(; English: The Human Comedy) is Honoré de Balzac's 1829–48 multi-volume collection of interlinked novels and stories depicting French society in the period of the Restoration (1815–30) and the July Monarchy (1830–48).
La Comédie humaine consists of 91 finished works (stories, novels, or analytical essays) and 46 unfinished works (some of which exist only as titles).Pierre Citron edition, vol 1, 49–50. It does not include Balzac's five theatrical plays or his collection of humorous tales Les Cent Contes drolatiquesLes Cent Contes drolatiques translation: (1832–37).
A pioneer of the modern novel, Balzac describes the totality of reality as he understood it, and shows aspects of life hitherto ignored in literature, because they were ugly or vulgar. He shows in its various forms the rise of capitalism and the omnipotence of money, leading to the disappearance of nobility and the dissolution of social ties. La Comédie Humaine refers to the medieval poem Divine Comedy. Balzac's world is grounded in sociology, not theology, where love and friendship are of prime importance and which highlights the complexity of people and the deep immorality of a social mechanism where the weak are crushed while the crooked banker and the venal politician triumph. A keen observer, Balzac created human types that are strikingly true. Some of his characters are so vivid that they have become archetypes, such as Rastignac, the ambitious young provincial, Grandet, the miserly domestic tyrant, or Father Goriot, the icon of fatherhood. He gives an important place to financiers and notaries, but also to the character of Vautrin, the outlaw with multiple identities. His work includes many courtesans and grisettes, as well as admirable and angelic women. The importance of these women and their psychology earned him an enthusiastic female readership very early on.
Despite the opposition of the Catholic Church, this work quickly became a printing phenomenon and greatly influenced the development of the novel both in France and elsewhere. Translated into many languages, it is still published today and has often been adapted for film and television.
The title The title of the series is usually considered an allusion to Dante's Divine Comedy;Robb, Graham: Balzac: A Life, pg. 330, 1996, W. W. Norton and Company, Inc. while Ferdinand Brunetière, the famous French literary critic, suggests that it may stem from poems by Alfred de Musset or Alfred de Vigny.Brunetière, Ferdinand, Sanderson, Robert Louis: Honoré de Balzac, pg. 77, J. B. Lippincott & Co., London, 1906. While Balzac sought the comprehensive scope of Dante, his title indicates the worldly, human concerns of a realist novelist. The stories are placed in a variety of settings, with characters reappearing in multiple stories.
Evolution of the work The Comédie humaine was the result of a slow evolution. The first works of Balzac were written without any global plan (Les Chouans is a historical novel; Physiologie du mariage is an analytical study of marriage), but by 1830 Balzac began to group his first novels (Sarrasine, Gobseck) into a series entitled Scènes de la vie privée ("Scenes from Private Life").
In 1833, with the publication of Eugénie Grandet, Balzac envisioned a second series entitled "Scènes de la vie de province" (Scenes from Provincial Life). Most likely in this same year Balzac came upon the idea of having characters reappear from novel to novel, and the first novel to use this technique was Le Père Goriot (1834–35).
In a letter written to Madame Hanska in 1834, Balzac decided to reorganize his works into three larger groups, allowing him (1) to integrate his "La physiologie du mariage" into the ensemble and (2) to separate his most fantastic or metaphysical stories—like La Peau de chagrin (1831) and Louis Lambert (1832)—into their own "philosophical" section. The three sections were: "Études de Moeurs au XIXe siècle" (Studies of Manners in the 19th Century) – including the various "Scènes de la vie..." "Études philosophiques" "Études analytiques" – including the "Physiologie du mariage"
In this letter, Balzac went on to say that the "Études de Moeurs" would study the effects of society and touch on all genders, social classes, ages and professions of people. Meanwhile, the "Études philosophiques" would study the causes of these effects. Finally, the third "analytical" section would study the principles behind these phenomena. Balzac also explained that while the characters in the first section would be "individualités typisées" ("individuals made into types"), the characters of the "Études philosophiques" would be "types individualisés" (types made into individuals").
By 1836, the "Études de Moeurs" was already divided into six parts: "Scènes de la vie privée" "Scènes de la vie de province" "Scènes de la vie parisienne" "Scènes de la vie politique" "Scènes de la vie militaire" "Scènes de la vie de campagne"
In 1839, in a letter to his publisher, Balzac mentioned for the first time the expression Comédie humaine, and this title is in the contract he signed in 1841. The publication of the Comédie humaine in 1842 was preceded by an important preface or "avant-propos" describing his major principles and the work's overall structure (see below). For this edition, novels which had appeared in serial form were stricken of their chapter titles.
Balzac's intended collection was never finished. In 1845, Balzac wrote a complete catalogue of the ensemble which includes works he started or envisioned but never finished. In some cases, Balzac moved a work around between different sections as his overall plan developed; the catalogue given below represents that last version of that process.
Balzac's works were slow to be translated into English because they were perceived as unsuitable for Victorian readers. John Wilson Croker attacked it in the April 1836 issue of the Quarterly Review, excoriating Balzac for immorality, saying "a baser, meaner, filthier scoundrel never polluted society ...". The consensus of the day was that only Eugénie Grandet, Le Curé de Tours, Le Médecin de campagne and a few of the early short stories were suitable for females. Individual works appeared, but not until the 1890s did "complete" versions appear, from Ellen Marriage in London (1895–8, forty volumes edited by George Saintsbury, five omitted as too shocking) and from G. B. Ives and others in Philadelphia (1895–1900).Margaret Lesser: Marriage, Ellen (1865–1946). In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, May 2010). Subscription required. Retrieved 23 August 2010.
The "Avant-propos"
In 1842, Balzac wrote a preface (an "Avant-propos") to the whole ensemble in which he explained his method and the collection's structure.
Motivated by the work of biologists Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, Georges Cuvier and most importantly Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Balzac explains that he seeks to understand "social species" in the way a biologist would analyse "zoological species", and to accomplish this he intends to describe the interrelations of men, women and things. The importance of the woman is underlined by Balzac's contention that, while a biologist may gloss over the differences between a male and female lion, "in Society the woman is not simply the female of the man".Oeuvres complètes volume 1, La maison du Chat-qui-pelote quotation:
Balzac then gives an extensive list of writers and works that influenced him, including Sir Walter Scott, François Rabelais and Miguel de Cervantes.
He then describes his writer's role as a "secretary" who is transcribing society's "history"; moreover, he posits that he is interested in something that no previous historian has attempted: a history of "moeurs" (customs, manners and morals). He also notes his desire to go behind the surface of events, to show the reasons and causes for social phenomena. Balzac then professes his belief in two profound truths—religion and monarchy—and his concern for understanding the individual in the context of his family.
In the last half of his preface, Balzac explains the Comédie humaines different parts (which he compares to "frames" and "galleries"), and which are more or less the final form of the collection (see below).
Sources of the Comédie humaine Because of its volume and complexity, the Comédie humaine touches on the major literary genres in fashion in the first half of the 19th century.
The historical novel The historical novel was a European phenomenon in the first half of the 19th century—largely through the works of Sir Walter Scott, James Fenimore Cooper and, in France, Alexandre Dumas, père, and Victor Hugo. Balzac's first novel Les Chouans was inspired by this vogue and tells of the rural inhabitants of Brittany during the revolution with Cooper-like descriptions of their dress and manners.
Although the bulk of the Comédie humaine takes place during the Restoration and the July Monarchy, there are several novels which take place during the French Revolution and others which take place in the Middle Ages or the Renaissance, including "About Catherine de Medici" and "The Elixir of Long Life".
The popular novel Balzac's later works are decidedly influenced by the genre of the serialised novel ("roman feuilleton") popular at the time, especially the works of Eugène Sue which concentrate on depicting the secret worlds of crime and vice that hide below the surface of French society, and by the ethos of melodrama typical of these part-works.
Fantasy Many of Balzac's shorter works have elements taken from the popular "roman noir" or gothic novel, but often the fantastic elements are used for very different purposes in Balzac's work.
The magical ass's skin in La Peau de chagrin for example becomes a metaphor for diminished male potency and a key symbol of Balzac's conception of energy and will in the modern world.
In a similar way, Balzac undermines the character of Melmoth the Wanderer in his "Melmoth Reconciled": Balzac takes a character from a fantastic novel (by Charles Robert Maturin) who has sold his soul for power and long life and has him sell his own power to another man in Paris ... this man then sells this gift in turn and very quickly the infernal power is traded from person to person in the Parisian stock exchange until it loses any of its original power.
Swedenborg Several of Balzac's characters, particularly Louis Lambert, traverse mystical crises and/or develop syncretic spiritual philosophies about human energy and action that are largely modelled on the life and work of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772). As depicted in his works, Balzac's spiritual philosophy suggests that individuals have a limited quantity of spiritual energy and that this energy is dissipated through creative or intellectual work or through physical activity (including sex), and this is made emblematic in his philosophical tale La Peau de chagrin, in which a magical wild ass's skin confers on its owner unlimited powers, but shrinks each time it is used in science.
Themes of the Comédie humaine The following are some of the major themes that recur throughout the various volumes of the Comédie humaine:
France after the Revolution Balzac frequently bemoans the loss of a pre-Revolutionary society of honor which has now become—especially after the fall of Charles X of France and the arrival of the July Monarchy—a society dominated by money.
Money and power "At the origin of every fortune lies a crime": this precept from the "Red Inn" recurs constantly in the Comédie humaine, both as a biographical truth (Taillefer's murderous fortune, Goriot's deals with the Revolutionary army), and as a sign of French collective guilt at the horrors of the Revolution (and most notably by the execution of Louis XVI).