Splendors and Miseries of Courtesans – Episode 1

THE HUMAN COMEDY – Honoré de Balzac Eleventh volume of works of Honoré de Balzac edited by widow André Houssiaux, publisher, Hebert and Co, successors, 7 rue Perronet – Paris (1877)

Scenes from Parisian life SPLENDORS AND MISERIES OF COURTISANS (Episode 1)

How girls like it Work dedicated by Balzac A.S.A. PRINCE ALFONSO SERAFINO DI PORCIA Let me put your name at the head of an essentially Parisian work I’ve been meditating on in your home over the past few days. Isn’t it natural to offer you the flowers of rhetoric grown in your garden, watered with the regrets that made me know nostalgia, and that you softened when I wandered under the boschetti whose elms reminded me of the Champs-Elysées ? Perhaps this will redeem the crime of having dreamed of Paris opposite the DUOMO, of having longed for our muddy streets on the clean, elegant flagstones of Porta Renza . When I have a few books to publish that can be dedicated to Milanese women, I will be happy to find names already dear to your old Italian storytellers among those of the people we love, and to whose memory I beg you to recall Yours sincerely De Balzac

Analysis of the work Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes is one of Balzac’s most famous novels, but also one of his most unusual and, in a way, least Balzacian. A great fresco teeming with characters, colorful, contrasting and dramatic, it is a kind of monument that gives an impression of boldness, inventive richness and power. But, at the same time, this grand fresco is, so to speak, foreign to Balzac’s patiently composed family album, which lines up portraits of magistrates, shopkeepers, women of the world, honest or odious bourgeoises, who don’t seem to belong to the same time or the same country as the escarpes and marginals here depicted full-length with their rags and ulcers. We step out of César Birotteau and abruptly into Les Mystères de Paris, with the same characters as in Eugène Sue’s novel. The only thing missing is the bouges. In Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes, we encounter another Balzac, one of the “blockbusters”. Illusions perdues was the first in a series of works that would expand in Balzac’s last ten years, not only with Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes , but also with Les Paysans, Les petits bourgeois and Le député d’Arcis, all ambitious works that Balzac never had time to complete. These “blockbusters” have almost all been presented as Lost illusionsin the form of a series of separate novels published over a number of years, often reunited under their general title only in the editions of The Human Comedy that appeared during Balzac’s lifetime and after his death. Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes was published in successive volumes from 1836 to 1846, now known as “parts” of the novel. Despite the many twists and turns, the novel’s subject matter is simple: the relentless struggle between a “gang” and the private police employed against it. We recognize the “gangsters” and “privateers” of the American detective novel in this device. At the head of the “gang”, the escaped convict Vautrin already described in Le Père Goriotdisguised here as a Spanish priest under the name of Carlos Herrera; his instrument for ensuring the power of his maffia is Lucien de Rubempré, already portrayed in Lost IllusionsThe victim is the banker Nucingen, from whom the money needed to finance this career must be extracted.

The glories and miseries of courtesans is made up of four novels published in 1838/1843, 1843/1844, 1846 and 1848 respectively, which now constitute the four parts of the novel, as presented in this volume. (volume XIII of the works of La Comédie Humaine (published by France Loisirs in 1986) was published in two editions, the first in 1838 under the title The Torpedothe end in 1843 under the title Esther or The Loves of an Old Bankerthe final title chosen by Balzac for this set being How girls like it. This first part is the beginning of the battle. It’s simply the story of “enlistment” and its first consequences. Carlos Herrera, in need of a million to succeed in his scheme, takes advantage of the old banker Nucingen’s sudden passion for Lucien’s mistress, Esther, whom he meets for a moment during a nocturnal stroll. All the implausibility and romance of Splendours and Misfortunes of the Courtesans are already contained in this extravagant design: all the dice used by the novelist are loaded: the chance of the meeting, Nucingen’s sudden and irresistible passion, the fragility of Lucien’s situation whose luxury is inexplicable, the power of this Spanish abbot who makes the Archbishopric of Paris and the Congregation act like a conjurer pulling mice out of his hat, and finally the transformation of a little eighteen-year-old prostitute into a mystical and passionate angel. Nothing stands up to scrutiny: and yet, everything is exciting and seems true, the voice, the intelligence, the hold of the storyteller exerting on the reader a kind of fascination that paralyzes the critical mind. This is an extraordinary result. There’s a farce, of course, that’s fun and games: a Géronte for whom everyone is Scapin, the policemen he employs, the servants he pays, the information he’s sold, and opposite him, the industrious gambler who so quickly squeezes his millions out of him. It’s a very funny, very successful comedy: nothing more. But that’s not the real story, it’s just the plot. The real subject is the ecstatic, all-consuming, absolute love of the girl, i.e. the courtesan, who gives herself to a man as to a god, who brings everything to him, who lives only through him. This is what Balzac admirably describes, in a situation whose absurdity we forget, because the feelings are so true, so admirably portrayed, explained with such depth that we no longer think of the impossibility of the facts, but of the truth of the psychological study. Balzac’s physiology again explains this total love, this trembling, slave-like submission. For him, it’s a formidable concentration of all vital energy, the only energy the little prostitute can have, since she’s never known any other, and it produces miracles that we accept, because any concentration of the totality of vital fluid on a single point produces the same effects. Esther’s conversion, so extravagant, we believe in it as we believe in Birotteau ‘s lightning strike : it’s the same aberrant effect, the strange pattern that lightning makes when it strikes. Balzac bewitches his readers with details, sudden strokes and flashes of psychology that are so deep and so moving: we go on because, in this impossible story, we feel that everything is true. And it’s all the more remarkable when you consider that the real thing is invented. Balzac works here without a model: and the result is far superior to what he does when he has a model in front of him. It’s something to think about.

It doesn’t matter, after all, that the young dandies’ conversation at the Opéra is pedantic and false, that Esther’s letter to Carlos Herrera makes you smile, that the Grandlieu family look like dummies, that Asia and Europe, the servants and the bâtonniste Packard are a little too much like Eugène Sue characters. As we know, Balzac’s design is charcoal in places. What counts is his truth, or his flashes of truth. The wording of this first part has a special feature. When Balzac, in 1838, made Lucien de Rubempré reappear at the Opéra in front of the young elegants who had once known him, at the time ofIllusions Perdues, they looked at him like a ghost, astonished at this brilliant resurrection after the fall they had experienced. At the time, Balzac had not yet written the main part ofIllusions Perdues, the story of Rubempré’s triumphs and downfall in his career as a journalist, and of course the climax, which ends with his hero’s narrowly averted suicide. So Balzac knew all about Rubempré’s future destiny before he wrote. All this was for him like a map for a traveler before he began his journey. Of course, the 1843 reprint, published after Lost Illusions, had to be reworked and modified. But this gift of second sight is worth noting. It has been the subject of much comment. Another peculiarity of the writing of this first novel Comment aiment les filles is worth noting. Balzac had promised both the end ofIllusions perdues and this first part of Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes: both were to appear in serial form. And Balzac had been invited to St Petersburg by Madame Hanska and was due to leave in early July. From May 10, 1843, he had to meet both his obligations. To achieve this feat, on June 13 he moved to the printing works itself, in Lagny, where a cot was set up in the workshop, where he slept for almost a month. The end ofIllusions perdues began serial publication on June 9. Balzac finished it at the same time as writing Les Amours d’un vieux banquier, which was also starting to be published. I wanted to attempt the impossible,” he wrote… “I’m at the end of my strength… The speed of my work is taking away my sense of composition: I can’t see, because I don’t know what I’m doing. This speed of execution is evident in the final pages. Balzac left Lagny on July 7, and five days later set sail for Dunkirk on the boat that would take him to Russia.

Source analysis: Preface compiled from the complete works of the Comédie Humaine (tome XIII) published by France Loisirs 1986 under the auspices of the Société des Amis d’Honoré de Balzac.

The story Lucien, narrowly saved from suicide by Abbé Carlos Herrera at the end ofIllusions perdues, returns to center stage in Splendeurs et Misères des courtisanes in 1824, at the last ball of the Opéra. It creates amazement and envy. Amazement at his resurrection on the Parisian scene, envy at his outward signs of wealth. Lucien dazzles the world with his beauty, his poise, his dandyish looks. The life of pleasure and insouciance he has always dreamed of, and which he leads thanks to his protector, the Abbé Herrera, who is none other than Vautrin, provides a fertile breeding ground for the dandy’s weaknesses, including his idleness and his need to appear, which feed his vanity and pride. This chosen prey of Vautrin, an escaped convict, gradually becomes dependent on the prodigalities of his protector and master, the false Abbé Herrera, who manipulates and uses the handsome young man as an instrument to make his fortune. His plan is simple: throw this magnificent “stallion” into the world and get him a grand noble wedding and an ambassadorship.

To make this ambitious project a reality, Vautrin maintains Lucien’s excessive lifestyle and outward signs of wealth, in order to get him to reclaim his Rubempré name (on his mother’s side) – once this distinction has been achieved, Lucien will infiltrate the best salons of the Faubourg Saint-Germain in search of the wife who will bring him fame, wealth and perhaps, who knows, the peerage. In anticipation of being able to legally eat the fortunes of the nobility, and in order to serve their own interests, Vautrin and Lucien eat the fruit of the appropriations and rapines of the convicts for whom Vautrin is treasurer. To justify Lucien’s sudden financial resources, Balzac makes Vautrin not only treasurer of the convicts’ assets in all the French prisons, but also head of the ” maffia des dix mille “, with its dedicated henchmen and spies. But Lucien’s whims and inconsistency mean he can’t follow the course of action set for him without resisting life’s attractions and temptations. He falls head over heels in love with the beautiful Esther, an eighteen-year-old prostitute known as “La Torpille”. In order not to compromise the young man’s probity as he climbs the ladder to fortune, Abbé Herrera promises to arrange a nice little household for him, unbeknownst to the world, on condition that Esther takes off her “girl” disguise and agrees to enter a convent long enough to be forgotten and assume the respectability of a “proper” young lady. Out of love for the young man, Esther accepts every sacrifice and disappears from the Parisian scene until she becomes a young girl from a good family.

On his return from the convent, Vautrin keeps his promise and sets up a comfortable home for the two young men in total secrecy. Esther, so as not to compromise Lucien’s probity, would never show her face in his company, completely disappearing from Parisian society and leaving the house only at night. His every move will be scrupulously checked by his servants Asie (Vautrin’s aunt) and Europe, Vautrin’s devoted spies. During an evening stroll, Esther is noticed by the famous banker, the old and powerful Nucingen, who can’t get this “enchanted vision” out of his mind, and will use any means, including the police, to find his lovely stranger, at any cost. Sensing the danger to Lucien of Nucingen’s stubbornness in getting his hands on Esther, and the likelihood of revealing his protégé’s affair, Abbé Herrera puts an end to the two lovers’ affair by sequestering Esther in the house of a guard and his wife deep in the forest of Saint-Germain. With Lucien and Esther having eaten up all Carlos’s financial resources, he devises a plan to pay off the debts left by the couple’s lifestyle, and to acquire a new fortune to marry Lucien. Nucingen is the prey of this diabolical man. End of part one.

The main main characters Vautrin: Real name Jacques Collin, born in 1779, criminal then head of the security force. Vautrin is Balzac’s Vidocq. Baron de Nucingen: Frédéric de Nucingen, born around 1763 – married Delphine Goriot, born in 1792, and had a daughter Augusta who married Eugène de Rastignac. Esther Gobseck: Esther, known as La Torpille, was the great-grandniece of Jean-Esther Gobseck (1740-1830), an Antwerp Jew and usurer. Of unknown parentage, she is the daughter of Sara(grandniece of usurer Gobseck), known as La Belle-Hollandaise, murdered in 1818. Esther is a prostitute born in 1805. Death by suicide in 1830. Lucien de Rubempré: A noble family from the Charente whose last member married Chardon, giving rise to a son Lucien Chardon, known as de Rubempré, born in 1798, died in 1830. Asie: Born in Java in 1774, Jacqueline Collin, whose nickname was “Asie”, was Jacques Collin’s aunt. She is Esther’s maid. Europe: Born in 1806, Prudence Servien, known as Europe, is Esther’s maid. She is Paccard’s wife.

Character genealogy source: Félicien Marceau “Balzac et son monde” Gallimard.