minor Balzac

One of Picasso's thirteen etchings for a 1931 edition of Le Chef-d'œuvre inconnu

[Image source: https://www.march.es/arte/cuenca/exposiciones/honore-de-balzac/?l=2 .]

One of our favourite cafés in Bath has some shelves of old books upstairs, including a dozen volumes of the Caxton Edition of Balzac in English (1897 - ).  That block of dull peridot spines probably depresses some customers, but I was thrilled. Eventually my light-fingered ways got the better of me and, just as the café was about to close, I abstracted one of the books at random (yes, I shall be returning it).

The Caxton Balzac contained 53 volumes altogether; the translators are not named and info on the internet is distinctly lacking / unreliable. The book I snatched turned out to be The Unknown Masterpiece. It contains the title story and four others, all from the early 1830s. Balzac subsequently incorporated them into the "Études Philosophiques" section of the Comédie Humaine.

I suppose they can be considered minor pieces. Balzac was quite generous when it came to giving early ephemeral pieces a place in his grand conception. None of these stories evince the kind of intense commitment to a single artistic idea that we find in e.g. Eugénie Grandet.  Balzac's forensic, exhaustive focus on character and setting are distinctly absent here.  By comparison there's an improvised, slapdash quality. Different parts of the same story have different types of interest. In "The Maranas", for example, the account of the Diards' attempts to get on in Parisian society take us to a much more serious place than the melodramas of the story's prelude and denouement. In "The Red Inn" it's difficult to feel absorbed in the narrator's moral dilemma at the end: this is a story that has brushed tantalizingly on many themes of greater interest, but keeps swerving away from them. Does Balzac know or care what he's doing? On the basis of his wilier masterpieces you'd want to say yes. In "Master Cornelius" the ample narrative of the opening is, as it were, tossed away in the maelstrom of the later pages; the lovers' terrors now seem insignificant fripperies; but what follows absorbs us in a completely different way. Is this radical change in our point of view to be regarded as opportunism, indifference, or a supremely confident gearshift?


"Le Chef-d’œuvre inconnu" / "The Unknown Masterpiece" (1832)

Balzac is relatively unusual as a novelist for having significant influence on the fine arts. He knew quite a lot about painting, as is apparent from Le Cousin Pons as well as this story, which obsessed Cézanne and Picasso -- not to mention Zola. "Frenhofer, c'est moi!" Cézanne asserted. Ironically, he certainly was the main model for Zola's Claude Lantier in L'Oeuvre. When Cézanne discovered this, he immediately, and finally, ended their long-standing friendship.

 Set in 1612-13, it recounts the case of a brilliant amateur artist and critic, Frenhofer (a fictional character), now an old man, whose earlier paintings were remarkable and who has now been working for ten years on his masterpiece, a painting of a beautiful courtesan. No-one has ever seen the picture. Frenhofer, unable to satisfy himself that his work is complete and wanting to make some final adjustments, requires a surpassingly beautiful model. His artist friends Porbus (= Frans Pourbus the younger, 1569 - 1622) and a young Nicolas Poussin (1594 - 1665) offer to let Poussin's mistress Gillette model for him, in exchange for a glimpse of the mysterious painting. They are horrified to discover that it's a chaotic daub in which no subject is discernible (except in one corner, where a tell-tale foot shows that the painting did at one time depict a woman). Frenhofer has imagined that he has achieved unmatched realization, until he perceives their scepticism and instantaneously recognizes his own delusion. "The next day, Porbus, feeling anxious concerning Frenhofer, called once more at his house, and learned that he had died during the night after burning his pictures."

Balzac's story is quite historically informed. Poussin really was in Paris learning his craft from 1612. He subsequently became a painter notable for emphasis on line. In the story, Frenhofer insists that there is no line in nature, but Porbus defends its use in art. Evidently we are to understand that Poussin takes on board Porbus' moderate advice, and rejects Frenhofer's more extreme ideas.

Margherita Gonzaga, portrait by Frans Pourbus the younger

[Image source: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/437325 .]

The fascination of the story is its absence of interpretation. True, Frenhofer is mad, but aren't all serious artists a bit mad? Is the story a cautionary tale about the immoderate pursuit of art-theory and perfectionism (Porbus notes that Frenhofer's wealth means he has no restraints)? Or is Frenhofer a demonic inspiration, a reproof to unserious art and a true visionary of art's possibilities? Or maybe both: a fable of genius as simultaneously life-giving and deadly, a quest that ends in both triumph and failure.

Then again, you can read it as a meditation on the mystery of finishing a painting. Lesser mortals know how easy it is to ruin a picture by incautiously trying to improve it. But Frenhofer isn't a lesser mortal, his technique is unparalleled and his perfectionism without limits, so why would he ever regard his painting as finished? Or perhaps it considers the temptations of a private art that brings perfect satisfaction to the artist but cannot bear the public gaze? (It's a tragic irony, maybe, that Frenhofer, such a pitiless critic of other artists, is himself destroyed by a few words?)

Are Gillette's the truest insights of all, because she cares least about art and most about people? Her sad acceptance that Poussin loves his art more than he loves her, and her horror when he insensitively treats as failed art something that has become to its creator a fetish, a living being, his soul companion... (The story evidently casts a glance at the myth of Pygmalion.)

St Denis the Areopagite, Poussin's earliest dated painting (1620-1621)

[Image source: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Saint_Denis_l%27Ar%C3%A9opagite_couronn%C3%A9_par_un_ange_-_Poussin_-_MBA_Rouen.jpg .]

Online text of The Unknown Masterpiece -- probably Katharine Prescott Wormeley's translation, but this isn't stated.


"Les Marana" / "The Maranas" (1832)

The story begins with the French capture of Tarragona in 1811 and two friends among the invading army, the Italian libertine Montefiore and the low-born, corrupt, Provençal quartermaster Diard. The former pursues the beautiful and closeted girl Juana, he even thinks of marrying her, until he learns that she's the daughter of a famous Venice courtesan in the immemorial line of the Maranas. The courtesan ("La Marana") had hoped to preserve this beloved daughter from following the family profession, and has had her adopted by an upright Spanish couple, but the experienced Montefiore soon recognizes the girl's inherited, though unconscious and buried, passions. But in mid-seduction Juana's mother unexpectedly arrives and chaos ensues, resulting in Montefiore fleeing for his life and Juana promising her mother to marry a perfectly willing Diard, who has just arrived on the scene in response to Montefiore's cries for help (La Marana sees this as the only way to avoid her daughter's disgrace).

Juana dislikes her husband but honours her promise and is quiescently, unhappily married. Diard expels Montefiore from the regiment and, much in love with his new wife, is at first ambitious in his plans to make headway in society (he has made plenty of money), but he lacks strength of character and finesse. The couple establish themselves in Paris: the Parisians admire Juana but, scenting the attitude of his military colleagues, are profoundly contemptuous of Diard. Juana, though unsophisticated in her ideas of society, sees all this.

"These details convey but a feeble idea of the thousand and one tortures of which Juana was the victim; they came one by one; each social unit contributed its pin-prick, and who can conceive the excruciating agony of a heart that prefers dagger-thrusts in that constant conflict in which Diard received insults without feeling them and Juana felt them without receiving them?"

Juana encourages her husband to take comfort in domestic life but he's unsettled and begins to find fault with his virtuous wife. In the end he quarrels with her over their children; he realizes that she has been concealing her preference for the eldest, doubtless not his own son but Montefiore's.  Estranged from his wife, Diard falls into dissipation, takes up gambling for high stakes and moves on to dodgy business transactions. (Ironically, society now begins to respect him.)  Juana fears some disaster; Diard fears his wife. Finally his luck and money run out. He moves the family to Bordeaux. He takes up sharpery at the spa resorts of the Pyrenees, meets Montefiore and loses to him. He invites Montefiore back to  Bordeaux on the pretext of paying his debt; then murders him. He returns to his wife, pursued by the gendarmes. Seeing that he cannot escape, she urges him to shoot himself to save his sons' honour. When he hesitates, she shoots him in the head.  Though she admits what she's done, the authorities give suicide as the cause of death and allow her to leave for Spain with her children.  On the point of departure, she's seen by her dying mother: "Die in peace, mother, I have suffered for you all!" (that is, she has expiated the sins of the Maranas).

Online text of Juana (the original title of The Maranas), translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley.

[In Ewa Maczka's interesting essay "La belle Juive", she claims that Balzac here appropriates the term "marranes", which meant Jews who, though converted to Christianity, clandestinely practiced Judaism. The essay shows that Balzac (influenced by Scott's Rebecca in Ivanhoe), portrays Jewesses as "oriental". And he often associates courtesans and Jews, framing an ambivalent image of the exotically beautiful but socially unassimilable: neither clearly anti-Semitic nor clearly philo-Semitic, but with the potential to go either way.]




"Un drame au bord de la mer"  /  "A Seashore Drama"  (1834)

Two lovers, holidaying at Le Croisic, encounter a tragic, silent solitary. Later they are told his story: an austere fisherman who finally killed his own worthless son.

"...they were mad over him. If their little Jacques had dirted in the saucepan, saving your presence, they would have said it was sugar. ... And when another said: 'Pierre Cambremer, do you know that your son has put out the little Pougaud girl's eye?' he replied: 'He will be fond of the girls!' -- He thought that all he did was right. And so my little rascal, at ten years of age, cudgelled everybody, and amused himself by cutting off chickens' heads; he would cut them open, too, -- in short, he rolled in blood like a polecat. -- 'He will be a famous soldier,' said Cambremer, 'he has a taste for blood.' ..."

One of the things Jacques goes on to do is rob his mother's savings; the same motif occurs in George Eliot's "Brother Jacob". The contrast between the two stories, not in condemnation of the deed, but in tone and treatment, is remarkable.

Online text of A Drama on the Seashore, translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley


"L'Auberge rouge" / "The Red Inn"  (1831)

Like the previous, a boxed story with multiple frames. At its heart is an account of the young surgeon Pascal Magnan, who, staying at a Rhineland inn in 1799, during the war with Austria, is horribly tempted to commit a murder, but doesn't. When he wakes, the murder has taken place. Pascal is arrested and executed. His defence is feeble both because he feels morally guilty and because he can't countenance the obvious conclusion that his friend and fellow-surgeon must have carried out the murder.  In the outer frame, the narrator identifies the murderer (now twenty years older) as present among the audience for the story. He also learns that this stranger is father to the girl he loves and wishes to marry. Now he knows that her wealth results from an atrocious crime. What to do?

Online text of The Red Inn, translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley.


"Maître Cornélius" / "Master Cornelius"  (1831)

A tale of Louis XI; and Balzac makes due reference to Scott's Quentin Durward. For the first forty pages (concerning the perilous assignations of two lovers) there's indeed something of Scott's solidly grounded costume drama, but from then on the story becomes altogether more flighty. The situation at the end is ingenious: Master Cornelius, silversmith, merchant, miser and crony of king Louis, has suffered numerous robberies over the years (and hanged quite a number of his assistants as a result). The king-turned-detective discovers that his friend sleepwalks and has been unconsciously robbing himself. The waking Cornelius doesn't know where the sleeping Cornelius secretes the booty. The only way he could find out would be to allow someone else to watch him, but that's out of the question, because they'd be sure to make off with the booty themselves. And accordingly, Cornelius will never know where his treasures are. Louis, sensing Cornelius' distrust, takes his leave; the friendship between the two old men is broken.  Cornelius is so terrified of being secretly observed while asleep that he tries to stay awake night after night, and eventually, tortured by sleep deprivation, cuts his own throat.

Online text of Maitre Cornelius, translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley.

[Eugène Scribe borrowed the somnambulism part of the plot for his libretto to Halévy's 1839 opera Le shérif  (Cornelius is transformed into Sir James Turner, High Sheriff of London).]

[Both Louis and Cornelius reappear in "The Merry Jests of King Louis the Eleventh", one of Les Cent Contes drolatiques. (As it turned out, Balzac only managed thirty.) Here's an English translation: http://www.classicreader.com/book/545/1/ . ]