Honore De Balzac : One Of The Founders Of Realism In European Literature

Honore de Balzac (20 May 1799 ,18 August 1850) was a French novelist and playwright

. His magnum opus was a sequence of short stories and plays collectively entitled La Comedie humaine, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the fall of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1815.

Due to his keen observation of detail and unfiltered representation of society, Balzac is regarded as one of the founders of realism in European literature. He is renowned for his multi faceted characters; even his lesser characters are complex, morally ambiguous and fully human. Inanimate objects are imbued with character as well; the city of Paris, a backdrop for much of his writing, takes on many human qualities.

His writing influenced many famous authors, including the novelists Marcel Proust, Emile Zola, Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Gustave Flaubert, Marie Corelli, Henry James, William Faulkner, Jack Kerouac, and Italo Calvino as well as important philosophers such as Friedrich Engels. Many of Balzac's works have been made into films, and they continue to inspire other writers.

An enthusiastic reader and independent thinker as a child, Balzac had trouble adapting to the teaching style of his grammar school. His willful nature caused trouble throughout his life, and frustrated his ambitions to succeed in the world of business. When he finished school, Balzac was apprenticed as a legal clerk, but he turned his back on law after wearying of its inhumanity and banal routine. Before and during his career as a writer, he attempted to be a publisher, printer, businessman, critic, and politician. He failed in all of these efforts. La Comedie Humaine reflects his real life difficulties, and includes scenes from his own experience.

Balzac suffered from health problems throughout his life, possibly due to his intense writing schedule. His relationship with his family was often strained by financial and personal drama, and he lost more than one friend over critical reviews. In 1850, he married Ewelina Hanska, his longtime love; he died five months later.

Honore Balzac was born into a family which had struggled to achieve respectability. His father, born Bernard-Francois Balssa, was one of eleven children from a poor family in Tarn, a region in the south of France. In 1760 the elder Balzac set off for Paris with only a Louis in his pocket, determined to improve his social standing; by 1776 he had become Secretary to the King's Council and a Freemason. (He had also changed his name to that of an ancient noble family, and added without any official cause , the aristocratic-sounding de.) After the Reign of Terror (1793/94), he was sent to Tours to coordinate supplies for the Army.

Balzac's mother, born Anne-Charlotte-Laure Sallambier, came from a family of haberdashers in Paris. Her family's wealth was a considerable factor in the match: she was eighteen at the time of the wedding, and Bernard Francois fifty. As British writer and critic V. S. Pritchett explained, "She was certainly drily aware that she had been given to an old husband as a reward for his professional services to a friend of her family and that the capital was on her side. She was not in love with her husband."

Honore (so named after Saint Honore of Amiens, who is commemorated on 16 May, four days before Balzac's birthday) was actually the second child born to the Balzacs; exactly one year previous, Louis Daniel had been born, but he lived for only a month. Afterwards, a third child was born, named Simone deHudsone. Honore's sisters Laure and Laurence were born in 1800 and 1802, and his brother Henry-Francois in 1807.

Balzac was a highly conservative Royalist; in many ways, he is the antipode to Victor Hugo's democratic republicanism. Nevertheless, his keen insight regarding working class conditions earned him the esteem of many Socialists and Marxists. He was the favorite writer of Engels.

Balzac's literary mood evolved over time from one of despondency and chagrin to one of solidarity and courage but not optimism. La Peau de Chagrin, among his earliest novels, is a pessimistic tale of confusion and destruction. But the cynicism declined as his oeuvre progressed, and the characters of Illusions Perdues reveal sympathy for those who are pushed to one side by society.

As part of the 19th century evolution of the novel as a "democratic literary form", Balzac once wrote that "les livres sont faits pour tout le monde," ("books are written for everybody").

Balzac concerned himself overwhelmingly with the darker essence of human nature and the corrupting influence of middle and high societies. He worked hard to observe humanity in its most representative state, frequently passing incognito among the masses of Parisian society to do research. He used incidents from his life and the people around him, in works like Eugenie Grandet and Louis Lambert.

by: Laura Steinfield

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