May 20 was the birthday of the French writer Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850).
The world often thinks that genius-like works are made by splashing ink on the shoulders, but they ignore the need for writing day after day. Balzac, the legendary realist novelist who drank fifty thousand cups of coffee in his lifetime, pushed his hard-labored writing to the extreme. He accomplished with a pen what Napoleon failed to accomplish with a sword, and his collection The Comedy of Man, which contains nearly a hundred novels, depicts the overall landscape of 19th-century French society.
However, such intense work burned out the oil lamp of his life ahead of time. Today, we read Zweig's biography of Balzac, and together we restore and commemorate the great writer who worked day and night.
Balzac
#1
Night: A sanctuary for writing
The servant woke him up with a gentle knock on the door. Balzac got up and put on his monk's robe. Based on his long experience, he chose the robes of the monks as the clothes that best suited his work, just as the warriors prepared his armor, the miners prepared his leather coats, and according to the requirements of his profession, the writer chose white robes made of warm cashmere in the winter and fine linen in the summer.
Because this robe is close to the body and easy to move, only the neck is exposed to breathe, while keeping warm, but not oppressing the body. Perhaps because this robe is like the robe worn by a monk, it will remind him of his position, it will remind him that he has sworn allegiance to a higher creed, and that as long as he wears this robe, he will give up the real world and its temptations.
The monks wore crosses, sleeveless robes, and weapons from their prayers, while Balzac's body hung scissors and origami utensils, gadgets from his work. Wearing this soft and fitted garment, and walking back and forth a few more steps, letting the last shadow of sleep fall off his body, allowing blood to flow more actively in his veins, Balzac is now ready to fight.
The servant lit six candles on the silver candlestick at the desk and pulled the curtains tightly, as if to make it apparently isolated from the outside world. For Balzac now did not want to measure time on a real scale, but in the scale of his work; he did not want to know when the morning sun was shining, when the day was coming, when Paris was waking up, when the rest of the world was waking up. There must be no more real-world objects around him, and the books on the surrounding walls, the four walls and the doors and windows, and everything behind him are submerged in the darkness of the room. Only some of the people he has created out of his head now should speak, act, and survive. His world, his own world, came into being.
Balzac sat at the table, right next to this table,
I threw my life into the crucible, like an alchemist throwing gold into the crucible.
It was an inconspicuous square table, but Balzac loved it more than the most precious treasure in his possessions. He loved not the golden cane inlaid with turquoise, not the silverware he had painstakingly acquired, not the ornately framed books, nor his honor, but the silent four-legged little furniture. He liked the table more than anything else, and because of bankruptcy and disaster, he rescued it from one apartment to another, just as a soldier carried his comrades who had fought together from the guns and bullets. Because this table is the only one in the know, who knows his deepest pleasures, the most intense pains, only it silently witnesses his real life.
This table saw all my hardships, knew all my plans, and overheard all my thoughts. When I write on the table, my arm is almost rude to it.
No friend, no one in the world knows so much about him, no woman who has so many nights to be cared for by him, and spend with him passionately. Next to this table, Balzac lived. Next to this table, he worked until his death.
Balzac leaned back and rolled up the sleeves of his robes, making it easier for his right hand, the writing hand, to move. Then, like a coachman urging his horse, he pumps himself up with a half-joking roar, like a swimmer once again stretching his arms upwards and moving his joints before plunging into a torrent.
Balzac wrote, wrote, wrote, without rest, without pause. Once his imagination was ignited, the flame burned and spread like a mountain fire, and the flame burned from one trunk to another, burning more and more vigorously, the heat getting higher and higher, and the fire jumped faster and faster, burning to all sides. The quill pen was held in the hands of a delicate somewhat feminine person, moving so quickly on the paper that the words could barely keep up with thought. The more Balzac wrote, the more syllables he omitted, and he wanted to write quickly, down, without hesitation, without pause; he could not stop writing, could not interrupt the image in his head. He would not stop writing until his hands were cramping, his eyes were not blurred by tiredness, and the words he wrote could not be seen clearly.
At one o'clock, two o'clock, three o'clock, four o'clock, five o'clock, six o'clock, sometimes even seven o'clock, eight o'clock, there were no carriages driving in the alleys, there was no sound in the house, only the slight rustling sound of the quill pipe sliding through the white paper in the room and the sound of a discarded piece of paper from time to time. The sky outside the window was already white, and Balzac did not know that for him the day was only this small circle of candlelight, and that there was no other humanity except the one he had just created, and no other fate than the fate he had drawn when he wrote. There is no space, no time, no other world than that world in his own universe.
Sometimes the machine is at risk of stopping. Even the most unbridled will cannot transcend the natural limits of power. After four to six hours of non-stop writing and creating, Balzac felt that he could no longer move on. His right hand was paralyzed, his eyes were beginning to burst into tears, his back was sore, and the blood was rushing from his burning temples, frighteningly fast. Nervous tension is at its peak.
If you change someone, you will stop writing, you will rest, you will be grateful, and you will be satisfied with such a fruitful result. But Balzac, the strong-willed demon, was not slack. The predetermined target must be achieved. Even if the horse is injured, it will not hesitate! If this lazy beast refuses to move forward, bring the whip!
Balzac stood up and ,——the few short breaks in the middle of his work,—— went to the table and lit the coffee stove.
#2
Without coffee, you can't write
Because coffee is black oil, only this black oil can start this magical writing machine again and again. So for Balzac, this black oil is more important than eating, sleeping, and other enjoyments. He believes that only work makes some sense.
Balzac hated tobacco because it could not excite people, could not bring people to that extraordinary situation. The extraordinary, for him, happens to be the only measure—"Tobacco harms the body, invades the intellect, dulls the whole nation—" He sings the most beautiful ode a poet can sing about coffee:
The coffee goes straight to the stomach and then the whole body moves. All the thoughts and thoughts are in place, just like the battalions of the army on the battlefield; when the battle begins, all kinds of memories run into the line, just like the flag bearers when marching in a line. The light cavalry took formation in a magnificent gallop. Logic's artillerymen drove deafeningly with their heavy squads and canisters. The intelligent casual sense participates in battle as a sniper. The characters appeared in ink, the manuscript paper was stained with ink, and the battle began and finally ended in a black torrent, just like the real battle was drowned in the black smoke of the gunpowder explosion.
Without coffee, without writing, or at least without the kind of constant work that Balzac vowed to do. In addition to pen and paper, the third work necessity he carries with him is his coffee pot. He was used to this coffee pot, just like the table he was used to, wearing this monk's robe. He wouldn't let anyone make coffee for him, because no one could process this refreshing poison for him to such a stimulating concentration and intensity. He harbored a fetishistic superstition and used only some kind of paper, choosing only a specific form of quill. he
In determining the dose of coffee, the type of coffee is also stirred according to a special procedure - this coffee consists of three kinds of coffee beans, Burpen, Martinique, and Mocha. Bourbon coffee beans, which he bought at Rue Montblanc; Martinique, to a grocery store owner on Rue Viey-Oderieux, who probably had not forgotten the glorious recipe; and mocha beans at a merchant on Rue Duc Université in Saint-Germain.
But I can no longer say which merchant I was, although I had accompanied Balzac on this kind of shopping expedition on many occasions, each of which was a half-day journey across Paris. But buying good coffee was worth the effort for him.
Coffee, like any stimulant, needs to be increased in quantity the more you drink it, in order to be effective. So Balzac's nerves became more and more afraid of breaking down from excessive tension, and he relied more and more on this murderous magic soup. He wrote that one book was written thanks to "The Flow of Coffee." In 1845, almost twenty years after he had overused his coffee, he admitted that his entire body had been poisoned by this constant use of stimulants, complaining that the effects of coffee were getting weaker and weaker.
The time for inspiration through coffee is getting shorter and shorter, and coffee now makes my brain spin for only fifteen hours,—— and the consequences of this agility are disastrous; it causes me terrible stomach pain.
(One statistician estimates that Balzac drank 50,000 cups of coffee that were too high.) ）
If fifty thousand cups of overly strong coffee hadtened the production of Balzac's voluminous Comedy of Men, they would have also ruptured prematurely in his already extremely healthy heart. Dr. Nagar, both his friend and his doctor, observed him for the rest of his life and would definitively diagnose his true cause of death:
It's an old heart problem that is exacerbated by staying up late at work, drinking coffee, or more accurately, by the abuse of coffee. In order to overcome man's need for natural sleep, he had to resort to coffee.
#3
"My fatigue at one job, getting a break in another"
Finally, at eight o'clock in the morning, there was a gentle knock at the door. The servant Auguste came into the room and brought a tray with a very ordinary breakfast. Balzac stood up from the table. He hadn't put down his pen since twelve o'clock in the morning, and now it was time to rest. The servant opened the curtains, and Balzac went to the window and glanced at the Paris he was going to conquer. It was only a few hours before he realized for the first time that there was another world besides the one he had created. In addition to his imaginary Paris, there was another real world, and he was going to work, and at this moment his work was temporarily over.
Shops are now open, children are hurrying to school, and vehicles are moving. In thousands of rooms, officials and merchants sat at their tables. He was the only one of hundreds of thousands who had done his job.
Messengers from other printers, newspaper houses and publishing houses brought proofs of newly printed manuscripts. This is a manuscript that Balzac wrote the day before yesterday and was published yesterday, and at the same time brings a proof of the previous revision and printout. The whole pile of freshly printed, undried paper, twenty copies, thirty or forty copies, often sixty or seventy proofs, like a flood, covered his small desk, asking for proofing again and again.
"I get tired at one job and get a break in another." His production was so hurried and continuous that Balzac had to change his work to gain strength.
Balzac worked three or four hours on his proofs, rewriting and revising. As he joked himself, "cooking this literary dish" fills the whole morning every time, and always without pause, always with the same tenacity, just like writing at night. It wasn't until noon that Balzac pushed the stack aside and ate something, an egg, a brioche bread or a plain snack.
Influenced by the eating habits of his hometown of Touraine, he loves greasy and firm foods with strong meatballs, crispy chicken, and braised pork pieces. He was familiar with the wine and wine of his hometown, just as a musician was familiar with his keyboard,—— but at work, he strictly forbade himself to enjoy these foods. He knew that eating made people sleepy, and he didn't have time to be sleepy. He did not allow nor willing to rest on his own. He put his armchair in front of the little desk again, and went on, and went on, and went on reviewing the proofs, or writing sketches, essays, or letters, and went on working, without pause, without rest.
It was finally five o'clock. Balzac threw away the pen in his hand, thus also lowering the leather whip that drove him forward. That's enough! Balzac didn't see anyone all day,—— and this tended to go on for weeks—without looking out the window or reading a newspaper. Now this overly tense body, this overheated brain, can finally rest. The servant served dinner. Sometimes, a publisher he meets with or a friend comes to talk for half an hour or an hour. Most of the time, he was alone, meditating and meditating, already dreaming in advance of what to create tomorrow.
He never or almost never went out on the street. After such a desperate effort, he was too tired, and by eight o'clock everyone else had begun to rush out the house, but he lay down on the bed, and fell asleep at once, sleeping deeply and sweetly, not even dreaming; he slept as he did everything else: unrestrained,—— slept more deadly than anyone else. He sleeps to forget, and all the work that has been done does not free him from the work that will be done tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, until the final moment of his life.
Balzac worked uninterruptedly, week after week, month after month, not allowing himself to rest as long as a work was not completed. Even when work is interrupted, time is always short: "one battle after another", one work after another, like stitch after stitch embroidered on a piece of silk that is incomparably large, which is his life's work.
It's always the same thing: night after night, new works are done one after another! The mansion I want to build, so tall, so far away...
Balzac let out a desperate groan. He often feared that this work was delaying his real life; he shook the chains he had put on himself vigorously.
Within a month I had to accomplish something that someone else hadn't been able to do for a whole year or longer.
But work has become a kind of coercion for him, and he can't quit.
At work I forget my pain; work is my savior.
Different kinds of work allow him to continue to work without interruption.
If I don't write a manuscript, I have a plan for writing. If I don't want to write, I'll revise the proof. That's my life.
He lived the chains of this kind of work on his feet all his life. Even as he fled, the chains followed him, clanging. Without a single trip, he did not carry a manuscript. Even in a passionate love, the passion of love has to be subject to this higher relationship of attachment. He announced to Madame de Hanska, to the Duchess de Castries in Geneva that he was about to visit, and, in spite of his impatience and lust, he wrote at the same time to warn his lover not to see him until five o'clock in the evening. He didn't belong to a woman until he had unshakably worked at his desk for twelve or fifteen hours.
First works, then love; first Human Comedy, then the real world; first work, then – or not at all – pleasure.
Only this fanatical energy, this self-destructive, paranoid, unbridled work, can explain how he created miracles like "The Comedy of Man" in less than two decades. In addition to the purely artistic creation work he carried out, coupled with practical, private, commercial writing tasks, Balzac's already incomprehensible productive capacity became even more incomprehensible. Goethe or Voltaire often had two or three secretaries on hand, St. Beuve, and also entrusted all the preparations to one of his own employees. But here in Balzac, all correspondence and all business were taken care of by him alone. In addition to the last shocking document written on the spiritual bed, since he was no longer able to carry the pen freely, he attached the following sentence to the letter written by his wife:
"I can't read or write anymore."
The Biography of Balzac
[Austria] by Stephen Zweig
Translated by Zhang Yushu
People's Literature Publishing House
June 2019
◎ Source: From the Biography of Balzac