Editing Honoré de Balzac (section)

====Characters====
Balzac sought to present his characters as real people, neither fully good nor fully evil, but completely human. "To arrive at the truth", he wrote in the preface to ''[[Lily of the Valley (novel)|Le Lys dans la vallée]]'', "writers use whatever literary device seems capable of giving the greatest intensity of life to their characters".<ref>Quoted in Rogers, 161</ref> "Balzac's characters", Robb notes, "were as real to him as if he were observing them in the outside world".<ref>Robb, 254</ref> This reality was noted by playwright [[Oscar Wilde]], who said: "One of the greatest tragedies of my life is the death of [''Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes'' protagonist] Lucien de Rubempré.... It haunts me in my moments of pleasure. I remember it when I laugh".<ref>Robb, 156</ref>

At the same time, the characters depict a particular range of social types: the noble soldier, the scoundrel, the proud workman, the fearless spy, the alluring mistress.<ref>Helm, 23</ref> That Balzac was able to balance the strength of the individual against the representation of the type is evidence of the author's skill. One critic explained that "there is a center and a circumference to Balzac's world".<ref>Lehan, 45</ref>

Balzac's use of repeat characters, moving in and out of the ''Comédie''{{'s}} books, strengthens the realist representation. "When the characters reappear", notes Rogers, "they do not step out of nowhere; they emerge from the privacy of their own lives which, for an interval, we have not been allowed to see".<ref>Rogers, 182</ref> He also used a realist technique which French novelist [[Marcel Proust]] later termed "retrospective illumination", whereby a character's past is revealed long after she or he first appears.

[[Image:Balzac1901.jpg|thumb|left|''The Works of Honoré de Balzac'' (1901), including ''[[Le Père Goriot]]'']]
A nearly infinite reserve of energy propels the characters in Balzac's novels. Struggling against the currents of human nature and society, they may lose more often than they win—but only rarely do they give up. This universal trait is a reflection of Balzac's own social wrangling, that of his family, and an interest in the Austrian mystic and physician [[Franz Mesmer]], who pioneered the study of [[animal magnetism]]. Balzac spoke often of a "nervous and fluid force" between individuals, and Raphaël de Valentin's decline in ''La Peau de Chagrin'' exemplifies the danger of withdrawing from other people's company.<ref>Rogers, 73–74</ref>