Louis Lambert (1812-1824)
The tragic story of the childhood prodigy Louis Lambert.
Born poor, even while in school he wrote a philosophical treatise
that was destroyed by his teacher.
Lived as a workman for three years during which time he was
a member of the Cenacle literary circle.
Just when he meets the woman he loves and wishes to marry
on a trip to Touraine, a fatal brain malady sets in.
This novel follows the history of Balzac's own philosophical development.
Like "Seraphita" there is more metaphysics than action for large stretches,
so this novel might not be everyone's cup of tea.
Balzac, the narrator, and Louis Lambert are
young students
attending the College of the Vendome in Paris, the same school that Balzac
attended in his youth.
They are both voracious readers, social misfits for whom philosophy
has become more than just a subject at school.
Lambert is a Swedenborgian mystic believing
"in the co-existence of two 'natures'
or substances, spirit and matter."
Balzac the narrator is a "votary of science" and a materialist. (Hunt, 48)
Lambert is prompted to write a treatise on metaphysics, Treatise on the Will,
by an experience of second-sight or extra-sensory perception
in which he sees in a dream a castle that he is about to visit
but has never visited or seen before.
This treatise moves beyond the Swedenborgian and materialist views of the
two friends to a reconciliation and synthesis of their views.
It builds on the work of Mesmer (hypnosis) and
"adopts a physiological explanation of the phenomena
of Will and Thought" equating them with
"a 'fluid' akin to electric current, heat-waves, light-waves, discharged from the brain."
The production of ideas "in their entrancing variety and multiplicity"
is seen as the "essential function of man."
The treatise also seeks to prove that there exists in some men
a "power to reconstruct the past or foresee the future,
or to witness events taking place at great distances." (Hunt, 49-50)
There are three "ascending degrees of intelligence and spirituality"
in human beings.
As a person ascends this hierarchy
he becomes "increasingly ill-adjusted to the world around him"
and is likely "to collapse under the strain." (Hunt, 50)
(This is, in fact, what happens to Lambert at the end of the novel.)
The treatise is confiscated and destroyed by one of Lambert's teachers at the school.
After he is removed from the school he eventually arrives in Paris
and driven by his ego dives into the study philosophy.
After three years he is disillusioned by all the egotism he has seen in Paris
and the fragmented, incomplete nature of philosophy he encounters there.
He reverts to his old Swedenborgian mysticism
and retires to the countryside to live with his uncle.
He falls in love with a wealthy, young Jewish woman, Pauline de Villenoix,
and the letters he writes to her reveal that he has already begun to lose his mind.
The passion she invokes in him finishes him off completely.
He goes iretrievably insane on the eve of his wedding and his bride-to-be
nurses him in his angelic, comtemplative trance state
for three more years before he dies.
An interesting tidbit of trivia:
Balzac once planned a sort of inverse character to the short lived
genius Louis Lambert.
In "Ecce Home", a novel he never wrote,
"a cretin was to be shown living for a hundred years, by virtue of his complete
mental inertia." (Hunt, 57)
(Medium, Louis Lambert, lmbrt10.txt)
Seraphita (1799-1800)
"The story of an angel, half-man, half-woman,
passing through it's final earthly transformation
in the fjords of Norway." (Robb, 256)
The story has more metaphysics than action,
so it might be a little hard-going unless you can quickly
cultivate a taste for Swedenborgian mysticism.
The story's setting is steeped in fantasy, featuring a being
named Seraphita:
This strange creature is androgynous, and appears to the
Promethean wanderer Wilfrid as a beautiful and desirable woman,
Seraphita; whereas for the ingenuous and docile Minna, daughter of Becker,
the local pastor, 'Seraphita' is 'Seraphitus',
the incarnation of manly wisdom and strength.
Both of these young mortals are in love with Seraphita-Seraphitus,
but she has passed beyond earthly love,
and her role is to reveal to the human couple
'the chemin pour alle au ciel'. [the road to the sky].
(Hunt, 52)
Acceptance as a prophet or a founder of a new form of Christian mysticism
has been proposed as a motive for writing this story:
It may be a matter of astonishment that a man so close to earthly
reality should have set up as a seer and hoped that contemporaries
would accept as a revelation his turgid arguments and apocalyptic rhapsodies.
Yet this was undoubtedly Balzac's hope in writing the three novels
(Les Proscrits [The Exiles], Louis Lambert, Seraphita) and publishing them together.
(Hunt, 53)
(Seraphita, sraph10.txt)