Ursule Mirouet

[poliphilo]

Ursule Mirouet is charming- a fairy story in realist clothing: a noble young girl, raised by three virtuous old men- like Snow White by the seven dwarves- is cheated out of her inheritance by  wicked cousins and...Well I'm not going to spoil it, but the resolution involves a handsome viscount and the intervention of a ghost.

You know what? I think this might be my favourite. At an earlier stage- when I'd only read harsher texts like Eugenie Grandet and Le Pere Goriot- I had Balzac pegged as a pessimist and a cynic. This was wrong. There are pessimistic books and there are optimistic books, cynical books and cheery ones. The totality of La Comedie Humaine encompasses a multiplicity of attitudes and philosophies. 

Flaubert said of Balzac, "What a pity he couldn't write".  True enough, as far as it goes; the work is often slapdash, hurried, clumsy- Balzac had so much to say and was racing death (death won)- but, on the other hand, if he'd been as scrupulous an artist as Flaubert he'd only have written as many books as Flaubert- and that would have been a huge pity. Balzac is Balzac is Balzac: a unique force in literature- overflowing with views and opinions and information.  There isn't a nook or cranny of his society- from the highest reaches of the aristocracy down to the peasantry of the provinces- where he's not at home, where he doesn't know how people think and act.  Name a profession- from engineering, to the law, to politics, to high finance, to the church, to the criminal underworld- and he's an initiate of its mysteries.  And if the finish is sometimes rough, the modelling is always vigourous and full of life- with passages where the mastery- of narrative, dialogue, psychology- takes your breath away.

The greatest of all novelists- oh easily!   Everyone else- ever since- has just been gleaning the field he reaped.

Comments

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Found in my bookshelf: Old Goriot by Balzac.

It's in volume 13 of an old set (1917) Harvard Classics from my parents' house. The book is French Fiction and includes Balzac, Sand, De Musset, Daudet, and De Maupassant.

I confess it: I've never read a word of Balzac, but your enjoyment of his novels has intrigued me.

If I'm going to try him, is Old Goriot where to start?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Old Goriot is as good a place to start as any.

It's an acknowledged masterpiece. Mind you, I haven't read a book of his I didn't like- and they're all so very different. The one I'm reading at the moment (my 33rd)- a really obscure one called The Companionship of Consolation- is about a group of disappointed old folk who band together to live according to the rules of The Imitation of Christ. I can't think of anything in English remotely like it.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Ok, thanks.

In the front of the book is a "criticism and interpretation" by Arthur Symons, who says "The novels of Balzac are full of electric fluid. To take up one of them is to feel the shock of life, as one feels it on touching certain magnetic hands."

Between the two of you, I think I must try out Balzac!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

What a nice way of putting it. I like Arthur Symons.

By the way, Balzac was very interested in hypnotism- or mesmerism as they called it back then. Ursule Mirouet (wonderful book) has an incident where a hypnotised woman travels out of the body and is able to report on the lay-out of a house she's never visited.