Understanding Balzac

Lost Illusions is, among other things, the story of how a provincial poet in nineteenth century Paris becomes a social-climbing hack journalist. He does this, of course, in order to eat. As Uncle Karl never tired of telling us, what you do and what you believe are not always the same thing.

I, unfortunately, did this model. Tens of thousands of dollars of sophisticated software and the better part of a week; for what?

In Balzac’s words:

“And once I had a tragedy accepted! And among my papers I have a poem that will not live! And I was a good fellow! My love was pure, once – and now I have an actress at the Panorama-Dramatique for my mistress – I, who once dreamed of noble loves, for distinguished women of the great world! And now, if a publisher refuses to send a copy of it to my newspaper, I am prepared to run down a book that I think is good.”

“Ah! Those who see [the art] as I once did . . . as an angel with diaphanous wings, clad in immaculate white, with a palm of virtue in one hand and a flaming sword in the other – a sort of cross between the mythological abstraction who lives at the bottom of a well, and the virtuous poor girl of the suburbs, who refuses to grow rich at the expense of chastity, and who makes her way by efforts of a noble courage, reascending to the skies without a stain on her character (always supposing she does not end her days soiled, despoiled, polluted, and forgotten on a pauper’s bier) – men like that, whose brains are helmeted in bronze, whose hearts remain still warm under the snows of experience, and seldom met in [this great city.]” – H. Balzac, Lost Illusions, 1843

The older I get, the more I understand the world – and the less I respect it.

Compare: Romancing the Profession