The ignored Martyrs

THE HUMAN COMEDY – Honoré de Balzac This title of Les Martyrs ignorés is not included in the edition of the complete works of H. DE BALZAC by Veuve André HOUSSIAUX, publisher, Hébert et Cie, Successors, 7, rue Perronet, 7 – Paris (1877).

 

Philosophical studies

THE IGNORED MARTYRS (FRAGMENT FROM “TODAY’S PHEDON”)

Analysis and History This short story, published in 1837 in Etudes philosophiques, complements and illustrates the physiological themes set out in Louis Lambert. Full title, Les Martyrs ignorés, fragment of today’s “Phédonevoking Plato’s famous dialogue on the immortality of the soul, announced his intention not only to illustrate a physiological thesis, but also to draw a philosophical conclusion from it, echoing Louis Lambert’s conclusions on the materiality of thought. Balzac never wrote today’s Phédon, about which no details have been found. Les Martyrs ignorés is presented as a conversation in a café near the Odéon, which Balzac places in 1827. The interlocutors are two young doctors, a Lithuanian physicist, a German, an Irishman living in France, a bookseller and the narrator, in whom we recognize Balzac. They’re all cultured people, and the conversation turns to bizarre events they’ve witnessed or been told about. Gradually, the conversation turns to a theme dear to Balzac: the slow or sudden deaths caused by a fixed idea that mobilizes the whole affections around a single preoccupation and ends up producing the same effects as a poison introduced into the body. The doctors taking part in the discussion draw a conclusion from these sudden deaths or examples of insanity reported to them by their interlocutors. Is an idea,” they ask, “really the product of the nervous fluid that constitutes an intimate circulation similar to the bloodstream?…Aren’t there pernicious ideas that, introduced into the system where thought is developed, vitiate or pervert it?” For me, concludes one of them, according to the confidences of an old doctor from Tours: “Thought is a fluid of the nature of imponderables which has in us its circulatory system, its veins and arteries, by its affluence on a single point, it acts like a Leyden bottle, and can give death. A man can dry it up in its source by a moral movement that spends everything, just as we can dry up that of the blood by opening up the crural artery.” In these sudden deaths, or collapses of personality, we can find some of the denouements of La Comédie humaine, the death of Birotteau “killed by the idea of probity as by a pistol shot”, the denouement ofAdieu, the end of Ferragus or Colonel Chabert. It also reflects the thesis of La Peau de chagrin on longevity: “Men who, despite the exercise of thought, have reached a great age,” says the same old practitioner, “would have lived three times longer if they had not used this homicidal force: life is a fire that must be covered with ashes. To think, my child, is to add flame to fire.” And he explains: “Do you know what I mean by thinking? Passions, vices, extreme occupations, pains, pleasures are torrents of thought.” This example shows the extent to which the entire drama of La Comédie humaine is linked to the energy system Balzac outlined in Louis Lambert. This application is even more complete than you might think. Here, in fact, is Balzac’s explanation of the title of his short story Les Martyrs ignorés. The old doctor from Tours gives this explanation. Showing the use that can be made of these destructive properties of thought, which, acting like a drug, can both destroy a personality or lead to martyrdom, he concludes: “Looking at society as a whole, I see many more martyrs. My reflections showed me an immense flaw in human laws, a frightful gap, that of purely moral crimes against which there is no repression, which leave no trace, as elusive as thought. I saw countless victims without vengeance, I discovered those horrible torments inflicted in the interior of families, in the deepest secrecy, on gentle souls by hard souls, torments to which so many innocent creatures succumb… I saw an eternal subject of social observation in these secret struggles whose effects are so poorly appreciated by the world…”. These lines demonstrate the link between Balzac’s physiological conceptions and his perception of society. They show that the Etudes philosophiques are not only the crowning achievement of La Comédie humaine , but that they also nourish Balzac’s entire descriptive oeuvre, making it both meaningful and pathetic.

The characters The scene is the Café Voltaire, Place de l’Odéon, Paris, in the last salon, whose windows look out onto Rue de l’Odéon, next to Soleil, an optician. Every evening, until midnight, three or four scholars play dominoes at the table at the back of the room, near the cross-beam, which has been dubbed the philosophers’ table. Doctor Physidor: Young doctor, 27 years old, born in Ville-aux-Dames in Touraine. Busy with phrenology, irritation, madness, the insane and wanting to make a scientific specialty of his own. Doctor Phantasma: Born in Dijon, he came to Paris during the famous discussion on animal magnetism that stirred up France’s learned community. 73 years old, tall and fat. Housed for 38 years on rue de Condé in Paris. Grodninsky: Courlander, place of birth and age unknown. Mathematician, chemist and inventor, no known address. The pallid complexion of northern men. Bull-like build. Unkempt, a true philosopher above vulgar compliments: a modern Socrates. Tschoern: German. Undefinable character. A man between the superior mind and the genius, holding both. Age undecided, journalist’s suit. Little voice. Raphaël: ^5th floor, rue des Cordiers. Twenty-three years old, good-looking, black hair, lean and puny. Chesty, cavernous voice. Eager to learn. Théophile Ormond: Irish, very Byronic, prudish, elegant and with an English complexion. Clear, graceful voice. The bookseller: A former clerk at Briasson, the first bookseller for Diderot’s Encyclopédie. Spent the unhappy years from 1790 to 1815 on the back of four undeclared bankruptcies. Discounting at 24%, knowing the place well, having business concepts, not undertaking anything, but pushing others to undertake. Country house in Meudon. Giving excellent advice to people of letters. 60 years old, with the face of a professor of rhetoric, frank and open. Voice off. Students: Mobile companions, mute in the café, but talking in the street about what they’ve heard there. The boy: Asleep in a chair after the Odeon closed, from 11:30 a.m. until the philosophers left.

Source analysis/history: Preface from the ^26th volume of La Comédie Humaine published by France Loisirs in 1987, based on the full text published under the auspices of the Société des Amis d’Honoré de Balzac, 45, rue de l’Abbé-Grégoire – 75006 Paris. Comments on the characters in the short story “Les Martyrs ignorés”, 26th volume of La Comédie Humaine, published by France Loisirs in 1987, based on the full text published under the auspices of the Société des Amis d’Honoré de Balzac, 45, rue de l’Abbé-Grégoire – 75006 Paris.