Balzac - La Comédie humaine

[VivianDarkbloom]

Greetings, my dear book fiends!

I have a question for you.

I'm planning on reading Balzac's La Comédie humaine in French. However, I recently realized that some of its titles are actually missing in the Folio Classique collection of les Éditions Gallimard, something which prompted in me the following doubt:

Do I have to read the novels that constitute this immense work in their order of publication (the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade edition, for example) in order to fully understand it, like Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu, or each particular work can be tackled individually without any loss of meaning in the context of the whole work?

Cheers.

Viv

[SilvanDitties]

I reckon it won't hurt to read them out of order, I'm not sure that anyone really does. The sparing people that do read Balzac usually pick up Le Pere Goriot, Eugenie Grandet, and Lost Illusions.

[VivianDarkbloom]

Has anyone here read the entire work? I know a few people who have, if not the whole work, at least most of it. Two persons, to be precise. Other than that, folks I know who read anything by Balzac read exactly either of the works mentioned above by SilvanDitties, some without even finishing the novel they picked.

Is it true that Balzac is somewhat boring and tends to describe at length marginal aspects (such as the inner workings of social and/or bureaucratic processes) that kind of distract the reader from the main narrative?

[WyattGwyon]

Has anyone here read the entire work? I know a few people who have, if not the whole work, at least most of it. Two persons, to be precise. Other than that, folks I know who read anything by Balzac read exactly either of the works mentioned above by SilvanDitties, some without even finishing the novel they picked.

Is it true that Balzac is somewhat boring and tends to describe at length marginal aspects (such as the inner workings of social and/or bureaucratic processes) that kind of distract the reader from the main narrative?

I've read a dozen of the novels in English. I'm not sure it makes sense to call the whole a "work." That implies for me a much greater unity and interdependence among the individual novels than one will find here. All stand perfectly well on their own, the shared characters notwithstanding.

As for order of reading: I suspect it might be more rewarding to read them chronologically not by order of publication, but by the chronology of the novels' fictional time-frames. Not sure how well this would work since some of the novels unfold over long spans and there has to be a lot of overlap.

Balzac has his obsessions. You can see him rubbing his hands greedily together when discussing piles of cash, investment instruments and the like. I found some of the novels tedious and others quite exciting.

[VivianDarkbloom]

As for order of reading: I suspect it might be more rewarding to read them chronologically not by order of publication, but by the chronology of the novels' fictional time-frames. Not sure how well this would work since some of the novels unfold over long spans and there has to be a lot of overlap.


Do you have such a list? I mean, one enumerating each work according to their fictional chronology. The only list I know is that based on the publishing date of each work.


Balzac has his obsessions. You can see him rubbing his hands greedily together when discussing piles of cash, investment instruments and the like. I found some of the novels tedious and others quite exciting.

Now, of the novels you read, which ones did you find tedious and which were exciting? I'd really like to hear that.

[loe]

I don't think Balzac is boring. I really love his entertaining style and I think he had some clever thoughts that are still important today (e.g. his criticism of press in Lost illusions).

I didn't read all of his works and didn't read them in strict order. It really makes sense to read Lost illusions before Les splendeurs et misères des courtisanes because in this case the latter is some kind of a sequel.
For the other books I don't think that the reading order is that essential. Balzac reuses his characters, so you meet them again and again, but it's no problem to understand the books when not knowing where one character was introduced for the first time.

[WyattGwyon]

Do you have such a list? I mean, one enumerating each work according to their fictional chronology. The only list I know is that based on the publishing date of each work.

I have no such list but thought it might be nice if someone did.


Now, of the novels you read, which ones did you find tedious and which were exciting? I'd really like to hear that.

I remember finding The Quest of the Absolute to be a bit of a slog, in part because I got the impression that Balzac was way out of his depth with respect to the subject of the protagonist's research. The works of genre fiction, like The Chouans and The Gondreville Mystery move along pretty well, as one might expect. Eugénie Grandet and Père Goriot were lean and direct. I remember feeling a strong headwind pushing through Lost Illusions but that could have been my fault. Commentary on the others would just be vague recollections along the lines of "liked it" or "didn't," and so not worth reporting.

What started me reading them was finding a musty set of Balzac's collected works in translation for like $2 per volume. Couldn't resist. Might get to the others eventually.