July 2023: Honoré de Balzac

Our July author is Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850).

His life work was the La Comédie humaine, consisting of 91 finished works (stories, novels, or analytical essays) and 46 unfinished works (some of which exist only as titles) -- Wikipedia numbers -- although he also had other works.

So... what do you plan to read this month? :)

I've got Un début dans la vie standing by.

I'm going to read Old Goriot.

Droll Stories will be my first choice as I'm in the mood for something droll.

Just finished droll stories and have been laughing through the entire book He is known for his satiric stabs at religion, nobility, hypocrisy etiqutte and sixteenth-century French life and manners. He is compared with Boccaccio, Chaucer, and Rabelais . I had heard of him, but never experinced his work. Thank you for choosing him for the theme this month, as its been rare that Ive enjoyed a book as I hav ethis one, cover to cover. ..the last story shows 3 pilgrims at an inn, talking about why they decided to go, and all said because of a women. they of course continue to insult the fairer sex and pledge a vow not to have any thing to do with one. Enter the landlady who ovr hears them....Lets just say he does not suffer fools gladly. Now i need to choose another one of his reads....do let me know what you are all reading so I can best choose!

I decided to go with Eugenie Grandet….it just arrived in the mail today! This will be my first experience with Balzac.

I completed Old Goriot. This was my first Balzac and I liked it, for the most part. He reminds me somewhat of Dickens, but perhaps more elegant with his words and a bit more sparing. This is the story of Paris in 1819 and evidently the First Estate survived the Revolution and is flourishing, in general. The titular character is a man that loves his daughters to excess (?) and lives in penury because of it; while his daughters disown him. Theme of this book: money trumps all! 175 pages 4 stars

Having finished Barnaby Rudge I feel interested to see how Balzac tackles what for him is recent history, and I have taken Les Chouans from the shelf.

I have just finished reading The Edwardians by Vita Sackville West and I will now begin Droll Stories. What a contrast!

I have read three short works from La Comedie Humaine this month, all of which I rather enjoyed: An Episode under the Terror; The Vendetta; and The Recruit. The first and third concerned episodes of tension and drama during the French Revolution, while The Vendetta was about the effects of a feud between two Corsican families.

I have finished Un début dans la vie where young Oscar Husson is sent to a small town near Paris by his impoverished mother to be taken under the wing of the man who supports her financially to some degree. Alas, his travelling companions tell tall tales and he wishes to impress them by revealing intimate details about the big man of the town – who is also sitting in the coach, incognito. Serious repercussions follow, and his family must find another career for him. They decide on the law and he makes progress until the final step, when his vanity trips him up again, and he ends up enlisting as a soldier.
Oscar is not much of an interesting protagonist, the novel takes its life and its charm from all the other people we meet. We also learn about public transport from Paris to the surrounding countryside, much detail about how estate managers feather their own nests, how law clerks spend their evenings etc. I was also intrigued to find Ali Pacha making an appearance (as he does in Dumas' Count of Monte Cristo), and happy to learn some colloquial expressions.

I have also re-read Madame Firmiani which was also contained in the digitised book I downloaded. These short, early works are not very memorable and often rather treacly, like this one.

And just in time I also finished Les Chouans.
This was the first novel he published under his own name, and I was surprised to learn that he revised it to some degree a few years later. My French copy just had the bare text and I sorely missed notes and an introduction to tell me which of the characters were real. We get several skirmishes between the Royalists and the Republicans, a very nasty spymaster and creature of Fouché, and a pair of truly tedious lovers. In his early years, Balzac was very much a Romantic still, and his lovers are always beautiful and noble people. Here they are on different sides of the civil war and their on-off relationship took up way too much room.
Apparently, some of the characters on the sidelines reappear in L'Envers de l'histoire contemporaine, so that goes on my wishlist.

My ebook from the Open Library also held two short stories: Le message and La messe de l'athée, and the second was truly lovely.
Last night I also finished my re-read of Le colonel Chabert, which made much more sense to me the second time around. I also like his lawyers, following them across the many books of the Comédie might be a rewarding way of tackling it.
And now I'm ready to move on to something else, I think.

>7 Tess_W: Inspired by readers of Balzac in the group i picked up Pere Goriot in the library a month ago and have enjoyed reading it. When I was young I read a lot of classical literature in translation including some of Balzac's books. I seem to recall enjoying Cousin Bette and may have a copy somewhere. Note to self- time for a reread.
Balzac's character drawing in this book of people living at opposite extremes in post- Napoleonic Paris is wonderful. I particularly loved the cynical Vautrin whose influence on the young student Rastignac is pernicious. From the spoilt daughters of a haplessly devoted father, to the penny pinching boarding house owner a picture is drawn of a society in which money rules and the better human instincts are stifled.
Many thanks for the choice and I am sorry to have been so slow in responding.