Repertory of the Comedie Humaine Part 1 | Page 6

especially since the death of the novelist. Balzac seems to have
observed the society of his day less than he contributed to form a new
one. Such and such personages are truer to life in 1860 than in 1835.
When one considers a phenomenon of such range and intensity, it does
not suffice to employ words like infatuation, fashion, mania. The
attraction of an author becomes a psychological fact of prime
importance and subject to analysis. I think I can see two reasons for this
particular strength of Balzac's genius. One dwells in the special
character of his vision, the other in the philosophical trend which he
succeeded in giving to all his writing.
As to the scope of his vision, this /Repertory/ alone will suffice to show.
Turn over the leaves at random and estimate the number of fictitious
deeds going to make up these two thousand biographies, each
individual, each distinct, and most of them complete--that is to say,
taking the character at his birth and leaving him only at his death.
Balzac not only knows the date of birth or of death, he knows as well
the local coloring of the time and the country and profession to which
the man belongs. He is thoroughly conversant with questions of
taxation and income and the agricultural conditions. He is not ignorant
of the fact that Grandet cannot make his fortune by the same methods
employed by Gobseck, his rival in avarice; nor Ferdinand du Tillet, that
jackal, with the same magnitude of operations worked out by that
elephant of a Nucingen. He has outlined and measured the exact
relation of each character to his environment in the same way he has
outlined and measured the bonds uniting the various characters; so well
that each individual is defined separately as to his personal and his
social side, and in the same manner each family is defined. It is the
skeleton of these individuals and of these families that is laid bare for
your contemplation in these notes of Messieurs Cerfberr and
Christophe. But this structure of facts, dependent one upon another by a
logic equal to that of life itself, is the smallest effort of Balzac's genius.
Does a birth-certificate, a marriage-contract or an inventory of wealth
represent a person? Certainly not. There is still lacking, for a bone

covering, the flesh, the blood, the muscles and the nerves. A glance
from Balzac, and all these tabulated facts become imbued with life; to
this circumstantial view of the conditions of existence with certain
beings is added as full a view of the beings themselves.
And first of all he knows them physiologically. The inner workings of
their corporeal mechanism is no mystery for him. Whether it is
Birotteau's gout, or Mortsauf's nervousness, or Fraisier's skin trouble,
or the secret reason for Rouget's subjugation by Flore, or Louis
Lambert's catalepsy, he is as conversant with the case as though he
were a physician; and he is as well informed, also, as a confessor
concerning the spiritual mechanism which this animal machine
supports. The slightest frailties of conscience are perceptible to him.
From the portress Cibot to the Marquise d'Espard, not one of his
women has an evil thought that he does not fathom. With what art,
comparable to that of Stendhal, or Laclos, or the most subtle analysts,
does he note --in /The Secrets of a Princess/--the transition from
comedy to sincerity! He knows when a sentiment is simple and when it
is complex, when the heart is a dupe of the mind and when of the
senses. And through it all he hears his characters speak, he
distinguishes their voices, and we ourselves distinguish them in the
dialogue. The growling of Vautrin, the hissing of La Gamard, the
melodious tones of Madame de Mortsauf still linger in our ears. For
such intensity of evocation is as contagious as an enthusiasm or a
panic.
There is abundant testimony going to show that with Balzac this
evocation is accomplished, as in the mystic arts by releasing it, so to
speak, from the ordinary laws of life. Pray note in what terms M. le
Docteur Fournier, the real mayor of Tours, relates incidents of the
novelist's method of work, according to the report of a servant
employed at the chateau of Sache: "Sometimes he would shut himself
up in his room and stay there several days. Then it was that, plunged
into a sort of ecstasy and armed with a crow quill, he would write night
and day, abstaining from all food and merely contenting himself with
decoctions of coffee which he himself prepared." [Brochure of M. le
Docteur Fournier in regard to the statue of Balzac, that statue a piece of

work to which M. Henry Renault--another devotee who had established
/Le Balzac/--had