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Title: Lost Illusions by Honore De Balzac, Kathleen Raine ISBN: 0-375-75790-2 Publisher: Modern Library Pub. Date: 13 November, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.73 (11 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Sacre bleu, the man can write!
Comment: As much as I enjoyed Pere Goriot, Lost Illusions is the kind of a literary work that lets you peer into the soul of a great mind and dwell there. Just as Lucien was Balzac, the lost poet, David Sechard, the printer, is also Balzac the craftsman in real life: he bought a print shop in Paris to print his own novels. Sechard is much like the scientist in the Quest of the Absolute, except that David ultimately finds himself through his invention and the inventor in The Quest becomes lost to his own monomania. As Balzac wrote of Lucien: "He's not a poet, this young man: he's a serial novel." And so it's time to find out what happens to Lucien after this novel in his return to Paris. The characters of his novels keep reappearing in scenes from one novel to the next, which is wonderful. However, they seem to change as one sees them through different eyes. Delightful young Rastignac in Pere Goriot becomes a rather unscrupulous mean-spirited character in Lost Illusions. Balzac has built an entire society of his characters and as varied as they are, they are all also him and show the great diversity and depth of his personality and sensitivity. Like Galsworthy, Balzac wanted to build an interconnected society of characters who are so human that it's easy to understand why they behave as they do. The realism is striking and magnificent and always rings true. Balzac works hard despite the realism to spin out of every hardship a redemption and out of every malignity a comic side that's all too human. The comedy and irony are rich in Balzac in his passionate account of life in Paris in high society and the challenges that it thrusts upon every ideal. This is the best work of Balzac that I have read so far out of four novels of his. It's such great writing, and the energy of the translator can make a difference, that Balzac keeps one coming back for more. But the writing and wit and wisdom are so extraordinary, I am happy to accommodate him. Anyone who has ever aspired to write and publish prose in New York will identify with Blazac's Lucien: Lost Illusions is a novel that aspiring writers especially may find intriguing.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Contrast of Genius, or: Bright Lights, Big City
Comment: Alongside his current and future contemporaries, Victor Hugo and Marcel Proust, Honore de Balzac is considered to be the preeminent French author of the 19th century. Fabulous, larger-than-life, Balzac was a man of fertile talent and extreme contrasts, whose proficiency with the pen was matched only by his prolificacy of his appetites. A clown, a genius, a glutton and a monk: Balzac burned brightly with the Promethean Gift, and left behind an enormous body of work - some ninety-two novels - all loosely interconnected in theme and character(s). To accomplish this, he worked manic-style from the hours of midnight to six in the morning, scribbling furiously by candlelight and swilling copious amounts of black coffee, retaining the sexual urge tantric-style while cultivating a reputation as a ladies' man and legendary great lover (. . . as I said, a man of extreme contrasts). The eventually result of this effort is entitled Le Comedie Humaine [The Human Comedy], an almost-encyclopaedic opus that paints a relatively accurate portrait of Balzac's time and setting - a true French *milieu* - and easily compares to the output of his literary contemporaries, by way of both qualitative exertion and sheer talent.
*Lost Illusions* chronicles the trials and triumphs of two potential geniuses, Lucien Rubempre and David Sechard, men of steadfast friendship, common ideal and altogether differing personality. Lucien is the handsome, debonair poet-dreamer, a wordsmith-wannabe of vast ambition and dubious moral fortitude, who envisions all existence bound up in the invisible perimeters of "art" to the exclusion of pressing realities; this leads, of course, to the misery and consternation of those of his closest intimacy. David, in contrast, is a plain, hard working, abstract-thinking inventor, the simpleton-savant forced to endure continual ridicule and poverty as he strives to streamline certain basic elements of the printing business for the benefit of future generations. The contrasting development of these two men - for better and for worse - reveals the true path one must take (i.e. disciplined WORK), and the many temptations one should avoid (sloth, sensual over-abandonment, sham-intellectualism), in finding culmination for the burgeoning talent, in realizing and applying the genius-drive. . . at least according to Balzac's not-so-humble opinion.
The novel begins very much like most 19th century literature, with the first fifty or so pages devoted almost exclusively to describing the environment in which the forthcoming drama shall ensue, and in detailing the history and general character of the main participants therein. These necessities thus scribed, Balzac launches into the narrative with his usual vigor: his technique includes a slow-boil development of tension/conflict; a scathing portrayal of the high society; reflective asides and cultural digressions; humorous episodes coupled with a smattering of violence, the latter element confined mostly to the psychological. This structure is common to a Balzac novel, and in *Lost Illusions* it is achieved with page-turning skill; even when the pace flags, the infectious energy implicit in the text and overall construction helps to buoy the reader across Balzac's vast, oceanic theme-excursions.
To be honest, *Lost Illusions* is one of those books where, paradoxically, 'the less said the better;' it is so good that, in my opinion, its delights and secret treasures should be discovered by the innocent, diligent reader - the eventual impact of the novel becoming all the greater. But I suppose a few tidbits are necessary for this sort of review...thus:
Fed up with being a tortured poet among philistines, Lucien Rebempre leaves the small-town constraints of his native Angouleme for the bright lights and big city splendor of gay Paree. There he is quickly seduced by the glittering illusions of bourgeois society, and almost as quickly thrown down to languish amidst the common rabble. For some time our 'hero' pines and abstract-pontificates, juggling his dream of artistic immortality with the more immediate desire for monetary wealth/social recognition, slowly but ever-so-surely capitulating toward the fantasy-chimera of the latter. Lucien, with his flower sonnets and unfinished manuscript _An Archer of Charles IX_, begins his 'quest' as a fresh-faced, starry-eyed enthusiast of human potential; in short, a typical example of naïve ambition as yet unhampered by the crushing weight of repeat-failure and/or the angst-miasma of the cynical perspective. Lucien's eventual abandonment of the higher ideals of art for the quick fame of journalism seems almost inevitable given his unstable character, and it gives the author unrestrained motive to rant and rave, via literary form. It is obvious that Balzac, who toiled in the fickle trade of news-shaping for some considerable time, had an axe to grind; and his blow-by-blow critique of the business - its hypocrisies, desperations, vacant platitudes and absolute corruption - is all the more affecting because it is witnessed by the demoralized, disillusioned Lucien: his 'quest' has taken him from the Elysian Fields of "pure" Glory to the sordid pits of a fraudulent Hell, a vast, soulless Perdition for the artistically condemned.
Indisputably one of Balzac's finest novels, *Lost Illusions* is where the casual reader should venture after reading *Pere Goirot* and possibly *The Black Sheep*. Balzac's characters often reappear, in some form or another, over the course of his opus: principle to this volume are the roguish personalities of Rastignac and Vautrin/Jacque Collins, both of which are introduced in *Pere Goirot*. The former is somewhat inconsequential to the novel as a whole, but the latter arrives at a fortuitous moment, afflicts a massive change to one of the leading protagonists, and comes to dominate *Lost Illusion*'s inferior sequel, *A Harlot High and Low*. His speech about mankind and its necessary illusions - in itself a harrowing disillusionment to the already shattered reader-participant - culminates all of Balzac's themes, digressions, character arcs: he tells it like it is in a fashion that few authors of this era dare dream - or even conceive - of attempting.
Highly Recommended.
Rating: 5
Summary: Stimulus response
Comment: I only write this as a response to the reviews I read. I have also only read up to 500 (but having read A harlot high and low I guess I have some right to review anyway). It seems to me that Balzac isn't so great that every page might be a pleasure, as someone wrote. But as someone else wrote, there is a definite and palpable satisfaction in reading Balzac, even if some parts are boring. I suppose what draws me to Balzac is that when a characterization stays true and Balzac really adheres to it, an almost real "world" actually does seems to develop. When Lucien shows D'Arthez, as yet (pg. 453) a good guy, an article in which he is going to skewer D'Arthez's book (he is more or less blackmailed into doing so, sort of, yet he still does have a choice, as always), here is D'Arthez' "solemn" reply, after some general effusiveness on Lucien's part:
"I regard periodic repentances as a great hypocrisy, for repentance is then only a bonus given to evil deeds. Repentance is a virginity which our souls owe to God: a man who twice repents is therefore a reprehensible sycophant. I'm afraid you only look on penitence as a prelude to absolution.
After looking up the work sycophant and rereading this little passage, it occured to me that D'arthez's statement jives incredibly well with his character, and this is satisfying. Equally satisfying are these great bursts of writing which never fail to show up when things get a bit slow. There might (I would dare to say probably) also be a little bit of Balzac behind the above quote.
Concerning my penguin edition, I wish it were annotated. Balzac litters his prose with good descriptive physiognomies and many, many times assumes the (well, yeah, french) reader is acquainted with a piece of art resembling a part of the face. An annotated edition - perhaps even an ambitiously complete one - would make this book more fun for me, at least. To me, one thing Balzac isn't is so wildly entertaining that references should be ignored: I would just as soon learn something more about the artists, writers, architecture of that time if I am going to go to the bother of reading him. More, I feel at times I am losing some fairly valuable information the readers of Balzac's day would readily know and perhaps even need for both enjoyment and entertainment. It almost seems like the translators thoght this is a current/topical novel! Well, there is always the marker.
There is, like Proust,- though of course in a much sloppier and lengthier manner,- something I guess I would call "humanly satisfying" in seeing characters appear. This is maybe the most realistic part of Balzac's novels: People in life reappear. And with Balzac when they do it seems as though you get to look at them from a vantage point far removed from the ordinary, creating interesting juxtapositions and giving the impression one has the privilege of seeing characters through funhouse mirrors. When Rastignac reappears as a thoroughly malicious and thoughtless jerk, his last sentiments in Old Goriot, where he inwardly and hatefully challenges Paris ("Now I am going to get you" or something close to that)seem to resonate, and what's more, make perfect sense. Also, the early Rastignac in Old Goriot is by no means too far separated by Lucien's personality. Not by a longshot is Balzac's form of realism more real to me than in these senses by which the characters' turns of thought across time make perfect sense.
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Title: A Harlot High and Low: (Splendeurs Et Miseres Des Courtisanes (Splendeurs Et Mis`Eres Des Courtisanes;) by Honore De Balzac, Rayner Heppenstall ISBN: 0140442324 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: December, 1970 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The Black Sheep: LA Rabouilleuse (Penguin Classics) by Honore De Balzac, Donald Adamson ISBN: 0140442375 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: August, 1976 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: The Wrong Side of Paris by HONORE DE BALZAC, JORDAN STUMP, ADAM GOPNIK ISBN: 0679642757 Publisher: Modern Library Pub. Date: 30 December, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Cousin Pons: Part Two of Poor Relations (Penguin Classics, L205) by Honore De Balzac, Herbert J. Hunt ISBN: 0140442057 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: August, 1978 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Pere Goriot (Oxford World's Classics Series) by Honore De Balzac, A. J. Krailsheimer, Honore de Balzac ISBN: 0192835696 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: June, 1999 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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