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Book, page 231 / 264 As regards the first, his claim can be admitted without reserve. Force of conception is dominant throughout his fiction. It is that which gained his novels their earliest acceptance. Whether they were approved or disapproved in other respects, their strong originality imposed itself on the attention of friends and enemies alike. One felt then, and one feels now, though more than half a century has elapsed since they were produced, that, whatever factitious accretions clung to them, they came into the world with substance and form new- fashioned; no mere servile perpetuation of an effete type, but a fresh departure in the annals of art. Especially is this seen in his characterization. His men and women are most of them put on foot with the energy of movement in them and an idiosyncrasy of speech and action that has not been surpassed. As already stated, they generally are not portraits, although his memory was of that peculiar concave visuality which allowed him to cast its images forth solidly into space. What he did was to remodel these images with proportions differing from those of the reality, magnifying or diminishing them pretty much as Swift with his Brobdingnagians and Lilliputians; and, having got the body of his personage recomposed, with mental and moral qualities and defects corresponding to every one of its details--for Balzac was a firm believer in the corporal being an exact reflection of the spiritual-- he set his mechanisms in motion.[*] [*] "A round waist," he says, "is a sign of force; but women so built are imperious, self-willed, more voluptuous than tender. On the contrary, flat-waisted women are devoted, full of finesse, inclined to melancholy." Elsewhere, he informs us that "most women who ride horseback well are not tender." "Hands like those of a Greek statue announce a mind of illogical domination; eyebrows that meet indicate a jealous tendency. In all great men the neck is short, and it is rare that a tall man possesses eminent faculties." To call his men and women mechanisms, while yet acknowledging their intense vitality, may seem a contradiction; but nothing less than this antinomy is adequate to indicate the fatality of Balzac's creatures. None of them ever appear to be free agents. Planet-like they revolve
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