A REALIST AT WORK.

Auckland Star, Volume XXI, Issue 163, 12 July 1890, Page 2 (Supplement)

A REALIST AT WORK.

Some of Balzac's Pecularities While

Writing,

When Belzac wrote a book he became so absorbed in ib that sometimes he would not stir out of doora for two months afe a time, says a writer in ' Belgravia.' Then he would suddenly make his appearance in the boulevards very much as it he had just arrived from nbroad. He would ask a hundred quostions, shake hande with every osie, and seem more eager to ' live ' than any one of his friends. And then he would as suddenly return to work. Hβ never appeared to rest, and when one thinks that during these twenty years he made long and frequent journeys, that he read an enormous number of books, it appears almost miraculous ; indeed, when one also considers the large quantity of coffee he took in order to resist natural sleep, it i 3 a marvel that he even lived to the age of 50. It would be an interesting subject tor conjecture —supposing Balzac's * banker ' had appeared and paid his debts, as he believed he would some day—whether better work would have been done; whether, had the visions of demons in the shape of creditors been driven away by this imaginary philanthropist hi 3 genius would have been more brilliantly displayed. SainteBeuve speaks of him as inebriated with his work. 'He wrote his " Comedie Hnmaine " not only with his thought, but with his blood and with his muscle. . And in his letters Balzac seemed to confirm this opinion. • I am now working twenty hours a day, , he writes to Mme. Hanska in 1835, some fifteen years before his death, 'and the cruel conviction gains upon me that I cannot long bear up under the present severe strain of work. People talk of victims of war and epidemics, but who is there who thinks of the battle fields of the arts, of the sciences, of literature, or of the heaps of dead and dying caused by the violent struggles to succeed ? * * * Work ! always work ! night succeeds night of consuming work; days succeed days of meditation, execution sucoeeds conception ; conception, execution ! When I am not leaning over my papers by the. light of wax candles in the room whioh I have desoribed in "La Fille aux Yeux dOr," or lying down from fatigue on the divan, I am panting with pecuniary difficulties, sleeping little, eating little, seeing nobody : in short, I am like a republican general making a campaign without breacj and without shoes.' The 'Vieille Fille ' wos written in three nights and. the • Secret dcs Ruggierri' in one.