The Wild Ass's Skin (The Magic Skin) (1830-31)
A young man in debt and facing failure is about to commit
suicide but entering an old curio/antique shop comes across a magical animal skin
that will make all the holders wishes come true. The only catch is that
with every wish the skin shrinks and when the skin has shrunk to nothing
the holder will die.
(Long, La Peau de chagrin, mgcsk10.txt)
The Illustrious Gaudissart (1830-31)
A salesman (swindler/entrepreneur/mountebank)
gets taken in by the same provincials he hoped to fleece.
(Very Short, L'Illustre Gaudissart, 1gdsr10.txt)
A Man of Business (1833,40)
Actresses, swindlers, counts, a reading room to support
a mistress that fails, and finally debt collectors.
The "man of business" here is the swindler Cerizet who
you've already in part three of Lost Illusions if you've
read that classic, a character who will play an even bigger part
in one of Balzac's final novels "The Lesser Bourgeousie".
(Very Short, Un Homme d'affaires ,mnbus10.txt)
A Daughter of Eve (1833-34)
The virtuous wife of a nobleman falls prey to
a fashion that has overwhelmed Paris, taking a lover.
She falls in love with a vain, self-serving playwrite, want-to-be
journalist-politician, her world-wise husband finds out and brings
the whole affair to a quiet, expeditious conclusion.
(Medium, doeve10.txt)
Ursule Mirouet (Ursula) (1829-37)
A relative of a young girl who lives in a small town
dies but someone has destroyed his will so she doesn't inherit
anything. They eventually find out who did it through supernatural means.
(Long, Ursule Mirouet, rsula10.txt)
The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan (1830-33)
"Based on an affair the Comtesse de Castellane had had with
the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Count Mole:
'It's about the pack of lies by which a thirty-seven-year-old
woman ... manages to pass herself off as a saint,
a virtuous and modest young thing,
in the eyes of her fourteenth lover.'
One of Balzac's great themes:
deceit in the service of genius." (Robb, 329)
(Medium, Les Secrets de la princesse de Cadignan, sdpdc10.txt)
Honorine (1824-36)
A high ranked government official lives by himself in continual
hope that his wife will return to him. An intelligent young man enters his
service as his protege and is eventually recruited to get her back.
Unfortunately for the government official, his wife really does want to
"cultivate her own garden."
(Medium, Honorine, hnrne10.txt)
Albert Savarus (1834-35)
Pessimistically autobiographical in which
Balzac looks towards his death.
Savarus fails in his carreer, then in love,
and finally becomes a monk. (Robb 338-339)
A lawyer, Albert Savarus, descends quietly upon a small town,
closed in it's small town ways to the intrusions
of outsiders.
Nobody notices him until a legal case is
inadvertently placed in his hands and
he wins it and another and another.
He attracts the attention of merchants in the
town who give him their cases and that of a young woman
who procedes to fall in love with him and
thoroughly investigate his mysterious life.
Balzac uses some interesting
narrative techniques and changes of perspective in this story.
The young female character (one of
Balzac's representative readers?) re-enacts the
very act of reading a Balzac novel,
a sort of eavesdropping on the lives of others,
and gathers intelligence about the lawyer.
The background on his love life is provided indirectly by the
autobiographical story he writes as filler for the
provincial newspaper he founds.
To continue on where the novel leaves off,
the young woman blackmails
her maid who is romantically involved with Albert Savarus's servant
and has the maid bring all of the letters that Savarus sends.
She uses this power over his mail at first to effect his
defeat in the upcoming election so he will remain for another
five years and marry her and then to effect a break
with the woman he loves so she can marry him.
Ultimately she fails, he retires to a monastery, and
she gets hit by a train, disfigured, and lives out the
remainder of her days without a husband.
Balzac can sometimes be a bit of a male chauvinist.
(Medium, Albert Savarus, svrus10.txt)
Gambara (1831-37)
A philosophical study of music in which a composer's
"dream of impossible perfection destroys
the work itself." (Robb, 10)
(Short, Gambara, gmbra10.txt)
The House of Nucingen (Nucingen & Co., Bankers) (1826,37)
The House of Nucingen
This short story "spins out the bewildering details of a grand coup
of ruthless financial manipulation in the early heyday
of private, unrestricted banking houses." (Fuller, 8)
(Short, La Maison Nucingen, ncngn10.txt)
The Seamy Side of History (The Brotherhood of Consolation) (1809,36)
[I. Madame de la Chanterie,II. L'Initie - The Initiate]
The second part of this work, entitled "L'Initie"
"sounds in parts like the lamentations of an old man,
deploring the disappearance of faith, devotion, and discipline."
This was his last complete novel and
"scenes from his life are scattered throughout it like
involuntary memories: his legal studies, his tracking of
passers-by in the streets of Paris, the restaurant in Rue de Tournon,
his pamphlet on primogeniture, battles with publishers..." (Robb, 382)
The story resembles Dickens's "The Cricket and the Hearth"
in some repects:
"the invalid Vanda (the daughter of a Polish woman)
lives in what she thinks is luxury -- in reality an illusion
created by her father, who, by scrimping and saving and selling all
his books, has filled one room of their hovel with treasures.
(Robb, 382) "L'Initie" also gives a detailed account
of what it meant to be poor in Paris." (Robb, 383)
(Long, L'Invers de I'histoire contemporaine, brcns10.txt)
The False Mistress (Paz) (1835-42)
The devoted close companion of a Russian nobleman relocated to Paris
who serves him doggedly as an assistant falls in love with his wife.
Since both the character and appearance of the companion are superior
to her husband's, the wife is likewise attracted,
but the high character of the companion takes control and he
invents various roundabout means to kill the love the wife feels for
him and avoids harming his friend who turns out to be completely
unworthy of his faithful devotion.
(Medium, La fausse maitresse, pzhdb10.txt)
A Prince of Bohemia (1830-37)
About the bohemian exploits of "La Palferine".
Bohemia, Balzac tells us, is a world of young men between
20 and 30 given to frivolity and buffoonery.
Holding the middle class in contempt,
they conquer women and abandon them
for the sake of conquest alone.
They live in squalid garrets, but move
socially in high society.
(Short, Une Prince de la boheme, prbhm10.txt)
Beatrix (1836-40)
"Based on Liszt's affair with Marie d'Agoult
and containing an interesting hermaphroditic
George Sand character." (Robb, 329)
There are several sections devoted to the genesis of this tale
in a well-known biography of George Sand.
Answers the question:
"What happens to young men from feudal oases in the provinces
when they enter the modern world?" (Robb, 330)
(Beatrix, btrix10.txt)
Z. Marcas (1836)
About a "political genius who refuses to serve the reigning
mediocrity." (Robb, 315)
Two poor students have an equally poor
but strangely well-dressed neighbor
with an even stranger story named Z. Marcus.
As a journalist Z. Marcus acted as the "ghost"
behind a successful politician
rather than getting a paid back for
his efforts his patron ruined him.
He was able to survive
but only by becoming
a free-lance hired gun, his ambitions for a political
carreer crushed, he retires to a life as a legal
copyist where his income is exactly equal to
the amount he needs to survive.
Like Rabourdin in "Bureaucracy" Z. Marcus stands for a type,
"a victim of his devotion to a party,
repaid by betrayal or neglect."
He predicts that the thwarted ambitions
of France's youth will
end in a revolution: (cf 1968)
"Youth will explode like the boiler of a steam-engine. Youth has no
outlet in France; it is gathering an avalanche of underrated
capabilities, of legitimate and restless ambitions; young men are not
marrying now; families cannot tell what to do with their children.
What will the thunderclap be that will shake down these masses? I know
not, but they will crash down into the midst of things, and overthrow
everything. These are laws of hydrostatics which act on the human
race; the Roman Empire had failed to understand them, and the Barbaric
hordes came down."
The young students response:
"Marcas confirmed us in our
resolution to leave France, where young men of talent and energy are
crushed under the weight of successful commonplace, envious, and
insatiable middle age."
(Short, Z. Marcus, zmrcs10.txt)
The Muse of the Department (1836-43)
The novel in which what a crumpled dress worn by a woman
in a carriage implied was,
"cited in Parliament as proof that novelists were becoming
too immoral for the good of the nation." (Robb, 352)
(Medium, La Muse du departement, msdpt10.txt)
A Country Vicar (The Village Rector, A Country Parson) (1827-43)
"Intended to show how useful Christian reprentance is for
modern society." (Robb, 341)
(Long, Le Cure du village, vrctr10.txt)
Cousin Bette (1838-44)
Almost defines what it is to be hopelessly debauched.
One of Balzac's greatest.
(Long, La Cousine Bette, cbtty10.txt)
Cousin Pons (1844-46)
Two aging musicians, wrapped up in what their work,
naively unaware of the true thoughts and motives of those
around them, take a tumultuous ride through Parisian
society as one of them, Pons, dies and everyone
tries to grab some of his inheritance,
an inheritance that no one could have believed existed.
One of Balzac's greatest.
(Long, Le Cousin Pons, cspns10.txt)
The Lesser Bourgeoisie (The Middle Classes) (1830-40)
The story of a young lawyer trying to make a successful
marriage for himself with a sizeable dowry by helping the godfather
of the potential bride, a retired civil servant, succeed in politics,
real estate, publishing,...in the midst of doing this he gets
himself into some pretty hairy situations.
Some shady con men get the lawyer started in this marriage strategem
in exchange for signing some notes that put him in debt to them.
The battle that the lawyer fights to get out of this debt is
the most interesting part of the novel.
The novel fizzles out towards the end.
One of two uncompleted novels that was completed by another
author hired by Balzac's wife after his death,
adding a conclusion that was "many times longer than the fragments
left by Balzac." (Robb, 414)
(Very Long, Les Petits Bourgeois, lsbrg10.txt)
Gaudissart II (1844)
An Englishwoman is having a hard time trying
to pick out a scarf in a stylish Parisian boutique.
She looks at everything, but it appears she isn't going to buy
anything. In the end though they do quite well by her.
(Very Short, Gaudissart II, 2gdsr10.txt)
The Deputy of Arcis (1839)
One of two uncompleted novels that was completed by another
author hired by Balzac's wife after his death,
adding a conclusion that was "many times longer than the fragments
left by Balzac." (Robb, 414)
(Very Long, Le Depute d'Arcis, arcis10.txt)
The Unconscious Comedians (Comedians Without Knowing It, The Unconscious Mummers) (1846)
A famous painter takes his provincial cousin
for a tour around Paris to open his eyes to the way things
work behind the scenes in the city.
(Very Short, Les Comediens sans le savoir, nccmd10.txt)
Physiology of Marriage
(Le Physiologie du mariage)
Petty Annoyances of Married life
"Reveals what happens when the 'high-tide of the honeymoon' goes out for
good. Balzac's analysis of a relationship degenerating into
mutual envy and emotional manipulation takes the form of a series of
vignettes reminiscent of Daumier cartoons (especially a wretched outing
to the country with ungrateful child and gloating mother-in-law)
and is notable for its lack of practical solutions.
This, the modern romantic was saying, is what modern marriage
treated as 'a good business deal' really is..." (Robb, 362)
(Petites Miseres de la vie conjugale)
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)
(Seraphita, sraph10.txt)