Edgar Saltus - Balzac

One of the causes of his disdain of everything which smacked of journalism was this: He had engaged to write “Séraphita” for the “Revue des Deux Mondes,” and shortly after the story had been delivered he learned that it was published at St. Petersburg. Thinking, as was but natural, that the editor had been the victim of some audacious theft, he hastened to tell him what he had heard; and his astonishment may be readily imagined when he was informed that the Russian edition had appeared with the sanction of the editor himself, who not only insisted that he had a perfect right to do as he pleased with the manuscript, but positively refused to make any indemnity. Thereupon, Balzac, in spite of the remonstrances of his friends, who pointed out that any contest with the “Revue,” whose word was law, would inevitably result in the closing of its columns to him, began a lawsuit, alleging that, independent of the pecuniary loss which he suffered, a precedent of this kind, once established, would in the future be highly prejudicial, not only to him, but to all his confrères. Much to his amazement, however, the defendant appeared in court with a list of signatures of almost all of those whom he had sought to defend at his own risk and peril, who attested that from a literary as well as from an ethical standpoint they considered the action of the editor of the “Revue des Deux Mondes” as eminently right and proper.

The law was, none the less, perfectly clear. Balzac won the suit, and with it a host of enemies, whose hatred was so vigorous that it barely abated, even after his death. Their insults delighted him. “Fire away,” he would say; “the armor is strong. Your abuse is an advertisement; your praise would lull the public to sleep, but your diatribes wake them up. Besides, you hit the mark sometimes, and every fault you signalize I correct, which in the end is so much gained.”

Among the host of enemies thus aroused were those who, not content with denying his genius, advanced their artillery into private life, and painted him in the possession of every vice in the criminal statutes; and it is from the falsehoods of these guerrilleros that all the stupidities which have been told concerning him found their primal gestation. Not only his morality, his honesty, his sobriety, were attacked, but even his name was denied to him. The de was declared not only an affectation, but a theft; and when some one said to him, in allusion thereto, “But you are no connection of the De Balzac d’Entragues,” “Ah! am I not?” he answered placidly. “Well, then, so much the worse for them.”

“One would say he had read the inscription on the gates of Busyrane, – ‘Be bold;’ and on the second gate, – ‘Be bold, be bold, and evermore be bold;’ and then again had paused well at the third gate, – ‘Be not too bold.’” – Emerson, Plato.

The general plan and outline of the “Comédie Humaine” originated in a comparison between humanity and animal existence. That which Buffon had achieved in zoölogy, Balzac proposed to accomplish in moral science, and the habits and customs as well as the vices and virtues of his contemporaries found in him a secretary whose inventory offers to posterity an elaborate insight into the every-day life of France in the nineteenth century, and realizes for their future curiosity that work which the ancient monarchies have neglected to bequeath to us as their own civilizations.

But the pictures of two or three thousand of the most striking figures of an epoch required, in a general history of society, not only frames but galleries, and the work therefore is divided into,

Scènes de la Vie Privée.

Scènes de la Vie de Province.

Scènes de la Vie Parisienne.

Scènes de la Vie Politique.

Scènes de la Vie Militaire.

Scènes de la Vie de Campagne.

These six subdivisions are grouped under the general title of “Études de Mœurs,” and in them the attempt has been made to examine and explain the general causes of earthly happiness and misery, as demonstrated in the results obtainable in the practice of the great principles of order and mortality, or in the selfish abandonment to purely personal interests.

Happiness, Balzac considered, consisted in the exercise of our faculties as applied to realities. But inasmuch as its principles vary with each latitude, and ideas of right and wrong find their modifications in the climate, he concluded that morals and convictions were valueless terms, and that happiness was to be found, first, in violent emotions which undermine existence; second, in regular occupations functionating like mechanism; or, lastly, in the study of the laws of nature and in the application of the lessons thereby derived.

In his treatment of this subject he has prepared a complete history of the effects of the agitation of social existence, and each of the foregoing divisions represents a particular aspect of life.

In the “Scènes de la Vie Privée,” life is represented between the last developments of childhood and the first calculations of virility. These scenes contain tableaux of the emotions and undefined sensations combined with pictures of the errors committed through ignorance of the exigencies of the world.

The “Scènes de la Vie de Province” represents that phase of existence in which passions, calculations, and ideas take the place of sensations, impulses, and illusions. The instincts of the young man of twenty are generous; at thirty he calculates and turns egotist. These scenes therefore initiate the reader into the thousand aspects of the transition through which a man passes when abandoning the thoughtless impulses of adolescence for the politic attitudes of manhood. Life becomes serious: positive interests jostle with violent passions, disillusions begin, the social machinery is revealed, and from the shock of moral or pecuniary interests the crime bursts in the midst of the most tranquil household.

Herein are unveiled the petty annoyances by whose periodicity a poignant interest is concentrated in the slightest detail of existence. Herein are also exposed the petty rivalries, the jealousies born of vicinage, and the family worries, whose increasing force degrades and weakens the most resolute will. The charm of dreams escapes; the prosaic and the matter of fact alone exist; woman reasons, and no longer feels; she calculates where before she gave. Life is now ripened and shaded.

In the “Scènes de la Vie Parisienne” the questions are enlarged, and existence painted in bold outlines gradually arrives at the frontiers of decrepitude. Herein purity of sentiment is exceptional: it is broken in the play of interests and scattered by the mechanism of the world. Virtue is calumniated, innocence is purchased. Passions become vices, emotions ruinous gratifications; everything is analyzed, bought, and sold. Life is a bazaar; humanity has but two forms, that of the deceiver and the deceived; it is a struggle and a combat, and the victor is he who best throttles society and moulds it to his own ends. The death of relatives is awaited; the honest man is a simpleton; generosity is a means, religion a governmental necessity, probity a policy; everything is marketable; absurdity is an advertisement, ridicule a passport, and youth, which has lived a hundred years, insults old age.

These scenes close the tableaux of individual existence, and their three frameworks contain representations of youth, manhood, and old age. First the bloom of life, the expansion of the soul, and the radiance of love; then come the calculations, the transformation of affection into passion; and, lastly, the accumulation of interests and the continual satisfaction of the senses joined to the inevitable weariness of mind and body.