A Collection of Works by Honore de Balzac

This ebook contain at least more than ten of his work, but i only give the description a few of them such:

La Bourse

La Bourse (The Purse) is a short story by the French novelist Honoré de Balzac. It was published in 1832 by Mame-Delaunay as one of the Scènes de la vie privée (Scenes of Private Life) in La Comédie humaine. Later editions of the work were brought out by Béchet in 1835 and by Charpentier in 1839, in both of which La Bourse was placed among the Scènes de la vie parisienne (Scenes of Parisian Life). It was, however, restored to the Scènes de la vie privée when Furne brought out the fourth and final edition in 1842; this heavily revised version of the story appeared as the third work in Volume 1 of La Comédie humaine.

The young painter Hippolyte Schinner falls from a step-ladder while working in his atelier and is knocked unconscious. The noise of his fall alerts two of his neighbours, Adélaïde Leseigneur and her mother Madame de Rouville, who occupy the apartment immediately below. The two women revive the young man and an acquaintance is struck up. Inevitably, the young painter falls in love with Adélaïde and over the following weeks he pays frequent visits to her apartment. There he is always warmly welcomed, but he cannot help noticing the unmistakable signs of poverty - a poverty that the two women are at obvious pains to hide. Hippolyte's suspicions are aroused. The mother and her daughter have different surnames; they are reluctant to reveal anything of their past; and what is Hippolyte to make of the two old friends of the mother, the Comte de Kergarouet and the Chevalier du Halga, who regularly visit her to play cards for money, but who always lose to her as though on purpose?

Hippolyte discovers that Madame de Rouville's late husband was a naval captain who died at Batavia from wounds reveived in an engagement with an English vessel. The Comte de Kergarouet, it transpires, is a former comrade of Baron de Rouville. Hippolyte offers to draw a portrait of Monsieur de Rouville, a fading sketch of whom is hanging in the apartment. Two months later, when the finished portrait is hung in Madame de Rouville's apartment, the Comte de Kergarouet offers Hippolyte 500 pistoles to have his own portrait painted in a similar style. Hippolyte, however, suspects that the old man is offering him the price of both portraits while paying for his own, and he declines the offer.

Despite his suspicions that the two women make are living in some mysterious and disreputable manner, Hippolyte continues his visits, for he is deeply in love with Adélaïde. One day, as he is leaving the apartment, he realizes that he has left his purse behind; but when he returns and inquires about it, Adélaïde brazenly insists that no such purse has been left in their apartment. The young man suspects he has been robbed by the women and he stops visiting them. Over the following week he pines away. His colleagues seem to confirm his worst suspicions - that Adélaïde is a prostitute and Madame de Rouville her procuress. Even his mother notices that he is out of sorts.

But a chance meeting on the stairs outside Adélaïde's apartment is enough to dispel all Hippolyte's suspicions. He decides that he was wrong to ignore the promptings of his heart. That evening he calls on the two women. Madame de Rouville suggests a game of cards. Hippolyte loses, and when he reaches into his pocket for some money, he finds before him a purse which Adélaïde has slipped in front of him without his noticing it: "the poor child had the old one in her hand, and, to keep her countenance, was looking into it for the money to pay her mother. The blood rushed to Hippolyte's heart with such force that he was near fainting. The new purse, substituted for his own, and which contained his fifteen Louis d'or, was worked with gilt beads. The rings and tassels bore witness to Adélaïde's good taste, and she had no doubt spent all her little hoard in ornamenting this pretty piece of work. It was impossible to say with greater delicacy that the painter's gift could only be repaid by some proof of affection." There and then Hipployte asks for Adélaïde's hand in marriage.

Meanwhile Hippolyte's mother, having made inquiries about her son's condition and having learned of the whole affair, informs the Comte de Kergarouet of the malicious rumours surrounding the two women. Outraged, he explains to Madame Schinner that he loses intentionally at cards to Madame de Rouville because the Baronne's pride has left him none but these ingenious means of assisting her and her daughter in their poverty.

The Comte de Kergarouet and Madame Schinner go round to Madame de Rouville's, and arrive just in time to pronounce a benediction on the young lovers' engagement.

In La Bourse, Balzac deals with a range of themes which he was to explore in great detail throughout La Comédie humaine: the arts; creation in all its forms, as well as the joys and the pains which it causes. A great admirer of Eugène Delacroix, whom he was later to use as a model for the character of Joseph Bridau (a painter who appears in The Black Sheep, A Start in Life and La Bourse), he depicts the act of artistic creation from every angle: the innovative and misunderstood painter (the brilliant Frenhorfer in The Unknown Masterpiece); the novice painter who gains public recognition (Joseph Bridau); the wealthy man who dabbles in art (Pierre Grassou, who fritters away his talent making copies of the masters).

Balzac rarely misses an opportunity to illustrate his novels with references to famous paintings, and La Bourse is no different: " Adelaide came behind the old gentleman's armchair and leaned her elbows on the back, unconsciously imitating the attitude given to Dido's sister by Guérin in his famous picture."

Balzac also deals brilliantly with those disciplines of the arts which are dear to him and which distinguish La Comédie humaine, treating them with a meticulousness and a precision which still astonish experts today:

Sculpture: Sarrasine whose eponymous hero is a rebel genius.

Music: Gambara, in which is described a quasi-mathematical creation of a musical work of art, and in which Balzac also gives us a meticulous analysis of one of Giacomo Meyerbeer's operas.

Lyrical art: Massimilla Doni, in which a love story serves as a pretext for a lecture on the art of Rossini.

Balzac is a great storyteller and creator of fables. La Bourse is a subtle fable in which an artist - one who, by definition, is skilled in the art of observation - must try and make sense of the conflicting signs he observes in Madame de Rouville's apartment, as though he is trying to decipher a work of art. Balzac also portrays in this short novel a social category to which he often returns in La Comédie humaine: the forgotten victims of Napoleon. Although regarded as a minor work, La Bourse illustrates the world of painting in a rather unexpected way. It also sheds light on other works on the same theme, and on Balzac's understanding of art. As such, it represents an important stone in the edifice of La Comédie humaine.

Sarrasine

Sarrasine is a novella written by Honoré de Balzac. It was published in 1830 (the same year as he published La Peau de Chagrin), and is part of his Comédie Humaine.

Balzac's "Sarrasine" was not paid much attention prior to Roland Barthes' blow-by-blow (post-)structuralist analysis of the text in his book S/Z, published in 1970. Barthes dissects the text in accordance to five 'codes' (hermeneutic, semic, symbolic, proairetic, cultural).

Imagery and Themes

A glance at the introduction to the story reveals Balzac's excellent story-telling abilities, and his precision of detail at the linguistic level:

J'étais plongé dans une de ces rêveries profondes qui saisissent tout le monde, même un homme frivole, au sein des fêtes les plus tumultueuses. […] Assis dans l'embrasure d'une fenêtre, et caché sous les plis onduleux d'un rideau de moire, je pouvais contempler à mon aise le jardin de l'hôtel où je passais la soirée. Les arbres, imparfaitement couverts de neige, se détachaient faiblement du fond grisâtre que formait un ciel nuageux, à peine blanchi par la lune. Vus au sein de cette atmosphère fantastique, ils ressemblaient vaguement à des spectres mal enveloppés de leurs linceuls, image gigantesque de la fameuse danse des morts. Puis, en me retournant de l'autre côté, je pouvais admirer la danse des vivants ! […] [P]our achever d'étourdir cette foule enivrée par tout ce que le monde peut offrir de séductions, une vapeur de parfums et l'ivresse générale agissaient sur les imaginations affolées. Ainsi, à ma droite la sombre et silencieuse image de la mort ; à ma gauche, les décentes bacchanales de la vie : ici, la nature froide, morne, en deuil ; là, les hommes en joie. Moi, sur la frontière de ces deux tableaux si disparates, qui, mille fois répétés de diverses manières, rendent Paris la ville la plus amusante du monde et la plus philosophique, je faisais une macédoine morale moitié plaisante, moitié funèbre. Du pied gauche je marquais la mesure, et je croyais avoir l'autre dans un cercueil. Ma jambe était en effet glacée par un de ces vents coulis qui vous gèlent une moitié du corps tandis que l'autre éprouve la chaleur moite des salons… (1-2).

The words in italics denote important antitheses. The descriptions are all binary: inside/outside, cold/warmth, gaiety/gravity, and, most notably, masculine/feminine. The use of these antithetical elements illuminates Balzac's symbolic manipulation of extremes, which is significant since the story explores the notion of a bipolar gender system. The story of La Zambinella is one of androgyny and mistaken identity—as a young castrato in the Opera, this character throws into question both masculinity and femininity as well as heterosexual vs. homosexual desire. When the Parisian artist Sarrasine falls in love with La Zambinella- thinking that the castrato, who plays female roles in the Opera-- is not only a woman, but the perfect woman—he does not realize that he has fallen into a kind of homoerotic scenario. When Sarrasine discovers that La Zambinella is in fact a castrato and that he has constructed a notion of perfect femininity (represented by his chef d'oeuvre, a statue) on an androgynous image, Sarrasine attempts to kill La Zambinella in a rage. In this way, the text does much to construct the XIX century's more rigid notion of (compulsory) heterosexuality and (fear of) homosexuality, while also reinforcing more rigid gender roles (promising punishment to those who render gender ambiguous, or those who appreciate ambiguous gender).

The story also echoes in many ways Ovid's tale of Pygmalion in his Metamorphoses.

Sarrasine is the name of the Prince of Sydney in Vampire: The Masquerade

Seraphita (1835)

Seraphita first appeared in Le Livre Mystique, with Louis Lambert and Les Proscrits (Paris, 1835). A portion of it had already been published in the Revue de Paris in 1834. In 1840 it appeared in Le Livre des Douleurs; in 1842 it was republished with Louis Lambert. Since 1846 it has been included in the Comedic in the Etudes Philosophiques. Balzac's personal estimate of this work is very high. In his dedication to Madame de Hanska he said: "If I should be accused of incapacity after trying to extract from the depths of mysticism this book, which demanded the glowing poetry of the East under the transparency of our beautiful language, the blame be yours! Did you not compel me to the effort—such an effort as Jacob's—by telling me that even the most imperfect outline of the figure dreamed of by you, as it has been by me from my infancy, would still be something in your eyes? Here, then, is that something. Why cannot this book be set apart exclusively for those lofty spirits who, like you, are preserved from worldly pettiness by solitude!" In his Introduction to the Comedy (1842), Balzac thus explains his aim: "Some persons, seeing me collect such a mass of facts and paint them as they are, with passion for their motive power, have supposed, but wrongly, that I must belong to the school of Sensualism and Materialism—two aspects of the same thing—Pantheism. But their misapprehension was perhaps justified—or inevitable. I do not share the belief in indefinite progress for society as a whole; I believe in man's improvement in himself. Those who insist in reading in me the intention to consider man as a finished creation are strangely mistaken. Seraphita, the doctrine in action of the Christian Buddha, seems to me an ample answer to this rather heedless accusation. . . . The wonders of animal magnetism, with which I have been familiar since 182o; the beautiful experiments of Gall, Lavater's successor; all the men who have studied mind as opticians have studied light—two not dissimilar things—point to a conclusion in favor of the mystics, the disciples of St. John, and of those great thinkers who have established the spiritual world—the sphere in which are revealed the relations of God and man."

IN May, 1800, the mountainous amphitheater en-closing the Stromfiord between Drontheim and Christiania was still covered with snow and ice; the falls of the Sieg even had not yet melted. It was a daring thing, therefore, for two human beings to mount the shelves of the Falberg to the summit on their skis. Finally they paused, and she whose name was Minna, looking down into the abyss, was fascinated and overwhelmed with the spectacle at her feet, and was about to throw herself down the precipice in her vertigo, crying, "I am dying, my Seraphitus, having loved no one but you!"

Seraphitus breathed softly on her brow and eyes, and immediately she was calmed.

"Who and what are you?" she cried; "but I know, you are my life."

Without replying, Seraphitus left her side and stood on the very edge of the precipice, looking calmly into the gulf. Minna called him back in agony and asked the source of such super-human strength of mind. The strange being, raising his hand toward the blue patch between the clouds, replied:

"You can look into far greater space without a qualm." "But what a difference," she said, smiling.

"You are right," he replied. "We are born to aspire sky-ward. Our native home, like a mother's face, never frightens its children."

They proceeded till they reached a beautiful little meadow full of alpine plants. In Minna's delight in his presence and talk, she exclaimed that she never had seen Seraphitus so beautiful. Seraphitus had a complexion like the internal glow of an. alabaster vase, and eyes that seemed to give out light rather than receive it, a frame slight and fragile as a woman's, but of wonderful strength, and hair with light curls.

Seraphitus repelled Minna's proffered embrace, and said kindly : "Come!" To her gentle reproaches, Seraphitus re-plied by exhorting her to a celestial love, when she would love all creatures, and added: "Some day, perhaps, we may meet in the world where love never dies."

Then he said: "I can give nothing that you want. Why do you not love Wilfrid? He will be your lover, your husband. I wanted a companion to go with me to the realm of light. I thought to show her this ball of clay, and I find that you still cling to it. Adieu! Remain as you are, enjoy through your senses, obey your nature; turn pale with pale men, blush with women, play with children, pray with sinners, look up to heaven when you are stricken; tremble, hope, yearn; you will have a comrade, you still may laugh and weep, give and receive. For me—I am an exile far from heaven; like a monster, far from earth! My heart beats for none; I live in my-self, for myself alone. I feel through my spirit, I breathe by my brain, I see by my mind, I am dying of impatience and

longing. No one here below can satisfy my wishes or soothe my eagerness; and I have forgotten how to weep. I am alone --I am resigned, and can wait."

They returned to the valley.

"Make haste, pretty one, the night is falling," said Seraphitus.

The voice startled Minna : it was as clear as a girl's. Manly strength seemed leaving Seraphitus. They hurried through the village of Jarvis to the parsonage, where Pastor Becker sat reading. He affectionately welcomed the pair; and Seraphitus invited Minna and her father to tea two days later.

When Seraphitus arrived at the old Swedish castle, David, a man of eighty, came out to welcome the owner. Seraphitus declined refreshment, and lay down to sleep, while the old man lingered in loving contemplation of the strange being the question of whose sex was so puzzling. He wept as he thought: " She is suffering and will not tell me."

In the evening David came into the drawing-room. "I know who is coming," said Seraphita; "Wilfrid may come in."

Wilfrid had come to urge her to accept his undying devotion; but she reasoned with him as she had reasoned with Minna. Among other things, she said:

"You know full well that I can never be yours. Two feelings rule the love that attracts the women of this earth: either they devote themselves to suffering creatures, degraded and guilty, whom they desire to comfort, to raise, to redeem, or they give themselves wholly to superior beings, sublime and strong, whom they are fain to worship and understand—by whom they are too often crushed. You have been degraded, but you have purified yourself in the fires of repentance, and you now are great; I feel myself too small to be your equal, and I am too religious to humble myself to any power but that of the Most High."

Seraphita told him that she loved him truly, and Minna also, but to her they were one being. She begged him to marry Minna, so that she might see them happy before quitting this sphere forever.

"Yes, I should be sorry to see you married to Minna, but promise me to make her your wife when you see me no more,

Heaven intends you for each other. . . . I torture you, and you come to this wild country to find rest—you who are racked by the fierce throes of misunderstood genius, worn out by the patient labors of science, who have almost stained your hands by crime and worn the chains of human justice."

Wilfrid fell to the floor in agony. Seraphita breathed on his brow, and he fell asleep. Laying her hand on his brow, she explained to him her feelings and mystical love, exhorting him to rise to the rank of those who are in the circle of love and wisdom and who aspire to celestial illumination. She concluded:

"Now gaze at me for a moment, for you will henceforth see me but darkly, as you behold me by the light of the dull sun of the earth."

She gazed at him with her head gently bent on one side, her hair flowing about her in the airy grace which the sublimest painters have attributed to messengers from heaven; and the folds of her dress had the indescribable grace which makes the artist stop to gaze at the exquisite flowing veil of the antique statue of Polyhymnia. When Wilfrid awoke, Seraphita, lying on her bearskin, with calm face and shining eyes, dismissed him with an invitation to come to tea with the Beckers.

Outside he gazed up at the lights in the windows of the castle and asked himself whether he was awake or sleeping. To recover his mental balance, he went to the manse to spend the evening.

Pastor Becker was seated in his large armchair near the stove and in front of a table on which were books, one of which he was reading, and for extra comfort he had his feet in a foot-muff. A beer-jug and a glass were on his right, while on his left stood a smoky lamp. He was of about sixty years, with a noble Rembrandtesque face and head, and as he smoked his long pipe, he occasionally watched the spirals of smoke with a speculative eye while digesting what he was reading. Minna was sitting opposite him, sewing. Her fresh young face, delicately pure in outline, harmonized with the innocence that shone on her white brow and in her bright eyes. Her attitude as she sat forward on her chair leaning slightly toward the light, showed the grace of her figure. She presented the most complete and typical image of woman born to earthly duties, whose eye might pierce the clouds of the sanctuary, while a mind at once humble and charitable kept her on the level of man.

Until the silence was broken by Wilfrid, the only sound was the heavy step of the kitchen-maid and the sizzle of the dried fish in the frying-pan in the next room.

Wilfrid asked the Pastor for information about the strange being who dwelt at the Castle. He had been six months in the village, and he found that the chains that were binding him were likely to make his stay permanent. On the very first day he fell under Seraphita's enchantment. The Pastor asked, "Are enchantments possible?" and Wilfrid replied that the man who at that moment was so conscientiously studying Jean Wier's Incantations would understand his own sensations. After describing Seraphita's mysterious influence over him, he concluded: "I have for the past few days been wandering round this abyss of madness too helplessly to keep silence any longer. I have, therefore, seized a moment when I find courage enough to resist the monster that drags me to her presence without asking whether I have strength enough to keep up with his flight. Who is she? Did you know her as a child? Was she ever born? Had she parents? Was she conceived by the union of sun and ice? She freezes and she burns; she comes forth, and then vanishes like some coy truth; she attracts and repels one; she alternately kills and vivifies me; I love her, and I hate her! I cannot live thus. I must be either in heaven altogether, or in hell."

The Pastor listened with a mysterious expression, glancing occasionally at his daughter, who seemed to understand Wilfrid's words.

"My dear guest," he said, "to explain her birth it will be necessary to disentangle the obscurest of all Christian creeds," and he proceeded to give a detailed description of Swedenborg's life, writings, beliefs, and teachings.

Swedenborg was especially attached to Baron Seraphitus, his most zealous disciple, who was in search of a woman with the angelic spirit, and Swedenborg revealed her in a vision, saying the life of heaven shone brightly in her and she had gone through the first tests. She was the daughter of a London shoemaker. After the prophet was translated, the Baron came here to Jarvis to solemnize his heavenly nuptials in the practise of prayer. The earthly life of the couple was undoubtedly that of the saints whose virtues are the glory of the Roman Church. They were extremely charitable; they were never angry or impatient, but invariably gentle and beneficent, full of amiability, graciousness, and true kindness. Their marriage was the harmony of two souls in constant union. The wife was simple in manner, sweetly dignified, and lovely in face and form.

In 1783 Seraphita was born. Previously her parents had lived in the greatest retirement in perpetual prayer. They hoped to see Swedenborg. At Seraphita's birth Swedenborg appeared and filled the room with light. He said: "The work is accomplished; the heavens rejoice." The servants heard strange sounds of music, brought, they declared, by the four winds. Swedenborg led the Baron out to the fiord and left him in ecstasy.

"I met him on my way to the Castle. His face was radiant, and his whole appearance inspired. He said: `Your ministrations are superfluous; our child is to be nameless on earth. You will not baptize with earthly waters one who has been bathed in fires from heaven. This child will always be a flower; you will not see it grow old ; you will see it pass away. You have existence, it has life; you have external senses, it has not; it is wholly inward.'

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