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3.66 AVERAGE
3.66 AVERAGE
Who is to say which sight is the more horrible: shrivelled hearts, or empty skulls?
At first, I thought it was coincidence that only a few days after seeing the head of Auguste Rodin’s Monument to Balzac in a museum, I started reading Père Goriot. That unflattering rendition of Balzac, his face contorted in a mix of powerful emotions I couldn’t quite decipher — an expression attendant to the act of creation? — didn’t appeal to me. In fact, I was a bit taken aback that the usually sublime Rodin had created something so ugly. But it left an impression on me. I didn’t realize it at the time, and I moved quickly past the piece to linger in front of the Rodin’s other sculptures.
When I chose Père Goriot later that week, I thought I was merely acting on an ongoing desire to read more French literature, but now I believe it was a subconscious reaction to Rodin’s rendition that gave reading Balzac more urgency and appeal at precisely at that moment, rather than any other. Who was that man, and what sort of books might he write?
I’ve since arrived at an initial impression of sorts: of a writer who keenly observed early to mid 19th century Parisian — and more broadly French — society, and pursued a grandiose project to capture, dissect, and render it all through a vast array of novels and stories into a infinitely patterned, textured, and detailed tapestry that he named La Comédie Humane. With the acquaintance of just one fascimile of it which is Père Goriot, I can imagine the length and breadth of that tapestry and how breathtaking it must be in its extensiveness, in its aspirations to completeness, to not just record life but to become life itself, or rather, that more distilled and potent form of life that only art can elicit.
In a relatively compact novel, Balzac explores multitudes. His setting: the full stratum of social classes in Paris, a city where "you have to stay up all night if you want to know what’s really going on around you," situated in an "illustrious valley of endlessly crumbling stucco and black, mud-clogged gutters; a valley full of genuine suffering and frequently counterfeit joy, where life is so frantically hectic that only the most freakish anomaly will produce any lasting sensation. Nonetheless, here and there, in this dense web of vice and virtue, you come across sufferings that seem grand and solemn: the selfish, the self-interested stop and feel pity; although for them such things are no sooner seen than swallowed, as swiftly as succulent fruit.” A Paris to be explored: "But then Paris is an ocean. Heave in the lead as often as you like, you’ll never sound its depths. Explore it, describe it: however exhaustive your exploration or description, however numerous and inquisitive the explorers of that sea, there will always be virgin territory, an unknown cave, flowers, pearls, monsters, something unheard of, forgotten by literary divers. The Maison Vauquer is one of these curious monstrosities.”
The characters that populate this Paris are a large cast, with even the most minor life-like. The protagonist is young Eugène de Rastignac, a provincial student just embarking on his metamorphosis to society dandy. He’s intoxicated by his glimpse into high society and is drawn to its accoutrements and wealth like a moth to a flame. How will such an ambitious young man, whose "soul is matched in beauty only by his face” advance in materialistic Paris with only the meager income of his family to support him? It’s a question he grapples with, on the cusp of his becoming: “if I want to be wealthy or great, must I stoop to lying, scraping, crawling, pouncing, flattering, deceiving? Must I consent to be the lackey of those who have lied, scraped and crawled?” He was perhaps always destined to be devoured by society (or rather, intiated into it), whether Monsieur Vautrin, as he says, "slashed at my heart with his steel claws” or not. As he becomes more entangled, completes this “education,” he is driven to choices that “would lead him, as on a battlefield, to kill or be killed, to deceive or be deceived; to leave his heart, his conscience at the gate, to wear a mask, to dupe other men mercilessly, and, as at Lacedaemonia, to win his laurels by stealthily seizing his chance.” Embroiled as he is, he realizes by the end of the novel that: "I myself am in hell and must stay there. Whatever terrible things you hear about society, believe them all! Not even a Juvenal could do justice to the horrors that lurk beneath its gold and jewels.”
And who is this Monsieur Vautrin, the slasher of hearts previously mentioned? In his own words: "Who am I? Vautrin. What do I do? Whatever I like." My favorite character of the book, to be certain. He’s electrifying, morally grey, and he has the best speeches, save for Goriot’s at the end. He’s learned "to imitate Providence, which picks us off without rhyme or reason, and to love beauty wherever it is found. After all, what finer game is there than to take on the rest of mankind and have luck on your side?” and gives Rastignac, who he has fallen in love with, earfuls of advice: "Let me shed some light on your position, from the vantage point of a man who, having studied the world, has seen that only two courses of action are possible: slavish obedience or revolt. I obey nothing, is that clear?” His view of the world in cynical: "That’s life as it really is. It’s no prettier than the kitchen, it smells just as foul, and if you want to cook something up, you have to get your hands dirty; just master the art of scrubbing them clean afterwards: that’s what morality boils down to, today. If I’m talking about the world in this way, it’s because it has given me cause to do so, I know it well. You think I blame it? Not in the slightest. Things have always been like this. Moralizing won’t change them. Man is flawed. He is, at times, more or less of a hypocrite, making fools claim he’s moral or immoral. I don’t point the finger at the Rich in favour of the People: man is the same at the top, the bottom and in-between.” His serpent-whispers in Rastignac’s ear are also a way for Balzac’s cutting analysis of the workings of society to be voiced: "Do you know how a man makes it to the top of the social pile? Through the brilliance of his genius or the skill of his corruption. You must either plough through this mass of men like a cannonball or creep among them like the plague. Honesty will get you nowhere. They’ll yield to genius – they’ll detest it, they’ll try to malign it because it keeps taking without giving back – but they’ll yield if it prevails; in a word, they’ll worship it on their knees when they’ve failed to bury it in mud. Corruption is thick on the ground, talent rare. Which means that corruption is the weapon of mediocrity and you’ll feel the tip of its blade wherever you go.”
And what of Goriot, the titular character? Once a retired vermicelli merchant, he’d sacrifice anything, do anything, for his ungrateful daughters: "He was a father who gave everything. For twenty years, he gave his soul, his love; as for his wealth, he gave that away in a day. Once the lemon had been squeezed dry, his daughters threw the peel into the road.” And over the course of the book, he gives and gives and gives, and so he suffers. He’s too soft-hearted, loves his daughters to much to deny them anything: "One sad look from them makes my blood run cold. One day you’ll understand the way their joy makes us far happier than our own” and "I, who would sell the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost to spare either of them a single tear.” It’s only on his deathbed that he can admit to himself the truth: " O God! You who know how much misery, how much suffering, I’ve endured; you who have witnessed each twist of the knife in my heart, how these past years have aged me, changed me, drained me, greyed me: why make me suffer today? I’ve already atoned for the sin of loving them too much. They themselves have taken revenge on my fondness, they tortured me, they were my executioners. Ah, how foolish a father is!” and “'Yes, I see now that for them my habit of holding nothing back rendered worthless everything I did. If they’d wanted to pluck out my eyes, I’d have said: 'Pluck them out!’'” His deathbed laments pained me ("Cut off my head, but leave me my heart”) as they did the characters attendant on him: "He’s still alive,’ said Bianchon.
‘What for?’ asked Sylvie.
‘To suffer,’ replied Rastignac.”
Goriot's end is what makes Père Goriot an "obscure but terrible Parisian tragedy.” I have a liking for tragedy, so it's no surprise I want to read more Balzac. Even without tragedy, his complex characters and passages of acute analysis of human nature would be enough to beckon me back. It's always a pleasure when classics are alive and worthwhile to this modern reader. My first meeting with Balzac has been a success.
More quotes:
On money:
"A man in a carriage who gets his hands dirty is honest, a man who walks and gets his feet dirty is a rogue. If you’re unfortunate enough to lift some trifle or other, you’re paraded on the square in front of the law courts like a freak. If you steal a million, you’re pointed out in the salons as one of the Virtues.”
"He recognized the world for what it is – a place where laws and morality have no power over the rich – and he saw in wealth the ultima ratio mundi.
‘Vautrin is right: wealth equals virtue!’ he said to himself."
"The secret of a vast fortune with no apparent cause is a crime which has been forgotten, because it was committed cleanly.”
On society:
"Well, Monsieur de Rastignac, treat this world as it deserves to be treated. You want to succeed, and I will help you. You will plumb the depths of female depravity, you will gauge the breadth of the contemptible vanity of men. Although I’ve read widely in the book of society, there were a few pages even I knew nothing about. Now, I know them all. The more coldly calculating you are, the further you will go. Strike ruthlessly and you’ll be respected. Accept that men and women are post-horses that you ride into the ground then leave at each stage, and you’ll reach the pinnacle of your desires. Remember, you’ll be nothing here without a woman to further your interests. You need one who is young, wealthy and elegant. But if you have a single genuine feeling, bury it like treasure; don’t ever let others suspect its existence or you’ll be lost. Instead of being the torturer, you’ll become the victim. If you ever fall in love, guard your secret well! Don’t reveal a thing until you have made sure of the person to whom you are opening your heart. From now on, to protect this love which does not yet exist, learn to be wary of this world of ours."
Statements:
"My poetry isn’t the kind you write down: it’s made of deeds and feelings.”
(full disclosure: this lovely quote was sandwiched in between Vautrin’s pretty gross musings on making his fortune by becoming a slaveowner)
"You have to be dying to find out what your children are really like. Ah, my friend, don’t marry, don’t have children! You give them life, they give you death. You bring them into the world, they hound you out of it.”
On human nature:
"Although the human heart may stop and rest as it climbs the peaks of an attachment, it rarely pauses on the slippery downward slope of hatred."
"What twist of fate had caused such a confusion of scorn and hatred, persecution and pity, such a lack of concern for his suffering, to rain down on the head of the oldest boarder? Had he brought it upon himself through one of those acts of ridicule or eccentricity that we find less pardonable than actual vice? Such issues lie behind many a social injustice. Perhaps it’s in human nature to reserve all suffering for the person who quietly endures everything, whether out of genuine humility, weakness or indifference. Don’t we all love to prove our strength at the expense of someone or something else?"
"However, she wouldn’t be the first person to mistrust her nearest and dearest yet confide in the first stranger who comes along: a strange but true quirk of behaviour, whose root is easily traced to the human heart. Some people perhaps have nothing left to gain from those they live with; having revealed the emptiness of their souls, they secretly feel themselves to be judged with deserved severity; however, as they have a powerful craving for the flattery they need but lack, or a burning desire to appear to possess qualities they do not have, they hope to take by surprise the heart and esteem of those who are strangers to them, at the risk of one day falling from grace. Meanwhile, there are some individuals who are born mercenary, who never do a kind deed for friends or family, because they owe it to them; but who will bend over backwards for people they don’t know in a bid to salvage some scrap of self-esteem: the narrower the circle of their intimates, the less they love them; the wider it is, the keener they are to offer their services. Madame Vauquer’s nature had something of both these types, at bottom loathsome, deceitful and mean."
"Like all narrow-minded people, Madame Vauquer tended not to look beyond her own version of events or to examine root causes. She preferred to blame others for her own failings."
On morality:
"What moralists call the murkiest depths of the human heart are merely the deceptive thoughts, the involuntary urges, of self-interest. These peripeteia, the subject of so many tirades, these sudden reversals, are calculated moves in the pursuit of pleasure."
"A man who boasts that his opinions are unshakeable is a man who commits himself to following a straight line, a fool who believes in infallibility. There are no principles, only events; there are no laws, only circumstances: a superior man espouses events and circumstances the better to influence them. If fixed principles and laws really existed, countries wouldn’t change them as often as we change shirts. One man can’t be expected to show more sense than an entire nation."
At first, I thought it was coincidence that only a few days after seeing the head of Auguste Rodin’s Monument to Balzac in a museum, I started reading Père Goriot. That unflattering rendition of Balzac, his face contorted in a mix of powerful emotions I couldn’t quite decipher — an expression attendant to the act of creation? — didn’t appeal to me. In fact, I was a bit taken aback that the usually sublime Rodin had created something so ugly. But it left an impression on me. I didn’t realize it at the time, and I moved quickly past the piece to linger in front of the Rodin’s other sculptures.
When I chose Père Goriot later that week, I thought I was merely acting on an ongoing desire to read more French literature, but now I believe it was a subconscious reaction to Rodin’s rendition that gave reading Balzac more urgency and appeal at precisely at that moment, rather than any other. Who was that man, and what sort of books might he write?
I’ve since arrived at an initial impression of sorts: of a writer who keenly observed early to mid 19th century Parisian — and more broadly French — society, and pursued a grandiose project to capture, dissect, and render it all through a vast array of novels and stories into a infinitely patterned, textured, and detailed tapestry that he named La Comédie Humane. With the acquaintance of just one fascimile of it which is Père Goriot, I can imagine the length and breadth of that tapestry and how breathtaking it must be in its extensiveness, in its aspirations to completeness, to not just record life but to become life itself, or rather, that more distilled and potent form of life that only art can elicit.
In a relatively compact novel, Balzac explores multitudes. His setting: the full stratum of social classes in Paris, a city where "you have to stay up all night if you want to know what’s really going on around you," situated in an "illustrious valley of endlessly crumbling stucco and black, mud-clogged gutters; a valley full of genuine suffering and frequently counterfeit joy, where life is so frantically hectic that only the most freakish anomaly will produce any lasting sensation. Nonetheless, here and there, in this dense web of vice and virtue, you come across sufferings that seem grand and solemn: the selfish, the self-interested stop and feel pity; although for them such things are no sooner seen than swallowed, as swiftly as succulent fruit.” A Paris to be explored: "But then Paris is an ocean. Heave in the lead as often as you like, you’ll never sound its depths. Explore it, describe it: however exhaustive your exploration or description, however numerous and inquisitive the explorers of that sea, there will always be virgin territory, an unknown cave, flowers, pearls, monsters, something unheard of, forgotten by literary divers. The Maison Vauquer is one of these curious monstrosities.”
The characters that populate this Paris are a large cast, with even the most minor life-like. The protagonist is young Eugène de Rastignac, a provincial student just embarking on his metamorphosis to society dandy. He’s intoxicated by his glimpse into high society and is drawn to its accoutrements and wealth like a moth to a flame. How will such an ambitious young man, whose "soul is matched in beauty only by his face” advance in materialistic Paris with only the meager income of his family to support him? It’s a question he grapples with, on the cusp of his becoming: “if I want to be wealthy or great, must I stoop to lying, scraping, crawling, pouncing, flattering, deceiving? Must I consent to be the lackey of those who have lied, scraped and crawled?” He was perhaps always destined to be devoured by society (or rather, intiated into it), whether Monsieur Vautrin, as he says, "slashed at my heart with his steel claws” or not. As he becomes more entangled, completes this “education,” he is driven to choices that “would lead him, as on a battlefield, to kill or be killed, to deceive or be deceived; to leave his heart, his conscience at the gate, to wear a mask, to dupe other men mercilessly, and, as at Lacedaemonia, to win his laurels by stealthily seizing his chance.” Embroiled as he is, he realizes by the end of the novel that: "I myself am in hell and must stay there. Whatever terrible things you hear about society, believe them all! Not even a Juvenal could do justice to the horrors that lurk beneath its gold and jewels.”
And who is this Monsieur Vautrin, the slasher of hearts previously mentioned? In his own words: "Who am I? Vautrin. What do I do? Whatever I like." My favorite character of the book, to be certain. He’s electrifying, morally grey, and he has the best speeches, save for Goriot’s at the end. He’s learned "to imitate Providence, which picks us off without rhyme or reason, and to love beauty wherever it is found. After all, what finer game is there than to take on the rest of mankind and have luck on your side?” and gives Rastignac, who he has fallen in love with, earfuls of advice: "Let me shed some light on your position, from the vantage point of a man who, having studied the world, has seen that only two courses of action are possible: slavish obedience or revolt. I obey nothing, is that clear?” His view of the world in cynical: "That’s life as it really is. It’s no prettier than the kitchen, it smells just as foul, and if you want to cook something up, you have to get your hands dirty; just master the art of scrubbing them clean afterwards: that’s what morality boils down to, today. If I’m talking about the world in this way, it’s because it has given me cause to do so, I know it well. You think I blame it? Not in the slightest. Things have always been like this. Moralizing won’t change them. Man is flawed. He is, at times, more or less of a hypocrite, making fools claim he’s moral or immoral. I don’t point the finger at the Rich in favour of the People: man is the same at the top, the bottom and in-between.” His serpent-whispers in Rastignac’s ear are also a way for Balzac’s cutting analysis of the workings of society to be voiced: "Do you know how a man makes it to the top of the social pile? Through the brilliance of his genius or the skill of his corruption. You must either plough through this mass of men like a cannonball or creep among them like the plague. Honesty will get you nowhere. They’ll yield to genius – they’ll detest it, they’ll try to malign it because it keeps taking without giving back – but they’ll yield if it prevails; in a word, they’ll worship it on their knees when they’ve failed to bury it in mud. Corruption is thick on the ground, talent rare. Which means that corruption is the weapon of mediocrity and you’ll feel the tip of its blade wherever you go.”
And what of Goriot, the titular character? Once a retired vermicelli merchant, he’d sacrifice anything, do anything, for his ungrateful daughters: "He was a father who gave everything. For twenty years, he gave his soul, his love; as for his wealth, he gave that away in a day. Once the lemon had been squeezed dry, his daughters threw the peel into the road.” And over the course of the book, he gives and gives and gives, and so he suffers. He’s too soft-hearted, loves his daughters to much to deny them anything: "One sad look from them makes my blood run cold. One day you’ll understand the way their joy makes us far happier than our own” and "I, who would sell the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost to spare either of them a single tear.” It’s only on his deathbed that he can admit to himself the truth: " O God! You who know how much misery, how much suffering, I’ve endured; you who have witnessed each twist of the knife in my heart, how these past years have aged me, changed me, drained me, greyed me: why make me suffer today? I’ve already atoned for the sin of loving them too much. They themselves have taken revenge on my fondness, they tortured me, they were my executioners. Ah, how foolish a father is!” and “'Yes, I see now that for them my habit of holding nothing back rendered worthless everything I did. If they’d wanted to pluck out my eyes, I’d have said: 'Pluck them out!’'” His deathbed laments pained me ("Cut off my head, but leave me my heart”) as they did the characters attendant on him: "He’s still alive,’ said Bianchon.
‘What for?’ asked Sylvie.
‘To suffer,’ replied Rastignac.”
Goriot's end is what makes Père Goriot an "obscure but terrible Parisian tragedy.” I have a liking for tragedy, so it's no surprise I want to read more Balzac. Even without tragedy, his complex characters and passages of acute analysis of human nature would be enough to beckon me back. It's always a pleasure when classics are alive and worthwhile to this modern reader. My first meeting with Balzac has been a success.
More quotes:
On money:
"A man in a carriage who gets his hands dirty is honest, a man who walks and gets his feet dirty is a rogue. If you’re unfortunate enough to lift some trifle or other, you’re paraded on the square in front of the law courts like a freak. If you steal a million, you’re pointed out in the salons as one of the Virtues.”
"He recognized the world for what it is – a place where laws and morality have no power over the rich – and he saw in wealth the ultima ratio mundi.
‘Vautrin is right: wealth equals virtue!’ he said to himself."
"The secret of a vast fortune with no apparent cause is a crime which has been forgotten, because it was committed cleanly.”
On society:
"Well, Monsieur de Rastignac, treat this world as it deserves to be treated. You want to succeed, and I will help you. You will plumb the depths of female depravity, you will gauge the breadth of the contemptible vanity of men. Although I’ve read widely in the book of society, there were a few pages even I knew nothing about. Now, I know them all. The more coldly calculating you are, the further you will go. Strike ruthlessly and you’ll be respected. Accept that men and women are post-horses that you ride into the ground then leave at each stage, and you’ll reach the pinnacle of your desires. Remember, you’ll be nothing here without a woman to further your interests. You need one who is young, wealthy and elegant. But if you have a single genuine feeling, bury it like treasure; don’t ever let others suspect its existence or you’ll be lost. Instead of being the torturer, you’ll become the victim. If you ever fall in love, guard your secret well! Don’t reveal a thing until you have made sure of the person to whom you are opening your heart. From now on, to protect this love which does not yet exist, learn to be wary of this world of ours."
Statements:
"My poetry isn’t the kind you write down: it’s made of deeds and feelings.”
(full disclosure: this lovely quote was sandwiched in between Vautrin’s pretty gross musings on making his fortune by becoming a slaveowner)
"You have to be dying to find out what your children are really like. Ah, my friend, don’t marry, don’t have children! You give them life, they give you death. You bring them into the world, they hound you out of it.”
On human nature:
"Although the human heart may stop and rest as it climbs the peaks of an attachment, it rarely pauses on the slippery downward slope of hatred."
"What twist of fate had caused such a confusion of scorn and hatred, persecution and pity, such a lack of concern for his suffering, to rain down on the head of the oldest boarder? Had he brought it upon himself through one of those acts of ridicule or eccentricity that we find less pardonable than actual vice? Such issues lie behind many a social injustice. Perhaps it’s in human nature to reserve all suffering for the person who quietly endures everything, whether out of genuine humility, weakness or indifference. Don’t we all love to prove our strength at the expense of someone or something else?"
"However, she wouldn’t be the first person to mistrust her nearest and dearest yet confide in the first stranger who comes along: a strange but true quirk of behaviour, whose root is easily traced to the human heart. Some people perhaps have nothing left to gain from those they live with; having revealed the emptiness of their souls, they secretly feel themselves to be judged with deserved severity; however, as they have a powerful craving for the flattery they need but lack, or a burning desire to appear to possess qualities they do not have, they hope to take by surprise the heart and esteem of those who are strangers to them, at the risk of one day falling from grace. Meanwhile, there are some individuals who are born mercenary, who never do a kind deed for friends or family, because they owe it to them; but who will bend over backwards for people they don’t know in a bid to salvage some scrap of self-esteem: the narrower the circle of their intimates, the less they love them; the wider it is, the keener they are to offer their services. Madame Vauquer’s nature had something of both these types, at bottom loathsome, deceitful and mean."
"Like all narrow-minded people, Madame Vauquer tended not to look beyond her own version of events or to examine root causes. She preferred to blame others for her own failings."
On morality:
"What moralists call the murkiest depths of the human heart are merely the deceptive thoughts, the involuntary urges, of self-interest. These peripeteia, the subject of so many tirades, these sudden reversals, are calculated moves in the pursuit of pleasure."
"A man who boasts that his opinions are unshakeable is a man who commits himself to following a straight line, a fool who believes in infallibility. There are no principles, only events; there are no laws, only circumstances: a superior man espouses events and circumstances the better to influence them. If fixed principles and laws really existed, countries wouldn’t change them as often as we change shirts. One man can’t be expected to show more sense than an entire nation."
emotional
sad
medium-paced
Une fois passée la description de la pension qui peut faire peur, c’est une lecture facile ou l’on ne s’ennuie pas !
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
challenging
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This book now is almost 200 years old. But some parts are still relevant. Money and material objects still corrupt. Fathers still love their daughters. And people still use other people to get more famous.
Although political, economic and social structure changes, people are still the same and 200 years later this book shows exactly that. Not by design probably, but by what is written in it.
Although political, economic and social structure changes, people are still the same and 200 years later this book shows exactly that. Not by design probably, but by what is written in it.
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes