Re: Balzac's Lost Illusions chat thread

[CallMeAnnii]

I am still reading the Marriage translation but in the reprint that I have from the library the part of Lucien in Paris is completely missing. So, reading about the printing industry of the time now and Eve and David. Still enjoying it but only in bits and pieces. I may not be able to renew and may have to get my oen copy after all as I'd like to read all three parts.

Hi DAntonia, you can find Lost Illusions on Project Gutenburg (PG), Open Library or InternetArchive. PG also has the story of Lucien in Paris, here's the link https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1559/1559-h/1559-h.htm

[Andrea]

Ha! I just posted the link too. Great minds think alike!

[DAntonia]

Thank you both!

[Andrea]

Also, don't forget the audio version is available:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_NVJPNSQVo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-fiI76W0xs&t=25183s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UVpEXkQelI&t=19743s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQuyucrrJL8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekn-Asf4s64

[Jeanne]

I am just about to start on the third part - back to Eve, David and the long-suffering mother. Can someone remind me what happened after Lucien started to cosy up again with Mde Bargeton and her cousin? I thought they were going to take up with him again. Was it because he was still with Coralie? Which also reminds me - what did she die of? Consumption?

[CallMeAnnii]

I am just about to start on the third part - back to Eve, David and the long-suffering mother. Can someone remind me what happened after Lucien started to cosy up again with Mde Bargeton and her cousin? I thought they were going to take up with him again. Was it because he was still with Coralie? Which also reminds me - what did she die of? Consumption?

Hey Jeanne, it was actually Mdm B and her cousin was who wanted to cosy up to him because he was en vogue. The cousin would kind of act as a good between to soften up Lucien and told him that they only distanced themselves from him because he had broken Mdm B's, basically blaming him for what happened. If I remember correctly they, they tried to persuade him to leave his Coralie because it wasn't de rigueur to live so openly with your mistress. Through this "friendship" that didn't last very long, he was nearly able to get the title he so coveted and could have eventually married Mdm B. But he had another hiccup, drew too much attention to himself, causing these around him to plan his social/political demise.

I'm not sure if Coralie died of consumption. It just said she overtasked herself and got sick, but I don't remember her sickness being identified. Seems like she just lost all hope and deteriorated.

[Jeanne]

Hi, thanks so much for your reply. I obviously lost track at some stage - brain fog!

[Andrea]

Now that I am at leisure "to Balzac" again (hey can we make to 'balzac' into a verb??) I decided to google around about gay authors and characters in literature. Then  I stumbled across a very interesting article on the contemporary/1840s  press response to A great man from the provinces in Paris / Lucien in Paris.  The press did not take well to Balzac's descriptions of the workings of that organ. Not well at all.  But surely the author was writing from his own experience; I assumed the experiences of Lucien would have been closely aligned with Balzac's.

Was Lucien's experience as a journalist a  grotesque exaggeration of the actual experience, heightened for melodramatic effect?  David's father is a caricature of a miser. And, if I recall correctly, Father Griot was a lunkhead, completely blind to the bottomless exploitation by his daughters (Greg would be able to confirm or correct this) In Lost Illusions, David's long suffering mother-in-law and wife are bent almost sideways in their patience and goodness and purity.  If individual characters  can be ratcheted up for dramatic effect, why not larger entities such as the press in its entirely?

[Andrea]

Well, I have finished the book.  There was a time--about the time that Lucien went to Paris--that I was thinking yikes! what a slog! will I ever get through this?-- but, apart from the voluminous footnotes,  I turned the last page yesterday.  I admit the audio version really smoothed the way for me.  I haven't heard the whole audio book, but have been charry-picking chapters here and there.  This afternoon I've been listening to the chapters on Lucien's meeting with Vaturin /the carriage ride.

[Jeanne]

I can't get the audio for the last part but I'm keeping going. In Dublin this week for various appointments so not getting too much read.
The finances etc were a bit too much for me.

[Andrea]

Jeanne,  Do you mean you can't find the link to the third volume of the audio book?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQuyucrrJL8&t=1s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekn-Asf4s64

[Andrea]

off topic, ... I want to start up our Zoom dances again (Doris, Greg, Tyrefyre, Annie??)

We're trying to resurrect the general chat thread we had on the old meetup group.  I've posted the zoom dance stuff there:

https://the-write-thread.forumotion.com/t9-chat-here

[greggu]

Andrea asked me about Balzac but I’m not a Balzac scholar. Anyhow I was asked if Balzac was exaggerating things for effect ?
Well , I looked at the Wikipedia entry for Balzac and a few internet articles, and they all praise him for being a REALIST! ( ? )
Maybe realism is relative. After all what had gone before in literature doesn’t sound very realistic.

He has been universally praised ( Flaubert , Proust , Somerset Maugham, etc ) but everyone seemed to add reservations.

Personally, haven’t been keeping up with the reading because my health is so poor.

[Andrea]

Greg,

So sorry to hear about your poor health at this time. Hopefully you will be feeling better before too long and can enjoy more thumping tomes (!!).
I appreciate your comments on Balzac, and the whole "realist" slant.  I will have a few comments to make about that, but first I want to look up a few things.
Til next time.

[Andrea]

"...Well , I looked at the Wikipedia entry for Balzac and a few internet articles, and they all praise him for being a REALIST! ( ? )
Maybe realism is relative...."

I think relative is right.  I guess compared to the romantic and gothic works that preceded "realism", Balzac's works were closer to the real world.  I don't know much about the Romantics, but I've read Gothic novels.    Balzac's stories,  peopled by lawyers and politicians and journalists would seem startlingly realistic if one had been brought up reading Ann Radcliff and Samuel Richardson.  Instead of fair maidens being abducted from overturned carriages by  dastardly villains-, to be kept prisoner in castle towers, (with a single maid servant servicing the whole castle) , Balzac's novels-- featuring grubby everyday life as well as posh drawing rooms--would have been a huge departure from the previous best-sellers.

Jane Austen wrote years before Balzac, and her novels strike me as infinitely more realistic than Balzac's.  Her characters were nuanced; Balzac's--at least in Lost Illusions-- are melodramatic caricatures.    I think if anyone gets the prize for 'realism' in 19th century literature, it should be George Eliot, for Middlemarch.

[Andrea]

Compare Mary Shelly's Frankenstein published 1818 vs Balzac's Lost Illusions, circa 1840. No wonder the latter was considered realistic.

[Andrea]

I think that Annii mentioned that she wanted to read Frankenstein.  Shall we consider that for our next book?

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