable enough to make it worth a person to chase after him, This is ... gold. All the forces of mankind are concentrated in gold. I traveled, I saw that all over the earth there are plains and mountains. The plains are boring, the mountains are tiring; in a word, in what place to live - it does not matter. As for morals, 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. Everywhere muscular people work, and skinny people suffer. Yes, and the pleasures are the same everywhere, and everywhere they exhaust the forces in the same way; only one joy survives all pleasures - vanity. Vanity! It is always our "I". And what can satisfy vanity? Gold! Streams of gold.
Life is a complex, difficult craft, and one must make an effort to learn it. When a person recognizes life, having experienced its sorrows, the fibers of his heart will be hardened, strengthened, and this allows him to control his sensitivity. Nerves then become no worse than steel springs - they bend, but do not break. And if, in addition, digestion is good, then with such preparation a person will be tenacious and long-lived.
The role of money in modern society is the main theme in Balzac's work.
Creating the "Human Comedy", Balzac set himself a task still unknown to literature at that time. He strove for truthfulness and a merciless display of contemporary France, a display of the real, real life of his contemporaries.
One of the many themes that sound in his works is the theme of the destructive power of money over people, the gradual degradation of the soul under the influence of gold. This is especially vividly reflected in two famous works of Balzac - "Gobsek" and "Eugene Grandet".
Balzac's works have not lost their popularity in our time. They are popular both among young readers and among older people who draw from his works the art of understanding the human soul, seeking to understand historical events. And for these people, Balzac's books are a real storehouse of life experience.
The usurer Gobsek is the personification of the power of money. The love for gold, the thirst for enrichment, kill all human feelings in him, drown out all other principles.
The only thing he aspires to is to have more and more wealth. It seems absurd that a man who owns millions lives in poverty and, while collecting bills, prefers to walk without hiring a cab. But these actions are also due only to the desire to save at least a little money: living in poverty, Gobsek pays a tax of 7 francs with his millions.
Leading a modest, inconspicuous life, it would seem that he does not harm anyone and does not interfere in anything. But with those few people who turn to him for help, he is so merciless, so deaf to all their pleas, that he resembles some kind of soulless machine rather than a person. Gobsek does not try to get close to any person, he has no friends, the only people he meets are his professional partners. He knows that he has an heiress, a great-niece, but does not seek to find her. He does not want to know anything about her, because she is his heiress, and it is hard for Gobsek to think about heirs, because he cannot accept the fact that he will someday die and part with his wealth.
Gobsek strives to spend his life energy as little as possible, which is why he does not worry, does not sympathize with people, always remains indifferent to everything around him.
Gobsek is convinced that only gold rules the world. However, the author endows him with some positive individual qualities. Gobsek is an intelligent, observant, insightful and strong-willed person. In many of Gobseck's judgments, we see the position of the author himself. So, he believes that an aristocrat is no better than a bourgeois, but he hides his vices under the guise of decency and virtue. And he takes cruel revenge on them, enjoying his power over them, watching how they kowtow to him when they cannot pay their bills.
Turning into the personification of the power of gold, Gobsek at the end of his life becomes pathetic and ridiculous: accumulated food and expensive art objects rot in the pantry, and he bargains with merchants for every penny, not inferior to them in price. Gobsek dies, his eyes fixed on the huge pile of gold in the fireplace.
Father Grande is a stocky "good man" with a moving bump on his nose, a figure not as mysterious and fantastic as Gobsek. His biography is quite typical: having made his fortune in the troubled years of the revolution, Grande becomes one of the most eminent citizens of Saumur. No one in the city knows the true extent of his fortune, and his wealth is a source of pride for all the inhabitants of the town. However, the rich man Grande is distinguished by outward good nature, gentleness. For himself and his family, he regrets an extra piece of sugar, flour, firewood to heat in the house, he does not repair the stairs, because he feels sorry for the nail.
Despite all this, he loves his wife and daughter in his own way, he is not as lonely as Gobsek, he has a certain circle of acquaintances who periodically visit him and maintain good relations. But still, because of his exorbitant stinginess, Grande loses all trust in people, in the actions of those around him he sees only attempts to get hold of him at his expense. He only pretends that he loves his brother and cares about his honor, but in reality he does only what is beneficial to him. He loves Nanette, but still shamelessly uses her kindness and devotion to him, exploits her mercilessly.
Passion for money makes him completely inhuman: he is afraid of the death of his wife because of the possibility of dividing property.
Taking advantage of his daughter's boundless trust, he forces her to renounce her inheritance. He perceives his wife and daughter as part of his property, so he is shocked that Evgenia herself dared to dispose of her gold. Grande cannot live without gold and often counts his wealth hidden in his study at night. Grande's insatiable greed is especially disgusting in the scene of his death: dying, he snatches a gilded cross from the priest's hands.
