FROM HACK-WORK TO MASTERPIECES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3804, 8 February 1927, Page 74

FROM HACK-WORK TO MASTERPIECES.

That almost exactly a hundred years ago Honore do Balzac ceased writing “penny dreadfuls” and set up in business as a printer is a more important fact than appears at first sight (says a writer in John o’ London's Weekly). For had that printing business been a financial success, it is practically certain that the world would have had no “Comedie Humaine,” perhaps the most, stupendous series of masterpieces ever written by mortal man. We owe much to the failure that sent this colossal genius back to writing. * * *

In any century you will find a few great men who seem to have been born before their time, and whose minds are busy with ideas or inventions for which the world at large is not yet ripe. Pythagoras, Archimedes, Galileo, Newton, and Brunel are names which at once suggest themselves. Honore de Balzac was another of these. There were novelists before him, great ones such as Sir Walter Scott, Fielding, and George Sand, but before Balzac the novel was limited to the illustration of one passion only, that of love, and usually of love existing under ideal conditions. Balzac - was the first writer to present to the world the other and more ordinary passions of humanity, such as greed for food, gold, or power, the first, in short, to describe the struggles of ordinary humanity and to take as his characters such usual types as the shopkeeper manufacturer, the soldier, student, and policeman. He not only does this, but he goes to the extreme with it. Knowing, as he did by bitter personal experience, how necessary money is in the struggle for existence, he makes out life to be one long scramble for riches and material prosperity. In the words of another great Frenchman, Gautier, “The life he depicted is dominated by one great fact, money.” He and George Sand had an enormous effect upon French literature of the nineteenth century, and no one can deny that Balzac was the founder of French realism.

" Honore de Balzac was bom at Tours in Mav, 1799, and was educated first at the College de Vendome and afterwards at the Sorbonne in Paris. He then began life as clerk in a lawyer's office, where he gained that intimate knowledge of the law which is evident in all his books. He began writing at a very early and between . 1822 and 1823 published a number of novels, none of them under his own name, and none worthy of his great reputation. While he wrote, lie was trying hard to make money by various ventures as publisher, printer, and typefounder, but instead of making money he merely plunged more and more deeply into debt. His family, angry with him because he had abandoned his legal career, allowed him barely enough to keep him from starving, and without doubt his bitter struggles during-these seven years left their mark on all his later work.

At last, in 1829, there appeared “Les Chouans,” the first novel published under his own name, and during the following year he wrote no fewer than seven books But it was not until 1831 that h 0 achieved a real success with “La Peau de Chagrin,” the material for which he drew from his student life. From then on for nearly twenty years h e turned out books at a most amazing rate. In one year (1832) no fewer than nine appeared from his pen. It was not, however, until 1842, when ha had already written sixty novela, that he had the great idea o£ a

series of novels connected together, and began that “Comedie Humaine,” which more than anything- else gave him enduring fame. the plan of the “Comedie Humaine” was to give a complete picture of the social life of the day, and so came about his wonderful series in which the same characters appear again and again.

As a personality Balzac was most interesting,. In body he was big, vigorous, strongly, built. One of his friends called him “a joyous boar.” As a very young man he was somewhat coarse and vulgar, but later in life he seems to have changed in these respects. His mind matched his body, for he had an intense belief in himself, and a full share of vanity, even of conceit. His powers of work were simply prodigious. When busy upon a book he would shut himself up for days, even weeks, at a time, refusing to see any visitors. At these times he wore a dress resembling- that of a monk, drank vast quantities of coffee, and sometimes went without sleep for so long that when he went out he would simply collapse in a chair and sleep for hours. When he awoke he would abuse his friends for leaving him to waste so much valuable time.

Even when a book was written and finished he worked as hard on the proofs as on the original, revising time after time. He never spared any pains to bring his work as near to perfection as was possible. In his letters he writes much ofc., the hardships of the literarylife, but he also dwells upon its practical rewards, and upon the new power which conditions of modern life place in the hands of the novelist. Even after he had become famous and successful, he was still in debt and constantly struggling to pay off hi s debts. He made a great deal of money, but spent or wasted most of it. His great ambition in life was to have a fine house, y ell furnished and equipped, and at last’ in 1848, 11© achieved thia ambition and married the Countess Then, just when there seemed some chance of a little rest from his superhuman toil, worn-out Nature took its revenge. Balzac’s fine constitution, undermined by overwork, gave way, and within two years he died at the comparatively early age of fifty-one. His power was enormous, and his influence upon modern fiction greater than that of any other novelist. The debt owed to him by the modern writer can only be appreciated by. those who read his books.