The writer Balzac designed his characters with the 18th century "science" of phrenology and physiognomy, still regarded as a science today in many parts of the world.
It is in his almost constant reliance upon the science of physiognomy that Balzac betrays most ingenuously his tendency to look to some general system of ideas for the governing factors and justifications of his plots. Not content with simply describing a character's face and appearance, he also insists on on each of the features described revealing some aspect of the person's psychology and character. (Marceau, 251)
The faces and bodies of characters in Balzac become control panels for their personality. The features of the face and body select personality traits, personality traits that predetermine the character's destiny. Since the world of Balzac's Comedie Humaine is so small and the destinies of its characters so interwoven, the features of the face and body often determine the destiny of the whole world...as created by Balzac.
Balzac's story "The Vicar of Tours" provides a good example of how physiognomy controls plot. Take Mlle Gamard, an unmarried woman who runs a boarding house for priests and who is also in dire need of friends:
Her aquiline nose was of all her facial characteristics the one that did most to express the despotism of her ideas, just as the flattened angle of her forehead betrayed the narrowness of her mind. ("The Vicar of Tours")
The first priest to live as a boarder in her house, having some insight into the situation, avoids friendship and all sustained interactions. His successor, unaware of the consequences, freely socializes with her. When he finds her not a little domineering and tries to extricate himself from the situation, it is already too late, his fate is sealed, he is doomed.
This little web page is devoted to one of the most important instruments Balzac used as he flew over his world, composing it as he went along: the nose.
The variety of different noses one encounters in Balzac is truly amazing. Usually you would only encounter these amazing noses over a lifetime or at least over a very long period of time as you made your made through life or the stories of Balzac, but for the impatient there is a shortcut: the computer.
If all you're after is a quick survey of the noses in Balzac's world check out: descriptive adjectives typically used to describe noses. These descriptive adjectives are unlikely to quench your curiousity though. They're like zooming over the peaks of the Comedie Humaine's noses without experiencing anything of their depth and brilliance.
The nose is really a rich vein of descriptive brilliance in the Comedie Humaine and the only way to truly understand this is to survey everything that Balzac has to say about noses for yourself. For this you need to use a so-called "grep" utility on your computer to search through texts. The 98 Balzac works available through Project Gutenberg contain over 4 million words. If you attempted to find all of Balzac's noses manually, it could easily take you years.
The "grep utility" (Unix-speak) is a type of computer program that allows you to search for a word or phrase in multiple files. I used the shareware "Editplus" editor [screen capture] to pull up all the places where "nose" occurs (references) in the Comedie Humaine. By clicking on the reference you can go straight to the original text where the reference occurs and see everything that Balzac has to say about noses at that point in his writing. That is the method used to collect these "Balzac Nose Quotes" the contents of the next section, so please read on. (Note: An incredible variety of free grep programs are available online. Just do a search on "grep" at Google.com)
If one looks closely at every one of the almost 400 references to the 'nose' in the Comedie Humaine you'll find some very interesting descriptions. Here are some of these wonderful descriptions extracted from the works that contain them:
| His nose, thick at the end, bore a veined wen, which the common people said, not without reason, was full of malice. (M. Grandet, gngnd10) |
| The line of the nose might have seemed cold, like a steel blade, without two rosy nostrils, the movements of which were out of keeping with the chastity of that dreamy brow, often perplexed, sometimes smiling, but always of an august serenity. (Gabrielle, htdsn10) |
| Imagine a bald head, the brow full and prominent and falling with deep projection over a little flattened nose turned up at the end like the noses of Rabelais and Socrates (the young visitor, The Hidden Masterpiece, hmstp10) |
| Socratic face with its blunt nose (Michu, hmyst10) |
| his thin flat nose had the sardonic expression which we see in a death's head (police officer, hmyst10) |
| an unnatural distance between his nose and mouth which gave him a submissive air, wholly in keeping with his character (Monsieur d'Hauteserre, hmyst10) |
| Mademoiselle d'Aubrion was a long, spare, spindling demoiselle, like her namesake the insect; her mouth was disdainful; over it hung a nose that was too long, thick at the end, sallow in its normal condition, but very red after a meal,--a sort of vegetable phenomenon which is particularly disagreeable when it appears in the middle of a pale, dull, and uninteresting face. ...However, to counterbalance her personal defects, the marquise gave her daughter a distinguished air, subjected her to hygienic treatment which provisionally kept her nose at a reasonable flesh-tint... showed her the trick of melancholy glances which interest a man and make him believe that he has found a long-sought angel, taught her the manoeuvre of the foot,--letting it peep beneath the petticoat, to show its tiny size, at the moment when the nose became aggressively red; (Mademoiselle d'Aubrion, gngnd10) |
| "Jean, fill up all the holes except those at the bank of the river; there you are to plant the poplars I have bought. Plant 'em there, and they'll get nourishment from the government," he said, turning to Cruchot, and giving a slight motion to the wen on his nose, which expressed more than the most ironical of smiles. (Grandet, gngnd10) |
| a nose so sharp at the tip that it put you in mind of a gimlet (gobseck, gbsek10) |
| She is an oldish woman, with a bloated countenance, and a nose like a parrot's beak set in the middle of it (Mme Vauquer, frgrt10) |
| Rouge had destroyed by this time the diaphanous tints of her cheeks, the flesh of which was still delicate; although she could no longer blush or turn pale, she had a thin nose with rosy, passionate nostrils, made to express irony,--the mocking irony of Moliere's women-servants. (Florine, doeve10) |
| Her sharp nose promised epigram. (Madame de Lansac, dmspc10) |
| In fact, he told them such a pack of absurdities, that even an old quartermaster who had lost his nose with a frost-bite, so that they had dubbed him Nezrestant, was fain to laugh." (ctrdr10) |
| Of her past charms of feature, little remained save a remarkably prominent slender nose, curved like a Turkish scimitar, now the principal ornament of a countenance that put you in mind of an old white glove... Her voice had remained in her head during one-third of her lifetime; she could not prevent a descent into the membranes of the nose, which lent to it a peculiar expressiveness (Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry, dlang10) |
| Nothing has sunk in the modeling of the nose. Martial, dmspc10 |
| his sharply-cut nose with its slight curve at the tip was very much like an eagle's beak. (Butifer, ctrdr10) |
| ...the same turned-up nose, with a sprightly cleavage at the tip...the veins on his protuberant nose (Dr. Bennasis, ctrdr10) |
| his narrow chin turned up to meet an exaggeratedly hooked nose (Taboreau, ctrdr10) |
| Poor dear! If I was now what I was once, I would leave Cibot for you! upon my word, I would! Why, with a nose shaped like that--for you have a fine nose-- how did you manage it, poor cherub? (La Cibot (the porter's wife), cspns10) |
| His nose, though thin, turned up and snuffed battle. (sailor, ctdmd10) |
| His nose was broad and long, thick at the end,--the nose of a lion (Charles IX, ctdmd10) |
| The face was divided by a square nose, remarkable for the flexibility of its entire length, the tip of which was significantly flat, seeming the more in harmony with the prodigious power expressed by the form of that imperial head. (Calvin, ctdmd10) |
| The smallpox had riddled his face with numberless dints, and spoilt the shape of his nose by imparting to it a gimlet-like twist (M. Blondet (Judge), clntq10) |
| "Then am I going to see a man called Camusot?" she asked. "With a nose to match his name,"[*] assented Chesnel. [*] Camus, flat-nosed (clntq10) |
| ...a Don Quixote nose that rose out of it like a monolith above a plain. It was the kind of nose, as Cervantes must surely have explained somewhere, which denotes an inborn enthusiasm for all things great, a tendency which is apt to degenerate into credulity. Pons, cspns10 |
| One would think she meant to stab us with that nose of hers. (woman farming, choun10) |
| Sometimes the light brought out the transparent rose of the nostrils and the double curve which united the nose with the upper lip, (Mademoiselle de Verneuil, choun10) |
| The nose, thin and straight, parts into two oblique nostrils, passionately dilated at times, and showing the transparent pink of their delicate lining. This nose is an admirable continuation of the forehead, with which it blends in a most delicious line. It is perfectly white from its spring to its tip, and the tip is endowed with a sort of mobility which does marvels if Camille is indignant, or angry, or rebellious. There, above all, as Talma once remarked, is seen depicted the anger or the irony of great minds. The immobility of the human nostril indicates a certain narrowness of soul; never did the nose of a miser oscillate; it contracts like the lips; he locks up his face as he does his money., (Camille Maupin (George Sand)) |
| her nose, which describes one- quarter of a circle, is pinched about the nostrils; very shrewd and clever, but supercilious, (Beatrix, btrix10) |
| But his nose, that feature of the human face that changes most, is growing to a point; the countenance is sinking into mysterious depressions, the outlines are thickening; leaden tones predominate in the complexion, giving tokens of weariness, although the fatigues of this young man are not apparent; perhaps some bitter solitude has aged him, or the abuse of his gift of comprehension. (Claude Vignon, btrix10) |
| Her broad, flat nose, with nostrils expanded into oval cavities, breathed the fires of hell, and resembled the beak of some evil bird of prey. (Ma'ame Nourrisson, cbtty10) |
| His nose seemed shorter than it was, on account of the thick nostrils. (unknown man, choun10) |
Here are some of the adjectives used to describe noses in the Comedie Humaine. They can be found using corpus linguistics tools.
| Description | Name | Work |
|---|---|---|
| short flat | Z. Marcus | zmrcs10 |
| long narrow aquiline | Dante | xiles10 |
| flat | Gerard | vrctr10 |
| thin sharp | Margaritis | 1gdsr10 |
| slightly upturned | Caroline Clocharde | 2ndhm10 |
| turned up | Caroline Clocharde | 2ndhm10 |
| nearly meeting chin | old crone | 2ndhm10 |
| aquiline | Angelique | 2ndhm10 |
| big | Jerome-Nicolas Sechard | 2poet10 |
| Bourbon curve | Mme. de Bargeton | 2Poet10 |
| hidden by moustache | clerk Coloquinte | adpap10 |
| sunken | Fendante | adpap10 |
| Greek | Maxime de Trailles | arcis10 |
| pointed | Dorlange | arcis10 |
| like the beak of a bird of prey | Colonel Franchessini | arcis10 |
| aquiline | Madame de la Chanterie | brcns10 |
| tuberous (like St Vincent de Paul) | Alain | brcns10 |
| large long very thin | Bernard | brcns10 |
| Hebraic long curved | Halpersohn | brcns10 |
| Louis XV | Rabourdin | brcrc10 |
| red (of a tippler) | Abbe Gaudron | brcrc10 |
| flat turned slightly up | Isidore | brcrc10 |
| crooked | Dutocq | brcrc10 |
| flat | Poiret | brcrc10 |
| red (old man) | Gigonnet | brcrc10 |
| delicate | Agathe Rouget | brthr10 |
| like a potatoe | Giroudeau | brthr10 |
| of a Roxelane | Mme. Cognet | brthr10 |
| like a black spot | Dr. Rouget | brthr10 |
| rigid | Monsieur du Guenic | btrix10 |
| humped in the middle | Monsieur du Guenic | btrix10 |
| aquiline thin | the baroness | btrix10 |
| thin straight | Camille Maupin (George Sand) | btrix10 |
| sharp growing | Claude Vignon | btrix10 |
| Greek (Bette tries to destroy her sister's beautiful nose) | Adeline Fischer | cbtty10 |
| thick nostrils | unknown man | choun10 |
| delicate | Mademoiselle de Verneuil | choun10 |
| aquiline | Comte Victurnien | clntq10 |
| like the beak of some bird of prey | M. Sauvager (police officer) | clntq10 |
| like an obelisk | Magus | cspns10 |
| turned up pointed like a weasel | man at the dinner table | ctdmd10 |
| turned up at the end sunk in the face | La Fosseuse | ctrdr10 |
| aquiline | Montcornet | dmspc10 |
| crooked shrewd | Raoul Nathan | doeve10 |
| hooked noses | a circle of elderly people | dswmn10 |
| square | Goriot | frgrt10 |
| sharp | wife of a former magistrate | frmni10 |
| reddened bulbous | beggar's depicted by Charlet | frrgs10 |
| nose discolored from using snuff | police chief | frrgs10 |
| of extravagant dimensions | major-domo | gmbra10 |
| thick at the end | Grandet | gngnd10 |
| big | Mme Grandet | gngnd10 |
| aquiline | Monsieur d'Hauteserre | hmyst10 |
| pinched | Madame d'Hauteserre | hmyst10 |
| huge red | Peyrade | hmyst10 |
| aquiline nose which resembled the beak of a bird of prey | the count | htdsn10 |
| lion nose with flaring nostrils | Comte d'Herouville | htdsn10 |
