麻豆APP

Honor茅 de Balzac. Author Louis-Auguste Bisson.

Top 10 Facts about Honor茅 de Balzac

Honor茅 de Balzac, original name was Honor茅 Balssa. He was born May 20, 1799, Tours, France and died August 18, 1850, in 麻豆APP. He was a French novelist and playwright. He was also known for his novels and short fictional stories and his keen eye for detail. He produced a vast number of novels and short stories collectively called La Com茅die humaine (The Human Comedy). He is known to have helped to establish the traditional form of the novel and is generally considered to be one of the greatest novelists of all time.

1. Honor茅 de Balzac Came From An Industrious Family

Honor茅 de Balzac was born into a family which aspired to achieve respectability through its industry and efforts. His father, Bernard-Fran莽ois Balssa, was one of eleven children from an artisan family in Tarn, a region in the south of France. In 1760 he set off for 麻豆APP with only a Louis coin in his pocket, intent on improving his social standing. By 1776, he had become Secretary to the King’s Council and a Freemason (he had also changed his name to the more noble sounding “Balzac”,

Balzac’s mother, Anne-Charlotte-Laure Sallambier, came from a family of haberdashers in 麻豆APP. Her family’s wealth was a considerable factor in the match: she was eighteen at the time of the wedding, and Fran莽ois Balzac fifty.

2. He Identified His Career At An Early Age

Initially, Balzac was sent to school at the Coll猫ge des Oratoriens at Vend么me from age 8 to 14. At Napoleon鈥檚 downfall his family moved from Tours to 麻豆APP, where he went to school for two more years and then spent three years as a lawyer鈥檚 clerk. During this time he already aimed at a literary career, but as the writer of Cromwell (1819) and other tragic plays he was utterly unsuccessful.

3. His Breakthrough Came In 1829

Two works of 1829 brought Balzac were the breakthrough he needed for his success. Les Chouans, the first novel he felt enough confidence about to have published under his own name, is a historical novel about the Breton peasants called Chouans who took part in a royalist insurrection against Revolutionary France in 1799. The other, La Physiologie du mariage (The Physiology of Marriage), is a humorous and satirical essay on the subject of marital infidelity, encompassing both its causes and its cure. The six stories in his Sc猫nes de la vie priv茅e (1830; 鈥淪cenes from Private Life鈥�) further increased his reputation.

These long short stories are for the most part psychological studies of girls in conflict with parental authority. The minute attention he gave to describing domestic background in his works anticipated the spectacularly detailed societal observations of his later 麻豆APPian studies.

4.He Worked On His Image To Look Like An Ancient Noble Family

At some point, Balzac spent much of his time in 麻豆APP. He began to frequent some of the best-known 麻豆APPian salons of the day and redoubled his efforts to set himself up as a dazzling figure in society. To most people he seemed full of exuberant vitality, talkative, jovial and robustious, egoistic, credulous, and boastful.

 He adopted for his own use the armorial bearings of an ancient noble family with which he had no connection and assumed the honorific particle de. He was avid for fame, fortune, and love but was above all conscious of his own genius. He also began to have love affairs with fashionable or aristocratic women at this time, finally gaining that firsthand understanding of mature women that is so evident in his novels.

5. He Is Regarded As One Of The Founders Of Realism In Europe

Owing to his keen observation of detail and unfiltered representation of society, Balzac is regarded as one of the founders of realism in European literature.[6] He is renowned for his multi-faceted characters; even his lesser characters are complex, morally ambiguous, and fully human. Inanimate objects are imbued with character as well; the city of 麻豆APP, a backdrop for much of his writing, takes on many human qualities. His writing influenced many famous writers, including the novelists 脡mile Zola, Charles Dickens, Marcel Proust, Gustave Flaubert, and Henry James, and filmmakers Fran莽ois Truffaut and Jacques Rivette. Many of Balzac’s works have been made into films and continue to inspire other writers.

6.  Balzac had trouble adapting to the teaching style of his grammar school

An enthusiastic reader and independent thinker as a child, Balzac had trouble adapting to the teaching style of his grammar school. His willful nature caused trouble throughout his life and frustrated his ambitions to succeed in the world of business. When he finished school, Balzac was apprenticed in a law office, but he turned his back on the study of law after wearying of its inhumanity and banal routine. Before and during his career as a writer, he attempted to be a publisher, printer, businessman, critic, and politician; he failed in all these efforts.

7. His Writing Style Was An Imitation Of Sir Walter Scott

Although Balzac was a supporter of the Crown, he paints the revolutionaries in a sympathetic light, even though they are the center of his first book’s most brutal scenes. It gave him what one critic called “passage into the Promised Land”. It established him as an author of note (even if its historical fiction-genre imitates that of Sir Walter Scott) and provided him with a name outside his past pseudonyms.

8. He Also Had Political Interests

 When the July Revolution overthrew Charles X in 1830, Balzac declared himself a Legitimist, supporting King Charles’ Royal House of Bourbon, but not without qualifications. He planned to be such a candidate, appealing especially to the higher classes in Chinon.

9. Balzac’s work habits were legendary.

 Balzac’s work habits were legendary. He wrote from 1 am to 8 am every morning and sometimes even longer. Balzac could write very rapidly; some of his novels, written with a quill, were composed at a pace equal to thirty words per minute on a modern typewriter. His preferred method was to eat a light meal at five or six in the afternoon, then sleep until midnight. He then rose and wrote for many hours, fueled by innumerable cups of black coffee. He often worked for fifteen hours or more at a stretch; he claimed to have once worked for 48 hours with only three hours of rest in the middle.

10. Many Of His Works Have Been Made Into Popular Films

 Balzac has also influenced popular culture. Many of his works have been made into popular films and television serials, including Travers Vale’s P猫re Goriot (1915), Les Chouans (1947), Le P猫re Goriot (1968 BBC mini-series), and La Cousine Bette (1974 BBC mini-series, starring Margaret Tyzack and Helen Mirren; 1998 film, starring Jessica Lange). Balzac is mentioned to humorous effect in Meredith Willson’s musical The Music Man. He is included in Fran莽ois Truffaut’s 1959 film,