The Human Comedy

I've written about Balzac on this blog before, but now that I'm nearly through the NYRB edition of his Human Comedy, I thought I'd offer a few final observations. 

It's clear from the start that Balzac took great pleasure in the art of storytelling. The story itself was important; but more important was the way the writer presented his tale: in effect, Balzac enmeshed his stories in a narrative that charted its own course, that refused to be restricted by the story to which it had been assigned. 

Which is to say that, in Balzac, there are matrices, layers of tension: between the believability of a story and the characters to which it is exposed; between the storyteller and the author; and between the reader and Balzac. The Human Comedy can be cruel and severe, but it can also be lively and playful. That, too, underscores a tension: between what respect we believe characters (even fictional characters) deserve and what respect was accorded them by Balzac.

More than that, though, I'll take from Balzac's stories a profound sense for the variety of human experience. His stories are varied, and in their variety capture Parisian life. What's amazing, I think, is the extent to which Balzac was able to endow his stories with such detail: each and every character, each and every street is described with a master's touch, as if Balzac himself paddled the streams he took such great pains to present. In that way, Balzac really did ascend new literary heights: his work was not limited to a class or milieu; instead, it reflected a time, an age - and the result were stories that worked together to present society as it is: screaming, squirming, unruly, and beautiful. 

The last word is reserved for him:

"...There always comes a certain age when life is simply a habit carried out in some chosen setting."