Edouard Manet, Nana (1877)
"Human connection reduced to little more than data."
- From Renton's "Choose Life" speech in T2 Trainspotting (2017)
1
Introduction
I have recently decided to withdraw as much as is practically possible from social media & in the first few months, I have been able, in the time that I have saved & when I have felt well enough, to return with love & fervour to one of my favourite ways of spending my precious spare time in-between the endless barrage of treatments that I have to do, & that is, of course, reading great works of literature.
One of Balzac's key themes is the notion that rampant capitalism brutalises & reduces the genuine values of pretty much everything in human life. Lucien is a fine poet, whose exquisite verse is reduced to bartering by publishers & completely ignored by a philistine, insensitive public. Irreducibly blind to the fine & sublime sentiments that Lucien's writing portrays - when he reads his poems out at a gathering that has been arranged by his rich mistress, the people present prefer to smoke, play cards or gossip to each other (now I guess they would look at their phones) - he cuts a lonely figure, a peacock in an environment full of sharks & house bricks. And it is not only poetry & literature that gets trampled in this way but almost all of humanity's finest impulses. Compassion is reduced to a grotesque type of sentimental charity, given not to help the less fortunate but to soothe & massage the egos & consciences of the privileged givers. Love is debased, bought & sold as though it were a pair of fine (or not so fine) shoes. And on it goes, through all of society. Genuine talents & gifts are made commonplace & trampled through the dirt. Only a tiny minority of characters stand by their principles & don't sell out. Friendships are sacrificed on the alter of self interest & any solidarity between people is buried beneath an avalanche of ego, deception & self interest. The illusions Lucien & the reader loses on the way are many, but they are a stunningly accurate assessment of how our moneyed, capitalist way of life leaves very little room whatsoever for the finest talents, instincts or philosophies to find their true potential. And in a world where everything is brought to the lowest common denominator, & where nothing is sacred & all can be bought & sold, the question has to be asked: is there anything left, by this reckoning, that can have any genuine value at all?
II
Lucien de Rubempre
"One of the greatest tragedies of my life is the death of Lucien de Rubempre. It is a grief from which I have never been able to completely rid myself. It haunts me in my moments of pleasure. I remember it when I laugh."
- Oscar Wilde, The Decay of Lying (p.149)
- Oscar Wilde, The Decay of Lying (p.149)
Lucien de Rubempre is an infuriating, but ultimately deeply lovable character. His flaws are often off the radar. He suffers from vanity, self-importance, is wilful, highly strung, acts without thinking, can be selfish, prone to bouts of extreme productivity or hopeless idleness, is ambitious to the point of madness & is continually caught out by scheming rivals & rejected lovers, & all this eventually leads to disaster. And yet, despite this, he is supremely likeable, & very human in his foibles & contradictions, & it is impossible not to fall for this handsome, naive, infuriating & charming poet, even as he leaves a trail of wreckage & disaster in his wake. At the beginning of Lost Illusions we are introduced to Lucien when he is 21, living in poverty in provincial France & wondering how he can get to Paris in order to become a successful, published poet. He is also described by Balzac as having exceptional beauty, & it is this beauty which helps him in some ways on his rise through society, firstly in his provincial home town of Anguoleme, & then in Paris. But it also brings him more than a few troubles, from jealous men who envy his extraordinary looks to the many infatuated women whom he either loves or rejects. Balzac's psychological explorations of the effects of Lucien's beauty are incredibly interesting & go far beyond Lucien himself. Beauty is one of the prime forces in human life & in nature, & Balzac discusses the pros & cons of this subject in great detail. If nothing else, Lucien's beauty charms or infuriates everyone he meets & the response that he invites gives Balzac plenty of scope to describe how different personalities respond to a person who has divine good looks. From the women who lose their heads over him, whether that be giving up their fortunes, reputations & families by indulging in an extra-marital affair, or another who collapses & is on the verge of death when she learns that he has been arrested, Lucien certainly inspires extreme reactions. And then there are the men, mostly envious, who pretend to befriend him whilst ceaselessly plotting his downfall behind his well proportioned back, or those who are so beguiled that they gladly put his needs before their own, particularly in the case of his best friend, the inventor David Sechard, who concludes that, "The patient ox should draw the plough, the bird should be carefree. I will be the ox, Lucien shall be the eagle." (p.28) David loves Lucien to the point of idolatry, as does his sister Eve, who David marries. They make great sacrifices to help Lucien fund his life in Paris, & he repays them by forging David's signature to pay off his debts which leads to David getting arrested. But, & it is impossible to explain why in enough detail here, Lucien does this with a sense of naivety rather than malice, in the vain hope of resisting the pack of wolves that have gathered around him, but his miscalculation only leads to many more problems. Still a child in many respects, our poet, like a male bee if it were instructed to collect pollen, doesn't have the necessary tools to protect himself from the maelstrom of harshness & vindictiveness of people & society, & it is this, more than anything, which leads to some of the more fateful mistakes that he makes. Like many of us, I expect, he is a little bit human, all too human.
III
Beauty: Blessing or Curse?
The subject of beauty & the vast array of responses & the consequences of having it or desiring it are explored in great detail in both Lost Illusions & Splendours & Miseries of Courtesans. Lucien's beauty is, at the final reckoning, all he actually has. Having lost all his money at the end of Lost Illusions, having been betrayed by his friends in Paris, his lover Coralie dead, his writing career over hardly before it had begun, & having himself betrayed his beloved sister Eve & her husband, his best friend David, he decides that the only option left remaining to him is to throw himself into the river & end it all. Trudging as wearily as death down a dusty road, Lucien meets another of Balzac's great creations, the criminal master-mind Vautrin. Lucien, at an all time low & deciding he has nothing to hide as he is about to end his life, tells Vautrin (disguised as a Spanish priest) everything that he has done. The scandals, the betrayals, the hypocrisies, the sensual delights he has tasted, nothing is withheld. Vautrin, who is one of the principal characters in the sequel to Lost Illusions, Splendours & Miseries of Courtesans, listens to Lucien before putting his prodigious intelligence & psychological knowledge to work. Having fallen for Lucien, he expounds on a conversion that would not have been out of place had it come from the messenger of hell itself, the master persuader Mephistopheles. By the end of the next few chapters which close the novel, Lucien has changed his mind about killing himself & is taken under the wing of this prince of disguises from the Parisian underworld, having been allured by the promise that Vautrin can give him all that his heart so secretly desires: fame, fortune, beautiful women, & most importantly for Lucien, absolute revenge on those that have betrayed & humiliated him. But this comes with the non-negotiable condition that Lucien does exactly what Vautrin tells him to. Lucien decides to accept this invitation & refrains from doing himself in. Such is the power that beauty & the attraction that it fosters can have in life. For if Lucien hadn't possessed it & had he been dragging his feet at the side of the road in a pair of the kind of ignoble, modern day tracksuit trousers like so many people wear today, Vautrin would probably not have given Lucien a second glance, & instead of there being a wonderful sequel to Lost Illusions called Splendours & Miseries of Courtesans, Lucien would have ended up feeding the fishes in the bottom of the river & that would have been the end of that. And, of course, no self respecting dandy could ever be content with such a vulgar ending!
And it is not only Lucien's looks that cause mayhem in the two novels. Balzac himself, apparently a rather stout man who drank copious amounts of coffee & who would probably not be described as dashingly Byron-esque in appearance,
Balzac by Louis-Auguste Bisson (1842)
was obviously thoroughly fascinated by the effects & part to play that beauty has on human & non human interactions alike. Which is not surprising for a mind that was as sharp as a bright sun when it is glanced at unexpectedly through a mirror whilst shaving in a small, slightly scented garden in early spring. Balzac was deeply interested in every facet of life, & particularly the study of physiognomy, which is the assessment of a character from their outward appearance. He also observed society & human behaviour (& indeed all life; his stories & novels are sprinkled with allusions & comparisons from the animal kingdom & nature) like a scientist studying particles under a microscope. Balzac very rarely moralises in his works, he just presents his stories to the reader & then leaves any judgement up to them, if they feel the urge to do so. As someone who has read many of Balzac's works, particularly the fascinating collection of stories & novels that he called his 'Philosophical Studies', I would suggest that the subject of beauty was obviously of great importance to him. Lucien, as I have described, is treated very differently from other characters who don't have such strikingly good looks. His sister Eve dotes on him - even to the extent of picking out his outfit for him for his first aforementioned poetry reading - so by ensuring that he will look his dazzling best: "If your rich mistress has any intelligence, she must certainly love you! In this case, however, she's going to be very vexed this evening, for all the women will be trying to flirt with you!" His best friend David, as mentioned, marries Eve & is more than happy to put Lucien's needs before his own, with Balzac explaining that, "his friend's beauty implied an ascendancy which David acknowledged, believing himself to be uncouth & commonplace." (p.28) Lucien's extraordinary good looks (& poet's charm!) also bother, bewitch & bewilder a whole raft of society women, firstly in the provincial town he lives in, Anguoleme, & then in Paris. In Splendours & Miseries of Courtesans, the heroine Esther is a down & out, but famously beautiful, prostitute. She becomes completely smitten with Lucien & he soon falls in love with her also. Vautrin, however, observing this, senses the danger that Lucien's rise in society could be under if he is known to have a prostitute for a mistress & forces her to go to a nunnery to completely change her way of life, & constructs a completely different identity for her when she is "cured." Esther, because of her abject poverty, & because Lucien also owes him his life, is completely controlled by Vautrin, yet her love for Lucien shines like a beacon in this terrible battle of wills, where she is used as a mere pawn in the game Vautrin is playing in order to become more rich & powerful & keep his hold on Lucien. But it is her beauty that is to be the bait for Vautrin & Lucien's audacious plan to secure them & her the fantastic wealth that they seek. When the richest banker in Paris, the Baron Nucingen, first sets eyes on Esther, he is left absolutely spellbound. Balzac describes how this thrifty old shark, satiated to the point of complete boredom by all of Paris's treasures & proud to consider himself "finished with women", is suddenly reawakened by the change wrung upon him by Esther's extraordinary beauty. Contemplating whether or not the Mona Lisa or Raphael's Fornarina were as beautiful as Esther, Balzac goes on to say that, "What most stupefied the Baron was the noble air of a great lady which Esther, being loved, & being surrounded by love, had in the highest degree." (p.83) The Baron, of course, practically loses his head over her. And Vautrin & Lucien are quick to put this to their advantage. In a scheming game of cat & mouse, in which Esther reluctantly takes part, the Baron relinquishes, bit by bit, ever more money to pay for his new mistress, until he has been fleeced to the tune of millions & has practically lost his ability to think rationally, such is his desire to take possession of Esther. Esther, of course, is completely trapped by these dreadful circumstances, but her love for Lucien never diminishes, & she puts her own devastated feelings & emotions to one side for the good of Lucien. As can probably be imagined, none of this ends well, & if any one is interested in finding out what happens I can only suggest reading the book itself as it is far too intricate & complicated to do justice to in any small measure in this limited space. But what is relevant to the subject of beauty, is how it transforms the behaviour of people who see it & perhaps, want to possess it. The way different human beings respond to the beauty of people, nature, art, etc, is one of the principal themes that Balzac is truly fascinated by, & like him, I find it an intriguing subject. It can be one of life's most sublime, & heart stirring experiences, yet it can also be destructive, as observed with the Baron, & can be used by others to elicit some type of gain. In Lost Illusions & Splendours & Miseries of Courtesans, Balzac sums these responses in the following ways.
IV
Responses to Beauty
Esther's Response to Lucien:
Esther is completely transfixed & besotted by Lucien's looks, & is transformed by the love she feels for him, writing to him that,"If you only knew under what waves of love I drown in your eyes as I gaze at them, intoxicated." (p.369) The wealthy Baron, himself desperate to be loved by Esther is informed by her, "So, you want my heart! Well, now, I'm going to teach you how to win it...Be dashing, be handsome, be like Lucien de Rubumpre, who is over there talking to your wife, & then, you would be able to have, without any charge, what you will never be able to buy with all your millions." (p.242) And of course, being like Lucien is something the Baron could never be. Esther loves Lucien for his wonderful looks, his manners & his grace. Her response to his beauty is probably the purest & most genuine in the novel. She doesn't use Lucien's looks for her own gain & is content to experience the beauty of her lover in a totally authentic way. Balzac gives Esther a magnificent personality as well as divine looks. Blessed with sharp intelligence & splendid wit, she is compared to the Greek goddess of mischief, Aite, & although she is trapped by her poverty & by Vautrin, she manages to find a way of living her life as a trapped bird that aligns completely with her sacred love for Lucien.
The Baron's Response to Esther:
Esther's beauty, as I have mentioned, strikes the ageing Baron like a thunderbolt when he first catches glimpse of her & leads to him losing all his equilibrium which ultimately leads to his downfall. His adoration of Esther, because of the type of character he is, is very different to Esther's adoration of Lucien. The Baron wants to possess Esther at any price, & it is this weakness that is the device that Vautrin uses to force the wealthy banker to lavish millions on Esther. But as Esther tells him, no matter how much money & material possessions he gives her, she will never love him as she loves Lucien. The Baron, himself a thoroughly unscrupulous character, settles at nothing in his bid to find & finally have Esther as his mistress. Even though Esther tells him that once she has been forced to give herself to him it will be the death of her, he carries on with his pursuit regardless. Her sublime moment of revenge comes when she knowingly takes control of the situation that is being inflicted on her. She despises the Baron, & uses his weakness towards her as a weapon, until he finally admits that he has himself become "her slave," concluding that, "You have turned a man not without strength into a man of incredible weakness." (p.196) In case you are feeling too much sympathy with this revolting character, dear reader, I would ask you to consider Vautrin's words to Esther when she is feeling uneasy about using her charms to fleece the staggeringly wealthy banker of his money: "This man is a thief on the World Market, he's been without pity for a great many people, he's grown fat on the misfortunes of widows & orphans. You will be their revenge!" (p.161-162) Is it just me, or could Balzac be writing here about the Financial Crash of 2008 & the bankers & politicians who played such a prominent part in causing it? As Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy would have it, "Lots for me, the complete banker!" In terms of his response to beauty - or to be more precise, Esther's womanly charms, as he is completely insensitive to the beauty of art & the natural world - the Baron's response is that of wanting to own & possess it, which of course he cannot do. For what it's worth, I was delighted when he got his comeuppance & I found it fascinating to contrast his principals with Esther's. As a rich member of high society, the Baron is feted wherever he goes, & it takes the skulduggery of an underworld criminal to bring him to his knees, even though he has built his fortune on the suffering of others & by being excessively ruthless in his dealings & is one of those people who justify their unethical & money grabbing ways with no end of high-sounding arguments. Esther, by comparison, is dismissed as a whore & is sneered at by society. But for all these outward appearances, she is the one with grace & soul & a joie de vivre far beyond that of the Baron. During her conversion in the nunnery, she is repentant of her past, but she also struggles to let go of some of the things she loved about life in the world, & still supremely conscious of her beauty & the great energy of life flowing through her, often has to retire to an unseen part of the convent garden so that she can dance & "flirt with the trees." Her devotion to Lucien is absolute, & she faces her situation like a warrior, & finds victory by the way she approaches what is demanded of her. It is said of her eyes that they will always contain "something of the infinitude that they have contemplated," & when describing Esther since she fell in love with Lucien, Balzac writes that the people at the masked ball were able, "to recognise that most moving of spectacles, a woman truly animated by love. The aged men that were present, as well as their youthful counterparts, experienced so lively a sensation on seeing her that they envied Lucien this high privilege of being with a woman who had turned into a goddess. What is the source of this light," Balzac wonders, " which shines about a woman in love, & marks her out from the rest? Or of that lightness which seems to defy the law of gravity? Is it the freed soul?" (SM, p. 31-32) Esther's wonderful, life-affirming appreciation of her own & Lucien's beauty, is in stark contrast to that of the world weary, satiated & all grasping capitalist, the Baron Nucingen.
Different Responses to Eve:
In the final book of Lost Illusions, Lucien's sister Eve & her husband David, find themselves in dire financial straits. Although part of the blame for this lies with Lucien, it is principally because of the owners of the larger, rival printing press in Anguoleme, the Cointet brothers, who, much like the Baron, use every tactic that law will allow to bully & cajole their smaller rivals. Being so powerful, & by using acquaintances, they manage to allow Eve & David's small printing press just enough work to survive, but deny it any chance whatsoever of thriving. Eventually, matters come to a head & Eve has to meet up with them to try & save her & her husband's livelihood. Eve has also been described as possessing a rare kind of beauty, as well as a highly charming, unscheming character, & the way the businessmen (the Cointets) respond to her is another way that Balzac makes the observation that men who have become insensitive to the effects of beauty, have in fact, lost their souls. For they are so blinded by greed & self interest that Eve's charm makes no difference to them whatsoever, & they are as immune to her beauty as they are to her pleas. Forced to then seek advice from the local magistrate, Eve is in a state of desperation at this point, but his different reaction speaks volumes about Balzac's ideas about how you can get a glimpse into a person's inner life by how they react to beauty: "Impressed by Eve's beauty, the magistrate - who was a pillar of society & was the legal champion of widows & orphans - received her not only with the consideration due to a woman, but also with a kind of courtesy she had recently become unaccustomed to. At long last, she read in the magistrate's eyes an expression which, since her marriage, she had read only in her husband's. And that, for a beautiful woman like Eve, is the criterion for judging men. When some ruling passion of self-interest, or old age puts a chill in a man's eyes & quenches the gleam of complete deference which is ablaze in those of a young man, a woman then conceives mistrust for such a man & begins to watch him closely. The Cointets, & all the other men with whom she & her husband were struggling against so greatly had all looked at her with that type of dry, cold eye. And with a sigh of great relief, she therefore felt at ease with this magistrate." (p.554-555) I find this a fascinating piece of psychology to contemplate as the Cointets & their cohorts, concerned only with profit & obsessed with having power over Eve & David's humble printing press, are men who have not been moved one iota by Eve's beauty & personable, warm character & they are the ones that are as slippery as bars of wet soap & are constantly trying to rip them off. In all their scenes, art, nature, beauty, life & love are never mentioned. They are like grubbing, spoiled children who want simply to increase their wealth & simply laugh at the pain & suffering their power & actions cause to Eve, David & others. Balzac never explicitly judges them as characters, but I think the reader is left in no doubt how he feels about people who have lost the ability (if they ever had it in the first place) to respond to the beauty of women, life, nature & art, & it is not particularly complementary. And on a rather more humorous note, I couldn't help but chuckle when Balzac described how when the magistrate got home - after giving Eve a lift home - he found his wife completely furious with him & "in a fit of jealousy because of Madame Eve 's remarkable beauty." (p.562) Very Balzacian methinks to make a seemingly throwaway comment about the depth of female pride & anger! And this kind of feminine pride, especially when stirred by Lucien's beauty, shows itself in the novels in other instances, too, for example when a society lady that Lucien has rejected sees him again at a ball that they are attending, & Balzac notes that, "The more handsome Lucien was, the more she thirsted for revenge." (LI, p.458)
Lucien to Vautrin:
It becomes clear towards the end of Splendours & Miseries of Courtesans that Vautrin, & especially after his distraught reaction to Lucien's death, completely idolises Lucien, even though he has been using him in some respects for his own political ends. It has been suggested by critics that Vautrin is homosexual, & although Balzac never mentions this explicitly, there are many hints that suggest as much throughout the novels, & particularly telling for modern critics is the way that Vautrin is completely unmoved by Esther's beauty. After having realised that Lucien is deeply in love with Esther, he realises that his ambitious plan for Lucien to rise in society is under grave threat because of this, & that her life as a prostitute must be completely erased & that she must be given a completely different identity. On entering Esther's squalid apartment so he can take her to the convent, he finds her in a state of half undress & in despair over her situation. But although Esther has been acknowledged as being one of the most beautiful women in Paris, Vautrin was, " completely insensible to the delicious forms of that crouching Venus, which were as if magically revealed beneath the sheer black material of her shirt." (SM, p. 38) But when it comes to Lucien, Vautrin has been transfixed. After saving Lucien's life at the end of Lost Illusions, as I have already described, in Splendours & Miseries of Courtesans we find out more about the effect that Lucien has had on this most dangerous, master criminal: "For him, Lucien was more than a son, more than a beloved woman, more than a family, more than his life." (SM, p. 91) And, of course, if Vautrin had not have noticed Lucien's beauty in the first place, Lucien would have ended up in the river.
But Vautrin's role is more of a political than a personal one. Even though Balzac himself was a royalist, he was Friedrich Engels' favourite writer & was also much admired by Karl Marx. Although this appears at first glance to be a contradiction, as it's difficult to imagine the two authors of The Communist Manifesto having much time for a royalist, I am of the opinion that this highlights just one of the reasons why Balzac is such a fascinating author to read. For despite his own personal views, Balzac wrote about the world exactly as he saw it & George Lukacs states that, "Balzac saw with merciless clarity the class antagonisms engendered by capitalism." (p.22) He presented political systems & described with unnerving accuracy just how those systems affected people's lives. He described the valiant effort that characters with little or no fortune put into their lives in order to try & live a fulfilling life or to protect the ones they cared for. How capitalism was slowly but surely eroding humanity's finest impulses. And on a psychological level, too, he observed his own & other people's behaviour & then presented what he had learned through characters & situations in his novels & stories. And again, as with the politics of society, he did this without sentimentalism. Many people are grotesque individuals, & Balzac refused to shy away from presenting this. He created characters that are disloyal, unprincipled & repeatedly sell out for more money. Many are driven purely by greed & don't keep their word or believe in any greater good & are only interested in or concerned with themselves. And, as Balzac notes, usually whilst loudly proclaiming that they are in fact, the complete opposite. In this, Balzac is a great psychologist. He presents scenes in Lost Illusions & Splendours & Miseries of Courtesans which suggests how society often looks up to characters of a highly dubious moral nature, such as the Baron, but worships them & holds them up as success stories to be revered & emulated because they are rich. And meanwhile, a character at the bottom of the heap like Esther is abused, ostracised, judged & ridiculed because she has been born into poverty & is, even worse, a prostitute. But Esther has a hundred times more life, soul & compassion than the Baron & a hundred other such middle & upper class hypocrites combined, & she lives & behaves in keeping with her deep seated, sacred values, even though they are values that the hypocritical bourgeoisie disapprove of & mock her for. And unlike the capitalists who just sell out & change their minds at the drop of a hat in order to gain more money or obtain a better position, etc, Vautrin also shows that the world of commerce, law & capitalism is, in essence, no different from the the gangster underworld that he moves in. Driven by bullying, terror, money (or the lack of it), instigating fear in the powerless by the powerful, & encased in a protected shell as long as you know the right people or have family who can support you from ruin. But, Vautrin says, at least he is honest about his dealings. For me, the true heroes in Lost Illusions & Splendours & Miseries of Courtesans are the ones that fight relentlessly against the tides of self interest, greed, exploitation & ego: Esther, Eve, David, & sometimes, even Lucien. Balzac explicitly shows the crass hypocrisy of those who slander others for their behaviour, which is still alive & well in this day & age with slut-shaming & the like, even though it is done in the main by people who "secretly envy, but nevertheless choose to condemn loudly." (LI, p. 408) No wonder Marx & Engels learned so much about life, human nature & society by reading Balzac.
V
Conclusion
Which brings me pretty much to the end of this essay on Balzac's exploration of the subject of beauty & a few other things in Lost Illusions & Splendours & Miseries of Courtesans. As I have already mentioned, it is nigh on impossible to do justice to these great works in the space of one blog. Balzac was a master at creating so many fascinating characters & exploring a great many subjects around life & the societies that we have created. Personally speaking, I have to agree with Oscar Wilde, who wrote that "A steady course of Balzac reduces our living friends to shadows, & our acquaintances to the shadows & shades. Who would care to go out to an evening party, when one can sit at home with Lucien de Rubempre?" (p.14) And echoing that which surely attracted Marx & Engels to his works, Oscar also writes that Balzac "...sees life from every point of view. \He has no preference & no prejudices. He does not try to prove anything. He feels that the spectacle of life contains its own secret." (p. 14) This is how I feel when I read Balzac. He is never a mere realist & his characters take on the substance of myth & "...have a fierce vitality about them: their existence is fiery coloured - they dominate our fancy & defy scepticism." (Wilde, p.14)
His take on how capitalism has turned life itself into a commodity - & it is worth recalling that there are now people in China who buy pure air from Canada because of the pollution caused by the impact of consumption & industrialisation on the natural world - is as relevant now, if not more so, than when he was writing in the 19th century. The idea, expressed with unstoppable force by Vautrin, that high powered bankers & businessmen are just as immoral as criminals, is hugely prescient when considered in connection with the Financial Crash in 2008 & how it happened, with high powered bankers basically using the system as a casino, with little or no regards for the devastation that a Financial crash might cause. Balzac's utterly honest & detached portrayal of how politics either privileges or hinders & destroys individual lives is astonishing, & although Balzac was a royalist, he can give his characters speeches such as this, which could be taken straight from periodicals & books dedicated to the critique & overthrow of capitalism: "Today we have no more faith, we now know only self interest alone. If everyone thinks only of himself, from where do you want to derive civic virtue, particularly if such civic virtue can only be achieved by renouncing self?" (Balzac, The Country Doctor, p.125)
So, this is my take on Balzac as a novelist of the social order & political landscape. But what about the subject of which I have been concerned with principally here, & of which Lost Illusions & Splendours & Miseries of Courtesans has so much to say, which is namely, beauty & its effects? I agree with the picture that Balzac paints in these two great novels that beauty has enormous effects on human beings, both as individuals & as a society. And not only human nature. For if we take a fleeting glance at the non human world, we can see similar instances. Is the grand peacock concerned about whether or not he is considered vain or whether "beauty is a snare"? I think that is unlikely. I can't really imagine a female peahen pondering over whether it is shallow to ponder over the beauty of her targeted mate. And studies do indeed show that the peacock with the most iridescent tail is the one that gets the hen. And what too of the Nightingale? Again, studies show that the male with the most beautiful, intricate song is the one that wins his intended's heart & gets himself blissfully laid. And the nightingales, as do the peacocks, have to compete with each other in this way to continue the species...& they are driven purely by the force of nature. Is it any wonder then that the likes of Lucien & Esther cause such a stir wherever they go & with whomever they happen to meet? It could be argued that they are simply a pagan god & goddess brought by Balzac into the rapidly emerging 19th century modern world. It is certainly a subject that has fascinated humans from time immemorial & is one I hope to study further in a future blog about Shakespeare's Antony & Cleopatra, coupled with some examples that I myself have personally witnessed. I would like to close here by saying that beauty certainly enriches life incredibly, but as Balzac shows, it can also disrupt life in equal measure. Lucien is able to use his beauty, he enchants people through it, it opens doors for him, but it also causes him no end of problems because of jealousy & infatuation. And Esther too is able to savour her beauty, & she worships Lucien's good looks, but equally, it leads her into situations that she perhaps wouldn't have found herself in if she had been born with different looks. People may disagree with me that beauty plays as large a role in human lives as I have suggested, but I think peacocks, nightingales, humans & a myriad of other species confirm that beauty is one of nature's finest gifts & its profound influence affects us all. To think otherwise I would suggest is probably to be as naive as a chap who asks at the counter of his local W.H. Smith if they have any jazz mags & who then shows complete surprise when he is handed a porno by the young lady behind the counter. Whatever else we conclude, at least the love that Esther has for Lucien & his beauty is authentic, & is far more vital & precious than any of the countless marriages of convenience & cowardice that are the lot of most of the bourgeois characters that Balzac presents in these two novels.
And so... if any of you are still with me at this point I am indeed very grateful. This blog has turned out a little longer than I had expected & I'm aware that not many people have the time to read any more as spare time is becoming an increasingly endangered species. Which is one of the reasons I'm glad that I have decided to spend a lot less time on social media, which is definitely proving to be a good thing. I want to find time to read Balzac & so many others like him that make my life much, much richer. And like the quote by Renton in T2 Trainspotting that I opened this essay with, I feel it is having a damaging effect on the way people interact with each other. It has its uses but I feel that I would rather meet up with my friends in person rather than have a relationship that is behind a screen & feels inauthentic in many ways. I'm also concerned that time is becoming so closed in & that fewer people will want to read great novels or study subjects with any great depth or level of commitment. It reminds me of something I read in Alain De Botton's book How Proust Can Change Your Life, where de Botton describes what Shakespeare would probably have to do today rather than write the masterpiece Romeo & Juliet:
"Tragic end for Verona lovebirds: after mistakenly thinking his sweetheart dead, a young man took his life. Having discovered the fate of her lover, the woman killed herself in turn." (p.42)
And all that sublime poetry would therefore be lost. And likewise, the close on 1,500 pages of Lost Illusions & Splendours & Miseries of Courtesans, with all its philosophy, psychology, sociology, politics, drama & romance, would have to be condensed into a type of 'News in Brief' meme, which would read along the lines of:
"Promising provincial poet left the county for Paris. Got in with a bad crowd & became a journalist. Ended up bankrupt, committed forgery & became close with notorious homosexual gangster. Dated a prostitute who fleeced innocent billionaire banker & all three wound up dead. Gangster became head of the CIA."
"...take your time..."
And with that thought,
& until next time,
I do indeed remain,
Your Nocturnal Butterfly...
Bowie picture sourced here:
https://rhystranter.com/2016/08/29/a-guide-to-david-bowie-favourite-books/
The picture of yours truly with the glorious peacock was taken at the poet Lord Byron's former home, Newstead Abbey, in 2010.
Bibliography:
Balzac, Honore De. (Tr. by Herbert J. Hunt) Lost Illusions. Penguin Classics. (1971 ([1837-42])
Balzac, Honore De. (Tr by Heppenstall Rayner) Splendours & Miseries of Courtesans, or A Harlot High & Low. (1970 [1839-47])
De Botton, Alain. How Proust Can Change Your Life. Picador. (1997)
Lukacs, George. Studies in European Realism: A Sociological Survey of the Writings of Balzac, Stendhal, Zola, Tolstoy, Gorki. Merlin Press, London. (1972 [1950])
Wilde, Oscar. Selected Journalism: Balzac's Novels in English. Oxford Classics (2004 [1886])
Wilde, Oscar. The Critic as Artist. Wordsworth Classics. (1890)
