Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850)

The 19th Century
Presentation 7 of 13

Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850)
La Comedie Humaine.
The Writer as a “Secretary” of Society, Towards a Psychology of Man.
Presented by Roger Weir
Tuesday, January 17, 1984

Transcript:
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The date is January 17th, 1984. This is the seventh lecture in a series of lectures by Roger, where on the 19th century tonight's lecture is entitled. Paul's Zak, P a L Z a C who lives 1799, 1850 LOC committee LA comedy humane the writer as the secretary of society towards a psychology of man.
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Okay, I'm going to be more explicit. The line, the 19th century is invisible. We don't see it. We don't see it because it's has two horizons of blankness for us. There is a psychological unconscious horizon, which blocks out the inner effect of the times. There's a cultural blindness, which blots out the implications of the times. So we have more affinity psychologically. With a earlier times, we have a lot of affinity. For instance, you found in his practice that the unconscious of modern man so-called 20th century man seems to have an Al chemical metaphorical base, which goes back not to the middle ages so much, but it goes back to roughly the 16th century. So that 20th century man responds psychologically to motifs that are 16 century, which is why there's such a big to-do about Shakespeare and so forth. In our time, we don't have any living connection.
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Most of us with the 19th century, it exists as a nonentity. But the fact is is that the unconscious propensities, which actually affect us are 19th century. They originate there. Momentum comes from there. Also the culture that we inhabit, the buildings that we live in, largely the governments that we live under all have their Genesis in the 19th century. We like to think because of the kind of ground up education that we're spoonfed all the time, but we originated in the 18th century or that we went through all kinds of travail in the 20th century and have modified such and such. But the 19th century, it's really the social structure in which we live. The point being that it is a blind spot on the achievements of the 19th century could help us enormously if we could get to them psychologically. And culturally part of the absurdity of the 20th century is due to the fact that the solutions to the modern dilemma were all mooted in the 19th century and then cast aside forgotten. And so we are coming up with second hand and third hand speculations of what to do, and nothing's effective because the effective solutions were offered in the 19th century already by persons who were not bowled over by the conditions. By the times, by persons who had come humanly into the dilemmas and had a more accurate assessment of what had happened to man, because man had suffered a sea change,
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A sea change,
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Which is psychological poetic talk for saying that he had not just changed in one part, but that the whole mix had changed, Not like a chameleon that changes color, but like a butterfly that undergoes a metamorphosis. Isn't this a different creature. All of the individuals that we have taken thus far in the 19th century cars, grappled mightily with this problem and the individuals that we take for the concluding half also grappled mightily, but in a somewhat different light. That is to say, instead of trying to figure out in terms of a history or in terms of an economics or in terms of a science, these individuals will apply themselves primarily to literature.
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And the reason for that application to literature, this reason for the swing to literature is because of Henri [inaudible], who is a monument to human intelligence and ingenuity. If you want to see a true appraisal of Balzac's character review for yourself, Rodin sculpture of Balzac. I think there's a copy here in Los Angeles. I think the County museum of art has a copy of it out in the grounds, Rodin with his magnificent appreciation of the rugged monumental form of the human body portrays Balzac wrapped in a cloak and only his listening head looking heavenward with an expression of absolute determination to see through having to God himself, to be able to penetrate by human intuition by force of will by comprehension of thought to the essence of the mystery
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And to bring it back okay
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To himself where he could look down and he could tell everyone what was true and what was beautiful in the world now Belzec is an extraordinarily misapprehended individual. He is. In fact, the typical example of the invisibility of the 19th century, you will almost know where find a book in the 20th century about Balzac that understands him. You will almost know where to find in the 19th century a book about Balzac that understands it. There is a narrow wedge of comprehensible time running largely in the Edwardian period between say about 18, uh, 95, 1900 until about 1910, when the conditions of the 19th century still obtained in the 20th century. But the majority of the 20th century had risen up. But the hypnotic effect of the later 20th century had not taken over. That is to say in between the 1890s and the first world war is a window of genius in Western culture. Those individuals who were alert and writing at that time saw profoundly the dilemma and the quandaries that modern man was heading into and the quandary and dilemmas that he had been embroiled in. And if we look at the writings of that time, we find extraordinary genius in this country alone. We have William James and Henry Adams, Frank Lloyd Wright, Woodrow Wilson, Mark Twain names, and people that have been cast aside because they don't quite fit in anymore.
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Balzac was seen at this time in this period very clearly. And in fact, the American collected edition of Balzac published in Boston from 1890s to about 1905 was produced in all these leather volumes, 40 volumes at that time with extraordinarily accurate, uh, translations penetrating, uh, introductions.
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He has letters,
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Memoirs, uh, that did count the one by his sister. And this entire edition Was published in Boston. And since has language to almost nobody refers to it. And, uh, you hear almost nothing
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Young volume, and I'll refer to it
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Because you can find this at the whirling rainbow in volume 32, which is entitled memoir. There's a translation yes.
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In here of his sisters, memoir of their childhood and the young Balzac,
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That's the most accurate portrayal of him as a youngster. She emphasizes in here that Balzac was born May 16th, 1799, the encyclopedia Britannica listed as May 20th. He was born May 16th, 1899. His father was a peculiar individual. His father in fact, lived to be 83 and died only because he was involved in a mortal accident. His father's code throughout his whole life summed up in the word health
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Fullness. His father believed that man
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As an individual had a certain portion of vital essence and that if he conserved it, if he nourished it, if he protected it, his lifespan should be about a hundred years, a little bit more perhaps. So he spent all of his life conserving himself, portioning himself out, articulating his life energy, his vital essence. In fact, because he realized that he was probably going to live beyond a hundred. He worked very hard as a young man invested everything that he had wisely or not much of his investment, went to a certain
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Bank. And as the banks grew
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In the 19th century, and as his investments grow, he actually became a reasonably well to do
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Individual eye balls out.
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And his family and everything were from, uh, the area of France or on tour.
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And this terrain peasant mentality,
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[inaudible] provincial mentality coupled with the sense of mystical essence gave the young, Balzac a very interesting headstart in life for him. Psychical energy was just one of the simple facts of life and existence. Everyone must surely know about
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It.
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His mother was a vivacious intelligent woman who had lost a child just before Andre was born. So when Andre was born, he was put with a wet nurse and the wet nurse raised on Ray for the first two, three, four years of his life. And his sister who was about two years younger and they would be brought into the family and, uh, given a chance to say good morning or good night to mama and Papa, and then, uh, West off. So mama and Papa were somewhat a little distant, but loving nevertheless at the age of seven Andre who was named because he was born on Saint Andre's day, which is not May 20th, but is May 16th. Andre was sent to a boys Academy in Vendome and there he was considered by the so-called instructors and teachers to be somewhat below average and consequently, in order to get him out of the way as they did in boys schools. In those times, they would put him in a punishment cell.
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Finally, at the end of seven years of this regimen on Ray went into a coma. They found him with his eyes open and he was staring blankly and he would not respond to anyone's voice later in life. He would say of himself that he suffered from a con gestion of ideas because when he had been in those punishment cells day after day after day, year after year, because he had been a fairly interested reader, having nothing else to do, having an enormously capacious intellect and a talent, a hidden wild talent at psychical intuition on a scale that the great series of antiquity would have been jealous of. Balzac had read almost every book in the school's library. He was pale and puny compared with the robust boy that had been sent to the school. But after being put out on, in the fresh air, after being sent on long walks with friends and this mother after a year Balzac's health came back, his robustness came back, but they experienced crimped as his father would say, his energies had taken away. A lot of his life span while Zach would die at age 51, August of 1850, worn out, somewhat sensing this, somewhat believing this. I rather suspect that Balzac realizing that he would have a limited span hurled himself courageously into the fray and did in fact burn himself out, whether or not his vital reserves were deplenish or not. He lived the kind of life that simply exhausted him. His cousin Zakys once West in the letter, he wanted to live a life. So Torah that when death came, he would find nothing but bones in there
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Balzac is the original wild man of society.
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He was put into another school for a couple of years. He was made a law clerk for three years.
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Okay.
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At the age of 19 or 20, he finally decided that he would have to write. He was so filled, not so much with ideas, but with people. And at that age, he didn't understand what, why he was filled with people or what this meant that he was filled with people is to say Balzac psyche and his photographic memory, his tremendous intelligence, his unbelievable acquaintance with the world of literature and books had produced a unique specimen in the human species. Balzac was a case of someone having several thousand personalities and only discovered that later in life, when he began to write and found all of them alive in himself, the common theory of the literate tours of the university bred dead woods that teach literature is that an author thinks out the ideas then thinks out the characters then thinks out what the characters would say and then goes to the paper and writes them down.
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Nothing could be farther from the case. The writer is, as Ray Bradbury went said, grabbed by the Scruff of the neck and dragged, screaming, and kicking to the blank page and is in awe of what comes out. Whereas Dickens would observe and we'll see Dickens next week. Cause he had a very similar experience. The characters surprise you every day, what they will say and more with what they will do. And even more with the fact that they seem to be alive in their own right Faulkner. When he read Balzac closed the book one afternoon and wrote in a little letter to a friend, he said, I realized that characters, cast, shadows, that they are alive and possibly because they are more pure in their will and thought more alive than we are.
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Balzac
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Could not as a young man, get all this out. He would in fact have to go through a lot of life. He found as a child
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That
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There was one experience that was indelible for him, a visit to his grandpa, his grandpa's genealogy. They fact that the man represented, uh, someone beyond his father back in time, who was the son of somebody who lived even further back in time, the grandfather was a mysterious figure to him. The grandfather loved him, would hug the young ball's Zack and give him the kind of contact that children need. Balzac's sister would say young children don't thrive on ideas. They thrive on hugs and kisses and grandpa who would die a year and a half later. And the little balls, Zack little Andre was told that he would never be able to see his grandpa again, that he'd gone stretch mightily and himself to recover the man to recover first, the experiences that he had had then to recover the man intact then to recreate him and bring him back to life.
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All this lay fallow
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During the 1820s, Belzec tried many other careers. He tried to be a printer, tried to be a publisher, tried to be a businessman. Finally in 1828, he was on the verge of bankruptcy and he quit trying to be something other than what he was.
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He sat himself down.
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He had tried writing many times during the decade, but in 1829, he finally wrote a novel called the chew ones. And it's a historical novel about the Bret town pre uh, peasants. And about the same time he wrote a book called the physiology of marriage, which was sort of a French type, uh, uh, entertainment. The French love the Woody explication of all the convolutions that marriage and married life and the war of the sexes and so forth would bring. And Balzac began to have a little bit of reputation. His parents moved to Versailles outside of Paris. South Balzac began seriously considering for himself that his career was going to be an unfoldment of capacities of human nature, that there was some mystical metaphysical talent that had been given him, had been developed in him. So he took an apartment in Paris and for the next number of years, Balzac began to immerse himself into his career. As he would call himself, he became the secretary of French society.
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He would sit for 16 to 18 hours a day, sometimes 20 hours a day. He had sort of a religious costume. It was a sheer white gown. And he would sit at a plain blank table with his pen and his papers and alone. And his solitude. He had been in solitude a lot is a youngster. It was nothing new to him. But what kind of solitude do you have when you, you are filled with characters and he began to write and he wrote torrentially. He would take breaks from time to time. He would put on his outrageous costumes, his hats, his capes, he in fact began composing for himself. Um, very early on a whole series Queens of stories. He produced 30 stories that would fall into a sequence. He called them droll stories, translation, that stroll stories. And there would be three sets of 10 30 stories with prologues. And epilogues somewhat like Boccaccio, somewhat like Chaucer, somewhat like Rabelais, but interesting in this regard, in this particular Balzac was writing in the 19th century in the early 1830s. And he set all of his characters back in the 16th century.
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Sure. Right back. Okay.
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In the heyday of French society, that is, he transposed the chronological time by about 300 years, it was unnoticed in the 19th century. What a feat. This was, he was considered a great writer that this was some feat of the imagination, but it was never seriously entertained until the turn of the century, by certain individuals who were psychically as well as psychologically mature and aware that this man had done an almost impossible task. He had transported himself 300 years into the past and had viewed the lives of hundreds of individuals and had brought them back from time and put them on the page
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And recreated them because of the
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[inaudible] mentality and culture of 16th century France. What stands out to most people in the drills stories is the vulgar, uh, sexuality. They chorus language, the incredible plots, the humor. But what is going on all the time is that Balzac is recreating the essential, vital essence of the life of those people and bringing them up into the 19th century, putting them onto the page so that a perspicacious reader at any time after can reconstruct and bring back to life, those characters,
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I want a break.
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Well, this kind of overall commentary by giving you a few pages of balls, Zack. So if you'll indulge me for about 10 minutes, I'll give you some balls, Zack, and you can see the genius of them.
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Yeah. Just a little example.
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This is from the first droll story called the fair Imperia here's a few short pages of the Ferrum period. This is balls. The young balls act at his greatest, who liked Balzac Oh, let's see. Henry James thought. He was one of the greatest authors who had ever lived. Marcel Proust thought he was the greatest French writer who had ever lived Faulkner figured he was on a par with Shakespeare. In fact, Balzac late in his life said, I want to be the Shakespeare of the novel. This is towards the end, the Ferrum periods of beautiful woman. She has attracted individuals. A young priest is finally found his wherewithal to gain admittance. But as we will see, he is interrupted because Zach always portrays the social situation and the human situation as intertwined. And he gives us inadvertently, but conscientiously with great purpose. Look at the essential nature of the times and it's crisis of consciousness in this case, as always the crisis was in the way in which religious orders are destroyed by men's scheming mind, all this shown to us by an encounter and the hopeful Budvar encounter of a priest.
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Yeah, the fair Imperia the night Cain, the little terrainian exalted with pride comparison, with desire and spurred by his alax and a lasses, which nearly choked him glided like an eel into the Domeless Salah, the veritable queen of the council for before her bowed, humbly all the authority, science and wisdom of Christianity. The major Domo did not know him. And it was going to bundled him out again. When one of the chamber women called out from the top of the stairs, Hey, Mr. Embed, it is madames young fellow and poor Felipe blushing like a wedding night, ran up the stairs, shaking with happiness and delight. The servant took him by the hand and led him into the chamber where sat Madam lightly attired like a brave woman who awaits her conqueror, the dazzling Imperia with seated near a table covered with a shaggy cloth ornamented with gold and with all the requisites for a dainty Carus flagons of wine, various drinking glasses, bottles of hippo, cross flasks full of the good wine of Cyprus, pretty boxes full of spices, roast peacocks, green sauces, little salt hams, all that would glutton the eyes of the Gallant if she had not.
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So madly loved Madam Imperia. She saw a well that the eyes of the young priest were all for her. Although she accustomed to the curl paper, devotion of the church men, she was well satisfied that she had made a conquest of the young priest who all day long Ben in her head, the windows had been closed. Madame was done. And then a matter of fit to do the honors, a Prince of the empire, then the rogue beatified by the Holy beauty of Imperia knew that emperor burger ne even a Cardinal about to be elected Pope would willingly for that night have changed places with him. A little priest who beneath has gown had only the devil and love. He put on a lordly air and saluted her with a courtesy by no means on graceful. And then the sweet lady said to him, regaling him with a piercing glance, come and sit close to me that I may see if you have altered since yesterday.
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Oh, yes. Said he. And how said she yesterday replied the artful fellow. I loved you today. We love each other. And from a poorest center, I have become richer than a King. Oh little one little one. Cried shame. Merrily. Yes, you are. Indeed changed far from a young priest. I see you have turned into an old devil and side-by-side they sat down before a large fire, which helped to spread their ecstasy around. They remained always ready to begin eating, seeing that they only thought of gazing into each other's eyes and never touched a dish just as they were beginning to feel comfortable. And at their ease, there came a great noise that madams door, as if people were beating against it and crying out, Madame cried the little servant hastily. Here's another of them. Who is it? She cried in a Hottie matter, like a tyrant Savage at being interrupted.
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The Bishop of Cray wishes to speak with you. May the devil take him, said she looking at Philly, gently. Madame. He has seen the lights through the chinks and is making a great noise. Tell him I have the fever. And you would be telling him no lie for I'm ill of this little priest who is torturing my brain, but just as she had finished speaking and was pressing with devotion. The hand of Philly who trembled in his skin appeared the fat Bishop of Cray, indignant and angry. The officers following him, bearing a trout. Canonically dressed fresh, drawn from the Rhine and shining in a golden platter and spices contained in little ornamented boxes and a thousand Dantes such as liquors and jams made by the Holy nuns in the Abbey, ah, said he, with his deep voice, I haven't the time to go to the devil, but you must give me a touch of him in advance. Hey, my little one, your belly will one day make a nice sheath for a sword replies. She knitting her brows above her eyes, which from being soft and gentle had become mischievous enough to make one tremble. And this little chorus singer is here to offer that said the Bishop instantly turning his great rubicund face towards Philly. Most year I am here to confess bat down.
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Oh, do you know
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The cannons to confess the ladies at this time of night is a right reserve to bishops. So take yourself off, go and herd with simple monks and never come back here again. Under pain of excommunication, do not move cried. The blushing Imperia more lovely with passion than she was with love because now she was possessed with both passion and love. Stop my friend
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Here you are in your own house.
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Then he knew that he was really loved by her. It is not in the Breviary and then, and Evan gelical regulation that you shall be equal before God. And the Valley of Jehosaphat, she asked if the Bishop is an invention of the devil who is adulterated, the Holy book replied the great numbskull of a Bishop in a hurry default to, well, then be equal. Now, before me who am here below your goddess in plot replied, Imperia otherwise one of these days that will have you delicately strangled between the head and shoulders. I swear it by the power of my Tonsor, which is as good as the pokes and wishing that the trout should be added to the feast as well as the sweets and other Dantes. She added cunningly, sit you down and drink with us. But the artful Minx being up to a trick or two gave the little one, a wink, which told him plainly not to mind the German, whom she would soon find a means to get rid of the servant maid, seated the Bishop at the table and tucked him up while Felipe wild with a rage that closed his mouth because he saw his plans ending and smoke gave the Archbishop to more devils than ever.
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They were amongst alive. Thus, they got halfway through the repass, which the young priest did not touch hungering. Only four Imperia near whom he was already seated. But speaking that sweet language, which the ladies so well understand that has neither stops commas, accents, letters, figures, characters, notes, nor images, the fat Bishop sensual, and careful enough of the sleek ecclesiastical garment of skin for which he was indebted to his late mother, allowed himself to be plentiful, flee, served with hypocrisy by the delicate hand of Madame. And it was just at his first hiccup that the sound of an approaching cavalcade was heard in the street. The number of horses, the whole whole of the pages showed plainly that some great prints hot with love was also about to arrive. In fact, a moment afterwards, the Cardinal of Ragusa and against whom the servants of Imperia had not dared bar.
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The door entered the room at this terrible site. The poor courtesan and her young lover became a shamed and embarrassed, like fresh, pure letters for it would be tempting, the devil to try. And I was the Cardinal the more so as at that time, it was not knowing who would be Pope. It goes on the card, Cardinal, who is very powerful individual decides that he's going to, uh, get rid of the priest. First of off, he writes out, uh, he takes him into another room and he writes out a little note saying that I hear by make you possessor of a certain Abbey now clear out and let me never see you here again. And so the man, uh, says well in thanks to, uh, your grace. I will tell you how to get rid of the Bishop. If you don't mind, uh, tell him that you have just come from confessing a man with the plague who has just expired and he will leave.
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And the Cardinal says, well, you're a rogue after my own heart. So he gives him a thousand, um, uh, francs to hasten him on his way. So the little priest, ostensibly leaves in period is infuriated that he would give up so easily the little praise, because she really did like him. So she now, yes, insufferable because the Cardinal comes back, he chases away the Bishop with the reus of having confessed, a man dying of plague. But then the fare and period says, how dare you come in here, carrying plugged germs and wanting to just enjoy me and make it the last night of my life. And she pulls the dagger and the Cardo goes on his knees and she tells him to get out. And he says, but I may be the Pope. She says, I'm going to be alive goddess and not be, uh, killed by anybody, including the next Pope. So she goes, the Cardinal leaves and she goes in the Huff to her chambers. And she sees in her mirror slipping from behind one of the curtains, the young priest who did not leave after all. And she happy with the allure of her charms intact, obviously. And he happy with his cleverness douse, the light.
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This is Balzac well, this is the young Balzac who was, when these stories came out, the rage of Paris. He was simply simply the lion, the social lion. Everybody wanted to see him. And the more so because he buried himself, we're work with work for a long, long periods of time. In fact, Balzac what absent himself sometimes for weeks, sometimes for months on end and go traveling all over France and come to Paris and the dead of night go up to his place and go to work. What he found in his capacity was that he was able to look at human beings with such penetrating intuition and with his photographic memory and his tremendous literary talent. He was able, he said to put himself into another person's skin, he was able to enter their life. And in an instant, through this psychical intuition, through this ability to exfoliate in the writing out
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The creative
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Attack on the page to draw out of himself, the hidden structure, all of that person. In fact, he realized
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That with this talent,
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He could in fact create something that had never been done before now. Balzac was the first to write the, um, traditional novel where on omnipresent, omnipotent, observer, uh, narrates and lives through the action. He's the first ever to write a novel like that. He's the creator of that form, but he's the creator of a transcendental form beyond that, which just sends the novel into insignificance. He began composing in his mind and his experience, a vast work, which eventually he would take a title from Dante who wrote the divine comedy Balzac would write the human comedy accommodate humane. And he projected in his experience that it would take about 24 volumes, 24 interrelated interpenetrated novels of enormous extent. Some of them four or five, 600 pages. So he was thinking of writing, let's say 500 times 24, about 12,000 pages over a period of years in which the same character
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Jurors would appear.
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But in one novel, certain characters would be brought up to the fore and other ones would be in varying backgrounds. Then in another novel, the major characters here would go into varying backgrounds and others would be brought up. So the, eventually the reader canvassing these 24 volumes would come into possession of a complete or Eckard of human nature, a slice of life, complete recreated magically brought back into existence by the sear literature of Balzac. So that man would have for the first time in laboratory specimen of society intact, alive, and his experience could then approximate that of ball's Zack and be able to attune himself to human nature, to be able to understand man and consequently himself as a part of an inner penetrating society and interpenetrating civilization, is this too much for you? You want to take a break? This is profound. Balzac realized that we cannot know ourselves in isolation. There is no methodology, which the mind can imagine.
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Tarot,
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Astrology, whatever it is, Balzac investigated all of the on-call methods. He spent years and years in mesmerism and every conceivable on-call activity, trying to find if there was in fact, one that worked and he found again and again, that the problem was that we do not exist as an isolated phenomenon. We are not a thing. We are a interpenetration of others and the reaction of forces within ourselves to others. We exist in separable from the mid-year of our time, from the population of other people and the whole form of man. He has not man as an individual, like their Renaissance thought like Greece thought, but man exists as a social pattern as a social phenomenon and no one exists in isolation from that. So in order to recover, man, the essence of what man is one must recover intact,
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Oh, alive the society. Okay.
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The culture, the civilization of any given moment
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Only then will we have the BA only then will we have the starting point
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From which we may then evolve a philosophy of human nature, a theory of human history, a politics and a religion and whatever else we might have, Balzac set to work on this. And there was no one to whom he confide except several women. Now Balzac found that he has great empathy with human nature. Put him into contact with extraordinary women, women who are extraordinary in their sympathetic ability. The author said George sand was one of his closest friends. Balzac's relationship with women was extraordinary. He, it's not just the question of a man, uh, being a lover. It's the question of a man being able to be psychically a life long friend with a feminine consciousness, dominant personality in possession of her consciousness. And in this regard, as he began to write the novels, he began receiving letters from women all over Europe, who recognized that ball's Zack was a companion, a compatriot in existence with them whose abilities and insights, um, even, uh, transcended a, their own intuitive sympathetic grass. One of these women was a Polish woman named, uh, Mme. Hunt, SCA Madame Huska. She wrote to Balzac late in 1832. And he, with his uncanny ability, when he read her letter, he read through her letter to her. That is to say he like some, if I may use the vulgar phrase, psychic bloodhound took this scent, this trace and through the letter read her, knew her as a person, as a human being could recreate her.
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He wrote to her and uh, said to him, Adam Hasko that she was an extraordinary person, extraordinary to him. He writes at the end of his letter, he says, certainly there are works in which I like to be myself, but you can guess them. There are those in which the heart speaks out by fate, just to paint the happiness that others feel to desire it in perfection, but never to meet it. That is to say he was aware that he was no longer available to himself in an illusory sense or in a regular psychological sense. He was no longer able to be subjective to himself. He was no longer unread to Balzac special and separate from humanity. He was really, as he, he always said the secretary of French society, that is to say he was speaking very profoundly and psychically by saying that Henri to Balzac had transformed.
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And it'd become a communal creature compose of the some 2,350 characters, which he would create in the camp. They accommodate humane. That's where Balzac is. So he says, my fate is to paint the happiness that others feel tos desire it in perfection, but never to meet it, none. But those who suffer can paint joy because we express better than that, which we can see then that, which we have experienced. We express that, which we can see better than that, which we experience because the mind thought is not a phenomenon of the individual, but as a phenomenon of the time and as a product of the interpenetration of human beings in their time and not the property of an individual in isolation, that there is no such thing as the isolated individual human mind, Madam Harsco became a life long friend of Balzac for 17 years. He wrote letters to her and there are 700 pages of letters to her. And finally, they met several times. They became lovers.
(00:49:26):
Yeah. In 1842, when her husband died a wealthy, uh, Polish landowner, Balzac wanted to marry her Shay sensing the peculiar unique nature of all Zack, the quality of ambiguity, which he had to preserve in order to right. Refuse to marry him, not on the basis that she didn't love him, but on the basis that she did not want to ground him, she did not want to bring him back out of that psychic menu in which he was the grand Eagle. One of the best writers of all time in this regard, Shakespeare was also a writer like this. Incidentally, he did not exist as a man. He existed as the characters, which he created, where is Shakespeare. He is in his place. Nowhere else. Whereas Balzac, he's in the characters of his novels. He is in fact hard at work throughout the 1840s because she promised him that she would marry him when he completed the humane, the comedy humane. So from 1842 to 1848 balls, Zach poured himself out torrentially he wrote 17 novels. And those six years, some of the greatest novels that have ever been written, but more, every one of those novels interpenetrated with each other so that the entire work was a unity.
(00:51:09):
He would publish certain works and the critics would be it. And Balzac, uh, occasionally would go into print saying, nobody is reading me. This is not to stand by itself. This is a flowing in or penetrating part of something yet unfolding and coming to be, he wrote to Madam hand SCA. Then in 1840, he says,
(00:51:43):
I have surmounted many miseries. And if I have a success, now they are all over imagined. Therefore, what will be my acne during the evening when Vautrin is performed, Balzac thought that perhaps she was not going to be close to him because he was so in debt Balzac was indebted by tens of thousands of Franks, almost all of his life. So he thought that he wrote a triumphant, play, a drama for the theater, produced it in Paris, that this in one fell swoop with its run would extricate him from death. He never was able to affect that. There were many opportunities when Rothi, uh, women offered to pay his debts, but he realized that that would just ground him to this patron. And beside that Balzac was busy reminding you what I said at the beginning, he was busy burning himself out by extending himself to the utmost of his energy, to encompass, not just one personality fully, but some 2,350 personalities, which he was creating and infusing with his own vital essence.
(00:53:06):
His father might've lived a hundred years, but Balzac lived thousands of lives all at once in such detail that Balzac as a writer, as a portrayer of detail is often compared to the Dutch realist painters where every detail is portrayed. Balzac gives you the tastes, sights smells. Why? Because he's there because all I need to do is look around, listen again. And again, one is just overwhelmed by the luxuriant detail. Every character is portrayed and not just a thumbnail sketch, but in the fullest possible portrait one gets to know the ball's Zak characters. They're indelible,
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Balzac later writing to Madam [inaudible] in 1841. He says the affair of the publication of my great work under the title of LA comedy humane in which all my compositions will be classed. And definitely definitively corrected is about to begin. This is 1841 in order to travel, I must leave four volumes ready with my publishers for compact volumes. The whole will be in 28 volumes at four Franks with illustrations. So by now the comedy had grown to 28 volumes. Then in 1844, writing again to Mme. Hunt SCA, and I'm just excerpting paragraphs out of 700 pages of detailed, uh, explication.
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He writes here. Now I must talk health,
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Just like his father. Now I must talk health. You will not pardon me if I forget it in writing to you. I am well in spite of a slight grip, but I think that I shall be able to master the enormous work which I must do now, between now and March 20th, do not draw too much upon my troubles. And my toils do not pity me too much without this avalanche to sweep away, I should die. What was an avalanche, an avalanche of characters, thousands of them without this avalanche to sweep away, I should die consumed by an indefinable ill called absence fever, consumption, nerves, Langer, what a shinier has described in his June Mela day. Why would he suffer this? Because he would suffer from the illusion that he was a single isolated individual, a person in his own, right? And he knew that that was not true. And the more man tries to be a single human being in his own, right? The more, the absurd feverish in Newey malady be sensitive.
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We're very familiar in the 20th century with the absurd life. So Balzac says, do not pity me too much. I only live because this man lies this avalanche exists. Otherwise I should perish quite literally. Therefore he says, I bless heaven for the obligations, which misfortune has placed upon me. I do not count as I think I told you on a theater of success to pay my debts. He'd given up that idea by 1844. I kind of, I count only on the 50 folios of accommodate humane, the driven to 57 volumes by 1844. That's about 25,000 pages on an average, which I have to do, which I have to do. And which will give me about 50,000 francs. It is true that I also expect to bring in a good conclusion to the affair, uh, of illustrating Eugenia ground day and the physiology though, these two things represent about 20,000.
(00:57:45):
At least Balzac set himself okay to an extraordinary adventure. I have to skip over. I was going to read you the wonderful introductions. He finally began to make a map of the comedy humane and he decided that it would have to be in three segments, three vast parts, the first part, and this is a catalog which was made in 1845. They accommodate humane would have three parts. The first would be, uh, studies in manners that is the, uh, mores and so forth. And, uh, the second part would be studies in philosophy, which would go into the, uh, basic, uh, principles and causes so forth. And the third part would be studies analytic, which would be not so much in terms of the manners and the N and showing the characters for what they were doing or showing the characters more profoundly in what causes and motivations they had. But the studies analytic we'd go into the bed, rock bottom metaphysics of what human nature really was in its interpenetrating, humanity as a unity, what exists, not man, but only men kind
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That's what exists. Okay.
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The studies in manners or mores had, uh, six different sections. There were scenes from private life. There were scenes from provincial life scenes from Parisian life scenes, from political life scenes, from military life and scenes from country life, almost all of the writings and novels that ball's act did in this torrential 1840 period, fall into the section on the manners. The, uh, second part, the study's philosophic became so engrossing and penetrating to Balzac that he only did several works in this, and I've selected the major one. And I'm going to get to it regardless of the time, because you need to have it.
(01:00:25):
The third part, the studies analytic was almost on attempted on his part. That is to say the ambitiousness of the comedy humane tax, the capacity of even the torrential outpouring of balls. Zack, in fact, as we will see, he began to fall ill increasingly in the late 1840s. He journeyed to the estate of Madam Hans SCA in 1846 and stayed 1847 and stayed for, uh, let's see, from October, 1847 until, uh, February of 1848, went back to Paris fell Elligan uh, went back to, uh, her estates all this time, beginning to sense in himself, a quavering in order to make one last gas, because he intuited that he was in fact, um, burning himself out. He wrote one of the most extraordinary works of all time. It is a part of accommodate. Humane is a part in the section called philosophic studies. It is a novel, but it is a curious, penetrating novel of the mystery of life. It is called and its best translation. The magic skin, the penguin classics translation calls it the wild acids skin, the magic skin. It is without any question, one of the most important literary works ever done in any civilization. I would classify the w the magic skin, probably on a level with Don Quixote or Moby Dick. It is important beyond
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Say,
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I have to skip over a little bit of it,
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But I want to give you this Balzac was not a pessimist
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From the introduction to the magic skin written in 19. Yeah,
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Four,
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Not a pessimist. He believed in human progress in the general introduction already quoted. He says, man is neither good, nor bad. He is born with instincts and aptitudes society far from deep craving him as Rousseau pretended, elevates and improves.
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It was him, but
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Self-interest develops evil tendencies in him. And the natural remedy for them is religion. Society is where a man exists as a BA his egotistic self tendencies, the will, and thought bent to oneself in isolation makes of the mind a destroyer Bhagavad Gita says the mind just as the destroyer of the real, just so Balzac read the Bhagavad Gita. He was extraordinarily intelligent and extraordinarily well-read Balzac in the magic skin
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Gives us
(01:04:13):
The following. And this is, uh, this is from the introduction. And then I'll, I'll give you four paragraphs, which leap through the magic skin and give you some idea of the power with what she is doing this. And I hope that you'll go and find a copy and read this Balzac's philosophy included analysis of the consequences, not only of use, but abuse of the thinking power. And he wrote the magic skin as a commentary upon one of the salient evils of modern civilization, the increasing tendency to excess generated by the headlong pace at which existence is carried on and stimulated by the intenseness of competition and the enhanced attractiveness of the objects of human desire. We are constantly being baited into isolation, baited into wanting to coalesce into egotistical
(01:05:20):
Avaricious being, which doesn't really exist. And when we treat,
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Try to force it through will and thought to exist, it becomes like a knife cutting the social fabric, the very basis of its existence destroying, right?
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So the magic skin deals with this
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And in the very first part, I'm just going to read you four paragraphs. You're going to have to go through it yourself. The magic skin he gives in the very beginning, a quotation from Tris Shanti, Shanti by Lawrence stern, which was the model that James Joyce used when he wrote Ulysses, uh, chapter 233, Tristan Shani is also a marvelous tour de force of human intelligence. And the chapter consists
(01:06:14):
A squiggle
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Saying that there is nothing that we can say. It's so confused at this point that all we can do is make a squiggle. And that's what that chapter is.
(01:06:28):
Hmm.
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We're dealing with very sophisticated people. We haven't gotten anywhere beyond this by 1984. We're no, we're not even up to this.
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Here's how he begins. Notice the quality of balls, Zack,
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As he has matured from the droll stories. Notice the texture of Balzac's reality as it just scintillating only comes out. He's like a shower of gold of observations and it goes on and on and on and on until as Proust and Henry James and Faulkner what the test to one simply becomes a lie. Two balls out.
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Yeah.
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The first part of the magic skin is called the tells men
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Toward the close of October. Last, the young man entered the palai Royale at the hour. When the gambling houses opened in conformity with the law, which protects a passion, essentially taxable without much hesitation. He passed up the staircase of the hell, which went by the name of number 36, mature your hat. If you please, you called out a sharp rum monster to voice a pallid old man who was squatting in the dark corner, behind a railing, and who now Rose suddenly showing a face of an ignoble type. When you enter a gambling house, the law begins by depriving you of your hat. Is that meant as an Evan angelical and ghostly parable,
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May it not
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Rather be a means clenching and infernal bargain by extracting and exacting something of you as a pledge. Can it be intended to force you into a respectful attitude toward those who win your money? Do the police lurking near every social sinkhole insist on knowing the very name of your Hatter or your own. If you have written it on the lining, is it to take the measure of your skull and evolve some instructive statistics in the cerebral capacity of gamblers on this subject, the government is impenetrably silent, but you must plainly understand that no sooner have you made a step toward the green table, then your hat no more belongs to you. Then you belong to yourself. You are a stake. You, your money, your hat, your cane, your cloak. When you depart from that hell play, we'll show you by a malevolent epigram and action that it still leaves you something by returning your hat. We may remark that if as if it is a new one, you will learn to your costs that in future, you may wear gamblers clothes, you must wear a gambler's clothes. He goes in, the gambling goes on. He finds that in thinking about things that what he really needs is something to help him along very fast in and a old man with the beard and black cloak skull cap takes him up certain dark and stairs into certain mysterious room and reveals to him as the friend, his piece illustration shows a
(01:10:09):
Yeah, a pelt, very ancient, okay.
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And the box that it's in his seal and he looks, and he recognizes that this magical anagram is Solomon's seal. And the old man watching him carefully, it breaks the seal and opens the box and takes out the magic pelt, hands it to him and in it, on it, he has written a message and the message rates in translation. If thou possesses me, thou what's possessed all, but thy life would be in my possession. God, it so welds it. In other words, you have me and you can have anything you want, but I have you wish. And thou shall obtain die wishes, but measure thy wishes by thy life. It is here at every wish of dying. I shrink like dying days. In other words, the magic skin's going to shrink because it's an index to his life, his vital essence. And every time he wishes it shrinks someone and he gets what he wishes, but his life is ebbing away. Dust out, desire me, take me, God will grant thy wishes. So be it. So he has the magic skin and he begins to live with this talisman, just the sort of talisman man dreams in his isolation that he needs against
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Others.
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What else would we wish for? But advantage over others. Part two called the woman without a heart. Yes. A woman. Andrew is in
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A woman who senses the dilemma,
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Who senses the metaphysical implications, who falls in love with
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The man
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And wishes to take him from this destiny, from this curse, from this
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Quandary
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Part to the woman, without a heart, just the opening paragraph
(01:12:43):
Main character's name is Raphael. After remaining silent for a moment, Raphael said with a half careless gesture, I don't really know whether the fumes of punch and wine have, or have not something to do with a species of lucidity of mind, which enables me at this moment to grasp the whole of my life. As though it were a picture where figures, colors, lights, shadows, and half 10 are faithfully rendered. This poetic play of my imagination would not surprise me if it were not accompanied by a feeling of contempt for my sufferings and for my former joy rise. See, and from a distance, my life seems as though shrunk and by some moral phenomenon, this long slow agony, which has lasted 10 years, can tonight be reproduced by a few sentences and what suffering as no more than a thought and pleasure, but a philosophic reflection. I now pass judgment. I feel nothing.
(01:14:10):
I critic poignantly would say that Balzac not only plumbed the depths of human nature, but he touched rock bottom. He was able to feel nothing. Part three is the death agony. And this is the third part of the magic skin. The final part, just the first paragraph, the plot, then [inaudible] the movement of everything as it all balls, Zack thickens, congeals, and comes to the point like a pack of sharks onto the blood trail early in the month of December and old man, over 70 years of age was going along the route of Iran's unmindful of the rain and gazing up at the doors of all the houses, looking with the eagerness of a lover and the absorbed air of a philosopher for the one belonging to Ms. Year led Marquis Raphael, the Valentine, an expression of anxious grief struggling against the will of a despotic nature was on his face, which was dried like an old parchment shriveling in the fire all the way through the imagery of shriveling and shrinking just penetrates the magic skin. And increasingly as it goes on, everything contracts, everything comes down to as we'll see a clatter,
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All of life congeals to a clatter is the old
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Parchment face shriveling in the fire and framed by long gray locks. Now hanging in disorder. If a painter met the singular person age who was lean and boney and dressed in black, he would certainly on returning to his studio, have put a sketch of him into his notebook with the inscription classic poet in search of a rhyme after making sure of the number of the house, this living Pella and Jen Easy-A of rollin knocked gently at the door of a magnificent hotel
(01:16:18):
Is most shear or Rafael at home.
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And then the last page, the old man is the man who gave him the magic skin. You see
(01:16:32):
Coming in at the Torrid end of the novel. If I die, he lives, she cried and struggling to tighten the knot. Her hair hung loose. Her shoulders were bare. Her clothing and disorder in this wild struggle for death, with tearful eyes and a flushed faith face and rising in the anguish of her horrible despair. She met the eyes of Raphael and augmented his delirium. He darted towards her with the lightness of a bird of prey, tore shawl away and tried to grasp her in his arms. The dying creatures sought for words to utter the desire that possessed him, but no sounds came except the strangling death rattle in his throat. All language reduced to a death rattle in his throat, shrivel to a death rattle in his throat. Each breath. He drew more hollows than the last seeming to come from. His very interests person is just coming out at the last moment, furious at his own weakness. He bit her in the breast. Joe, Nathus terrified by the cries. He heard rushed in and struggled to tear his mistress from the dead body to what she clung in a corner of the room. What do you want of me? She demanded he is mine. I have killed him. Did I not predict it?
(01:18:08):
Well, as I can self near death,
(01:18:13):
Finally married, Madam him SCA in March of 1850. He was constantly bedridden in pain in Paris with her. And in August of 1850, he died, literally burnt out, literally shrunken and rival. And all that remained was about two thirds of the comedy humane finished about one third projected. And the incomprehension not only of his time, but of ours also.
(01:18:49):
Thank you.

END OF RECORDING