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Text | Reading Jun
His life was short, yet fulfilling, with more works than years. --Kedo Hugo
Balzac, a superstar in the French literary scene, was also a "terrible" writer, a writer who was regarded as "exhausted". He often went to bed at 6 o'clock, got up at midnight to write, often drank black coffee to "fight chicken blood", and when he got busy, he didn't see anyone for several months, except to meet his printer. Balzac's life has left people with too many anecdotes and legends, and more works than the years.
Balzac
However, Balzac was not born to write novels. His creative experience has to start from when he was a child.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="6" >01 Children who are "unlucky" are not favored from an early age</h1>
In 1799, the year of the birth of the Great Russian Literary Master Pushkin, a great writer was born in France, and this man was Balzac. (Three years later, the French writer Victor Hugo was born after them).)
Unlike Hugo's Romantic literature, Balzac went on a critical realist path.
What is "critical realism"? As the name suggests, it means to criticize, expose the darkness of reality, and expose sin. As the great critical realist writer of the 19th century, Balzac's most representative work is The Comedy of Man.
What is The Comedy of Man written about? Everyone knows that the encyclopedia is a high-pressure book, and the "Comedy of Man" is regarded as the "encyclopedia" of France.
However, the early Balzac was not a genius, and it can be said that it was no accident that he wrote such works.
Balzac's father (hereinafter referred to as "Old Balzac") was originally a peasant who worked as a short-term worker in another province. Balzac the Elder was born in a small french village called Nogayrian, where most of the people were poor peasants, including Balzac's family.
Balzac Sr.'s grandmother gave birth to a total of 11 children, the eldest of whom was Balzac Sr.
Parents always want their children to get ahead, rather than being like themselves, poor and confused as a lifelong cropper. Therefore, he thought that he hoped that by asking the local priest for help, the priest would teach his son to read and read, and train his son to become a priest, so that he would no longer have to follow his own old path.
When he grew up, the old Balzac, who had more ideas and ambitions than his parents, was certainly not willing to be a well-behaved priest in the countryside, so he left his hometown and went out to wander.
Along the way, he worked as a short-term worker, did odd jobs, and stumbled to Paris, the largest city in France at the time.
After entering the city, the times created heroes, and during the Great Revolution, the elder Balzac seized the opportunity to become a quartermaster, mixed up in the Parisian social circle, and made a big profit. And when he climbed from a tramp to the position of banker, he was already 51 years old. However, fortunately, although the age is already half a hundred, but the demeanor is attached, and he is particularly good at words, all kinds of bragging big words, coaxing the little young girl to turn around.
At the age of 51, the elder Balzac fell in love with the daughter of his bank boss, an 18-year-old girl who was good enough to be his daughter, and soon proposed to her. The girl did not refuse, and her parents repeatedly thought that the old Balzac was a good piece of "fat meat", although older, but the body was strong, and the appearance was dignified, and the male charm was full.
Eventually, the girl married Balzac the Elder and, shortly after their marriage, gave birth to Balzac.
For the old Balzac, this is an old man, but the girl does not like the child who fell off her body. So, as soon as Balzac was born, he was "sent to adoption". As he grew older, Balzac was sent to a boarding school, far from his parents.
In that ecclesiastical school, Balzac had to face all kinds of strict school rules and precepts every day, where there was no freedom, no rest days, no crying, no laughing... Parents are also not allowed to come to see their children casually on weekdays. The teachers there, in fact, are priests, and every day The gods chant, "Long live God, God is omnipotent, mankind is small, people are sinners..."
How dark the night was, Balzac felt in his heart how dim. The night was long and long, and Balzac was lying on the bed rolling over and over and unable to sleep.
When Balzac was 8 years old, the young mother could not withstand the temptation, and left the old father behind, secretly gave birth to an illegitimate child with another man, which made Balzac lose his mother's warmth.
There was no father and mother, and they were strictly disciplined by the school church, and for Balzac, you can imagine how bitter it was. As a result, although Balzac read every day, his grades were very bad, ranking at the bottom of the class, and he was still thin like a monkey. In the end, there was no way but to leave school and go home.
Later, although Balzac transferred several more schools in Paris, his homework was still poor, and he was able to barely graduate from high school. Therefore, his mother-in-law regarded him as a waste and sighed:
"Alas, I am finished, how did I give birth to such a waste son, and what will he be able to do in the future?"
In his later years, Balzac also bluntly expressed his "disappointment" with his mother in a letter to others:
"I don't know what kind of woman my mother is!" She's a leprechaun, and she's a goblin-like freak... My mother was the source of all the misfortunes I encountered in my life. ”
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="63" >02 Despite parental objections, starting a business alone owes an ass debt</h1>
In November 1816, Balzac gleefully ran to his mother and told her that he had been admitted to the Paris School of Law, and her mother was very happy for him.
However, after going to college, Balzac discovered that he loved not law but literature. After graduation, he refused to work at the law firm, but asked his father for two years of "food expenses", planning to "enter" the literary circle and break out of a prosperous road.
Later, after falling out with his parents, the parents cut off financial relief for him, and Balzac was forced to earn a living on his own. Since then, he has denied that he is a child of his parents, and has added a noble mark to his name to indicate a break with the bourgeois family, and secretly vowed to become the "king" in the literary world.
In this way, the sloppy Balzac moved out of his home, ran to a slum, rented a dilapidated little attic that was full of wind and rain, and had a fight with Tao Yuanming's dark room, and wrote books there every day.
Balzac manuscript
For this attic, Balzac also commented in Donkey Skin:
There is nothing more obnoxious than this attic, the walls dirty and yellow, a poor sour smell... The roof slopes, almost touching the floor, and the sky can be seen from between the loose tiles... I can't remember whether I paid for water during the long and difficult years of living at The Bridge of Arts. Every morning I bring water from the fountain in Piazza Saint Michel...
However, at that time, Balzac was still a young man, full of enthusiasm.
However, when his first work, Cromwell, was written, it was not an imaginary success.
At that time, France was in the midst of two major upheavals in the Napoleonic era and the "July Revolution" of feudal history, and the society was in chaos, and the oppressive environment gave birth to people's desire to dabble in and novelty. In the context of such an era, various erotic and terrifying vulgar novels echo out.
Balzac, who was impoverished and trapped in this torrent, finally failed to resist the temptation, and in order to make a living, he began to publish vulgar novels under false names, and collaborated with others on the creation of mythical novels and burlesque novels.
According to conservative estimates, from 1821 to 1824, Balzac concocted more than a dozen novels a year, all of which were shoddy and patchwork. It can be said that Balzac has reached the point of unscrupulousness in order to make quick money.
However, for his disgraceful behavior, Balzac also knew that he was ashamed and deeply remorseful. He once wrote to his sister Rohr:
"I want to get rich from these novels, how depraved! Why don't I have an annuity of 1500 francs that enables me to work decently? But I ultimately need to be independent, and for this I can only resort to this abomination. ”
Indeed, when a person is already in a state of hunger and cold, what about artistic creation?
During this time, Balzac came to know a noblewoman who was a full 22 years older than himself, and the arrival of this woman brought Balzac money, and the woman gave him tens of thousands of francs to do business.
With the funds, Balzac simply started a publishing company, became a publisher, and ran a foundry and a printing plant. However, he was not born to be the material for business, and after a few years, he not only did not earn a single son, but he lost even the money and owed a bunch of debts.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="68" >03 Returned to his old business after desperate, leaving 210,000 francs in debt three years before his death</h1>
In order to pay off his debts, the desperate Balzac could only return to his old business, continue to "climb the grid", and began to write more desperately. Every day from midnight to noon, then from noon proofreading to 4 o'clock, after eating at 5 o'clock, going to bed at 6 o'clock, until getting up again in the middle of the night to start writing, working up to 18 hours a day.
To refresh himself, Balzac's table was filled with a variety of black coffees, and when he was hungry, he nibbled on a few slices of dry bread and drank a few glasses of black coffee.
Sometimes in a hurry to rush the manuscript, you can sleep and forget to eat for several days in a row, and when you write to the depths of your love, sometimes you laugh madly, sometimes you cry bitterly, and sometimes you even make a big fuss for the characters in the work.
For him, the hustle and bustle of the outside world seemed to have nothing to do with him. In his world, there is no communication, no friends, no entertainment, and the only thing that exists is a struggler who wants to climb out of the bottom. He never stopped writing, his fingers had long since been numb and stiff, and he still insisted on it as always.
In April 1842, Balzac's great masterpiece The Comedy of Man was published.
It's especially worth mentioning here that this is a magnificent series of books, not just a novel as many people think. The Comedy of Man includes a total of 96 novels, such as the well-known titles, The Tall Old Man, Eugenie Grande, etc.
This work contains too many things about the times, society, and human nature. In summary, its social and historical content can be roughly divided into three major themes: the decline of the aristocracy, the development of the bourgeoisie, and the crime of money, especially the crime of money, which is portrayed vividly.
For example, for the sake of money and status, women can ignore their father's deathbed calls and run to extravagant balls, just to climb up and make more nobles ("The Tall Old Man"),; for the sake of status and wealth, wives do not admit that their husbands are still alive...
Money corrupts conscience, destroys love, destroys humanity...
Arguably, few writers have portrayed the sin of money in such a way.
However, Balzac, who produced such a huge amount and excellent works, because of a debt, perennial overdraft of body writing, coupled with a love of espresso when creating, as he once said: "I will die of 30,000 cups of coffee", and finally did not have time to enjoy the highlights of life, died at the age of 51 (1850), chronic coffee poisoning became one of the causes of his death.
Three years before his death, he was still in debt of 210,000 francs.
Such a generation of literary giants, but with such a turbulent and tortuous life, living such a poor and hard life, is indeed touching and deplorable!
His death caused the whole of France to fall into grief at that time, and as an old friend of Balzac, Hugo was even more grief-stricken, and at his funeral, he read out the funeral words to the French public who came to the funeral.
Today, more than 100 years later, Balzac's diligent work and countless excellent literary works left for future generations have long been spread around the world and profoundly affected mankind.
In this regard, what do you think, welcome to share and discuss in the comment area
Resources:
"Balzac Biography", "Balzac Biography, Literary Giants Struggling in Dilemma"
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