The Human Comedy: Introductions and Appendix | Page 3

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Etext prepared by Dagny, [email protected] and John Bickers,
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THE HUMAN COMEDY: INTRODUCTIONS AND APPENDIX

CONTENTS
Honore de Balzac Introduction and brief biography by George
Saintsbury.
Appendix List of titles in French with English translations and grouped
in the various classifications.
Author's introduction Balzac's 1842 introduction to The Human
Comedy.

HONORE DE BALZAC

/"Sans genie, je suis flambe!"/
Volumes, almost libraries, have been written about Balzac; and perhaps
of very few writers, putting aside the three or four greatest of all, is it so

difficult to select one or a few short phrases which will in any way
denote them, much more sum them up. Yet the five words quoted
above, which come from an early letter to his sister when as yet he had
not "found his way," characterize him, I think, better than at least some
of the volumes I have read about him, and supply, when they are
properly understood, the most valuable of all keys and companions for
his comprehension.
"If I have not genius, it is all up with me!" A very matter-of-fact person
may say: "Why! there is nothing wonderful in this. Everybody knows
what genius is wanted to make a name in literature, and most people
think they have it." But this would be a little short-sighted, and only
excusable because of the way in which the word "genius" is too
commonly bandied about. As a matter of fact, there is not so very much
genius in the world; and a great deal of more than fair performance is
attainable and attained by more or less decent allowances or exhibitions
of talent. In prose, more especially, it is possible to gain a very high
place, and to deserve it, without any genius at all: though it is difficult,
if not impossible, to do so in verse. But what Balzac felt (whether he
was conscious in detail of the feeling or not) when he used these words
to his sister Laure, what his critical readers must feel when they have
read only a very little of his work, what they must feel still more
strongly when they have read that work as a whole--is that for him
there is no such door of escape and no such compromise. He had the
choice, by his nature, his aims, his capacities, of being a genius or
nothing. He had no little gifts, and he was even destitute of some of the
separate and indivisible great ones. In mere writing, mere style, he was
not supreme; one seldom or never derives from anything of his the
merely artistic satisfaction given by perfect prose. His humor, except of
the grim and gigantic kind, was not remarkable; his wit, for a
Frenchman, curiously thin and small. The minor felicities of the
literature generally were denied to him. /Sans genie, il etait flambe/;
/flambe/