What young girl in the world does not regard her marriage story as a small novel? —by Balzac
When many unmarried girls choose a mate, they like to use "self-motivation" as a screening criterion:
He has no house, no car, no job, but he is self-motivated.
He is not highly educated and incompetent, but he is self-motivated.
He jumps ship 8 times a month, but watches inspirational movies and success books every day.
He failed to start a business and was in debt, but he continued.
After entering the marriage, they will find that the self-motivation thing is very hypocritical, and many times it is just a fig leaf that men wrap up for their own lofty ambitions and quick success.
If a woman is committed to discovering and cultivating [potential stocks] before marriage, and after marriage, she tries to enjoy the fruits of men's self-motivation, then I advise you to turn over the marriage law, or look at Balzac's love history to sober up.
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When it comes to self-motivation, no one compares to Balzac, which may have something to do with genetics and childhood experiences.
His father, Bernard François, came from a poor peasant background, but became an upstart in the Napoleonic era through drill camps, and at the age of 51 became middle class by marrying the banker's daughter, 19-year-old Anna Charlotte Sarangbier.
Balzac was born on May 20, 1799, and before he was full moon, he was sent by his parents to the home of a country nurse to feed.
When he was four years old, his father became a municipal magistrate and took him to his side.
At the age of 7, he had a serious illness and lay in bed for half a month before getting better, but his parents did not know anything about it.
The indifference of his parents and the long-term life under the fence made Balzac extremely insecure.
He is in a wealthy family, but he lives worse than a child in a slum.
"It was the most terrible childhood ever suffered in any human destiny," he said. ”
At the age of eight, his parents sent him to the prestigious Boarding School of Vendôme.
The school was like a prison in disrepair, dark, dilapidated, cold.
He was often beaten by his teacher with rattan and frostbitten hands, and he was often bullied by his classmates, and his parents only visited twice in six years.
At the age of 14, Balzac's father was appointed quartermaster of the First Army in Paris, and the family moved to Paris.
The father, who looked forward to his son's success and filled his son with classes, Balzac was overwhelmed by the heavy workload of schoolwork and once tried to commit suicide.
At the age of 17, under his father's arrangement, he was admitted to the most prestigious Sorbonne University in France, majoring in law.
His father hoped that he would become a respected lawyer in the future, but he himself hated the law and loved literature.
After graduation, he went to the law firm opened by his father's friend for an internship.
Here, he saw many people who were bright on the surface, but behind the scenes, they were separated from their wives and children for money and profit, and their families were destroyed.
He didn't want to repeat their old ways, so he told his father that he didn't want to be a lawyer and wanted to be a writer.
My father disagreed at first, and at his insistence, he reluctantly agreed to give him a two-year trial period.
For two years, his parents would provide him with 120 francs a month for living expenses, and if he had not yet become famous after two years, he would have to return to the law firm to earn money to support his family, or the family would interrupt his financial resources.
By this time, the 73-year-old father had retired, the family's income had plummeted, and they had to move the family to a small town near Paris.
Balzac remained alone in Paris, living in a small attic in the ghetto, and wrote his first five-act poetic play Cromwell.
His parents solemnly held a family reading party for him, invited and Invited Andreou, an academician of the Académie française and a playwright, to evaluate his works, and the other party said after reading it: "This author can do whatever he wants, just don't engage in literature." ”
Such comments disappointed the parents, who interrupted their support for Balzac.
But Balzac did not concede defeat, saying: "Tragedy is not my forte, that's all." ”
To encourage himself, he placed a plaster statue of Napoleon in his bedroom, and the scabbard of the sword read: "What he did not accomplish with the sword, I will accomplish with a pen." ”
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At the age of 20, Balzac joined a small literary workshop specializing in the concoctment of popular books, squandering his imagination and talents unscrupulously.
From love letters, complaints, whistleblower letters, party pamphlets, religious doctrines, to boudoir readings circulating privately in the Parisian nobles' circle, he took on any job, as long as he had money.
He was so disgusted by this kind of deadline-fulfilling, shoddy "literary garbage" that he called it a "vulgar work" and was even reluctant to sign his real name: "I want to get rich from these novels. ”
At the age of 22, Balzac became a governess for the children of his neighbor Madame de Bernie.
Madame Bernie was 45 years old, a year older than Balzac's mother, a mother of seven children, and already a grandmother.
Her family is prominent, her mother is the queen's personal maid, her father is a court musician, and her godfather and godmother are kings and queens, because she is familiar with court life since childhood, she is elegant and has the charm of a mature woman.
Perhaps because he lacked maternal love since childhood, or perhaps because he wanted to cross classes through Bernie's relationship, Balzac fell in love with Madame Bernie.
Madame Bernie was kind, considerate, and extremely literary, admiring from the bottom of her heart this lover, who was younger than her own daughter: "Balzac cannot be confined to the framework of the ordinary, he needs spiritual freedom. ”
She encouraged him to concentrate on writing, to give advice to his works bluntly, to teach him the etiquette of high society and the way of doing things, to remind him to be careful of bourgeois deceit, to help him get some creditors, to subsidize his family, and at the same time, to tolerate his style and flowers.
She was like the sun, warming Balzac. It was his mother, his lover, his teacher, his friend, everything a woman could do for a beloved man, she did it for him.
With her financial assistance, Balzac began to abandon his writings and pursue a career in business.
His first project was to cooperate with a bookseller to publish a pocket edition of the complete works of La Fontaine, but after the book was published, only a few dozen copies were sold, and the partners saw that the situation was not good, and they ran away with funds, leaving him with only bitter support.
To make matters worse, he met an unscrupulous bookseller who offered him a high price to take away all his unsalable books, but paid him promissory notes for bankrupt firms that could not be cashed.
In order to make up for the loss, Balzac immediately invested in the establishment of a printing company that formed a production chain in the various links of writing, printing and publishing, and continued to print the works of famous writers as well as his own works.
Who knew that the printing company was in dismal business and soon went out of business.
In the three years of business, he did not earn a penny, and he also owed a debt of one hundred thousand francs, which was ultimately because although he had a first-class business vision, he lacked the experience and ability of commercial combat, did not know how to calculate costs, would not save money, and could not study the subject of business in a down-to-earth manner.
In order to avoid creditors, he would often run to his friends' houses and leave the mess for his mother to clean up.
At 25 he met the 41-year-old Duchess of Abrandes.
She was the widow of Napoleon's general, General Nou, with a prominent and experienced background, and in her youth there was a sensational scandal in Europe: an elopement with Prince Metternich. Later, the prince died unexpectedly, and she returned to Paris to live in seclusion.
This kind of life and experience attracted Balzac, in order to conquer her, he spared no expense: to write her love letters, to help her write memoirs, often to chat with her until midnight, to take her in and out of the theater, to change his surname to the aristocratic surname "De", so that he became a constant laughing stock throughout Paris, painted the coat of arms of the nobility on the tableware and carriage, rented a whole floor, decorated it magnificently, and even joined the royalists for her.
Unfortunately, Mrs. Abrandez, attached to her old lover, rejected him.
This seriously hurt his self-esteem, and after failing his courtship, he returned to Madame Bernie and dedicated his favorite work to her, with the words: "To my present lover and my eternal lover." ”
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At the age of 30, Balzac published his first work under his real name, "The Shuon Party", followed by "Marriage Physiology", and gradually became famous in the literary world.
In August 1831, his novel "The Tale of Donkey Skin" was published, which was quickly sold out as soon as it was listed.
In 1833, he published Eugenie Grande, and became a famous writer.
After becoming famous, he had the opportunity to get involved in the long-awaited high society, so he planned to follow his father's shortcut to marriage - marrying Bai Fumei and embarking on the peak of his life.
However, he also knew that he was mediocre and fat, and could not attract young women, so he targeted the "rich widows" and "noble ladies with 200,000 francs".
He said: "A forty-year-old woman will do everything for you – a twenty-year-old girl won't do anything for you".
He wrote to his friends and sister several times, asking them to help keep an eye on the right people.
In order to attract the noblewomen, he bought mansions at prices he could not afford, bought carriages and servants, often put on thick head oil, put on a skeleton dress with gold buttons, and flaunted everywhere, the result of which was that, despite his hard work, he still owed more and more debts.
He said: "I was particularly in need of money, which prompted me to write Honors in three days and would force me to complete Last Love in more than three days.
When he was forced by the creditor to be helpless, he would run to the house of his good friend Merimi, and after that, he would go to sleep after eating, and when he woke up, he would scold Merimi, saying that the other party was a snake, a villain, and a cheater, because the other party did not wake him up in time, so that he missed the opportunity to change his fate, missed the opportunity to date a noble lady or do a big business.
After scolding people, he would leave in anger and repeat this scene every few days.
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In the field of literature, Balzac's fame is growing, but on the emotional road, he has a very difficult road.
He courted the newly widowed Duchess de Castries, but the other party refused to respond positively, only hanging on to his appetite, and agreed to meet, but after the meeting, he broke up unhappily.
The reason was that the two were each pregnant with a ghost fetus, Balzac wanted to add a prominent name to his hunting history, and the duchess wanted to get in touch with famous writers.
Subsequently, Balzac became acquainted with Julma Carlo, to whom he often confided in her life's troubles and emotional absurdities.
Gurma was a detractor in his life, and would often advise him not to cling to a noblewoman, a shortcut that would only waste his life, and he should focus on literature.
Unfortunately, Julma was plain-looking, of ordinary stature, of civilian origin, and her husband was only a junior officer, so no matter how much she admired Balzac and how much she was mentally committed to him, Balzac could not like her.
He fell in love with his beautiful housekeeper and let the other party serve him day and night.
But the housekeeper later found out that he was a womanizer and had many mistresses, and she stole his love letters from the noble ladies, asked him for the loss of youth, and if he did not cash them, he showed the love letters to the noble ladies' families, and he had to lose her a large amount of money.
At the age of 33, Balzac's life took two major turns.
The first twist was that he met the ideal marriage partner.
The other was a ukrainian noblewoman, Madame de Hanska, who had everything he coveted: her territory was the size of a French province, and her husband was rich and 25 years older than her, which meant that she was likely to become a widow.
Marrying her can solve all the problems, can get him rid of the creditor's pursuit, can free him from the daily literary hard labor, can let him enjoy life in a different way, so he attaches great importance to the relationship between the two.
After a period of correspondence, the two met.
Madame was richly dressed and elegantly mannered, and Balzac was fat, not very tall, and unassuming.
Madame was a little disappointed, but sweet words and the aura of a famous writer overcame the lack of appearance, and the two became lovers and made a secret marriage: Madame Hanska promised to marry Balzac after her husband's death.
The second twist is that Balzac is ready to bring all his works together to form a universe of fiction, which he will name The Comedy of Man.
Next, he worked sixteen to eighteen hours a day for more than three consecutive months to complete "The Tall Old Man".
After the publication of "The Tall Old Man" in the Paris Magazine, the response was strong, and then a single edition was issued, which was in short supply.
To be continued...