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Realism in French Literature. General characteristics of realism of the 19th century in France Realism as a trend based on the novels of Balzac

When capitalist exploitation exacerbated the poverty and misery of the masses with unprecedented force, progressive writers moved from criticizing the feudal system to denouncing the power of wealth, showing the plight of the masses, i.e., to exposing the vices of capitalist society. Deep penetration into the life of society inevitably gave rise in many writers to a critical attitude towards the bourgeois system and, at the same time, a desire for a realistic depiction of reality. From the 30s. 19th century in European literature, the direction of critical realism is taking shape. The writers belonging to this trend, in their works, truthfully reflected many of the contradictions of capitalist society.

Honore de Balzac

The largest representative of critical realism in France in the first half of the 19th century. became Honore de Balzac.

He was distinguished by an amazing capacity for work and an inexhaustible creative imagination. Living on literary earnings, he wrote for 14-16 hours a day, reworked his writing many times and had no equal in a truthful depiction of bourgeois society. Balzac created a huge series of novels and stories, with several thousand characters, under the general name "The Human Comedy". His goal was to reveal the mores of society in artistic images, to show typical representatives of all its strata.

Despising the greed of the bourgeoisie, Balzac had sympathy for the fading aristocracy, although he himself more than once showed the emptiness and worthlessness of its representatives, their self-interest, arrogance and idleness. He managed to show with unprecedented force how the pursuit of wealth destroys all the best human feelings (the novel "Father Goriot", etc.). Balzac exposed the power of money over man under capitalism. The heroes of Balzac's novels are bankers and merchants who increase their wealth at the cost of crimes, cruel and merciless usurers who ruin people's lives, young but prudent careerists and ambitious people (the image of Rastignac in a number of novels), cynically achieving their goals by any means. In the novel "Eugene Grande" a greedy rich man, owning millions, counts every piece of sugar and ruins the lives of loved ones with his stinginess. F. Sergeev wrote that the works of Balzac were an indictment against bourgeois society.

Charles Dickens

The novels of the great English realist Charles Dickens were also an accusation against the bourgeoisie. A native of the lower classes, forced from childhood to earn a living by hard work, he retained his love for the common people of England for the rest of his life.

Already in the early humorous novel by Charles Dickens "The Posthumous Notes of the Pickwick Club", which glorified the author, the image of a man from the people - the servant of Mr. Pickwick - Sam Weller, is displayed. The best folk features: natural intelligence, observation, sense of humor, optimism and resourcefulness are embodied in Sam, and Pickwick is shown as a kind, disinterested eccentric. His honesty, good-heartedness, even naivety arouse the sympathy of the reader.

In his next novels, Dickens turned to a sharper criticism of contemporary society - he reflected the misfortunes of the people in "prosperous" capitalist England and the vices of the ruling classes. His novels denounce the brutal corporal punishment of children in English schools ("David Copperfield"), the horrors of workhouses ("A Tale of Two Cities"), the venality of parliamentary figures, officials, judges and, most importantly, the poverty of workers, selfishness and acquisitiveness of the bourgeoisie.

Dickens' novel Dombey and Son has tremendous revealing power. This is the name of the trading company. Its owner Dombey is the embodiment of callousness and possessive aspirations. All human feelings are replaced by a thirst for enrichment. The interests of the company are above all for him, even the fate of his own daughter. His selfishness is expressed in the following words of the author: "The land was created for Dombey and son, so that they could conduct trading business on it."

Dickens sought to oppose the gloomy and cruel world of capital with some bright side of life and usually ended his novels with a happy ending: a “kind” capitalist came to the aid of the unfortunate hero. These Dickensian sentimental endings somewhat softened the revealing significance of his works.

Neither Dickens nor Balzac were revolutionary.

But their immortal merit was and remains a realistic depiction of the contradictions and vices of bourgeois society.

In all European countries, advanced literature advocated the liberation of the people from the oppression of the aristocracy and the rich. The writers of a number of Slavic countries, Hungary, Italy, and Ireland called for a struggle against national oppression. Advanced Russian literature has made a huge contribution to world culture.

The literature of the countries of the East in the first period of modern history mainly reflected the contradictions of feudal society and showed the cruelty of the European colonizers.

Relax and play

Composition

The formation of French realism, starting with the work of Stendhal, took place in parallel with the further development of romanticism in France. It is significant that the first who came out with support and generally positively assessed the realistic searches of Stendhal and Balzac were Victor Hugo (1802-1885) and George Sand (1804-1876) - bright representatives of French romanticism of the Restoration and Revolution of 1830 era.

In general, it should be emphasized that French realism, especially during its formation, was not a closed and internally complete system. It arose as a natural stage in the development of the world literary process, as an integral part of it, widely using and creatively comprehending the artistic discoveries of previous and contemporary literary movements and trends, in particular romanticism.

Stendhal's treatise Racine and Shakespeare, as well as the preface to Balzac's The Human Comedy, outlined the basic principles of the rapidly developing realism in France. Revealing the essence of realistic art, Balzac wrote: "The task of art is not to copy nature, but to express it." In the preface to The Dark Case, the writer also put forward his own concept of an artistic image (“type”), emphasizing, first of all, its difference from any real person. Typicality, in his opinion, reflects in the phenomenon the most important features of the general, and only for this reason the "type" can only be "the creation of the creative activity of the artist."

"Poetry of fact", "poetry of reality" became fertile ground for realist writers. The main difference between realism and romanticism became clear. If romanticism, in creating the otherness of reality, repelled from the inner world of the writer, expressing the inner aspiration of the artist's consciousness, directed to the world of reality, then realism, on the contrary, repelled from the realities of the reality surrounding him. It was this essential difference between realism and romanticism that George Sand drew attention to in her letter to Honore de Balzac: “You take a person as he appears to your eyes, and I feel called upon to portray him as I would like to see.”

Hence the different understanding by realists and romantics of the image of the author in a work of art. For example, in The Human Comedy, the image of the author, as a rule, is not singled out as a person at all. And this is the fundamental artistic decision of Balzac the realist. Even when the image of the author expresses his own point of view, he only states the facts. The narration itself, in the name of artistic verisimilitude, is emphatically impersonal: “Although Madame de Langey did not confide her thoughts to anyone, we have the right to assume ...” (“The Duchess de Langey”); “Perhaps this story brought him back to the happy days of life ...” (“Facino Cane”); “Each of these knights, if the data is accurate ...” (“The Old Maid”).

The French researcher of the "Human Comedy", a contemporary of the writer A. Wurmser, believed that Honore de Balzac "can be called Darwin's predecessor", because "he develops the concept of the struggle for existence and natural selection." In the writer's works, the "struggle for existence" is the pursuit of material values, and "natural selection" is the principle according to which the strongest wins and survives in this struggle, the one in whom cold calculation kills all living human feelings.

At the same time, the realism of Balzac, in its accents, differs significantly from the realism of Stendhal. If Balzac, as the “secretary of French society”, “first of all paints its customs, customs and laws, not shying away from psychologism, then Stendhal, as an “observer of human characters”, is primarily a psychologist.

The core of the composition of Stendhal's novels is invariably the story of one person, from which his favorite "memoir-biographical" development of the narrative originates. In the novels of Balzac, especially of the later period, the composition is “eventful”, it is always based on a case that unites all the characters, involving them in a complex cycle of actions, one way or another connected with this case. Therefore, Balzac the narrator embraces with his mind's eye the vast expanses of the social and moral life of his heroes, digging to the historical truth of his age, to those social conditions that form the characters of his heroes.

The originality of Balzac's realism was most clearly manifested in the writer's novel "Father Goriot" and in the story "Gobsek", associated with the novel by some common characters.

The originality of realism as a method occurs in a period when romantics play the leading role in the literary process. Next to them, in the mainstream of romanticism, Merimee, Stendhal, Balzac begin their writing journey. All of them are close to the creative associations of romantics and actively participate in the struggle against the classicists. It was the classicists of the first half of the 19th century, patronized by the monarchical government of the Bourbons, who in these years were the main opponents of the emerging realistic art. Almost simultaneously published the manifesto of the French Romantics - "Preface" to the drama "Cromwell" by V. Hugo and Stendhal's aesthetic treatise "Racine and Shakespeare" have a common critical focus, being two decisive blows to the code of laws of classic art that has already become obsolete. In these most important historical and literary documents, both Hugo and Stendhal, rejecting the aesthetics of classicism, stand up for expanding the subject matter in art, for the abolition of forbidden plots and themes, for representing life in all its fullness and inconsistency. At the same time, for both, the highest model, which should be guided by when creating new art, is the great master of the Renaissance Shakespeare (perceived, however, by both Hugo and Stendhal in different ways). Finally, the first realists of France and the romantics of the 1920s are brought together by a common socio-political orientation, which is revealed not only in opposition to the Bourbon monarchy, but also in a critical perception of bourgeois relations being established before their eyes.

After the revolution of 1830, which was a significant milestone in the development of France, the paths of realists and romantics will diverge, which, in particular, will be reflected in the controversy of the 30s (for example, Balzac's critical reviews of Hugo's drama "Hernani" and his own article "Romantic akathists" ). However, after 1830, the contacts of yesterday's allies in the struggle against the classicists were preserved. Remaining true to the fundamental methods of their aesthetics, the romantics will successfully master the experience of the realists (especially Balzac), supporting them in almost all important undertakings. The realists, in their turn, will follow with interest the works of the romantics, meeting with invariable satisfaction each of their victories (such, in particular, were the relations between J. Sand and Hugo and Balzac).

The realists of the second half of the 19th century will reproach their predecessors for the “residual romanticism” found in Merimee, for example, in his cult of the exotic (the so-called exotic novels), in Stendhal - in his passion for portraying bright personalities and exceptional passions (“Italian Chronicles”) , Balzac - in craving for adventurous plots and the use of fantastic techniques in philosophical stories ("Shagreen Skin"). These reproaches are not without foundation, and this is one of the specific features - there is a subtle connection between realism and romanticism, which is revealed, in particular, in the inheritance of techniques or even themes and motives characteristic of romantic art (the theme of lost illusions, the motive of disappointment).

The great realists see their task as the reproduction of reality as it is, in the knowledge of its internal laws that determine the dialectics and variety of forms. “The historian itself was to be the French society, I had only to be its secretary,” writes Balzac in the Preface. But the objective image is not a passive mirror reflection of this world, because sometimes, as Stendhal notes, “nature presents unusual sights, sublime contrasts” and they can remain incomprehensible to the unconscious mirror. Taking up Stndal's thought, Balzac argues that the task is not to copy nature, but to express it. That is why the most important of the installations - the recreation of reality - for Balzac, Stendhal, Merimee does not exclude such techniques as allegory, fantasy, grotesque, symbolism.

Realism of the second half of the 19th century, represented by the work of Flaubert, differs from the realism of the first stage. There is a final break with the romantic tradition, officially recited already in Madame Bovary (1856). And although bourgeois reality remains the main object of depiction in art, the scale and principles of its depiction are changing. The bright personalities of the heroes of the novel of the 1930s and 1940s are being replaced by ordinary people, not very remarkable. The multi-colored world of truly Shakespearean passions, fierce fights, heartbreaking dramas, captured in Balzac's Human Comedy, the works of Stendhal and Merimee, gives way to the "world of moldy color", the most remarkable event of which is marital adultery.

Fundamental changes are marked, in comparison with the realism of the first stage, and the relationship of the artist with the world in which he chooses the object of the image. If Balzac, Merimee, Stendhal showed an ardent interest in the destinies of this world and constantly, according to Balzac, "felt the pulse of their era, saw its illnesses", then Flaubert declares a fundamental detachment from the reality unacceptable to him, which he draws in his works. Obsessed with the idea of seclusion in an ivory castle, the writer is chained to the present, becoming a harsh analyst and an objective judge. However, for all the paramount importance that critical analysis acquires, one of the most important problems of the great masters of realism remains the problem of a positive hero, because "vice is more effective ... virtue, on the contrary, shows only unusually thin lines to the artist's brush." Virtue is indivisible, but vice is manifold

The end of the 1820s and the beginning of the 1830s, when Balzac entered literature, was the period of the greatest flowering of Romanticism in French literature. The big novel in European literature by the arrival of Balzac had two main genres: a novel of a personality - an adventurous hero ("Robinson Crusoe" by D. Defoe) or a self-deepening, lonely hero ("The Suffering of Young Werther" by W. Goethe) and a historical novel ("Waverley" by V. . Scott).

Realism, on the other hand, is a direction that strives to depict reality. In his work, Balzac departs from both the novel of personality and the historical novel of Walter Scott.

The rise of French realism, starting with the work of Stendhal, took place in parallel with the further development of romanticism in France. It is significant that the first who came out with support and generally positively assessed the realistic searches of Stendhal and Balzac were Victor Hugo (1802-1885) and George Sand (1804-1876) - bright representatives of French romanticism of the Restoration and Revolution of 1830 era.

on the contrary, he repelled from the realities of the reality surrounding him. It was this essential difference between realism and romanticism that George Sand drew attention to in her letter to Honore de Balzac: “You take a person as he appears to your eyes, and I feel called upon to portray him as I would like to see.”

Hence the different understanding by realists and romantics of the image of the author in a work of art. And this is the fundamental artistic decision of Balzac the realist.

The work of Balzac.

Honoré de Balzac (May 20, 1799, Tours - August 18, 1850, Paris) was a French writer. The real name - Honore Balzac, began to use the particle "de", meaning belonging to a noble family, around 1830.

In 1829, the first book signed with the name of Balzac was published: Chouans. The following year, he wrote seven books, among them Family Peace, Gobsek, which attracted wide attention of the reader and critics. In 1831 he published his philosophical novel Shagreen Skin and began the novel A Woman of Thirty. These two books lift Balzac high above his literary contemporaries.

1832 - a record for fertility: Balzac publishes nine complete works, chapters III and IV of his masterpiece: "A Woman of Thirty" and triumphantly enters literature. Reader, critic and publisher pounce on each new book. If his hope of getting rich has not yet been realized (since a huge debt is weighing down - the result of his unsuccessful commercial enterprises), then his hope of becoming famous, his dream of conquering Paris and the world with his talent, has been realized. Success did not turn Balzac's head, as happened to many of his young contemporaries. He continues to lead a hard working life, sitting at his desk for 15-16 hours a day; working until dawn, he annually publishes three, four and even five, six books. However, one should not think that Balzac wrote with particular ease. Many of his works he rewrote and revised many times.

In the works created in the first five or six years of his systematic writing activity (over thirty), the most diverse areas of contemporary French life are depicted: the village, the provinces, Paris; various social groups. A huge number of artistic facts, which were contained in these books, required their systematization. Artistic analysis had to give way to artistic synthesis. In 1834, Balzac had the idea to create a multi-volume work - a "picture of manners" of his time, a huge work, later entitled by him "The Human Comedy". According to Balzac, The Human Comedy was supposed to be the artistic history and artistic philosophy of France as it developed after the revolution.

Balzac works on this work throughout his subsequent life, he includes in it most of the works already written, and specially reworks them for this purpose. He outlined this huge literary edition in the following form:

Balzac reveals his idea in this way: “The study of morals gives the whole social reality, without bypassing any position of human life, not one type, not one male or female character, not one profession, not one everyday form, not one social group, not one French region, no childhood, no old age, no adulthood, no politics, no law, no military life. The basis is the history of the human heart, the history of social relations. Not fictional facts, but what is happening everywhere.”

Having established the facts, Balzac proposes to show their causes. An Inquiry into Morals will be followed by a Philosophical Investigation. In the Study of Morals, Balzac depicts the life of society and gives "typified individuals", in the "Philosophical Investigations" he judges society and gives "individualized types". The establishment of the facts ("Studies on Morals") and the elucidation of their causes ("Philosophical Studies") will be followed by the substantiation of those principles by which life should be judged. This will serve as "Analytical Research". Thus, a person, society, humanity will be described, judged, analyzed in a work that will represent the "Thousand and One Nights" of the West.

LECTURE 24

French realism. — Balzac

We are moving on to a new chapter in nineteenth-century literature, nineteenth-century French realism. To French realism, which began its activity somewhere on the threshold of the 1830s. It will be about Balzac, Stendhal, Prosper Merim. This is a special galaxy of French realists - these three writers: Balzac, Stendhal, Mérimée. They by no means exhaust the history of realism in French literature. They just started this literature. But they are a special phenomenon. I would call them that: the great realists of the romantic era. Think about this definition. The whole epoch, up to the thirties and even up to the forties, basically belongs to romanticism. But against the background of romanticism, writers of a completely different orientation, a realistic orientation, appear. There are still disputes in France. French historians very often consider Stendhal, Balzac, and Mérimée as romantics. For them, this is a special type of romance. Yes, and they themselves ... For example, Stendhal. Stendhal considered himself a romantic. He wrote essays in defense of romanticism. But one way or another, these three, named by me - and Balzac, and Stendhal, and Mérimée - are realists of a very special nature. In every possible way it affects that they are the offspring of the romantic era. Not being romantics, they are still the offspring of the romantic era. Their realism is very special, different from the realism of the second half of the 19th century. In the second half of the 19th century we are dealing with a purer culture of realism. Chis-that, free from impurities and impurity. We observe something similar in Russian literature. It is clear to everyone what a difference there is between the realism of Gogol and Tolstoy.

And the main difference is that Gogol is also a realist of the Romantic era. A realist who arose against the backdrop of the romantic era, in its culture. By the time of Tolstoy, romanticism wilted, left the stage. The realism of Gogol and Balzac was equally nourished by the culture of romanticism. And it is often very difficult to draw any dividing line.

It is not necessary to think that there was romanticism in France, then it left the stage and something else came. It was like this: there was romanticism, and at some time realists came on the scene. And they didn't kill romanticism. Romanticism was still played out on the stage, although there were Balzac, and Stendhal, and Mérimée.

So, the first one I will talk about is Balzac. The great French writer Honore de Balzac. 1799-1850 are the dates of his life. He is the greatest writer, perhaps the most important writer that France has ever put forward. One of the main figures in the literature of the 19th century, a writer who left extraordinary traces in the literature of the 19th century, a writer of great fertility. He left whole hordes of novels behind him. A great worker of literature, a man who tirelessly worked on manuscripts and galleys. A night worker who spent whole nights working on the typesetting of his books. And this huge, unheard-of productivity - it kind of killed him, this nightly work on typographical sheets. His life was short. He worked with all his might.

In general, he had such a manner: he did not finish the manuscripts. And the real finishing for him was already beginning in proofs, in layout. Which, by the way, is impossible in modern conditions, because now there is a different way of dialing. And then, with manual dialing, it was possible.

So, this work on manuscripts, mixed with black coffee. Nights with black coffee. When he died, his friend Théophile Gauthier wrote in a wonderful obituary: Balzac died murdered by so many cups of coffee he drank during the night hours.

But what is remarkable, he was not only a writer. He was a man of very intense life. He was passionate about politics, political struggle, social life. Traveled a lot. He was engaged, though always unsuccessfully, but with great fervour, he was engaged in commercial affairs. Tried to be a publisher.

At one time he set out to develop silver mines in Syracuse. Collector. He amassed a splendid collection of paintings. And so on and so forth. A man of a very wide and peculiar life. Were it not for this circumstance, he would not have had the nourishment for his extensive novels.

He was a man of the most humble origins. His grandfather was a simple farmer. My father had already made it to the people, he was an official.

Balzac - this is one of his weaknesses - was in love with the aristocracy. He would probably trade many of his talents for a good lineage. Grandfather was simply Balsa, a purely peasant surname. Father has already begun to call himself Balzac. "Ak" is a noble ending. And Honore arbitrarily added the particle "de" to his surname. So from Bals through two generations de Balzac turned out.

Balzac is a great innovator in literature. This is a man who discovered new territories in literature that had never been truly processed by anyone before him. In what area is his innovation primarily? Balzac created a new theme. Of course, everything in the world has predecessors. Nevertheless, Balzac created an entirely new theme. With such breadth and boldness, his thematic field has not yet been processed by anyone before him.

What was this new theme? How to define it, almost unprecedented in the literature on such a scale? I would say this: Balzac's new theme is the material practice of modern society. On some modest domestic scale, material practice has always been part of literature. But the fact is that Balzac presents material practice on a colossal scale. And unusually diverse. This is the world of production: industry, agriculture, trade (or, as Balzac preferred to say, commerce); any kind of acquisition; the creation of capitalism; the history of how people make money; the history of wealth, the history of money speculation; a notary's office where transactions are made; all kinds of modern careers, the struggle for life, the struggle for existence, the struggle for success, for material success above all. This is the content of Balzac's novels.

I said that to some extent all these themes have been developed in literature before, but never on a Balzacian scale. All of France, contemporary to him, creating material values - all this France Balzac rewrote in his novels.

Plus, political life, administrative. He strives for encyclopedism in his novels. And when he realizes that some branch of modern life has not yet been displayed to him, he immediately rushes to fill in the gaps. Court. The court is not yet in his novels - he is writing a novel about the courts. There is no army - a novel about the army. Not all provinces are described - the missing provinces are introduced into the novel. And so on.

Over time, he began to introduce all his novels into a single epic and gave it the name "Human Comedy". Not a random name. "The Human Comedy" was to cover the whole of French life, starting (and this was especially important for him) from its lowest manifestations: agriculture, industry, trade - and ascending higher and higher ...

Balzac has appeared in literature, like all people of this generation, since the 1820s. His real heyday was in the thirties, like the romantics, like Victor Hugo. They walked side by side. The only difference is that Victor Hugo far outlived Balzac. It is as if everything I have said about Balzac separates him from romanticism. Well, what did the romantics care about industry, before trade? Many of them disdained these items. It is difficult to imagine a romance for which the main nerve is trade as such, in which merchants, sellers, agents of firms would be the main characters. And with all that, Balzac, in his own way, approaches the romantics. He was eminently inherent in the romantic idea that art exists as a force fighting reality. Like a force that competes with reality. Romantics viewed art as a contest with life. Moreover, they believed that art is stronger than life: art wins in this competition. Art takes away from life everything that life lives for, according to the romantics. In this regard, the short story of the remarkable American romantic Edgar Poe is significant. It sounds a little strange: American Romanticism. For whom romanticism is not befitting, this is America. However, in America there was a romantic school and there was such a wonderful romantic as Edgar Allan Poe. He has a novella "The Oval Portrait". This is a story about how one young artist began to paint his young wife, with whom he was in love. An oval portrait began to be made of her.

And the portrait worked. But here's what happened: the further the portrait moved, the clearer it became that the woman with whom the portrait was being painted was withering and withering. And when the portrait was ready, the artist's wife died. The portrait took on life, and the living woman died. Art conquered life, took away all the strength from life; absorbed all her strength. And abolished life, made it unnecessary.

Balzac had this idea of a contest with life. Here he is writing his epic, The Human Comedy. He writes it in order to cancel reality. All France will pass into his novels. There are anecdotes about Balzac, very characteristic anecdotes. A niece came to him from the province. He, as always, was very busy, but he went out with her to the garden for a walk. He wrote at that time "Eugene Grande". She told him, this girl, about some uncle, aunt ... He listened to her very impatiently. Then he said: enough, let's get back to reality. And he told her the plot of Eugenia Grande. This was called a return to reality.

Now the question is: why was it Balzac who adopted all this huge subject of modern material practice in literature? Why was it not in literature before Balzac?

You see, there is such a naive view, which, unfortunately, our criticism still adheres to: as if absolutely everything that exists can and should be represented in art. Everything can be the theme of art and all arts. They tried to portray the meeting of the local committee in a ballet. The local committee is a respectable phenomenon - why shouldn't the ballet imitate a meeting of the local committee? Serious political themes are developed in the puppet theater. They lose all seriousness. In order for this or that phenomenon of life to enter art, certain conditions are needed. This is not done in a direct way at all. How do they explain why Gogol began to portray officials? Well, there were officials, and Gogol began to portray them. But even before Gogol there were officials. This means that the mere existence of a fact does not mean that this fact can become a topic of literature.

I remember once I came to the Writers' Union. And there is a huge announcement: The Union of Counter Workers is announcing a competition for the best play from the life of the counter workers. I don't think it's possible to write a good play about the life of the counter workers. And they thought: we exist, therefore, a play can be written about us.

I exist, therefore art can be made out of me. And this is not so at all. I think that Balzac with his new themes could have appeared precisely at this time, only in the 1820s and 1830s, in the era of the unfolding of capitalism in France. In the post-revolutionary era. A writer like Balzac is unthinkable in the eighteenth century. Although in the XVIII century there was agriculture, and industry, and trade, etc. Both notaries existed, and merchants, and if they were taken out in literature, then usually under a comic sign. And in Balzac they are found in the most serious sense. Let's take Molière. When Moliere portrays a merchant, a notary, this is a comedic character. And Balzac has no comedy. Although he, for special reasons, called his entire epic "The Human Comedy."

So, I ask why this sphere, this huge sphere of material practice, why does it become the property of literature in this epoch? And the answer is this. Of course, the whole point is in those upheavals, in that social upheaval and in those individual upheavals that the revolution brought about. The revolution removed every kind of shackles, every kind of forced guardianship, every kind of regulation from the material practice of society. This was the main content of the French Revolution: the struggle against all forces that limit the development of material practice, restrain it.

Indeed, imagine how France lived before the revolution. Everything was under state supervision. Everything was controlled by the state. The industrialist had no independent rights. A merchant who produced cloth - he was prescribed by the state what kind of cloth he should produce. There was a whole army of overseers, state controllers, who saw to it that these conditions were observed. Industrialists could only produce what was provided by the state. In amounts provided by the state. Let's say you couldn't develop production indefinitely. Before the revolution, you were told that your enterprise must exist on some strictly defined scale. How many pieces of cloth you can throw into the market - it's all been prescribed. The same applied to trade. Trade was regulated.

Well, what about agriculture? Agriculture was serf.

The revolution canceled all this. She gave industry and trade complete freedom. She freed the peasants from serfdom. In other words, the French Revolution introduced the spirit of freedom and initiative into the material practice of society. And so the whole material practice began to play with life. It acquired independence, individuality, and therefore was able to become the property of art. Balzac's material practice is imbued with the spirit of powerful energy and personal freedom. Behind material practice, people are visible everywhere. Personalities. Free personalities directing it. And in this area, which seemed to be hopeless prose, a kind of poetry is now appearing.

Only that which comes out of the realm of prose, out of the realm of proseism, in which a poetic meaning appears, can get into literature and art. A certain phenomenon becomes the property of art because it exists with a poetic content.

And the personalities themselves, these heroes of material practice, have changed a lot since the revolution. Merchants, industrialists - after the revolution they are completely different people. New practice, free practice requires initiative. First and foremost, initiatives. Free material practice requires talent from its heroes. One must be not only an industrialist, but a talented industrialist.

And you look - these heroes of Balzac, these doers of millions, for example, old Grande - after all, these are talented individuals. Grande does not cause sympathy for himself, but he is a big man. This is talent, mind. This is a real strategist and tactician in his viticulture. Yes, character, talent, intelligence - that's what was required of these new people in all areas.

But people without talents in industry, trade - they all perish at Balzac.

Remember Balzac's novel The History of the Greatness and Fall of Cesar Biroto? Why Cesar Biroto could not stand it, could not cope with life? But because he was mediocrity. And Balzac's mediocrity perishes.

And the financiers of Balzac? Gobsek. This is a highly talented individual. I am not talking about its other properties. This is a talented person, this is an outstanding mind, isn't it?

They tried to compare Gobsek and Plushkin. It's very educational. We in Russia had no grounds for this. Plush-kin - what kind of Gobsek is this? No talent, no mind, no will. This is a pathological figure.

Old Goriot is not as mediocre as Biroto. But still, old Goriot suffers a wreck. He has some commercial talents, but they are not enough. Here Grande, old Grande, is a grandiose personality. You can't say that old Grande is vulgar, prosaic. Although he is only busy with his calculations. This miser, this callous soul - after all, he is not prosaic. I would say this about him: this is a big robber ... Isn't it? He can compete in some importance with Byron's Corsair. Yes, he is a corsair. A special corsair of warehouses with wine barrels. Corsair on the merchant class. This is a very large breed man. Like others ... Balzac has many such heroes ...

The liberated material practice of post-revolutionary bourgeois society speaks in these people. She made these people. She gave them scope, gave them gifts, sometimes even genius. Some of Balzac's financiers or entrepreneurs are geniuses.

Now the second. What did the bourgeois revolution change? The material practice of society, yes. You see, people work for themselves. The manufacturer, the merchant - they do not work for state fees, but for themselves, which gives them energy. But at the same time they work for society. For some specific social values. They work with some vast social horizon in mind.

The peasant cultivated the vineyard for his master - this was the case before the revolution. The industrialist fulfilled the state order. Now it's all gone. They work for an uncertain market. On society. Not for individuals, but for society. So this is what the content of The Human Comedy is primarily about — in the liberated element of material practice. Remember, we constantly talked to you that romantics glorify the element of life in general, the energy of life in general, as Victor Hugo did. Balzac differs from the romantics in that his novels are also filled with elements and energy, but this element and energy receives a certain content. This element is the flow of material things that exist in business, in exchange, in commercial transactions, and so on and so forth.

Moreover, Balzac makes one feel that this element of material practice is an element of paramount importance. Therefore, there are no comedies here.

Here's a comparison for you. Molière has a Gobsec predecessor. There is a Harpagon. But Harpagon is a funny, comic figure. And if you shoot everything funny, you get Gob-sec. He may be disgusting, but not funny.

Molière lived in the depths of another society, and this making of money might have seemed to him a comic occupation. Balsa-ku - no. Balzac understood that making money is fundamental. How could this be funny?

Fine. But the question is, why is the whole epic called "The Human Comedy"? Everything is serious, everything is significant. Still, it's a comedy. Ultimately, it's a comedy. At the end of all things.

Balzac comprehended the great contradiction of modern society. Yes, all these bourgeois that he portrays, all these industrialists, financiers, merchants and so on - I said - they work for society. But after all, the contradiction lies in the fact that it is not a social force that works for society, but separate individuals. But this material practice is not itself socialized, it is anarchic, individual. And this is the great antithesis, the great contrast, which is captured by Balzac. Balzac, like Victor Hugo, knows how to see antitheses. Only he sees them more realistically than is typical of Victor Hugo. Victor Hugo does not grasp such basic antitheses of modern society as a romantic. And Balzac grasps. And the first and greatest contradiction is that the work of a non-social force is going on in society. Scattered individuals work for society. The material practice is in the hands of scattered individuals. And these disparate individuals are forced to wage a fierce struggle with each other. It is well known that in bourgeois society the general phenomenon is competition. This competitive struggle, with all its consequences, Balzac perfectly portrayed. Competitive fight. Bestial relations between some competitors and others. The struggle is for destruction, for suppression. Every bourgeois, every worker in material practice is forced to strive for a monopoly for himself, to suppress the enemy.

This society is captured very well in one letter from Belinsky to Botkin. This letter is dated December 2-6, 1847: “The merchant is a creature by nature vulgar, cheesy, low, contemptible, for he serves Plutus, and this god is more jealous than all other gods and more than them has the right to say: who is not for me , the one against me. He demands for himself a man of everything, without division, and then generously rewards him; he throws those who are not complete into bankruptcy, and then into prison, and finally into poverty. The trader is a creature whose purpose of life is profit, it is impossible to set limits to this profit. It is like sea water: it does not satisfy thirst, but only irritates it more. The trader cannot have interests that are not related to his pocket. For him, money is not a means, but an end, and people are also an end; he has no love and compassion for them, he is more ferocious than the beast, more inexorable than death.<...>This is not a portrait of a shopkeeper in general, but of a genius shopkeeper.” It can be seen that by that time Belinsky had read Balzac. It was Balzac who told him that the merchant could be a genius, Napoleon. This is the discovery of Balzac.

So, what should be highlighted in this letter? It is said that the pursuit of money in modern society does not and cannot have a measure. Here in the old society, pre-bourgeois, a person could set limits for himself. And in the society in which Balzac lived, the measure - any measure - disappears. If you earned yourself only a house with a garden, then you can be sure that in a few months your house and garden will be sold under the hammer. A person should strive to expand his capital. It is no longer a matter of his personal greed. Molière's Harpagon loves money. And this is his personal weakness. Disease. And Gobsek cannot but adore money. He should strive for this endless expansion of his wealth.

Here is the game, here is the dialectic, which Balzac constantly reproduces before you. The revolution freed material relations, material practice. She began by making man free. And it leads to the fact that material interest, material practice, the pursuit of money eats a person to the end. These people, liberated by the revolution, are transformed by the course of things into slaves of material practice, into its captives, whether they like it or not. And this is the real content of Balzac's comedy.

Things, material things, money, property interests eat people up. Real life in this society belongs not to people, but to things. It turns out that dead things have a soul, passions, will, and a person turns into a thing.

Remember old Grande, the arch-millionaire who was enslaved by his millions? Remember his monstrous stinginess? A nephew is coming from Paris. He treats him with almost crow broth. Remember how he raises his daughter?

Dead - things, capital, money become masters in life, and the living become dead. This is the terrible human comedy depicted by Balzac.

French realism of the 19th century in the work of Honore Balzac

Introduction

honoré ́ de Balsa ́ k - French writer, one of the founders of realism in European literature.

Realism, on the other hand, is a direction that strives to depict reality. In his work, Balzac departs from both the novel of personality and the historical novel of Walter Scott. He seeks to show a picture of the whole society, the whole people, the whole of France. Not a legend about the past, but a picture of the present, an artistic portrait of bourgeois society is at the center of his creative attention. The standard-bearer of the bourgeoisie now is a banker, not a commander, its shrine is the stock exchange, not a battlefield. Not a heroic personality and not a demonic nature, not a historical act, but a modern bourgeois society, the France of the July Monarchy - such is the main literary theme of the era. In place of the novel, whose task is to give in-depth experiences of the individual, Balzac puts a novel about social mores, in place of historical novels - the artistic history of post-revolutionary France.

The purpose of this work is to trace the manifestation of these trends in the writer's work, to assess the importance of O. Balzac for the formation of realism as a trend in world literature.

1. Biography of the writer Honore Balzac

The great French writer Honore Balzac was born on May 20, 1799 in the small provincial town of Tours, located on the Loire River.

Honore's grandfather was a farmer and bore the surname Balsa; the father of the future great writer, Bernard-Francois, was a shepherd in childhood, and having become an official and becoming a businessman, he gave it an aristocratic sound - Balzac. Mother Honoré came from a family of a Parisian cloth merchant. She was much younger than her husband, and she was destined to far outlive her brilliant son.

Honore's parents, occupied mainly with hoarding and gaining a respectable position in society, paid very little attention to their first-born.

The most difficult test fell on Honore when he was in his ninth year and he was placed in the Vendôme school - a closed educational institution, which was led, as elsewhere in France at that time, by Catholic monks.

In this school, for all the years of the student's stay in it, meetings with relatives were strictly forbidden, and vacations did not exist at all.

From a very early age, Honore read a lot. He was especially attracted by the works of Rousseau, Montesquieu, Holbach and other famous French enlighteners: they opposed the feudal Catholic Church, the faithful stronghold of reaction, with unheard-of courage. Neglecting all sorts of prohibitions and punishments, Honore read their creations.

When Honore was fourteen years old, he fell seriously ill, and the school authorities demanded that the parents take their son. Balzac's sister Laurence later wrote in her memoirs of her great brother: “A kind of numbness came over him […]. He returned home thinner and emaciated and looked like a lunatic sleeping with his eyes open. He did not hear the questions that were addressed to him.

It took a long time until the boy was able to recover from a serious condition.

Soon the Balzac family moved to Paris, but Honore's life did not get better. Parents demanded that their son become a lawyer and eventually open a notary office. They believed that it would be a great career for him, and Honore's creative plans did not interest them at all. And the young man was forced to enter the "School of Law" (Law Institute) and at the same time is doing practice in a lawyer's office. Is it true. This allowed the future realist writer to penetrate into all the subtleties of judicial chicanery and, over time, brand bourgeois legal proceedings with merciless satire.

Balzac finishes the "School of Law" and, in response to his parents' demand to do "business", declares with all determination that he intends to devote himself to literary work - to become a writer and only in this way build his career and life. An angry father deprived his son of material support, and the future writer led the life of a talented poor man, described so many times in his works. For almost ten years he lived in poverty in the capital's attics. Earning a living writing tabloid novels in the spirit of the then fashionable genre, which he later called "literary dirty".

However, in these years of stormy romantic disputes, Balzac's mighty talent gradually matured. Already in the early 1830s, he began to grope for his own path in art and became a professional writer, although his violent imagination and temperament, as well as the desire to get rich, quite in the spirit of the mercantile age, now and then pushed him to fantastic "business" ventures (as the purchase of a printing house and the release of a cheap edition of French classics, the development of silver mines abandoned by the Romans). All of them invariably ended in failure and only increased the amount of debts, from which, despite hard literary labor, Balzac was never able to get out until the end of his days.

Hounded by creditors, usurers, publishers, not leaving home for months, spending sleepless nights at his desk, Balzac worked with feverish speed and superhuman stress, driven not only by the impatience of the artist, but also by the need to escape from monetary bondage. Overwork completely upset his health and led to an early death.

Balzac's correspondence reveals the drama of the existence of a great artist - a victim of a money society, so brilliantly captured in his novels.

“I almost lost bread, candles, paper. The bailiffs hounded me like a hare, worse than a hare” (November 2, 1839). “To work is ... it means always getting up at midnight, writing before 8 in the morning, having breakfast in fifteen minutes and working again until five, having lunch, going to bed and starting all over again tomorrow” (February 15, 1845).

“... I write all the time; when I'm not sitting on the manuscript, I'm thinking about the plan, and when I'm not thinking about the plan, I'm correcting the galleys. Here is my life" (November 14, 1842).

In the rare moments when Balzac found himself in society, he amazed those around him with a brilliance of mind and a peculiar charm.

The writer's craving for aristocratic salons was also reflected in the story of Balzac's marriage, similar to one of his novels. Since 1838, Balzac began a correspondence acquaintance and long-term correspondence with the Polish Countess Evelina Ganskaya, a subject of the Russian Tsar; in March 1850, Balzac married her in the city of Berdichev, spent three months in his wife's huge estate - Verkhovnya, near Kiev, then took her to Paris, and on August 8 the writer died.

2. The influence of historical realities on creative activity

.1 Balzac and his time

In July 1830, the government of King Charles X was overthrown in France. His elder brother Louis XVI was executed in 1793. The average Louis XVIII, after being in exile, in 1814 was put on the throne by the rulers of the then Europe, who hoped to extinguish the fire of the Revolution forever. The attempts of Kings Louis XVIII and Charles X to return France to the era of feudalism failed completely. After the July Revolution of 1830, the capitalist development of the country went into full swing. Kings - aristocrats were replaced by the banker king, the bourgeois king Louis-Phillip.

Deceived after the July Revolution, the proletariat did not lay down its arms in the 1930s. In 1831 - a grandiose uprising of the Lyon weavers. In 1832 - barricades in the streets of Paris and bloodshed at the walls of the monastery of Saint-Merry. In 1834 - a new uprising of Lyon weavers.

Constant fermentation of minds, constant discontent. Until fierce censorship was reinstated, caricatures of the pear-shaped Louis Philippe never left the pages of successful satirical magazines.

It was 1830 that became the starting point for the literary activity of Balzac, Stendhal, Hugo, George Sand. Balzac created everything important from 1830 to 1848. And he became a kind of historian of two eras: the era of the Restoration and the era of the July Monarchy. Turbulent social events determined the historicism of Balzac's novels and led him to the concept of The Human Comedy.

Observation, the ability to look into other people's lives, into other people's minds and hearts became the main passion of the young Honore. In the thirst to know how different people live, the anti-romantic trait of his nature, characteristic of the new conditions of the capitalist world, when people were forced to take a more sober look at their life situation and their relationships with other people, was affected.

The young Balzac realizes in himself great strength, great talent, he overcomes many obstacles and embarks on the path of the writer he has chosen. In 1830, he wrote the novel "Gobsek", a year later - "Shagreen Skin", "Louis Lambert", "Unknown Masterpiece", in 1832 - "Colonel Chabert", in 1833 - Eugene Grande.

In 1834, when Balzac was working on the novel “Father Goriot”, he was struck by the thought that had been preparing for a long time in it: to create not separate novels, novellas and short stories, but one grandiose cycle that arises according to one plan, setting itself one goal - to understand and embody life of modern France in all its manifestations. All classes of society, all professions, all ages. The main thing is all types of people: rich and poor, doctors and students, priests and officers, actresses and maids, secular ladies and laundresses. Penetrate into all hearts, enter into the inner rhythm of heterogeneous lives, understand society as a whole, exploring it in parts. To connect the analysis of one experience in the synthesis of a grandiose and fully meaningful panorama.

In this regard, each individual novel becomes a particle of a multi-comprehensive whole, threads came out of it and stretched far into other stories and novels.

No novelist, either before or during Balzac's time, came so close to the task of exhaustively and accurately studying the state of modern society. A completely truthful and morally demanding study of society makes Balzac an anti-bourgeois writer, consistent and irreconcilable. The moral decline of the aristocracy is also obvious to him. Declaring himself a legitimist, a supporter of royal power in its pre-revolutionary pre-bourgeois form, Balzac at that time showed an uncompromising attitude towards bourgeois society, but also a lack of an ideal facing the future. Balzac is all in his era, he is equally inaccessible to a true understanding of the past and penetration into the future destinies of the people. His grandiose creation is almost entirely devoted to his present, the life of the French people after the revolution of 1789, mainly the first half of the nineteenth century.

Balzac did not immediately find the name of the entire cycle “The Human Comedy”. Dante's "Divine Comedy" was meant, but in the word "comedy" Balzac has a completely different meaning. It contains a harsh sentence to the nonsense - the comedy of social life contemporary to Balzac.

Reading any work of this cycle, you need to penetrate into a single, special Balzac style, you need to hear the voice of this author, you need to delve into his human studies, comprehend the nature of his creative thought.

Balzac's contemporaries were puzzled by his style. There was neither the dexterity, nor the elegance of the French prose writers of the eighteenth century, nor the brilliant pathos of Chateaubriand and Hugo. This style resembled, if at all, the style of such rejected, considered crude novelists as Retief de la Bretonne, such cumbersome memoirists of the seventeenth century as the Duke de Saint-Simon.

But the poet Theophile Gautier and the literary historian Hippolyte Taine already in the 50s of the nineteenth century, in defiance of all critics, started talking about the mathematical exact correspondence of Balzac's style to his idea, about the metaphor in the "Human Comedy", unexpected, bold and capable of establishing new significant connections between individual objects. .

The greatness of Balzac as an artist is now beyond doubt for his compatriots. The modern researcher of his work, Pierre Barberis, says this about this: “There was more genius in Balzac than Flaubert, Zola, the Goncourt brothers. He was of the breed of Shakespeare and Michelangelo. The temperament and mythology of Balzac is at the very heart of each of his novels… reality in his eyes is not ordinary, but lightning fast.”

This high assessment of a modern French literary critic is close to what Friedrich Engels wrote already in 1888: “Balzac, whom I consider a much greater master of realism than all the Zolas of the past, present and future, in The Human Comedy gives us the most remarkable realistic history of French society

In Russia, the greatness of Balzac was defended by A.I. Herzen, F.M. Dostoevsky, M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, N.G. Chernyshevsky.

Balzac violated the ossified norms of "good taste".

To understand Balzac, one must enter into his style. Balzac loves a full-bodied, courageous, tightly soldered word, feels and is aware of its inner form. His hyperbole is full of intelligence and sarcasm, his metaphor contains tightly compressed ideas, his epithet brings out the deeply hidden properties of people and things. Syntactic heaps reflect people's labored breathing, life's confusion. His portraits are sculptural. In most cases, they depict very ordinary people. But intellectual portraits are also characteristic of him, harmonious and subtle and powerful. In the depiction of a street, a house, a room, living imprints of human life are clearly visible, and every detail is addressed to the reader as a clearly expressed thought. The plot movement, slowed down at the beginning, is gaining more and more strength, involving the reader in a growing, natural course of action that reveals the fate of people. You are constantly aware of the inner necessity of events with their external unexpectedness: they are conditioned by the characters' characters. The image of private life, given in close-up, is always combined with the life of the city, town, village and with the life of France, which remains the most constant subject of Balzac's vigilant and spiritual thought.

.2 Balzac realism

balzac gobsek short story

What was the impact of the formation of realism in the work of Balzac?

) A person, the main object of a realistic story or novel, ceases to be a separate individual separated from society and class. An integral social fabric, by its nature infinitely multiple, in which each character is its particle, is being explored. So, in the novel "Father Goriot" in the foreground is the boarding house of Mrs. Voke. The yellow paint, the smell of decay, and the landlady herself, with her flip-flop shoes and sugary smile, sum up the impression of the boarding house. And there is something in common in the social status of all its inhabitants, which, however, does not prevent a sharp selection of individually specific inhabitants: the cynic Vautrin, the ambitious young Rastignac, the noble worker Bianchon, the shy Quiz, the complacent and preoccupied father Goriot. In Balzac's Human Comedy there are more than two thousand very significant and multifaceted characters studied by him.

Balzac's creative activity is infinitely difficult. Learn to penetrate into the minds and hearts of people close to him and strangers of different classes of society, different ages and professions. Balzac in the novel "Facino Canet" spoke about how he learned this. He peered into unfamiliar faces, caught snippets of other people's conversations, he trained himself to live in the feelings and thoughts of other people, felt their worn clothes on his shoulders, their holey shoes on his feet, he lived in someone else's environment of poverty, or luxury, or average prosperity. He himself becomes either a miser, or a spendthrift, or an irresistibly passionate seeker of new truths, or an idle adventurer.

It is with such penetration into other people's characters and mores that realism begins.

1)Not only a person, not only the relationship of people - the history of contemporary society occupied Balzac. His method was the knowledge of the general through the particular. Through Father Goriot, he learned how people get rich and how they go bankrupt in bourgeois society, through Tyfer - how crime becomes the first step towards creating a large fortune for the future banker, through Gobsek - how the passion for accumulating money suppresses everything living in the bourgeois of this era, in Vautrin he sees the extreme expression of that philosophical cynicism, which, like an ailment, affects different strata of society.

2)Balzac is one of the creators and classics of critical realism. Quite in vain the word "critical" is sometimes equated with the word negative and it is believed that this concept includes only one negative attitude towards the depicted reality. The concepts of "critical" and "accusatory" are identified. Critical means analyzing, examining, exacting. "Criticism" - the search and judgment of the merits and demerits ... ".

)In order to reproduce the history and philosophy of his contemporary society, Balzac could not confine himself to a single novel or a series of separate independent novels. It was necessary to create something integral and at the same time facing in different directions. The Human Comedy is a cycle of novels connected by one grand plan. In relatively rare cases, one novel is a continuation of another. So, in "Gobsek" - the further fate of the family of the Count de Resto, shown in the novel "Father Goriot". Even more consistent is the connection between Lost Illusions and The Luminosity and Poverty of the Courtesans. But most novels have their own complete plot, their own complete idea, although the characters, both primary and secondary, constantly move from novel to novel.

)Balzac's predecessors taught to understand the lonely, suffering human soul. Balzac discovered something new: the integrity, interdependence of human society. The antagonism that is tearing this society apart. With what contempt will the marquis d Espar of the young poet, learning that he was the son of an Angouleme apothecary! The class struggle will form the basis of the novel The Peasants. And each of his characters is a particle of that huge picture, both disharmonious and dialectically integral, which the author always has before his eyes. Therefore, in The Human Comedy, the author is completely different than in a romantic novel. Balzac called himself a secretary. Society uses his pen and tells about itself through him. This is where the novelist approaches the scientist. The main thing is not the expression of something personal, but the correct understanding of the subject being studied, the disclosure of the laws governing it.

)The concreteness and diversity of language in Balzac's works are associated with a new kind of detail, when the color of the house, the appearance of an old armchair, the creak of a door, the smell of mold become significant, socially saturated signals. This is the imprint of human life, telling about it, expressing its meaning.

The image of the external appearance of things becomes an expression of a stable or changeable state of mind of people. And it turns out that not only a person, his way of life influences the material world subordinate to him, but, on the contrary, a kind of power of the world of things that can warm and enslave the human soul is affected. And the reader of the Balzac novel lives in the sphere of objects that express the meaning of the bourgeois way of life, which oppresses the human personality.

6)Balzac comprehends and establishes the laws of social life, the laws of human characters, and, ultimately, the human spirit, infringed by the conditions of a possessive world and striving for freedom. It is Balzac's human studies, the ability to penetrate the inner structure of people, young and old, poor and rich, men and women, that is the true wealth of the "Human Comedy".

Therefore, the reader of this multi-component work, already in its linguistic fabric, should feel the strongest scope of the author's inculcating and multi-volume thought everywhere. If we knew our era perfectly, we would know ourselves better, ”says Balzac in the philosophical and political novella“ Z. Marx. Through the understanding of the whole society, a complete understanding of oneself and any other person is achieved. And vice versa, through the understanding of many people, one can reach the understanding of the people. Such guiding threads, important for the correct and integral perception of the "Human Comedy", saturate the author's speech, not only pictorial and visual, but also philosophically penetrating.

3. The work of Balzac "Gobsek"

.1 Origin of the novel

In the spring of 1830, in the newspaper Fashion, Balzac published an essay called The Moneylender. It was a characteristic essay, giving the appearance of a typical Parisian usurer. There was no plot in the essay, and there was none. But this was the grain from which a realistic short story grew, which, however, did not immediately acquire its final form. It originally had a more edifying title: The Perils of a Vicious Life.

From the beginning of the 40s, the final name was determined - "Gobsek".

In the course of this revision, links so important for Balzac with other parts of the Human Comedy were established. The figure of Derville appeared, who plays a decisive role in the short story "Colonel Chabert", and in other works - episodic roles. The tragedy of the de Resto family is a direct continuation of the novel Father Goriot. Maxime de Tray is a recurring character in The Human Comedy. And Esther van Gobsek, the great-niece of the usurer, appears in the novel The Glitter and Poverty of the Courtesans. Gobsek is a very important part of The Human Comedy.

.2 Composition of the novel

The framing of the novel "Gobsek" is very skillful. “At one in the morning, in the winter from 1829 to 1830, there were still two strangers in the salon of the Vicomtesse de Granlier. A handsome young man has just come out at the chime of the clock.

In the same first paragraph, the beginning of the action. Madame de Grandlier's daughter Camille, pretending to be looking at something on the wall, went to the window and listened to the noise of the departing carriage. Therefore, even the clatter of hooves and the rumble of wheels were dear to her. And the mother guessed in this her daughter's long-troubled hobby. She reads her daughter a strict notation: Camille shows excessive attention to the young Ernest de Resto, but meanwhile the mother strongly disapproves of this choice. After all, the mother of this charming young man is a person of low birth, a certain Mademoiselle Goriot, there was a lot of noise around her name in her time, she treated her father and her husband badly. No matter how noble the behavior of Ernest himself, while his mother is alive, not a single family will trust him and his mother with the future and condition of a young girl.

The viscountess does not express her thoughts to the end, she considers it indecent. And she thinks that Ernest's mother, Anastasi de Resto, ruined her family, and Ernest is too poor to become Camilla's fiancé. The mother sternly but quietly scolds her daughter. Nothing could be heard in the next room, especially since there was a game of cards. However, one of the two players guessed what was troubling the viscountess.

This is a quick-witted frequenter of an aristocratic salon, a solicitor for business, a lawyer Derville. By itself, Derville in this short story does not become one of the central characters. The author needs him as a witness, as a participant, and not as a character. This is a hard worker who studied with copper money, nevertheless received a legal education, won the trust of clients, enters the houses of the nobility in need, and knows well the dark corners of contemporary Paris.

“Observant by nature” and by his profession, Derville guesses that the viscountess de Granlier inspires his daughter, he intervenes in the conversation with a specific goal: to show that Ernest de Resto is far from being as poor as the arrogant aristocrat thinks. In essence, he does not object to her, he is far from trying to convince her that it is not wealth that makes happiness, no, Derville submits to her prejudice. She is mistaken, and he will prove it (not in his prejudices, you cannot convince her of this! - but only in circumstances and facts). She does not know that, upon reaching adulthood, Ernest de Resto will receive the inheritance of his father saved for him.

The final frame of the novel is very significant. Upon learning that Ernest was in for a very significant wealth, Madame de Grandlier involuntarily blurted out: it was his alleged poverty that was in her eyes an obstacle to his marriage to Camille. Yet she is not completely convinced, she speaks proudly and importantly: “We will think about it later, Ernest must be very rich so that a family like ours could accept his mother. Just think - my son will soon become the Duke de Granlier ... "

In a word, the framing of a novella is, in its way, a novella. The manners of that aristocracy, which returned with Louis XVIII from emigration, restored their wealth by depriving the people of houses, forests and lands, for which the titles - count, especially the duke - are of great value and for which, nevertheless, the decisive force is money.

.3 Portrait of a pawnbroker

Lawyer Derville begins his story with a portrait in which all the colors inherent in a Balzac portrait are invested, clouded, restrained, breaking through the semi-darkness. The appearance of a person is “pale and dull”, there is something “lunar” in him. Silver with some of the gilding gone. Ash gray hair. Facial features "cast in bronze". Yellow tiny eyes, the eyes of a marten, a predatory little animal. Eyes that are afraid of the light, covered with a visor. Narrow, compressed lips and nose, pointed, pockmarked and hard, boring. you not only see, you feel the sculptural appearance of the portrait: “In the yellow wrinkles of his senile face one could read terrifying secrets: love trampled under foot, and the falsity of imaginary wealth, lost, found, the fate of different people, cruel trials and delights of a triumphant predator - all entered the portrait of this man. Everything was imprinted on him.”

The main color of the portrait is indicated by the epithet yellow. This color in the literature acquires different meanings. Yellow eyes, afraid of the light, peering out from behind a black visor, belong to a predatory, secretive person.

It was a usurer, his name was Gobsek. In French usurer means to wear out, to deplete. the word itself contains a type of person who owns large sums of money, ready to supply this money to anyone, but on the security of things even more valuable than the money received, and on enslaving terms to repay the debt with a huge increase. this is a profession that allows you to get big incomes, doing nothing, spending nothing. Constantly enriching.

The usurer is a characteristic figure for the heyday of capitalist society, when the merchant needs to intercept a large amount of money in order not to miss a profitable product, when a burnt-out aristocrat is ready to pawn family jewels, if only to support his usual way of life, for which there is no longer enough money.

The name Gobsek - Sukhoglot, chopped off and sharp, is also a kind of portrait of a hard, uncompromising, greedy person. He was stingy even with movement. "His life passed by making no more noise than sand in an old-fashioned clock."

This is a gloomy figure of a cunning businessman and a cruel miser. But he was Derville's neighbor, they met, became close. And surprisingly, the modest and honest worker Derville felt some kindness towards Gobsek. And Gobsek began to treat Derville with respect and even love, who led a modest life, did not want to profit from him and was free from those vices with which the people who crowded around the usurer were oversaturated. He, full of confidence in Derville, at a decisive moment even gives him generous support: he gives him money on the condition of receiving the most moderate interest. Without interest, he cannot give money even to his closest friend!

Yet the miser is by nature alone. "If sociability, humanity were a religion, then in this sense Gobsek could be considered an atheist." Alienation of a person in a possessive world is shown in this image in the most extreme degree. Gobsek is not afraid of death, but he is depressed by the thought that his treasures will pass to someone else, that he, dying, will let them out of his hands.

Gobseck has his own complete and largely correct understanding of contemporary society. "Everywhere there is a fight between the poor and the rich, and it is inevitable." He believes that beliefs, morality - empty words. Only personal interest! Only one value - gold. The rest is changeable and transitory.

Bills held by Gobsek. According to which he receives money, they lead him to different, completely alien people for him. So he ends up in the luxurious mansion of the Counts de Resto. He tells Derville about this visit, and Derville tells Madame de Grandlier, her elderly relative, and her daughter. This story retains a double imprint: the caustic irony of Gobsek and the human softness of Derville.

What a contrast: a dry, bilious old man at noon in the boudoir of a high-society beauty, barely awake after a nightly ball. In the luxury surrounding her, there are traces of yesterday's night, fatigue, negligence everywhere. Gobsek's sharp gaze also comprehends something else: through this luxury, poverty peeps and bares its sharp teeth. And in the guise of Countess Anastasi de Resto herself - confusion, confusion, fear. And yet, how much beauty is in it, but also strength!

Gobsek, even Gobsek, looked at her admiringly. She is forced to receive a pawnbroker in her boudoir, humbly asking him for a reprieve. And here also the husband comes very inopportunely. Gobsek sees with pleasure that he holds in his hands her shameful secret. She is his slave. “This is one of my suppliers,” the countess is forced to lie to her husband. She quietly slips Gobsek what has turned up from the jewels, just to get him off.

In his own way, the pawnbroker is scrupulously honest. The diamond received from Anastasi was worth two hundred francs more than Gobsek was supposed to receive it. He takes advantage of the first opportunity to return these two hundred francs. He passes them on through the lover of the Countess Maxime de Tray, whom he met on the threshold. A fleeting impression of Maxim: “I read the future countess on his face. This charming blond, cold and soulless gambler, will ruin, ruin her, ruin her husband, ruin her children, devour their inheritance and destroy and destroy more than a whole artillery battery could destroy.

.4 Tragedy of the de Resto family

The plot of further events is the scene when Maxime de Tray, importunately pestering Derville, convinces the young lawyer to accompany him to Gobsek and recommend him to the usurer as his friend. Under no circumstances would Gobsek give anything to Maxim in debt. But at the same time, Anastasi arrived with diamonds belonging to her husband and her children, ready to pawn them, if only to help out her lover.

At the miser of the usurer, in a damp dark room, a greedy dispute takes place between the one who keeps an unlimited amount of money, and those. Who is accustomed to their unbridled squandering.

Colors of amazing power are invested in this picture of rough bargaining. Father Goriot's eldest daughter in this everyday scene, in spite of her vile role, is especially beautiful. The passion that has taken possession of her, her anxiety, the very consciousness of the criminality of her actions, the fear of failure and even exposure - all this does not erase, but enhances the radiance of her harsh and rude beauty.

And the diamonds she lays out They sparkle under Balzac's pen with triple strength. Gobsek has an old eye, but piercingly corrosive and passionate. Through his eyes of a passionate connoisseur we see the rarest jewels of the de Resto family.

Get those diamonds! Get them for nothing! Yes, and give Maxim his former IOUs, purchased from other moneylenders on the cheap, on account of the money issued!

As soon as Anastasi and Maxim left the dwelling of Gobsek, he rejoices. This is his complete triumph. All this was seen by Derville, penetrating far behind the scenes of Parisian life, initiated into its innermost secrets ...

Comte de Resto, dejected by the behavior of his wife, heartbroken and aware that his days are numbered, is concerned about the fate of his son Ernest. It is clear that the two younger ones do not belong to him. Convinced of the scrupulous honesty of the usurer, he decides to entrust him with all his fortune in order to protect him from the extravagance of Anastasi. Ernest is to receive this fortune on the day of his coming of age. This is where Derville leads his nocturnal narration in Madame de Grandlier's salon.

There is another striking scene in his story. Derville learns from Gobsek that the Comte de Restaud is dying. At the same time, Gobsek drops a phrase that at once reveals his insight, his unexpected responsiveness to someone else's mental suffering, and the same phrase contains the final description of Anastasi's husband: “This is one of those gentle souls who do not know how to overcome their grief and expose themselves to a deadly hit".

Derville seeks a meeting with the dying count, and he is impatiently waiting for him: they need to finish the business with a will that will not leave the countess and her younger children penniless, but will save the main wealth for Ernest. But Anastasi, fearing to lose everything, does not allow the lawyer to see his client.

Anastasi's state of mind, unraveled by the perceptive lawyer, is given with amazing clarity and completeness. Her bitter disappointment in Maxim, her annoyance that she got into such a position, and the desire to charm and disarm Derville, whom she considers her enemy, and shame before him, as a witness to the scene at the usurer, and a firm decision at any cost, if necessary, then crime, to seize the entire inheritance of a dying husband.

No matter how complex the tangle of heterogeneous thoughts and feelings is, the furiously passionate struggle for money turns out to be decisive. That is why in the depiction of the state of mind of Anastasi de Resto there is no less profound criticism of the possessive, bourgeois world than even in the image of the usurer.

At night, Derville and Gobsek, who were informed of the death of the count, came to the house and entered the room of the deceased.

The tragedy of the situation, completely personal, acquires under the pen of Balzac the character of a terrible symbol, exposing the desires of the possessive world.

“A terrible mess reigned in this room. Disheveled, with burning eyes, the Countess, stunned, stood in the middle of her rummaged clothes, papers, all kinds of rags ... As soon as the count died, his widow immediately broke open all the drawers ... everywhere there was an imprint of her bold hands ... The corpse of the deceased was thrown back and lay across the bed , like one of the envelopes torn and thrown on the floor ... The print of her foot was still visible on the pillow.

The dying de Resto called on Derville and pressed the revocation of his former will to his chest. At the urging of the lawyer, realizing his innocence, Resto included in his will both his wife and her younger children. It was this testament in fright and haste that Anastasi managed to burn. She deprived herself of everything.

Gobsek took over the house and all the possessions of an aristocratic family. He began to manage prudently and sparingly, increasing wealth. Madame de Granlier can be calm about her daughter: in a few days, Ernest de Resto will receive his inheritance in full, and even in an increased form.

The tragedy of the de Resto family: the folly of extravagance, like the folly of avarice, leads to the same end. This short story within a short story gives the whole work a truly tragic character.

.5 Conclusion

The death of the usurer is described on the last pages of the novel. Derville found him crawling around the room, already powerless to get up and lie down on the bed. Gobseck dreamed that the room was full of living, swaying gold. And he rushed to grab it.

So that he would not have neighbors, Gobsek alone occupied several rooms, cluttered with all kinds of food, which all rotted, and even the fish grew mustaches.

Until the last days of his life, Gobsek swallowed countless fortunes and was no longer able to digest them. If gold were to rot, it would rot in him.

One thought oppressed the dying Gobsek: he parted with his wealth.

Conclusion

Balzac, as a realist, drew attention in his work to modernity, interpreting it as a historical era in its historical originality.

Images such as Rastignac, Baron Nusengen, Cesar Biroto and countless others are the most complete examples of what is called "the portrayal of typical characters in typical circumstances." In his work, realism is already coming close to scientific knowledge, and some novels, in terms of the depth of their cognitive approach to social phenomena and social psychology, leave far behind everything that bourgeois science has done in this area.

Due to the peculiarities of his work, Balzac enjoyed great popularity in Europe during his lifetime. The works of Balzac influenced the prose of Dickens, Zola, Faulkner and others. His reputation as one of the greatest prose writers of the 19th century was universally acknowledged.

In Russia, his work has become known since the beginning of the 30s. 19th century Interest in him was shown by A.S. Pushkin, V.G. Belinsky, A.I. Herzen, I.S. Turgenev, L.N. Tolstoy, especially F.M. Dostoevsky and M. Gorky, on whom he had a significant influence.

Russian literary criticism pays great attention to the problems of Balzac realism, as one of the pinnacles of world literature.

balzac gobsek short story

Bibliography

1. Great Soviet Encyclopedia

Gerbstman A.I. Honore Balzac, biography of the writer [Text]: a guide for students / A.I. Herbstman. - St. Petersburg: Education, 1972. - 118 p. (requires reissue)

Ionkis G.E. Honore Balzac [Text]: a guide for students / G.E. Ionics. - M.: Enlightenment, 1988. - 175 p. (requires reissue)

History of foreign literature of the nineteenth century [Text]: textbook for students ped. in-tov / ed. Ya.N. Zasursky, S.V. Turaev. - M.: Enlightenment, 1982. - 320 p. (requires reissue).

Literary Encyclopedia

Chicherin A.V. The works of O. Balzac "Gobsek" and "Lost Illusions" [Text]: textbook for philol. specialist. ped. in-tov / A.V. Chicherin. - M.: Higher. school, 1982 - 95 p. (requires reissue).