Honoré de Balzac
May 20, 1799 – August 18, 1850
Also known as: Lord R’Hoone | Viellerglé | Horace de Saint-Aubin | Saint Aubin
Honoré de Balzac was a French writer, a representative of realism and romanticism, a journalist and critic. He is considered the founder of the critical-realist novel. Balzac's magnum opus is a cycle of ninety-seven novels and short stories under the collective title The Human Comedy. However, he also wrote a number of novels with adventure or fantasy themes, such as The Skin of Shagreen, also part of The Human Comedy - in the Philosophical Studies series. Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
Honoré de Balzac was born into a bourgeois family in the town of Tours in the French department of Indre-et-Loire. His parents were Bernard-François Balssa (1746-1829), who made a fortune as a military supply officer during the French Revolution, and Anne-Charlotte-Laure née Balzac. Sallambier (1778-1854), 32 years younger than her husband. Sometime between 1771 and 1783, her father received official permission to change the family name to Balzac. Honoré had two sisters, Laure née de Surville (1800-1871) and Laurence née de Montzaigle (1802-1825). His family tree also shows that one boy, Louis Daniel Balssa (20. From 22 June 1807 until 1813, Honoré stayed in the boarding school of the convent at Vendôme, where he was educated by the monks of the Oratorian order. He later studied law in Paris. He worked briefly as a notary, but then, against his family's wishes, became a writer. His parents gave him modest financial support on the condition that he would establish himself as a writer within two years. He began with a play and, failing, tried his hand at writing a historical novel in the style of Walter Scott, which he did not complete. Between 1821 and 1824 he wrote commercially successful adventure novels under various pseudonyms (most often as Horace de Saint-Aubin), which he later rejected and refused to include in his collected works.
In 1825, he started a publishing business, establishing a small printing house, but after two years he went bankrupt. He was then forced to write extensively to pay his debts. He actually wrote for profit (which was not common in his time) and exclusively at night. He devoted up to 18 hours a day to writing, consuming vast quantities of coffee (reportedly up to 60 cups a day). He also entered literary history as a legendary "pen worker", known for his extraordinary diligence; in addition to writing novels, he worked almost his entire creative life as a journalist and critic. He abandoned commercial literature and began a vast body of work in which he sought to represent the various human types and strata of French society at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. In mid-August 1829 he published his novel The Shuani, which was first signed with his real name, Honoré Balzac. It was followed by a large number of other short stories and novels. In 1830 alone, for example, he published some 70 titles, and even more in the following year. Balzac began to become a well-known author and at the same time wrote articles for various Parisian newspapers. In 1835 he bought the political and literary newspaper La Chronique de Paris, in which he published his articles, novels and short stories. This project also ended in failure, and in July 1836 he abandoned the newspaper under threat of bankruptcy. Despite this experience, he returned to business in 1840 and began publishing the monthly Revue parisienne, which closed down after three months.
He professed political legitimism, was a monarchist with lifelong aspirations to penetrate the higher (aristocratic) society. In 1831 he began to add a noble appellation to his name and to sign his name as Honoré de Balzac. He invested the money he earned in an expensive lifestyle, spending it on fancy suits, furniture, and mistresses. He frequented Parisian salons, such as James von Rothschild's, Madame Récamier. His constant financial difficulties stemmed from this endeavour, which he tried to solve with his hectic literary work. He also attempted suicide several times.
Women played a large part in Balzac's literary success. Balzac described women in his novels with great psychological dexterity and thus attracted their interest to his own person.
One of the most important women in Balzac's life was Laure de Berny, whom he met in 1822. Twenty years his senior, she was his lover and mentor, who also provided him with financial assistance in times of need. She inspired him to create female characters (Madame de Mortsauf, Madame Firmiani) in some of his novels. In 1825, he began an affair with the widowed Duchess d'Abrantès, who was 15 years older than he was.In 1832, Balzac met Countess Ewelina Hańska, née Mme. Rzewuska (1801-1882), the daughter of a Russian-Polish nobleman, married to a wealthy landowner based near Berdycevo in Ukraine. First Balzac received a letter from Odessa, signed only with the word "stranger" (L'étrangère), in which Hańska expressed her sadness at the cynicism and atheism in her novel La Peau de Chagrin. The writer responded to the unknown woman's criticism in the form of an advertisement in La Gazette de France, the only French newspaper then allowed to be imported into the Russian Empire. After an exchange of several letters, Balzac met his reader for the first time in September 1833 on the shores of Lake Neuchâtel in Switzerland, where Ewelina had arrived with her husband. Their next meeting took place in December 1833 in Geneva. According to biographer Roger Pierrot, Balzac "received the reward of his love" for the first time on 26 January 1834 at the Villa Diodati in Cologne, the same place where the Duchesse de Castries had earlier refused him such a favour.
In 1833 Balzac had a brief affair with Marie du Fresnay, a married woman then aged 24. From this relationship, his only child, a daughter, Marie-Caroline du Fresnay, was born on 4 June 1834. Marie-Caroline later married and divorced, while remaining childless. She died as a result of an automobile accident at the age of 96 in Paris. In his will, Honoré de Balzac made her his heir. After her death, this inheritance passed to her nephews.In 1835 Balzac fell in love with Countess Frances-Sarah Guidoboni-Visconti and their friendship lasted five years.
After Ewelina Hańská was widowed in 1841, Balzac travelled to St Petersburg to visit her (1843). After a few more months in Paris together, he went to Ukraine, visiting Kiev several times and staying in Radyvylovo. Despite her widowhood, Hanska hesitated for a long time before accepting Balzac's proposal to marry him. The situation was complicated by Russian law, which stipulated that the wife of a foreigner automatically lost her landed property unless the tsar signed a preliminary consent to the marriage. She also feared Balzac's constant debts.
Only a few months before his death, on 14 March 1850, when the writer was already seriously ill, his marriage to Ewelina Hańska took place in Berdycevo. Balzac's illness worsened during a trip to Paris in April. There Honoré de Balzac died on 18 August 1850. On the day of his death, he was visited by Victor Hugo, his long-time friend, who also spoke at the writer's funeral. Honoré de Balzac is buried in the Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris. Countess Hanska, his wife, who died much later, in 1882, is buried by his side.