“As for neologisms, as the critics call them,” he said, “who, I would like to know, has a right to give alms to a language, unless it be its writers? Of course I create words, but my parvenus will become nobles in time.”
But through discipline and constant attention Balzac’s style assumed at last the undulatory rhythm of the Romantic school, and became not only picturesque, mathematical, and peculiarly incisive, but the model of many of the prominent writers of to-day.
The attacks of the critics were not confined, however, to his style and form of expression; charges of personal as well as literary immorality were brought against him, and it is curious to note that while Venice reveled through an entire carnival in a masquerade of his characters his books were prohibited in Rome and Madrid.
Personally considered, Balzac was much more of a Benedictine than a disciple of Rabelais; even his student days were those of an anchorite, and purity of life was to him not only a refinement, but a basis indispensable to elevation of thought, and an essential in the production of any work of enduring value. Disorder he regarded as fatal to talent, and Gautier says that he preached what he practiced, and recommended to him that he should visit his Dulcinea but once a year, and then only for half an hour. “Write to her, if you wish to,” he said; “it forms the style.” In his books he has, it is true, agreeably painted the seductions of vice, but its contagious and destructive effects are rigorously exposed; and through all the struggles of his characters probity, purity, and self-denial are alone triumphant. In what, then, does his immorality consist? In his vast conception, it was necessary, he explained,[[17]] here to signalize an abuse and here to point out an evil; but every writer who has an aim and who breaks a fresh lance in the domain of thought is invariably considered immoral. Socrates was immoral; Christ was immoral: both were persecuted by the people whom they reformed.
In describing in the “Comédie Humaine” all the elements of society, in grasping it in the immensity of its agitations, it was inevitable that one part should expose more wickedness than virtue, that one part of the fresco represented a culpable group: hence the critic has brought his charge of immorality without observing the morality of other parts destined to form a perfect contrast. And in this particular we must observe that the most conscientious moralists are agreed that society is incapable of producing as many good as evil actions, yet in the “Comédie Humaine” the virtuous characters exceed in number those of a reprehensible disposition.
Blamable actions, faults, crimes, from the slightest to the most grave, find therein an invariable punishment, human or divine, evident or secret; and while it would be impossible to clothe two or three thousand characters in white and orange blossoms, it must be evident even to the most careless observer that the Marneffes, male and female, the Hulots, Brideaus e tutti quanti, are not imagined,—they are simply described.
| [14] | See Introduction by M. Felix Davin to the first edition of the Comédie Humaine. |
| [15] | Correspondance de H. de Balzac. |
| [16] | See also La Peau de Chagrin. |