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The Correspondance of Honor$ea de Balzac Its Significance and Its Unreliability

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Irene Cornwell
Irene Cornwell*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin
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Extract

There are four volumes of Balzac's letters: two volumes of miscellaneous letters known as the Correspondance and two very substantial octave volumes containing the master's messages to Madame Hanska during the seventeen years they were engaged. The latter collection has been poetically entitled Lettres à l'Etrangère. All four volumes have always been considered a rich store of biographical information. The Correspondance has been twice edited: in the two-volume edition published by Calmann-Lévy in 1877, and in an octave volume which forms part of what is known as the édition définitive of the Œuvres Complètes (Calmann-Lévy, 1876). The Lettres à l'Etrangère were published by Calmann-Lévy in 1906. None of these volumes contains information as to its editors or their method of procedure.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 44 , Issue 4 , December 1929 , pp. 1159 - 1178
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1929

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References

Note 1 in page 1159 Paul Bourget gives an interesting sketch of Lovenjoul's personality and work in his Pages de Critique et de Doctrine, Vol. II: Plon-Nourritt, 1912.

Note 2 in page 1160 Cabanès. Balzac ignoré. Appendice: Les descendants de Balzac.

Note 3 in page 1160 Etrangère. II, 161. For other information concerning the nieces given here see Ibid., pp. 161, 220, 383; also Correspondance, ed. 1877, I, 81; II, 286, 343.

Note 4 in page 1162 Les Débuts littéraires d'Honoré de Balzac. Paris 1924; p. 28, note.

Note 5 in page 1162 La Jeunesse de Balzac. Ferroud, Paris 1921; p. 19, note.

Note 6 in page 1162 A. Le Breton, Balzac, l'homme et l'oeuvre. Colin, Paris 1905, p. 13.

Note 7 in page 1162 L. Arrigon. Op. Cit. p. 233.

Note 8 in page 1163 Correspondance. Letter 24, p. 50. Oeuvres complètes, vol. 24.

Note 9 in page 1163 Etrangère, I, 363.

Note 10 in page 1163 Etrangère, I, 363.

Note 11 in page 1163 Etrangère, I, 556.

Note 12 in page 1164 Lovenjoul, Un Roman d'amour, 2me éd. 1896.

Note 13 in page 1164 1923. Vol. 14 p. 152 note.

Note 14 in page 1164 1923. Vol. 14, p. 74 note.

Note 15 in page 1164 Genèse d'un roman de Balzac, p. 120.

Note 16 in page 1164 Ibid., p. 131.

Note 17 in page 1164 Ibid., p. 135.

Note 18 in page 1164 Revue des deux mondes. 1823. Vol. 15, p. 104.

Note 19 in page 1164 Vol. I, p. 376.

Note 20 in page 1165 Revue des deux mondes, 1923. Vol. 15, p. 642.

Note 21 in page 1165 Ibid., p. 640.

Note 22 in page 1165 Lettres à l'Etrangère II, 249 note.

Note 23 in page 1165 Page 243.

Note 24 in page 1165 Lovenjoul, Genèse d'un roman de Balzac p. 255.

Note 25 in page 1165 Janet Anderson, Dorothy Marshall, Dorothy Jones, Senior Theses 1925.

Note 26 in page 1165 Du Pontavice de Heussey, R. Balzac en Bretagne. Rennes 1885.

Note 27 in page 1165 Page 138.

Note 28 in page 1166 Etrangère, I, pp. 107, 108, 114, etc. Genèse d'un roman d'Honorè de Balzac, p. 133.

Note 29 in page 1166 Genèse d'an roman etc., p. 151.

Note 30 in page 1166 II, 249.

Note 31 in page 1166 Débuts littèraires d'honoré de Balzac, p. 193 note.

Note 32 in page 1166 Ibid., p. 174.

Note 33 in page 1166 For 1922 and 1923. The Berny letters are in the 1921 volume.

Note 34 in page 1166 For 1903.

Note 35 in page 1166 For February 1924. See also Mercure de France, Vol. 170.

Note 36 in page 1166 Page 272-290.

Note 37 in page 1167 Lovenjoul in the Lettres à l'Etrangère reprints the fifty letters of Balzac to Madame Hanska included in the Correspondance. These letters were copied in her own hand by Balzac's widow, who, as Lovenjoul remarks (Roman d'Amour, p. 61), gave but very inexact copies of the manuscript.—The changes are of different kinds, most of them with a view to improvement of style. There are: (1) corrections of punctuation; (2) explanatory passages added in the body of the text; (3) corrections of grammar; (4) word substitutions; (5) omissions; (6) changes of word order; (7) words are spelled out in the Correspondance which were merely initialed by Balzac.

Note 38 in page 1167 Letter 193. The 7th of August 1838.

Note 39 in page 1168 Lovenjoul, Genèse d'un roman etc., p. 132.

Note 40 in page 1168 Ibid., p. 243.

Note 41 in page 1168 Hanotaux and Vicaire, La Jeunesse de Balzac, p. 49 note.

Note 42 in page 1168 Arrigon, op. cit., p. 28.

Note 43 in page 1168 Ibid., p. 37.

Note 44 in page 1168 Ibid., p. 48.

Note 45 in page 1168 From Letters 6, 15, and 18. See Arrigon, op. cit., pp. 88, 93, 100.

Note 46 in page 1169 Arrigon, op. cit., p. 150 and note.

Note 47 in page 1169 Arrigon, op. cit., p. 155.

Note 48 in page 1169 She reminds him of Madame de Lignolles, the heroine of the Chevalier de Faublas, one of the most licentious tales of the eighteenth century. Lovenjoul Roman d'amour, pp. 79-85. The authenticity of this letter has been questioned.

Note 49 in page 1169 Part of this letter is quoted from the manuscript by Arrigon, op. cit., p. 80.

Note 50 in page 1169 Professor Arthur Graves Canfield, of the University of Michigan, has been very helpful to me in my study of Balzac and in the composition of this article. I acknowledge with pleasure my indebtedness to him. Professor Canfield, who read this article in manuscript, suggested the addition to my list of corrections of Nos. 24, 112, 114, 135, 159, 160, 162, 164, 167, 169, 286, as above.

Note 51 in page 1171 Arrigon, op. cit., p. 233.

Note 52 in page 1172 Etrangère, I, p. 31.

Note 53 in page 1172 Revue des deux mondes. See the letters to Madame Carraud already mentioned. His request that Madame Carraud find him a young girl with 200,000 or perhaps 100,000 francs dowry which can be applied to the payment of his debts may be a blind.

Note 54 in page 1172 Etrangère, 22 February, 1842.

Note 55 in page 1172 Conf. H. Prior, Revue de Paris, 15 janvier 1924. M. M. Serval: Une amie de Balzac, Paris 1925, has written a history of Mme Marbouty in which he accepts Balzac's versions of the episode. It is perhaps à propos to note that Mme Marbouty paid 500 francs toward the twenty days' outing.

Note 56 in page 1173 Etrangère, I, 490, 494.

Note 57 in page 1174 Ibid., 158.

Note 58 in page 1174 Etrangère, I, 64, 180, 440, 572; II, 18, 243, etc.

Note 59 in page 1174 Ibid., II, 12, 59.

Note 60 in page 1174 Lovenjoul, Roman d'amour, p. 70-71, tells us that when Balzac wished to see Madame Hanska in Switzerland he told everyone, and wrote to Madame Carraud, that he was going to seek in the little mountain country a cheap vellum paper on which to print an edition of the classics within the reach of the poorest classes. Here he succeeds in pulling the wool over every one's eyes. One critic even cites this quest of paper as a particularly dazzling proof of Balzac's flightiness and instability. Cf. also Correspondance, p. 182.

Note 61 in page 1175 Etrangère, II, 36. He is speaking of the difficulty of concentrating. “Ordinairement, quand je puis vous écrire quelques lignes, c'est et ce fut toujours le matin en me levant, en attendant que mes esprits me reviennent et soient en état de reprendre les travaux de la veille (1842).

Note 62 in page 1175 Correspondance, p. 561.

Note 63 in page 1176 Etrangère, I, 418.

Note 64 in page 1176 Ibid., p. 478—May 20th, 1836.

Note 65 in page 1176 Ibid., II, 55. July 12th, 1842. Cf. I, 254.

Note 66 in page 1176 Ibid., II, 74—October 31st, 1842.

Note 67 in page 1176 André Bellesort, Balzac et son oeuvre. 1924, p. 116. M. Bourget's views are given in his Pages de critique et de doctrine. Vol. II, Art. Balzac.

Note 68 in page 1177 Madame Surville, in the biography of her brother which forms a preface to the Correspondance in the Oeuvres complètes, tells us that all his life her brother expected confidently that some millionaire would make him an unconditional gift of his entire fortune, merely because as a genius he could make better use of it than the millionaire himself.

Note 69 in page 1178 There are other interesting rapprochements.—One of Balzac's last published letters to his mother announces his marriage and informs her that his wife has settled her fortune upon her children and reserved only an annuity for herself.

On August 18, 1850 Balzac writes to M. Louis Véron from Dresden: “Oh! Que de belles choses il y a ici: J'en suis déjà pour une toilette de vingt-cinq à trente mille francs qui est mille fois plus belle que celle de la duchesse de Parme. Les orfèvres du moyen âge sont bien supérieurs aux nôtres, et j'ai découvert des tableaux magnifiques. Si je reste il n'y aura plus un liard de la fortune de ma femme, car elle a acheté un collier de perles à rendre folle une sainte.”