Honoré Balzac (1799 - 1850)

Born 20 May 1799 in Tours, Indre-et-Loire, France

Husband of Ewelina Constancja Viktoria (Rzewuska) Hańska — married 14 Mar 1850 in Бердичев, Российская Империя

Died 18 Aug 1850 at age 51 in Paris, Seine, France

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Biography

Honoré Balzac is Notable.

Honoré Balzac was born on 20 May 1799 in Tours, France, to Bernard François Balzac, who was born into an artisan family in Tarn in southern France as Bernard François Balssa, and had changed his surname on coming to Paris in 1760 "intent on improving his social standing"^[1]. He was very successful and "by 1776 he had become Secretary to the King's Council and a Freemason" (op.cit.). His mother was Anne Charlotte Laure Sallambier, daughter of a wealthy family of haberdashers in Paris. She was eighteen at the time of their wedding, in 1796 and François Balzac fifty. It was a loveless marriage. Honoré was sent to a wet-nurse and spent 4 years away from his parents, who kept their distance when he returned with his 3 years younger sister Laure. He also had a younger sister Laurence (b.1802) and a younger brother Henry François (b.1807).

About 1809, age ten (ref.4 has age 8), Balzac was sent to the Vendôme Oratory Grammar School, by his father, where he studied for seven years, but with little pocket money. An enthusiastic reader and independent thinker as a child, he had trouble adapting to the rote teaching style of his grammar school, and spent a lot of time in solitary confinement as punishment, even reading dictionaries. It is suggested that this punishment may have been the cause of his life long health problems, combined with an intensive writing schedule.

In 1814, the Balzac family moved to Paris and he was sent to private tutors and schools for the next two and a half years: An unhappy time, he attempted suicide on a bridge over the Loire River (ref.1).

In 1816, he entered the Sorbonne and studied under 3 famous professors (op.cit.). His father persuaded him to follow him into the study of Law, and he served as an apprentice, to 1819^[2] but wearied of its inhumanity and banal routine. [The time-frame seems inadequate for both?] He then decided to become a writer, though he may well have already made that decision while still at school, which caused serious discord amongst the family who moved 32 kms out of Paris to Villeparisis, while he stayed "in a garret furnished in the most Spartan fashion, with a starvation allowance and an old woman to look after him" (ref.1).

Before and during his career as a writer, he attempted to be a publisher, printer, businessman, critic, and politician; he failed in all of these efforts (ref.1).

After the collapse of his businesses; he owed his mother (the bringer of capital to the family) 50,000 francs in 1828; he went and stayed with friends in Brittany and wrote what was to become his first successful novel, 'Les Chouans' that was published in 1829, the year his father died. About the same time he wrote the first book that he signed 'Honoré de Balzac', which was published in 1830.

"Balzac was the first great writer to explore the influence of environment on human beings, and to reveal the complex bonds that tie man to society" (ref.2). "Before he was thirty years old he had published, under a variety of pseudonyms, some twenty long novels, veritable Grub Street productions, written in sordid Paris attics, in poverty, in perfect obscurity. Several of these "œuvres de jeunesse" have lately been republished, but the best of them are unreadable. No writer ever served a harder apprenticeship to his art, or lingered more hopelessly at the base of the ladder of fame."^[3].

In 1832, the novel 'Louis Lambert' was published, which Richard Maurice Bucke-46 writes "was undoubtedly conceived immediately after [Honoré's], illumination ... in 1831" (op.cit.). Later he says 1831 or 1832. 'Louis Lambert' was Honoré de Balzac and only a person who had attained Cosmic (or Universal) Consciousness could have written such a book. Bucke added: "By 1833, when he ... [Balzac] ... was thirty-four years of age, he had entered into full possession of his true life, a presentiment of which had dominated him from early boyhood".

It was also in 1832 that Balzac had a near-fatal accident: he slipped and cracked his head on the street (ref.1). Bucke actually died from a similar accident! However, another source says that "In May 1832, Balzac suffered a head injury when his tilbury carriage crashed in a Parisian street"^[4].

In his veiled and mystic narration of the actual oncoming of the Cosmic Sense, it is important, ... to notice that: (a) He had no idea what had happened to him. (b) He was seized with terror. (c) He debated seriously with himself whether he was not insane. (d) He considers (or reconsiders) the question of marriage.

In 1833 he published 'Seraphita', "the object of which was to delineate a person who was possessed of the great faculty. The two [- 'Louis Lambert' and 'Seraphita' -] taken together prove the possession of the faculty by their author" (ref.3). Bucke summarises the case for Balzac having attained Cosmic Consciousness in Part III (op.cit).

It was also in 1833 that the "idea burst upon his mind ... of collecting all his personages together and forming a complete society". This was to become his magnum opus - La Comédie Humaine. He rushed off to tell Madame Surville and told her "'Make your bow to me,' he said to us, joyously; 'I am on the highroad to become a genius!'" "'How glorious it will be if I succeed,'" (ref.3). This almost smacks of egotistical self-consciousness, rather than someone in a state of Cosmic Consciousness.

In the late 1820's he had a love affair with Laure Junot, Duchess of Abrantès, whose memoirs he had published. In 1833 he entered into an illicit affair with fellow writer Maria Du Fresnay (1809-1892), who was then aged 24. Their daughter, Marie-Caroline Du Fresnay, was born in 1834 (d.1930). In early 1832 he entered into a 15-year correspondence with Ewelina (née Rzewuska) Hańska, a Polish noblewoman. Her husband died in 1841 and Balzac visited her in St Petersburg in 1843. After overcoming objections from Tsar Nicholas I, they finally married on 15 March 1850 in St. Barbara's Catholic Church in Berdychiv , Russia, with Balzac a very sick man with heart trouble. As Bucke points out " there seems little doubt that anything like a general possession of Cosmic Consciousness must abolish marriage as we know it to-day" (ref.3).

Five months after his wedding, on Sunday, 18 August 1850, Balzac died in the presence of his mother; Eve de Balzac (formerly Countess Hańska) had gone to bed.

Balzac was buried at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. At his memorial service, Victor Marie Hugo-215 pronounced "Today we have people in black because of the death of the man of talent; a nation in mourning for a man of genius" (ref.1).

"Later, a statue (called the Monument à Balzac) was created by the celebrated French sculptor Auguste Rodin. Cast in bronze, the Balzac Monument has stood since 1939 nearby the intersection of Boulevard Raspail and Boulevard Montparnasse at Place Pablo-Picasso. Rodin featured Balzac in several of his smaller sculptures as well" (ref.1).

Sources

1. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor%C3%A9_de_Balzac
2. ↑ https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/51
3. ↑ https://www.sacred-texts.com/eso/cc/cc21.htm
4. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Lambert_(novel)

• Find A Grave: Memorial #51 Honoré de Balza
• Biography: Honoré de Balzac: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
• Wikidata: Item Q9711

See also:

• 'Virginia Woolf' a biography by her nephew Quentin Bell, published by The Hogarth Press, Pimlico, London in 1996. ISBN 0 7126 7450 0, includes extensive family trees. Hundreds of friends, professional connections and people in the 'Bloomsbury set' are also mentioned in the text.'Virginia Woolf' a biography by her nephew Quentin Bell