In his transitions and contrasts, however, there is as little abruptness as there is in the marriage of the blue of the skies with the green of a landscape; changes follow in orderly and natural sequence, and the mind of the reader is only confused at the multiplicity of his attainments, which present in turn houses and costumes, interiors and countries, intermingled with plot, science, religion, politics, agriculture, erudition, mysticism, and wit.
Balzac was also a delicious landscape painter, and his scenes from Brittany in “Les Chouans,” his landscapes of Touraine and particularly that of Vouvay in “La Femme de Trente Ans,” the grand sketch of Norway in “Séraphita,” that of the Mediterranean island in “La Duchesse de Langeais,” are cited by Davin as masterpieces of graphic description.
The resources of Balzac’s genius are perhaps as clearly exhibited in “Eugénie Grandet” as in any of his other works, and the appearance of this romance gave the keynote to the present Realistic school. “Eugénie Grandet” is the conquest of absolute truth in art. It is the drama applied to the most simple events of life; the fusion of the trivial and the sublime, the pathetic and the grotesque. It is a picture of life as it is, and the model of what a novel should be.
The motif here commenced is admirably continued in “Le Curé de Tours,” which contains none of those elements heretofore considered indispensable in the manufacture of fiction. From these pages love and marriage are banished; there is barely an event to be mentioned, yet the dumb, tortuous struggle between the two priests is at once clear cut and peculiarly vivid. Herein the most humble trivialities of the subject are elevated and dramatized, and to attentive eyes this book will perhaps contain the secret of Balzac’s superiority; for as no rôle is poor to a good actor, Balzac in this story demonstrates that nothing was small beneath his pen.
The interiors of Gerard Dow, with their vast chimneys lit by flickering flames, their polished floors, walls hung with tapestries, their sculptured cornices and quaint and curious furniture, their shadowed backgrounds and doors which seem about to open upon some mysterious room, are to be found in “La Recherche de l’Absolu,” in which the opulent detail of the Flemish school is equaled, if not surpassed. Here, as in “Eugénie Grandet,” the drama is formed of the fusion of the trivial and the sublime, and for the proper presentation of the subject he extracted from the past of chemistry its possibilities for the future.
This work, as is the case with almost all his others, contains evidence of the most obstinate researches; and in this respect it may be noted that the majority of his books are the result of patient labor and prolonged meditations.
“Ursule Mirouët,” one of his most chaste conceptions, is the fruit of exhaustive experiments in clairvoyance. “Séraphita” was born of the suggestions of a hundred works of the mystics. “César Birotteau” is a text-book on bankruptcy.
The production of “Gambara” and “Massimillia Doni” necessitated not only a thorough musical schooling, but vast operatic knowledge, and before attacking his subject Balzac engaged a violinist to saturate him with Rossini. “La Grande Bretèche” is the essence of the Causes Célèbres, and dowered French literature with a new shudder. The “Contrat de Mariage” is a code of legal finesse.
“Maître Cornélius,” which with the exception of “Catherine de Médicis” contains the only ghosts that he has evoked from the night of the past, is an attempt to rehabilitate Louis XI., and to refute the historical portion of “Quentin Durward.”
“Les Deux Proscrits” was the result of prolonged meditations on the works of Dante, while “La Dernière Incarnation de Vautrin” is a dictionary of prison slang.