Editing Honoré de Balzac (section)

===''La Comédie humaine'' and literary success===
{{Main|La Comédie humaine}}
After writing several novels, in 1832 Balzac conceived the idea for an enormous series of books that would paint a panoramic portrait of "all aspects of society". The moment the idea came to him, Balzac raced to his sister's apartment and proclaimed: "I am about to become a genius!"<ref name="Pritchett, 161">Pritchett, 161</ref> Although he originally called it ''Etudes des Mœurs''  (literally 'Studies of manners', or 'The  Ways of the World') it eventually became known as ''La Comédie humaine'', and he included in it all the fiction that he had published in his lifetime under his own name. This was to be Balzac's life work and his greatest achievement.
[[Image:800px-Maison-de-Balzac hi-res.jpg|thumb|right|The [[Maison de Balzac]] is one of three Parisian [[List of museums in Paris|literary museums]].]]

After the collapse of his businesses, Balzac traveled to [[Brittany]] and stayed with the De Pommereul family<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n86-805861/|title=Campaign of General Buonaparte in Italy, during the fourth and fifth years of the French republic /|website=WorldCat.org|access-date=26 November 2017}}</ref> outside [[Fougères]]. There he drew inspiration for ''[[Les Chouans]]'' (1829), a tale of love gone wrong amid the [[Chouannerie|Chouan]] royalist forces.{{sfn|Saintsbury|1911|pp=298–301}} Although he was a supporter of the [[House of Bourbon|Crown]], Balzac paints the revolutionaries in a sympathetic light—even though they are the center of the book's most brutal scenes. This was the first book Balzac released under his own name, and it gave him what one critic called "passage into the Promised Land".{{sfn|Saintsbury|1911|pp=298–301}} It established him as an author of note (even if its historical fiction-genre imitates that of [[Sir Walter Scott]]) and provided him with a name outside his past pseudonyms.

Soon afterwards, around the time of his father's death, Balzac wrote ''[[El Verdugo (short story)|El Verdugo]]''—about a 30-year-old man who kills his father (Balzac was 30 years old at the time). This was the first work signed "Honoré ''de'' Balzac". He followed his father in the surname Balzac but added the aristocratic-sounding nobiliary particle to help him fit into respected society, a choice based on skill rather than by right. "The aristocracy and authority of talent are more substantial than the aristocracy of names and material power", he wrote in 1830.<ref>Robb, 169</ref> The timing of the decision was also significant; as Robb explained: "The disappearance of the father coincides with the adoption of the nobiliary particle. A symbolic inheritance."<ref>Robb, 162</ref> Just as his father had worked his way up from poverty into respectable society, Balzac considered toil and effort his real mark of nobility.

When the [[July Revolution]] overthrew [[Charles X of France|Charles X]] in 1830, Balzac declared himself a [[Legitimist]], supporting King Charles' [[House of Bourbon|Royal House of Bourbon]], but not without qualifications. He felt that the new [[July Monarchy]] (which claimed widespread popular support) was disorganized and unprincipled, in need of a mediator to keep the political peace between the King and insurgent forces. He called for "a young and vigorous man who belongs neither to the Directoire nor to the Empire, but who is 1830 incarnate...."<ref>Quoted in Robb, 190</ref> He planned to be such a [[candidate]], appealing especially to the higher classes in [[Chinon]]. But after a near-fatal accident in 1832 (he slipped and cracked his head on the street), Balzac decided not to stand for election.<ref>Robb, 193</ref>
[[File:Dessin de Nadar 1850.jpg|thumb|left|Balzac caricature by [[Nadar (photographer)|Nadar]] in 1850]]

1831 saw the success of ''[[La Peau de chagrin]]'' (''The Wild Ass's Skin'' or ''The Magic Skin''), a fable-like tale about a despondent young man named Raphaël de Valentin who finds an animal skin which promises great power and wealth. He obtains these things, but loses the ability to manage them. In the end, his health fails and he is consumed by his own confusion. Balzac meant the story to bear witness to the treacherous turns of life, its "serpentine motion".<ref>Robb, 178</ref>

In 1833 Balzac released ''[[Eugénie Grandet]]'', his first best-seller.<ref>Pritchett, 155</ref> The tale of a young lady who inherits her father's miserliness, it also became the most critically acclaimed book of his career. The writing is simple, yet the individuals (especially the bourgeois title character) are dynamic and complex.<ref>Rogers, 120</ref> It is followed by ''[[La Duchesse de Langeais]]'', arguably the most sublime of his novels.

''[[Le Père Goriot]]'' (''Old Father Goriot'', 1835) was his next success, in which Balzac transposes the story of ''[[King Lear]]'' to 1820s Paris in order to rage at a society bereft of all love save the love of money.<ref>Adamson (1986)</ref> The centrality of a father in this novel matches Balzac's own position—not only as mentor to his troubled young secretary, Jules Sandeau,<ref>Robb, 258</ref> but also the fact that he had fathered a child, [[Marie-Caroline Du Fresnay]], with his otherwise-married lover, [[Maria Du Fresnay]], who had been his source of inspiration for ''[[Eugénie Grandet]]''.<ref>Robb, 246</ref>

In 1836 Balzac took the helm of the ''Chronique de Paris'', a weekly magazine of society and politics. He tried to enforce strict impartiality in its pages and a reasoned assessment of various ideologies.<ref name="Robb, 272">Robb, 272</ref> As Rogers notes, "Balzac was interested in any social, political, or economic theory, whether from the right or the left."<ref>Rogers, 18</ref> The magazine failed, but in July 1840 he founded another publication, the ''Revue Parisienne''. It produced three issues.<ref>Robb, 326</ref>

These dismal business efforts—and his misadventures in Sardinia—provided an appropriate milieu in which to set the two-volume ''[[Illusions perdues]]'' (''Lost Illusions'', 1843). The novel concerns Lucien de Rubempré, a young poet trying to make a name for himself, who becomes trapped in the morass of society's darkest contradictions. Lucien's journalistic work is informed by Balzac's own failed ventures in the field.<ref name="Robb, 272"/> ''[[Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes]]'' (''The Harlot High and Low'', 1847) continues Lucien's story. He is trapped by the Abbé Herrera ([[Vautrin]]) in a convoluted and disastrous plan to regain social status. The book undergoes a massive temporal rift; the first part (of four) covers a span of six years, while the final two sections focus on just three days.<ref>Rogers, 168</ref>
[[File:Balzac Gérard-Séguin.jpg|thumb|right|Portrait of Honoré de Balzac by Jean Alfred Gérard-Séguin (1842)]]

''[[Le Cousin Pons]]'' (1847) and ''[[La Cousine Bette]]'' (1848) tell the story of ''Les Parents Pauvres'' (''The Poor Relations''). The conniving and wrangling over wills and inheritances reflect the expertise gained by the author as a young law clerk. Balzac's health was deteriorating by this point, making the completion of this pair of books a significant accomplishment.<ref>Robb, 365</ref>

Many of his novels were initially serialized, like those of [[Charles Dickens|Dickens]]. Their length was not predetermined. ''Illusions Perdues'' extends to a thousand pages after starting inauspiciously in a small-town print shop, whereas ''[[La Fille aux yeux d'or]]'' (''The Girl with the Golden Eyes'', 1835) opens with a broad panorama of Paris but becomes a closely plotted novella of only fifty pages. According to the literary critic Kornelije Kvas, "Balzac's use of the same characters (Rastignac, Vautrin) in different parts of ''The Human Comedy'' is a consequence of the realist striving for narrative economy".<ref>{{Cite book|last=Kvas|first=Kornelije|title=The Boundaries of Realism in World Literature|publisher=Lexington Books|year=2020|isbn=978-1-7936-0910-6|location=Lanham, Boulder, New York, London|pages=26}}</ref>