Honoré de Balzac: an influential 19th century French novelist

The French writer Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) made an important contribution to the development of the modern novel. He is also an important illustration of the principle that failure can be followed by great success if one refuses to give up.

He was born in Tours, a city on the River Loire about 130 miles southwest of Paris. His parents wanted him to become a lawyer, but this idea did not excite Honoré who, from the age of about 19, made up his mind that he was going to be a great writer. To this end he left Tours and headed for Paris.

He would spend the next decade enduring a series of disappointments and considerable poverty. As well as writing he tried his hand at printing and publishing, plus some even less likely ventures such as growing pineapples, but the only result was a steady accumulation of debt.

His attempts at writing got him absolutely nowhere. He started with a verse tragedy entitled “Cromwell”, which was a failure, as was a string of potboilers that were either slushy, sensationalist, or both. He had the notion that because writers such as Walter Scott and James Fenimore Cooper had enjoyed huge success from their historical fiction in English, he could do the same in French. He was wrong – mainly because his efforts lacked originality.

But when he was about 30 Balzac got an idea that was not only original but revolutionary. This was to create a body of work that was based on a central theme and in which characters made appearances in more than one book. The theme was life in Paris and the surrounding region, as lived by the huge variety of people to be found there. He discovered a gift for description of people and places that had not been appropriate to his earlier derivative work, and once he had started on creating his self-contained world he did not stop until he died from exhaustion 20 years later.

He gave his new venture an overall title, “La Comédie Humaine” – The Human Comedy – which he hoped would be every bit as significant to literature as “The Divine Comedy” of Dante Alighieri. His ambition was not misplaced.

The project ran to nearly 100 works, some being novels and others stories of varying lengths. They introduced more than 2000 characters, many of whom made re-appearances in later works and helped to bind them together. Titles included “Le Père Goriot”, “Eugénie Grandet” and “La Cousine Bette”.

Once started, there was no stopping Honoré de Balzac. He would routinely work for 18 hours at a stretch, drinking as many as 50 cups a coffee a day. His story “The Illustrious Gaudissart”, which is 14,000 words long, was written in a single overnight sitting. He was no slapdash writer, in that he would survey publishers’ proofs with keen attention and revise his work six or seven times before allowing it to be printed.

Despite his dedication to work Balzac was constantly searching for the perfect woman to make his life complete. This turned out to be a Polish countess, whom he eventually married after corresponding with her for 15 years. However, married bliss turned out to be short-lived, because he died only five months after the wedding.

Balzac’s work showed that the novel could be an art form capable of representing life in considerable detail, warts and all, but with sympathy and humour thrown in. This was a gift that he shared with his near contemporary across the English Channel, Charles Dickens. Between them they set the tone for the 19^th century realist novel.

© John Welford