The Unknown Masterpiece
The story that Picasso loved, in which
the great artist, Frenhoffer, has been slaving away for ten years
on a painting so beautiful and so unutterly perfect that he loves it as his
mistress. Frenhoffer's pupil Porbus,
and a young artist called Nicolas Poussine are finally allowed
to view the miraculous painting" and when then they are shown
the work it appears to them all they see are
"blocks of different colour
in a confused mass bound by a multitude of weird lines
which form a wall of paint." (Robb, 198-9)
Sounds like an abstract painting one hundred years before
they existed!
As in the short story Gambara "the dream of impossible perfection destroys
the work itself." (Robb, 10,199)
(Very Short, Le chef-d'oeuvre inconnu, hmstp10.txt)
Gambara (1831-37)
A philosophical study of music in which a composer's
"dream of impossible perfection destroys
the work itself." (Robb, 10)
As Balzac concocts strange tortuous plots that some find unpalatable,
so the mad musician Gambara and the mad chef Giardini
concoct music and dishes that no one can listen to or eat,
unless of course they are drunk, then they are masters of their art.
Hunt's synopsis says it all:
Gambara is an eccentric musician who has settled in Paris after much roving,
and within the domain of his art is pursuing a chimaera similar to Frenhofer
[The Unknown Masterpiece].
In his view music has its roots in physics and mathematics,
and is therefore a science as well as an art.
As a composer--he has also invented a fantastic instrument, the
pan-harmonicon--he is trying to go behind and beyond the established
rules and principles of euphony and build his magnum opus
on a purely intellectual theory of the relation between sound, thought,
and emotion.
The result, when he tries out his composition on an audience,
however sympathetic,
is a series of excruciating cacophonies which earn him his repute as
a madman. (Hunt, 142-3)
If Gambara is a genius, he is also poor and lacks basic survival skills.
Luckily, he has a faithful and devoted wife who makes up for this deficiency.
The wife finally grows tired of this life and runs away with another man.
The other man, in turn, grows tired of her, so she returns to her
husband and her life of drudgery.
Some have suggested that the detailed plan for an opera "Mahomet"
that Gambara treats the reader to was actually a hoax concocted by
Balzac and the composer Hector Berlioz. (Hunt, 143)
(Short, Gambara, gmbra10.txt)
The Alkahest (Search for the Absolute) (1812-1824)
In which "a fanatical scientist twice sends the family fortune up
in smoke in his search for the principle of matter." (Robb, 256)
Balzac's tale of an addictive personality.
For fifteen years Balthazar Claes was a model husband and head
of an old aristocratic family, but one day in 1809 he meets a
Polish visionary and everything changes.
He becomes obsessed with building a machine that will reduce
all elements to one element and provide him with the principle constituent
of electricity....or something like that...its all a little unclear.
Over a period of 20 years and a series of intermittent repentances followed
by unrepentant obsessive research,
he wastes away every penny of the family fortune,
leads his wife and kids to utter destitution,
and dies.
With a little bit of melodrama engineering,
and "the financial ingenuity of the two lovers [his daughter and her sweetheart],
the generosity of relatives, the benevolence of public officials
and convenient marriages"
Balzac manages to save everything
at the last moment and provide the reader with a happy ending.
(Hunt, 69-71)
The portraits drawn of Balthazar and his wife are superior.
The portrait sketched of the love between their daughter and her sweetheart
might provide a good model for the modern genre of the romance novel but
for other audiences it will probably be a little trying. He charts...
...their progress as sweethearts from timid appreciation
through observant respect to silent tenderness--a sequence of
emotions which twentieth century youth is likely to find unentertaining and
unconvincing. Perhaps the early nineteenth-century taste for glozing over
the physical and instinctively egoistic elements
which are present even in virtuous love...is what most separates
Balzac from novelists and novel readers of today (Hunt, 70)
Comic relief: The machine he builds spits out a synthetic diamond during
his five year absence. Even as lies dieing Balzathar is attacked by one last
strong bout of inspiration....just let me try it one more time...
(Long, La Recherche de I'Absolu, lkhst10.txt)