A History of the French Novel Volume Ii Part 13

[Sidenote: The short stories.]

Thenceforward Balzac, though hardly ever faultless except in short stories, was almost always great, and showed what may be called a diffused greatness, to which there are few parallels in the history of the novel. Some of the tales are simply wonderful. I cannot think of any one else, even Merimee, who could have done _La Grande Breteche_--the story of a lover who, rather than betray his mistress, allows himself to suffer, without a word, the fate of a nun who has broken her vows--as Balzac has done it. _La Recherche de l'Absolu_ is one, and _Le Chef-d'oeuvre Inconnu_ is another, of the greatest known masterpieces in the world of their kind. _La Fille aux Yeux d'Or_ and _Une Pa.s.sion dans le Desert_ have not the least need of their "indexable" qualities to validate them. In the most opposite styles _Jesus Christ en Flandre_ and _La Messe de l'Athee_ have their warmest admirers. In fact it is scarcely too much to say that, in the whole list of nearer two than one score--as they were published in the old collection from _Le Bal de Sceaux_ to _Maitre Cornelius_--scarcely any are bad or insignificant, few mediocre, and not a few equal, or hardly inferior, to those specially pointed out just now. As so often happens, the short story estopped Balzac from some of his usual delinquencies--over-detail, lingering treatment, etc.,--and encouraged his virtues--intensity, grandeur, and idiosyncratic tone.

[Sidenote: The _Contes Drolatiques_.]

Of his one considerable collection of such stories--the _Contes Drolatiques_--it is not possible to speak quite so favourably as a whole; yet the reduction of favour need not be much. Of its greatest thing, _La Succube_, there have hardly been two opinions among competent and unprejudiced judges. "Pity and terror" are there well justified of their manipulator. The sham Old French, if not absolutely "according to c.o.c.ker" (or such subst.i.tute for c.o.c.ker as may be made and provided by scholarly authority), is very much more effective than most such things.

Not a few of the stories are good and amusing in themselves, though of course the votaries of prunes and prism should keep clear of them. The book has perhaps only one serious fault, that of the inevitable and no doubt invited suggestion of, and comparison with, Rabelais. In some points this will hold not so badly, for Balzac had narrative power of the first order when he gave it scope; the deficiencies of mere style which sometimes affect his modern French do not appear so much in this _pastiche_, and he could make broad jokes well enough. But--and this "but" is rather a terrible one--the saving and crowning grace of Pantagruelist humour is not in him, except now and then in its grimmer and less catholic variety or manifestation. And this absence haunts one in these _Contes Drolatiques_, though it is to some extent compensated by the presence of a "sentiment" rare elsewhere in Balzac.

[Sidenote: Notes on select larger books: _Eugenie Grandet_.]

Turning to the longer books, the old double difficulty of selection and omission comes on one in full force. There are, I suppose, few Balzacians who have not special favourites, but probably _Eugenie Grandet_, _Le Pere Goriot_, and the two divisions of _Les Parents Pauvres_ would unite most suffrages. If I myself--who am not exactly a Balzacian, though few can admire him more, and not very many, I think, have had occasion for knowing his work better--put _Eugenie Grandet_ at the head of all the "scenes" of ordinary life, it is most certainly not because of its inoffensiveness. It _is_ perhaps partly because, in spite of that inoffensiveness, it fixes on one a grasp superior to anything of Beyle's and equal to anything of Flaubert's or Maupa.s.sant's. But the real cause of admiration is the nature of the grasp itself. Here, and perhaps here only--certainly here in transcendence--Balzac grapples with, and vanquishes, the bare, stern, unadorned, unbaited, ironic facts of life. It is not an intensely interesting book; it is certainly not a delightful one; you do not want to read it very often. Still, when you have read it you have come to one of the ultimate things: the _flammantia moenia_ of the world of fiction forbid any one to go further at this particular point. And when this has been said of a novel, all has been said of the quality of the novelist's genius, though not of its quant.i.ty or variety.

[Sidenote: _Le Pere Goriot_ and _Les Parents Pauvres_.]

The other three books selected have greater "interest" and, in the case of the _Parents Pauvres_ at least, much greater variety; but they do not seem to me to possess equal consummateness. _Le Pere Goriot_ is in its own way as pathetic as _Eugenie Grandet_, and Balzac has saved its pathos from being as irritating as that of the all but idiotic grandfather in _The Old Curiosity Shop_. But the situation still has a share of that fatal helpless ineffectiveness which Mr. Arnold so justly denounced. Of the remaining pair, _La Cousine Bette_ is, I suppose, again the favourite; but I am not a backer. I have in other places expressed my opinion that if Valerie Marneffe is part-model[163] of Becky Sharp, which is not, I believe, absolutely certain, the copy far--indeed infinitely--exceeds the original, and not least in the facts that Becky is attractive while Valerie is not, and that there is any amount of possibility in her. I should not wonder if, some day, a novelist took it into his head to show Becky as she would have been if she had had those thousands a year for which, with their accompanying chances of respectability, she so pathetically sighed. Now Valerie is, and always must have been, a _catin_, and nothing else. Lisbeth, again, though I admit her possibility, is not, to me, made quite probable.

Hulot, very possible and probable indeed, does not interest or amuse me, and the angelic Adeline is good but dull. In fact the book, by its very power, throws into disastrous eminence that absence of _delightfulness_ which is Balzac's great want, uncompensated by the presence of the magnificence which is his great resource. _La Peau de Chagrin_ and some of the smaller things have this relief; _La Cousine Bette_ has not. And therefore I think that, on the whole, _Le Cousin Pons_ is the better of the two, though it may seem to some weaker, further "below proof."

Everything in it is possible and probable, and though the comedy is rather rueful, it is comedy. It is a play; its companion is rather too much of a sermon.

[Sidenote: Others--the general "scenic" division.]

The "Scenes de la Vie Privee" (to pa.s.s to a rapid general survey of the "Acts" of the Comedy) provide an especially large number of short stories, almost the only ones of length being _Modeste Mignon_ and _Beatrix_, a strongly contrasted couple. _Modeste Mignon_ is perhaps one of the best of Balzac's _second_ best. _Beatrix_, a book of more power, appeals chiefly to those who may be interested in the fact (which apparently _is_ the fact) that the book contains, almost more than any other, figures taken from real people, such as George Sand--the "Camille" of the novel--and some of those about her. The "Scenes de la Vie de Province" are richer in "magnums." _Eugenie Grandet_ is here, with a sort of companion, cheerfuller generally, in _Ursule Mirouet_.

The shorter stories are grouped under the t.i.tles of _Les Parisiens en Province_ (with the first appearance of _Gaudissart_) and _Les Rivalites_. _Le Lys dans la Vallee_ (which one is sometimes anxiously begged to distinguish from "the lily _of_ the valley," otherwise _muguet_) holds, for some, an almost entirely unique place in Balzac's work, or one shared only in part by _Memoires de Deux Jeunes Mariees_. I have never, I think, cared much for either. But there is more strength in two pairs of volumes which contain some of the author's masterpieces--_Les Celibataires_ with _Pierrette_, _Le Cure de Tours_, and the powerful, if not particularly pleasant, _Un Menage de Garcon_;[164] and _Illusions Perdues_, running up well with _Un Grand Homme de Province a Paris_ and the semi-idyllic _eve et David_.

But I suppose the "Scenes of Parisian Life" seem to be the citadel to most people. Here are three of the four books specially selected above, _Le Pere Goriot_ and both the const.i.tuents of _Les Parents Pauvres_.

Here are the _Splendeurs et Miseres des Courtisanes_, which some rank among the very first; not a few short stories in the volumes taking their t.i.tles from _La Derniere Incarnation de Vautrin_ and _La Maison Nucingen_; with _Cesar Birotteau_ (_Balzac on Bankruptcy_, as it has been profanely called) and the celebrated _Histoire des Treize_.

This last, I confess frankly, has always bored me, even though the volume contains _La Fille aux Yeux d'Or_. The idea of a secret society in Society itself was not new; it was much more worthy of Sue or Soulie than of Balzac, and it does not seem to me to have been interestingly worked out. But perhaps this is due to my perverse and elsewhere confessed objection to crime and conspiracy novels generally.

Neither have I ever cared much for the group of "Scenes de la Vie Politique," ranging from _Une Tenebreuse Affaire_ to _Le Depute d'Arcis_, the last being not entirely Balzac's own. The single volume, "Scenes de la Vie Militaire," consisting merely of _Les Chouans_ and _Une Pa.s.sion dans le Desert_, is much better, and the "Scenes de la Vie de Campagne" reach a high level with _Le Medecin de Campagne_, _Le Cure de Village_, and the late, grim, but very noteworthy _Les Paysans_.

None, however, of these sometimes rather arbitrary groups of Balzac's contains such thoroughly satisfactory matter as that which he chose to call "etudes Philosophiques." It includes only one full-volume novel, but that is the _Peau de Chagrin_ itself.[165] And here are most of the short stories singled out at first, _La Recherche de l'Absolu_, _Jesus Christ en Flandre_, _Le Chef-d'oeuvre Inconnu_, with _Melmoth Reconcilie_[166] in the same batch. The two volumes ent.i.tled _L'Enfant Maudit_ and _Les Marana_ contain all but a dozen remarkable tales. Here, too, is the curious treatise _Sur Catherine de Medicis_, with another, to some people among the most interesting of all, the autobiographic _Louis Lambert_, and also the mystical, and in parts very beautiful, _Seraphita_.

The "etudes a.n.a.lytiques," which complete the original _Comedie_ with the two notorious volumes of _Physiologie du Marriage_ and _Pet.i.tes Miseres de la Vie Conjugale_, are not novels or tales, and so do not concern us. They are not the only instance in literature showing that the sarcasm

The _G.o.d_ you took from a printed book

extends to other things besides divinity. The old conventional satires on marriage are merely rehashed with some extra garlic. Balzac had no personal experience of the subject till just before his death, and his singular claustral habits of life could not give him much opportunity for observation.

[Sidenote: "Balzacity": its const.i.tution.]

Experience, indeed, and observation (to speak with only apparent paradox), though they played an important, yet played only a subordinate part at any time in the great Balzacian achievement. Victor Hugo, in what was in effect a funeral oration, described that achievement as "un livre qui est l'Observation et qui est l'Imagination." But no one familiar with the Victorian rhetoric will mistake the _clou_, the dominating and decisive word of that sentence. It is the conjunction.

Hugo meant to draw attention to the astonis.h.i.+ng _union_ of Imagination with Observation--two things which, except in the highest poetry, are apt to be rather strangers to each other--and by putting Imagination last he meant also doubtless that this was the dominating--the masculine--element in the marriage. In the immense volume of discussion of Balzac which the long lifetime succeeding his death has seen, and which thickened and multiplied towards the close of the last century and a little later--owing to the conclusion of the _edition Definitive_ with its additions and ill.u.s.trative matter--this point has perhaps been too frequently lost sight of. The great critics who were his contemporaries and immediate survivors were rather too near. The greatest of the later batch, M. Brunetiere, was a little too eager to use Balzac as a stick to beat the Romantics with for one thing, and to make him out a pioneer of all succeeding French fiction for another. But, quite early, Philarete Chasles. .h.i.t the white by calling him a _voyant_ (a word slightly varying in signification from our "seer"), and recently a critic of less repute than Brunetiere, but a good one--M. Le Breton--though perhaps sometimes not quite fair to Balzac, recognises his Romanticism, his _frenesie_, and so the Imagination of which the lunatic and the lover are--and of which the devotee of Romance in verse and prose should be--compact.

Nevertheless it would be of course highly improper, and in fact absurd, to deny the "observation"--at least in detail of all kinds. Although--as we have seen and may see again when we come to Naturalism and look back--M. Brunetiere was quite wrong in thinking that Balzac _introduced_ "interiors" to French, and still more wrong in thinking that he introduced them to European, novel-writing, they undoubtedly make a great show in his work--are, indeed, one of its chief characteristics.

He actually overdoes them sometimes; the "dragging" of _Les Chouans_ is at least partly due to this, and he never got complete mastery of his tendency that way. But undoubtedly this tendency was also a source of power.

Yet, while this observation of _things_ is not to be denied, Balzac's observation of _persons_ is a matter much more debatable. To listen to some of the more uncritical--especially among the older and now almost traditional--estimates of him, an unwary reader who did not correct these, judging for himself, might think that Balzac was as much of an "observational" realist in character as Fielding, as Scott when it served his turn, as Miss Austen, or as Thackeray. Longer study and further perspective seem recently to have put more people in the position which only a few held some years ago. The astonis.h.i.+ng force, completeness, _relative_ reality of his creations is more and more admitted, but it is seen (M. Le Breton, for instance, admits it in almost the very words) that the reality is often not _positive_. In fact the _Comedie_ may remind some of the old nautical laudation of a s.h.i.+p which cannot only sail close to the wind, but even a point or two on the other side of it. If even Frenchmen now confess that Balzac's characters are very often not _des etres reels_, no Englishman need be ashamed of having always thought so.

The fact is that this giant in novel-writing did actually succeed in doing what some of his brethren in _Hyperion_ would have liked to do--in setting up a new world for himself and getting out of the existing universe. His characters are never _in_human; they never fail to be human; they are of the same flesh and blood, the same soul and spirit, as ourselves. But they have, as it were, colonised the fresh planet--the Balzacium Sidus--and taken new colour and form from its idiosyncrasies.[167]

[Sidenote: Its effect on successors.]

It is for this reason that one hesitates to endorse the opinions quoted above as to the filiation of all or most subsequent French fiction upon Balzac. Of course he had a great influence on it; such a genius, in such circ.u.mstances, could not but have. The "interior" business was largely followed and elaborated; it might be argued--though the contention would have to be strictly limited and freely provisoed--that Naturalism in general--as the "Rougon-Macquart" scheme certainly was in particular--was a sort of b.a.s.t.a.r.d of the _Comedie_. Other points of relations.h.i.+p might be urged. But all this would leave the most characteristic Balzacities untouched. In the most obvious and superficial quality--pessimistic psychology--the other novelist dealt with in this chapter--Beyle--is far more of a real origin than Balzac is. If one takes the most brilliant of his successors outside the Naturalist school--Flaubert and Feuillet--very little that is really Balzacian will be found in either. At least _Madame Bovary_ and _M. de Camors_--which, I suppose, most people would choose to represent the greatest genius and the most flexible talent of the Second Empire in novel-writing--seem to me to show hardly anything that is like Balzac.

The Goncourts have something of degraded Balzacianism on its lower side in them, and Zola approaches, at least in his "apocalyptic" period, something like a similar though less offensive degradation of the higher. But I can hardly conceive anything less like Balzac's work than Maupa.s.sant's.

[Sidenote: And its own character.]

For the fact is that the real Balzac lies--to and for me--almost entirely in that _aura_ of other-worldliness of which I have spoken. It is in the revelation of this other world, so like ours and yet not the same; in the exploration of its continents; in the frequentation of its inhabitants; that the pleasure which he has to give consists. How he came himself to discover it is as undiscoverable as how his in some sort a.n.a.logue d.i.c.kens, after pottering not unpleasantly with Bozeries, "thought of Mr. Pickwick," and so of the rest of _his_ human (and extra-human) comedy. But the facts, in both cases fortunately, remain.

And it may be possible to indicate at least some qualities and characteristics of the fas.h.i.+on in which he dealt with this world when he _had_ discovered it. In _Les Chouans_ he had found out not so much it, as the way to it; in the books between that and _La Peau de Chagrin_ he was over the border, and with _La Peau_ itself he had "crossed Jordan,"--it was all conquest and extension--as far as permitted--of territory afterwards.

[Sidenote: The "occult" element.]

There can, I should suppose, be very little doubt that the fancy for the occult, which played a great part, as far as bulk goes, in the _Juvenilia_, but produced nothing of value there, began to bear fruit at this time. The Supernatural (as was remarked of woman to the indignation of Mr. Snodgra.s.s) is a "rum creetur." It is very difficult to deal with; to the last degree unsatisfactory when of bad quality and badly handled; but possessing almost infinite capabilities of exhibiting excellence, and conveying enjoyment. Of course, during the generation before Balzac's birth and also that between his birth and 1830, the Terror Novel--from the _Castle of Otranto_ to Maturin--had circled through Europe, and "Illuminism" of various kinds had taken particular hold of France just before the Revolution. But Balzac's "Occult," like Balzac's everything, was not the same as anybody else's. Whether you take it in _La Peau de Chagrin_ itself, or in _Seraphita_, or anywhere, it consists, again, rather in atmosphere than in "figures." A weaker genius would have attached to the skin of that terrible wild a.s.s--gloomier, but more formidable than even the beast in Job[168]--some attendant evil spirit, genie, or "person" of some sort. A bit of s.h.a.green externally, shrinking--with age--perhaps? with weather?--what not?--a life shrinking in mysterious sympathy--that is what was wanted and what you have, without ekings, or explanations, or other trumpery.

[Sidenote: Its action and reaction.]

Nor is it only in the ostensibly "occult" or (as he was pleased to call them) "philosophic" studies and and stories that you get this atmosphere. It spreads practically everywhere--the very bankruptcies and the sordid details of town and country life are overshadowed and in a certain sense _dis_-realised by it. Indeed that verb which, like most new words, has been condemned by some precisians, but which was much wanted, applies to no prose writer quite so universally as to Balzac. He is a _dis_-realiser, not by style as some are, but in thought--at the very same time that he gives such impressions of realism. Sometimes, but not often, he comes quite close to real mundane reality, sometimes, as in the most "philosophical" of the so-called philosophical works, he hardly attempts a show of it. But as a rule when he is at his very best, as in _La Peau de Chagrin_, in _La Recherche de l'Absolu_, in _Le Chef-d'oeuvre Inconnu_, he attains a kind of point of unity between disrealising and realising--he disrealises the common and renders the uncommon real in a fas.h.i.+on actually carrying out what he can never have known--the great Coleridgian definition or description of poetry. In fact, if prose-poetry were not a contradiction in terms, Balzac would be, except in style,[169] the greatest prose-poet of them all.

[Sidenote: Peculiarity of the conversation.]

On[170] one remarkable characteristic of the _Comedie_ very little has usually been said. It has been neglected wholly by most critics, though it is of the very first importance. And that is the astonis.h.i.+ngly small use, _in proportion_, which Balzac makes of that great weapon of the novelist, dialogue, and the almost smaller effect which it accordingly has in producing his results (whatever they are) on his readers. With some novelists dialogue is almost all-powerful. Dumas, for instance (as is pointed out elsewhere), does almost everything by it. In his best books especially you may run the eye over dozens, scores, almost hundreds of pages without finding a single one printed "solid." The author seldom makes any reflections at all; and his descriptions, with, of course, some famous exceptions, are little more than longish stage directions. Nor is this by any means merely due to early practice in the drama itself; for something like it is to be found in writers who have had no such practice. In Balzac, after making every allowance for the fact that he often prints his actual conversations without typographical separation of the speeches, the case is just the other way. Moreover, and this is still more noteworthy, it is not by what his characters do say that we remember them. The situation perhaps most of all; the character itself very often; the story sometimes (but of that more presently)--these are the things for and by which we remember Balzac and the vast army of his creations; while sometimes it is not even for any of these things, but for "interiors," "business," and the like. When one thinks of single points in him, it is scarcely ever of such things as the "He has got his discharge, by----!" of d.i.c.kens; as the "Adsum" of Thackeray; as the "Trop lourd!" of Porthos' last agony; as the longer but hardly less quintessenced malediction of Habakkuk Mucklewrath on Claverhouse. It is of Eugenie Grandet shrinking in automatic repulsion from the little bench as she reads her cousin's letter; of Henri de Marsay's cigar (his enjoyment of it, that is to say, for his words are quite commonplace) as he leaves "la Fille aux Yeux d'Or"; of the lover allowing himself to be built up in "La Grande Breteche." Observe that there is not the slightest necessity to apportion the excellence implied in these different kinds of reminiscence; as a matter of fact, each way of fastening the interest and the appreciation of the reader is indifferently good.[171] But the distinction remains.

[Sidenote: And of the "story" interest.]

There is another point on which, though no good critic can miss it, some critics seem to dislike dwelling; and this is that, though Balzac's separate situations, as has just been said, are arresting in the highest degree, it is often distinctly difficult to read him "for the story."

Even M. Brunetiere lets slip an admission that "interest" of the ordinary kind is not exactly Balzac's forte; while another admirer of his grants freely that his _affabulation_ is weak. Once more, we need not and must not make too much of this; but it is important that it should not be forgotten, and the extreme Balzacian is sometimes apt to forget it. That it comes sometimes from Balzac's mania for rehandling and reshaping--that he has actually, like the hero of what is to some his most unforgettable short story, daubed the masterpiece into a blur--is certain. But it probably comes more often, and is much more interesting as coming, from want of co-ordination between the observing and the imagining faculties which are (as Hugo meant) the yoked coursers of Balzac's car.

The fact is that _exceptis excipiendis_, of which _Eugenie Grandet_ is the chief solid example, it is not by the ordinary means, or in the ordinary ways, that Balzac makes any considerable part of his appeal. He is very much more _der Einzige_ in novel-writing than Jean Paul was in novel-writing or anything else; for a good deal of Richter's uniqueness depended[172] upon eccentricities of style, etc., from which Balzac is entirely free. And the same may be said, with the proper mutations, of George Meredith. No one ever made less use--despite his "details" and "interiors"--of what may be called intellectual or artistic costume and properties than the author of the _Comedie Humaine_. The most egotistical of men in certain ways, he never thrusts his _ego_ upon you.

The most personal in his letters, he is almost as impersonal in most of his writings (_Louis Lambert_, etc., being avowedly exceptional) as Shakespeare. Now, though the personal interest may be not illegitimate and sometimes great, the impersonal is certainly greater. Thanks to industrious prying, not always deserving the adjective impertinent, we know a great deal about Balzac; and it is by no means difficult to apply some of the knowledge to aid the study of his creation. But in reading the creation itself you never need this knowledge; it never forces itself on you. The hundreds, and almost thousands, of persons who form the company of the _Comedie_--their frequently recurring parts adjusted with extraordinary, though by no means obtrusive or offensive, consistency to the enormous world of detail and scenery and general "surroundings" in which their parts are played--are never interfered with by the pointing-stick or the prompter. They are _there_; they can't help being there, and you have to make the best or the worst of them as you can. Considering the general complexion of this universe, its inevitableness and apparent [Greek: autarkeia] may seem, in some moods and to some persons, a little oppressive; it is always, perhaps, as has been admitted, productive rather of admiration than of pleasure. Faults of various kinds may be found with it. But it is almost always wonderful; it is often great, and it is sometimes of the greatest.[173]

FOOTNOTES:

[124] Of course there are exceptions, _Le Rouge et le Noir_ and _La Peau de Chagrin_ being perhaps the chief among long novels; while some of Balzac's short stories possess the quality in almost the highest degree.

[125] He tried several pseudonyms, but settled on this. Unfortunately, he sometimes (not always) made it "_De_ Stendhal," without anything before the "De," and more unfortunately still, in the days of his Napoleonic employment he, if he had not called himself, had allowed himself to be called "M. _de_ Beyle"--an a.s.sumption which though dropped, was not forgotten in the days of his later anti-aristocratism.

[126] Beyle himself recognized the necessity of the reader's collaboration.

[127] This does not apply to poets as much as to prose writers: a fact for which reasons could perhaps be given. And it certainly does not apply to Balzac.

[128] He was now forty-four, and had published not a few volumes, mostly small, of other kinds--travel description (which he did uncommonly well), and miscellaneous writing, and criticism, including the famous _Racine et Shakespeare_, an _avant-coureur_ of Romanticism which contained, besides matter on its t.i.tle-subjects, some sound estimate of Scott as a writer and some very unsound abuse about him as a man. This last drew from Byron, who had met Beyle earlier at Milan, a letter of expostulation and vindication which did that n.o.ble poet infinite credit, but of which Beyle, by no means to _his_ credit, took notice. He was only too like Hazlitt in more ways than one: though few books with practically the same t.i.tle can be more different than _De l'Amour_ and _Liber Amoris_.

[129] As for instance, those from Dekker and Ma.s.siger; Camoens and Ercilla are allowed their native tongues "neat."

[130] The actual "Chartreuse" of Parma only makes its appearance on the very last page of the book, when the hero, resigning his arch bishopric, retires to it.

[131] He is the younger son of a rich and n.o.ble family, but his father disowns and his older brother denounces him quite early. It is characteristic of Beyle that we hear very little of the father and are practically never even introduced to the brother.

[132] These four words somehow make me think of Samuel Newcome's comment on the unfortunate dinner where "Farintosh" did not appear: "Scarcely anything was drank."