TWO POETS
(Lost Illusions Part I)
By Honore De Balzac
Translated By Ellen Marriage
PREPARER’S NOTE
Two Poets is part one of a trilogy and begins the story of Lucien, his sister Eve, and his friend David in the provincial town of Angoulême. Part two, A Distinguished Provincial at Paris is centered on Lucien’s Parisian life. Part three, Eve and David, reverts to the setting of Angoulême. In many references parts one and three are combined under the title Lost Illusions and A Distinguished Provincial at Paris is given its individual title. Following this trilogy Lucien’s story is continued in another book, Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life.
DEDICATION
To Monsieur Victor Hugo,
It was your birthright to be, like a Rafael or a Pitt, a great
poet at an age when other men are children; it was your fate, the
fate of Chateaubriand and of every man of genius, to struggle
against jealousy skulking behind the columns of a newspaper, or
crouching in the subterranean places of journalism. For this
reason I desired that your victorious name should help to win a
victory for this work that I inscribe to you, a work which, if
some persons are to be believed, is an act of courage as well as a
veracious history. If there had been journalists in the time of
Molière, who can doubt but that they, like marquises, financiers,
doctors, and lawyers, would have been within the province of the
writer of plays? And why should Comedy, qui castigat ridendo
mores, make an exception in favor of one power, when the Parisian
press spares none? I am happy, monsieur, in this opportunity of
subscribing myself your sincere admirer and friend,