Balzac and The Poets

Extract

The attitude of Honoré de Balzac toward poets and poetry has received casual comment from several of his critics and biographers, and they are agreed that it was unfavorable. A consideration of the two poets who figure prominently in the Comédie humaine, Lucien de Rubempré of Les Illusions perdues and Canalis in Modeste Mignon, as well as a study of Balzac's correspondence and of documents about him by contemporaries, bring little to contradict that judgment. Théophile Gautier, in his chapter on Balzac in Portraits contemporains, devotes several pages to a discussion of Honoré's harsh criticisms of verse and verse-makers, evidently the cause of some resentment from the author of Emaux et Camées. As another example of such opinion, note a statement from the diary of Charles Weiss, apropos of a visit to his home in Besançon by Balzac in 1833. He tells of a first interview with Balzac, in which the conversation happened to fall upon contemporary French poets, eliciting very frank criticisms from his visitor, and then, on the following day, indicates this summing up of attitude toward poetry in general by Balzac, in the course of a second discussion: “Il est sensible à l'harmonie du style et cependant il n'aime pas les vers. Il prétend qu'il n'en faut plus faire.”