Lost Illusions (Penguin Classics) Read online

  PENGUIN CLASSICS

  LOST ILLUSIONS

  HONORÉ DE BALZAC was born at Tours in 1799, the son of a civil servant. He spent nearly six years as a boarder in a Vendôme school, then went to live in Paris, working as a lawyer’s clerk then as a hack-writer. Between 1820 and 1824 he wrote a number of novels under various pseudonyms, many of them in collaboration, after which he unsuccessfully tried his luck at publishing, printing and type-founding. At the age of thirty, heavily in debt, he returned to literature with a dedicated fury and wrote the first novel to appear under his own name, The Chouans. During the next twenty years he wrote about ninety novels and shorter stories, among them many masterpieces, to which he gave the comprehensive title The Human Comedy. As Balzac himself put it: ‘What he [Napoleon] was unable to finish with the sword, I shall accomplish with the pen.’ He died in 1850, a few months after his marriage to Evelina Hanska, the Polish countess with whom he had maintained amorous relations for eighteen years.

  HERBERT J. HUNT was educated at Lichfield Cathedral Choir School, the Lichfield Grammar School and Magdalen College, Oxford. He was a Tutor and Fellow at St Edmund Hall from 1927 to 1944, then until 1966 he was Professor of French Literature and Language at London University and from 1966 to 1970 was Senior Fellow of Warwick University. He published books on literature and thought in nineteenth-century France; he was also the author of a biography of Balzac, and a comprehensive study of Balzac’s writings: Balzac’s ‘Comédie Humaine’ (1959, paperback 1964). His translation of Balzac’s Cousin Pons appeared in the Penguin Classics in 1968. He died in 1973.

  OLIVIA McCANNON studied languages at the Queen’s College, Oxford. She has been based in Paris since 1998, working as a writer and translator. She has translated French plays for the Royal Court Theatre, and is currently working on a new edition of Balzac’s Old Goriot for Penguin Classics.

  HONORÉ DE BALZAC

  Lost Illusions

  Translated and introduced by HERBERT J. HUNT

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Lost Illusions originally published in three parts 1837–43

  This translation published 1971

  Reprinted with a new Chronology and Further Reading 2004

  22

  Translation and Introduction copyright © Herbert J. Hunt, 1971

  Chronology and Further Reading copyright © Olivia McCannon, 2004

  All rights reserved

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  ISBN: 978-0-14-193602-4

  Contents

  Introduction

  Chronology

  Further Reading

  PART I: THE TWO POETS

  1 A provincial printing-office

  2 Madame de Bargeton

  3 A social evening and a riverside stroll

  4 Catastrophic sequels to provincial love

  PART II: A GREAT MAN IN EMBRYO

  1 First-fruits

  2 Flicoteaux

  3 Two varieties of publishers

  4 First friendship

  5 The ‘Cénacle’

  6 The flowers of poverty

  7 A newspaper seen from outside

  8 The sonnets

  9 Good advice

  10 A third variety of publisher

  11 The Wooden Galleries

  12 A publisher’s bookshop in the Wooden Galleries

  13 A fourth variety of publisher

  14 Behind the scenes

  15 A use for druggists

  16 Coralie

  17 How a news-sheet is edited

  18 The supper

  19 An actress’s apartments

  20 Last visit to the Cénacle

  21 A variety of journalist

  22 Boots can change one’s way of life

  23 The arcana of journalism

  24 Re-enter Dauriat

  25 The battle begins

  26 Dauriat pays a call

  27 A study in the art of recantation

  28 Journalistic grandeurs and servitudes

  29 The playwrights’ banker

  30 A journalist’s christening-party

  31 Polite society

  32 The ‘viveurs’

  33 A fifth variety of publisher

  34 Blackmail

  35 The money-brokers

  36 A change of front

  37 Finot’s finesses

  38 The fateful week

  39 Skulduggery

  40 Farewells

  PART III: AN INVENTOR’S TRIBULATIONS

  Introduction

  1 The doleful confession of a ‘child of the age’

  2 Back-kick from a donkey

  THE HISTORY OF A LAW-SUIT

  3 The problem at issue

  4 A plucky wife

  5 A Judas in the making

  6 The two Cointets

  7 The first thunderbolt

  8 A glance at paper-making

  9 Provincial solicitors

  10 A free lecture on dishonoured bills for those unable to meet them

  11 Lucien under distraint

  12 ‘Your house is on fire’

  13 A contrast in loyalties

  14 Keeping the fire going

  15 Climax

  16 Imprisonment for debt in the provinces

  17 An obdurate father

  18 The pack pauses before the kill

  19 A bride for Petit-Claud

  20 The Curé has his say

  THE FATAL MEMBER OF THE FAMILY

  21 The prodigal’s return

  22 An unexpected triumph

  23 How the triumph had been staged

  24 A rare kind of devotion

  25 The pride of his province?

  26 The snake in the grass

  27 Lucien takes his revenge

  28 The peak of disaster

  29 A last farewell

  30 A chance encounter

  31 The story of a favourite

  32 A history lecture for the ambitious – by a disciple of Machiavelli

  33 A lecture on ethics – by a disciple of Mendoza

  34 A Spanish profile

  35 Why criminality and corruption go hand in hand

  36 On the brink of surrender

  37 The effect of a night in gaol

  38 A day too late

  39 The history of a business venture

  40 Conclusion

  Introduction

  HONORÉ DE BALZAC (born at Tours, 1799, died in Paris, 1850) was just past the middle of his writing career when he gave Lost Illusions to the world (The Two Poets, 1837, A Great Man in Embryo, 1839, An Inventor’s Tribulation
s, 1843). After ten uneasy years (1819–1829) of initial efforts, interrupted between 1826 and 1828 by an abortive attempt to make his fortune as publisher, printer and type-founder, he had achieved his first relative success by producing the novel since known as The Chouans (1829), the first one he signed with his own name. By about 1830 he had already conceived the idea of presenting the social and moral history of his own times in a complex series of novels and short stories: he also intended it to be an interpretation of life and society as he saw it, and it was therefore backed by a certain number of ‘philosophical novels’, the most conspicuous of these being The Skin (1831), Louis Lambert (1832–1835) and Seraphita (1834–1835). He made a first collection of his works between 1834 and 1837, dividing them into three categories: Studies of Manners, Philosophical Studies and Analytical Studies. The Studies of Manners were sub-divided into various kinds of ‘Scenes’ – of Private, Provincial, Parisian, Political, Military and Country Life. But of course, as he went on writing, new novels had to be inserted into these compartments. After finding a general title for them in 1840 (The Human Comedy) he collected them again between 1842 and 1846. He continued to write with feverish energy until as late as 1847, and by 1850, when he died, the time was ripe for yet another collection; hence the appearance, between 1869 and 1876, of the so-called ‘Definitive Edition’.

  Since then the republication of these works – together with the publication of unfinished works and fragments, critical editions, his vast correspondence, etc – has become a major industry. Balzac’s energy was unbounded and his productivity astounding. In fact he worked himself to death, one imperative motive for this being the urge to pay off the formidable debts he had contracted as a printer. Moreover his way of life was so extravagant that these debts went on increasing to the end. Another even more cogent motive was to bring forth all he had in him as the self-appointed ‘secretary’ of contemporary society. And yet he found time to lead an eventful, picturesque and tormented life, memorable for the incursions he made into fashionable, literary and artistic society and also for a series of love affairs which culminated in the lengthy court he paid to a woman who started as a ‘pen-friend’, became his mistress in 1834 and eventually, after keeping him on tenterhooks for many years, married him in May 1850, almost on the eve of his death: a Polish countess, Eveline Hanska. Naturally these sentimental adventures, his friendships, his animosities and his social relationships all furnished substance for his works, and one of the principal occupations of researchers has been to discover prototypes and models behind his characters (e.g., in Part II of Lost Illusions, the novelist George Sand behind Camille Maupin): not an unprofitable activity provided that one realizes that neither Balzac nor any other great writer carries real events and living persons into his fictions without fusing and transforming them.

  Balzac may indeed have distinguished himself as a ‘secretary’ of society, but he was also a great creative artist, and from his study of contemporary society emerged, not a mere copy of the world around him, but a new world which may appropriately be called ‘Balzacian’: a vividly striking world, teeming with extraordinarily vital and energetic people, impressively real from one point of view, but so heightened and dramatized, so metamorphosed that it is difficult to say at what moment reality is transcended and imagination takes control. There has been much argument over Balzac as an observer of daily reality and Balzac as a ‘seer’ expressing his own vision of things. He certainly possessed remarkable powers of observation and a prodigious memory. But, as he himself frequently asserted, these faculties were supplemented by a strange gift of sympathetic intuition which he himself, taking a leaf from Scott, called ‘second sight’. In fact he did regard himself as being specially if not preternaturally endowed. In any case no reader of his works will fail to see that he is not merely a ‘historian’ of society, but also a judge, a satirist and, within certain limits, a constructive thinker, although his philosophy is a curious one, a strange blend of science and occultism. As a novelist, he is, of course, a ‘classic’: that is to say that he tells a straightforward tale, creates his background, giving meticulous and often lengthy attention to localities, sites, buildings, furniture, physiognomy and dress, poses and develops his characters, and by so doing leads the action up to a climax which is usually rapid and eminently dramatic and moreover supported by lively and characteristic dialogue. He is then, in the main, an ‘omniscient’ narrator who knows where he is going and goes there. None the less, there are today quite a few exponents of the ‘new novel’, notably Michel Butor, who are far from thinking that the Balzac technique is antiquated in the twentieth century.

  In its three parts Lost Illusions sits astride the Scenes of Provincial Life and the Scenes of Parisian Life. Broadly speaking, it has three main themes:

  (1) A young man, born of a plebeian father and an aristocratic mother, after vainly trying to impose himself as a poet on the stupid and prejudiced ‘high society’ in his native Angoulême, is escorted to Paris by his patroness, Madame de Bargeton, for the purpose of making his name and fortune there. Such a migration and this bid for literary success in the metropolis were to some extent Balzac’s own personal experience, one he several times used as a basis for his fictions, for example in The Skin and Old Goriot. But it was also a common experience, a particular case observed at close hand by Balzac being that of Jules Sandeau (though he did not turn out to be a complete failure), a budding author who provided some essential features for the character and career of Étienne Lousteau in A Great Man in Embryo and a few years later in The Muse of the Department. In 1835 Balzac’s loyal friend Zulma Carraud, who had lived near Angoulême from 1831 to 1833, tried to interest him in a young protégé of hers, one Émile Chevalet, who had come to Paris for precisely the same purpose. Balzac took stock of him and sent Zulma a devastating report. ‘If he is without means, it will take him ten years to make a living by his pen… This young man is characteristic of our times. When one has no particular aptitude for anything, one takes to the pen and poses as a talented person.’ But even for the exploitation of real talent, Balzac insists, long and patient effort is needed. And this point is persistently hammered home in the novel.

  Lucien Chardon’s case is similar to that of Chevalet although, according to Balzac’s initial postulate, he does possess talent as both poet and prose-writer. The French title of this second part of Lost Illusions presents him as ‘a great man from the provinces’. Perhaps ‘a great man in embryo’ would be better, and indeed, in 1838, Balzac was thinking of ‘a great man in his apprenticeship’ as an alternative title. Lucien’s mother and sister, also his indulgent brother-in-law David Séchard, take him at his own valuation. So does Madame de Bargeton at first. What in effect are his claims to ‘greatness’?

  The specimens of his poetry proffered by Balzac – he extracted the sonnets from his friends, mostly minor poets except for Théophile Gautier, author of The Tulip – scarcely prove his case. It may not perhaps be fair to ask English readers to judge them by the translations offered, though the translator is not inclined to believe that his renderings are much worse than the originals. Then there is Lucien’s review of the Panorama-Dramatique play – clever and vivacious, but hardly giving evidence of genius. Here we are indeed presented with a dilemma. Obviously the frequently appearing epithet ‘grand homme’ is often used ironically. Yet there are many moments when Balzac seems to be using it seriously. The term ‘poet’ has of course a wider connotation than we should usually allow to it. Lucien and David Séchard are both called ‘poets’, though one is drawn to literature and the other to science, more specifically research into the processes of paper-making. Here a second theme appears to interfere with Balzac’s basically satiric attitude and inspire him with a great deal of sympathy for Lucien.

  (2) This second theme is the opposition Balzac draws between Paris and the provinces. Though he was himself a provincial by birth and early upbringing, he was proud of having become a Parisian, however whole-heartedl
y he might rail against Paris as being the heart and centre of the ruthless egoism and acquisitiveness which he looked on as the major vices of his time. And so, generally speaking, he adopts a contemptuous attitude towards provincial life. In 1833 he had written (in the preface to Eugénie Grandet): ‘Things happen in Paris: they just glide by in the provinces. All is drab. Nothing stands out, though dramas are played through in silence.’ And this Parisian sense of superiority is complicated with class snobbery. Balzac’s family, peasant in its origins, had become solidly bourgeois. In the late eighteen-twenties, and more especially since 1830, he was priding himself on having made a triumphal entry into aristocratic society. At the same time he had taken to conservative views in politics and become a champion of ‘Throne and Altar’, And so we shall always find Balzac striking an aristocratic pose (like Sixte Châtelet, he had awarded himself the ‘particule’ de) and mocking at the bourgeoisie. At the same time he never denies himself the pleasure of deriding the nobility for their pride of race and their unintelligent brand of conservatism – particularly in The Old Maid (1838) and The Cabinet of Antiques (1836–1839). As he portrays it, the aristocracy of Angoulême is at once arrogant, ignorant and petty-minded, and that is why he castigates its treatment of the potential ‘great man’ of Angoulême.