WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.480 Welcome back to The Deep Dive. This is the place 00:00:02.480 --> 00:00:05.280 where we take a huge stack of research biographies, 00:00:05.320 --> 00:00:08.500 literary analysis, historical context, and boil 00:00:08.500 --> 00:00:11.699 it all down to the one essential thing you really 00:00:11.699 --> 00:00:13.660 need to know. And today we're talking about a 00:00:13.660 --> 00:00:16.079 writer whose life wasn't just interesting, it 00:00:16.079 --> 00:00:19.559 was, well, it was a wreck. A truly spectacular, 00:00:20.000 --> 00:00:22.940 chaotic, and perpetually indebted wreck. We are 00:00:22.940 --> 00:00:25.839 diving into Honoré de Balzac. The one and only. 00:00:26.079 --> 00:00:28.280 Absolutely. The great French novelist and playwright. 00:00:28.379 --> 00:00:31.140 And before we even touch on the sweeping grandeur 00:00:31.140 --> 00:00:33.179 of his work, we have to start with the man's 00:00:33.179 --> 00:00:35.579 self -confidence. Yeah. It's almost unbelievable. 00:00:35.619 --> 00:00:38.100 It really is. It's the ultimate writerly mic 00:00:38.100 --> 00:00:41.259 drop. So it's 1832. After years of writing under 00:00:41.259 --> 00:00:43.700 pseudonyms, years of failed projects, Balzac 00:00:43.700 --> 00:00:46.799 has this sudden seismic realization about what 00:00:46.799 --> 00:00:49.119 his life's work is going to be. And he doesn't 00:00:49.119 --> 00:00:51.179 just, what, jot it down in a notebook? Oh, no. 00:00:51.259 --> 00:00:53.899 He races to his sister's apartment, bursts in 00:00:53.899 --> 00:00:56.560 and proclaims, I am about to become a genius. 00:00:56.979 --> 00:00:58.759 That is just phenomenal, especially considering 00:00:58.759 --> 00:01:01.340 he was more often than not hiding from creditors 00:01:01.340 --> 00:01:03.700 at that point. But he wasn't wrong, was he? Not 00:01:03.700 --> 00:01:08.019 at all. That moment, that self -declaration was 00:01:08.019 --> 00:01:10.939 the real conception of his colossal achievement, 00:01:11.200 --> 00:01:13.540 La Comédie Humaine. The human comedy. Right. 00:01:13.599 --> 00:01:15.659 And this isn't just one book. I mean, it's a 00:01:15.659 --> 00:01:19.000 whole sequence of novels. It's a universe. Ninety 00:01:19.000 --> 00:01:21.200 one of them either completed or planned. It's 00:01:21.200 --> 00:01:24.239 this absolutely dense panoramic sweep of French 00:01:24.239 --> 00:01:26.859 society in the decades right after Napoleon. 00:01:27.120 --> 00:01:30.120 He documents everyone from like the lowest peasant 00:01:30.120 --> 00:01:32.180 and the struggling clerk all the way up to the 00:01:32.180 --> 00:01:34.680 great financiers and the aristocracy. Every single 00:01:34.680 --> 00:01:37.000 level. So our mission today for you listening 00:01:37.000 --> 00:01:40.040 is to give you the shortcut. The shortcut to 00:01:40.040 --> 00:01:42.780 understanding why Balzac is really unanimously 00:01:42.780 --> 00:01:45.239 seen as one of the founders of realism in European 00:01:45.239 --> 00:01:47.280 literature. And more than that, we're extracting 00:01:47.280 --> 00:01:49.500 the core insight here, which is that Balzac built 00:01:49.500 --> 00:01:52.519 this incredible monument to society literally 00:01:52.519 --> 00:01:55.060 out of the wreckage of his own life. We need 00:01:55.060 --> 00:01:58.280 to see how his genuinely difficult. dramatic 00:01:58.280 --> 00:02:01.299 and failure ridden personal life, his debt, his 00:02:01.299 --> 00:02:05.439 legal training, his endless romantic drama, how 00:02:05.439 --> 00:02:08.400 all of that directly fueled the unfiltered detail 00:02:08.400 --> 00:02:10.879 picture of society that defines his work. He 00:02:10.879 --> 00:02:13.639 had to observe the world so acutely because, 00:02:13.699 --> 00:02:16.479 well, he was constantly at war with it. OK, let's 00:02:16.479 --> 00:02:18.419 unpack this. And we have to start at the very 00:02:18.419 --> 00:02:21.219 beginning because the creation of Balzac, the 00:02:21.219 --> 00:02:23.520 writer. really starts with the creation of the 00:02:23.520 --> 00:02:26.539 name Balzac itself. He wasn't born Honoré du 00:02:26.539 --> 00:02:29.900 Balzac. He was born plain Honoré Balzac. And 00:02:29.900 --> 00:02:32.759 even that name was basically a piece of social 00:02:32.759 --> 00:02:35.500 engineering by his father. Tell us about him, 00:02:35.599 --> 00:02:38.539 Bernard -Francois Balzac. Right, Balzac. He was 00:02:38.539 --> 00:02:40.599 the son of an artisan from the southwest of France, 00:02:40.800 --> 00:02:44.159 a true self -made man. The sources say he set 00:02:44.159 --> 00:02:47.379 off for Paris in 1760 with just a single coin 00:02:47.379 --> 00:02:50.830 in his pocket. Driven by just... Ferocious ambition. 00:02:51.110 --> 00:02:53.210 Completely. He didn't just climb the social ladder. 00:02:53.330 --> 00:02:56.009 He sprinted up it. He eventually rises to this 00:02:56.009 --> 00:02:58.389 really prestigious position, secretary to the 00:02:58.389 --> 00:03:00.590 king's council. And if you're climbing, you need 00:03:00.590 --> 00:03:03.629 to refine the image. Balsa sounds a bit rustic. 00:03:03.650 --> 00:03:06.689 Balzac sounds more established, more noble. So 00:03:06.689 --> 00:03:09.490 the father changes the name and the son, Honoré, 00:03:09.610 --> 00:03:12.189 takes that aspiration and just supercharges it. 00:03:12.250 --> 00:03:13.870 That's where the famous little particle comes 00:03:13.870 --> 00:03:16.729 in. Exactly. Honoré just starts adding it himself, 00:03:17.069 --> 00:03:20.289 de Balzac. With no official recognition, no royal 00:03:20.289 --> 00:03:23.349 decree, he was literally self -ennobling through 00:03:23.349 --> 00:03:26.729 his pen name. A huge declaration of his own artistic 00:03:26.729 --> 00:03:29.009 worth. And he was completely open about it. In 00:03:29.009 --> 00:03:32.370 1830, he wrote that the aristocracy and authority 00:03:32.370 --> 00:03:35.370 of talent are more substantial than the aristocracy 00:03:35.370 --> 00:03:38.289 of names and material power. So he's arguing 00:03:38.289 --> 00:03:41.050 that his hard work, his brilliance, that was 00:03:41.050 --> 00:03:44.159 his... True most of nobility. Way more than any 00:03:44.159 --> 00:03:46.319 inherited title. And that's a crucial insight 00:03:46.319 --> 00:03:48.419 for you right there. He's steeped in the language 00:03:48.419 --> 00:03:51.080 of the old aristocracy. But at the same time, 00:03:51.099 --> 00:03:54.060 he's embracing this new revolutionary idea that 00:03:54.060 --> 00:03:56.300 your achievement is what gives you status. That 00:03:56.300 --> 00:03:58.860 tension between the old order and the new capitalist 00:03:58.860 --> 00:04:02.419 meritocracy is basically the engine of la comédie 00:04:02.419 --> 00:04:04.479 humaine. It is. And his family life was just 00:04:04.479 --> 00:04:07.120 as defined by this kind of social climbing and, 00:04:07.219 --> 00:04:09.979 frankly, financial calculation. His mother and 00:04:09.979 --> 00:04:12.669 Charlotte Laura Salam. came from a wealthy Parisian 00:04:12.669 --> 00:04:14.750 family of haberdashers. A commercial background. 00:04:14.930 --> 00:04:18.209 A good dowry. And a stark contrast in age. She 00:04:18.209 --> 00:04:21.629 was 18. His father was 50. The sources are pretty 00:04:21.629 --> 00:04:24.329 brutal about this. They're clear it was a purely 00:04:24.329 --> 00:04:27.470 transactional marriage. She knew she was basically 00:04:27.470 --> 00:04:30.110 a reward for her husband's professional services 00:04:30.110 --> 00:04:33.069 to a family friend. She was not in love with 00:04:33.069 --> 00:04:36.129 him. So from the moment he's born, Balzac's entire 00:04:36.129 --> 00:04:39.720 world is built on money, ambition, and a profound 00:04:39.720 --> 00:04:42.399 lack of emotional warmth. The exact elements 00:04:42.399 --> 00:04:44.720 he would later expose with surgical precision 00:04:44.720 --> 00:04:47.379 in his novels. And that lack of warmth, it started 00:04:47.379 --> 00:04:49.879 immediately. Oh, yeah. As an infant, he was sent 00:04:49.879 --> 00:04:52.379 away to a wet nurse. He spent four years away 00:04:52.379 --> 00:04:55.019 from home. When he and his sister Lore finally 00:04:55.019 --> 00:04:57.420 came back, their parents kept them at a, quote, 00:04:57.600 --> 00:05:00.180 frosty distance. This isn't just biographical 00:05:00.180 --> 00:05:02.779 trivia. It's the genesis of the cold analytical 00:05:02.779 --> 00:05:05.360 observer. Right. His novel, La Liste dans la 00:05:05.360 --> 00:05:07.839 Vallée, has this cruel governess. Miss Caroline, 00:05:08.100 --> 00:05:10.379 who was modeled directly on his own caregiver. 00:05:10.819 --> 00:05:13.459 These early deprivations gave him this intense, 00:05:13.579 --> 00:05:16.680 critical distance. Home wasn't a refuge. It was 00:05:16.680 --> 00:05:18.980 a subject for analysis. And the isolation just 00:05:18.980 --> 00:05:21.519 got worse. At age 10, he was sent off to the 00:05:21.519 --> 00:05:24.100 Vendome Oratorian Grammar School for seven years. 00:05:24.509 --> 00:05:27.610 And his father, determined to instill this hard 00:05:27.610 --> 00:05:29.949 work ethic, intentionally gave him very little 00:05:29.949 --> 00:05:33.029 money. So he became an object of ridicule among 00:05:33.029 --> 00:05:35.250 his wealthier classmates. He's learning about 00:05:35.250 --> 00:05:38.610 class disparity not from a book, but from daily 00:05:38.610 --> 00:05:41.370 humiliation. And his response to the school's 00:05:41.370 --> 00:05:44.209 rigid learning style was just rebellion. He couldn't 00:05:44.209 --> 00:05:46.689 do rote memorization, so he was constantly being 00:05:46.689 --> 00:05:48.949 punished. The punishment being confinement in 00:05:48.949 --> 00:05:52.170 the alcove, a disciplinary cell. And get this. 00:05:52.699 --> 00:05:55.220 The school janitor later recalled having the, 00:05:55.240 --> 00:05:58.040 quote, honor of escorting him to the dungeon 00:05:58.040 --> 00:06:00.939 more than 100 times. More than 100 times. That's 00:06:00.939 --> 00:06:03.600 astonishing. It's almost every few weeks for 00:06:03.600 --> 00:06:06.379 seven years. It is. But here's where the personal 00:06:06.379 --> 00:06:09.250 failure flips into intellectual triumph. The 00:06:09.250 --> 00:06:11.730 confinement, ironically, gave him total freedom 00:06:11.730 --> 00:06:13.870 to read. So while he's being punished, he's educating 00:06:13.870 --> 00:06:16.670 himself. He devoured the school's library. Everything. 00:06:17.110 --> 00:06:20.509 Literature, philosophy, history, physics. He 00:06:20.509 --> 00:06:23.050 even read through dictionaries for, in his words, 00:06:23.529 --> 00:06:25.889 indescribable delight. Just for the knowledge 00:06:25.889 --> 00:06:29.550 itself. That boundless appetite for facts, for 00:06:29.550 --> 00:06:32.990 cataloging society, that's what drove La Comédie 00:06:32.990 --> 00:06:36.170 Humaine. He even put that exact habit into his 00:06:36.170 --> 00:06:38.550 novel Louis Lambert. But all that manic intellectual 00:06:38.550 --> 00:06:41.970 energy had a physical cost. Definitely. He returned 00:06:41.970 --> 00:06:45.050 home from school suffering from sort of a coma, 00:06:45.189 --> 00:06:48.790 which he blamed on intellectual congestion. It's 00:06:48.790 --> 00:06:51.110 a theme he'd explore in later ambition, literally 00:06:51.110 --> 00:06:54.110 consuming the body. And the despair became very 00:06:54.110 --> 00:06:56.910 real. The sources confirm that between 1814 and 00:06:56.910 --> 00:07:00.009 1816, he attempted suicide on a bridge over the 00:07:00.009 --> 00:07:02.569 River Loire. So this was a young man marked by 00:07:02.569 --> 00:07:05.430 neglect, isolation, and genuine despair long 00:07:05.430 --> 00:07:07.709 before he was a famous writer. And yet his parents 00:07:07.709 --> 00:07:09.589 were still determined he'd have a safe, respectable 00:07:09.589 --> 00:07:13.149 career. So in 1816, he goes to the Sorbonne to 00:07:13.149 --> 00:07:15.269 study law. And that part was actually intellectually 00:07:15.269 --> 00:07:18.029 stimulating. He studied under influential thinkers 00:07:18.029 --> 00:07:19.949 who encouraged independent thought. But then 00:07:19.949 --> 00:07:21.709 came the practical side of it. The apprenticeship. 00:07:21.889 --> 00:07:24.110 And this was the single most important, albeit 00:07:24.110 --> 00:07:26.689 negative, training of his entire life. Three 00:07:26.689 --> 00:07:29.120 years in a law office. Let's pause on this because 00:07:29.120 --> 00:07:31.160 it's absolutely vital. He wasn't just any kind 00:07:31.160 --> 00:07:34.040 of lawyer. He trained first as an avoué and then 00:07:34.040 --> 00:07:36.480 as a notaire. We need to be clear about what 00:07:36.480 --> 00:07:39.379 these jobs were in 19th century Paris. An avoué 00:07:39.379 --> 00:07:42.040 was like a solicitor. He prepared the cases, 00:07:42.139 --> 00:07:44.920 the bankruptcies, the foreclosures, the financial 00:07:44.920 --> 00:07:47.519 disputes, all the messy stuff. And a notaire 00:07:47.519 --> 00:07:50.060 was even more central to the machinery of money. 00:07:50.259 --> 00:07:53.660 Much more. They handled contracts, wills, mortgages, 00:07:53.660 --> 00:07:56.759 marriage settlements, real estate. Basically 00:07:56.759 --> 00:07:59.120 every document that moved money and property 00:07:59.120 --> 00:08:01.500 around. So Balzac wasn't just reading law books. 00:08:01.720 --> 00:08:04.220 He was watching the naked transaction of human 00:08:04.220 --> 00:08:07.439 ambition and failure every single day. He saw 00:08:07.439 --> 00:08:10.300 who was rising, who was falling. He processed 00:08:10.300 --> 00:08:12.800 the paperwork that documented every hidden family 00:08:12.800 --> 00:08:15.279 secret, every moral compromise. He basically 00:08:15.279 --> 00:08:17.819 had a front row seat to the engine room of Parisian 00:08:17.819 --> 00:08:20.139 society. He said it perfectly in his novel Le 00:08:20.139 --> 00:08:23.069 Notaire. He wrote that a young law clerk sees 00:08:23.069 --> 00:08:26.129 the oily wheels of every fortune, the hideous 00:08:26.129 --> 00:08:28.569 wrangling of heirs over corpses not yet cold, 00:08:28.750 --> 00:08:31.110 the human heart grappling with the penal code. 00:08:31.310 --> 00:08:35.070 Wow. The oily wheels of every fortune. That's 00:08:35.070 --> 00:08:37.690 it. That's the birth of literary realism right 00:08:37.690 --> 00:08:40.429 there. Seeing society not as some grand ideal, 00:08:40.610 --> 00:08:44.889 but as this, this morally hideous machine. Which 00:08:44.889 --> 00:08:47.919 is why. When the notaire he worked for, Manning 00:08:47.919 --> 00:08:50.659 Passes, offered to make Balzac his successor 00:08:50.659 --> 00:08:53.519 a stable, lucrative, respectable job for life, 00:08:53.659 --> 00:08:56.399 he said no. He refused. He said he wouldn't be 00:08:56.399 --> 00:08:58.899 a quirk, a machine, a writing school hack. I 00:08:58.899 --> 00:09:00.840 should be like everyone else. A total betrayal 00:09:00.840 --> 00:09:03.019 of his family's plans for him. The family was 00:09:03.019 --> 00:09:05.700 furious, but they let him live in a garret in 00:09:05.700 --> 00:09:08.620 Paris, a tiny room furnished in the most Spartan 00:09:08.620 --> 00:09:11.559 fashion on a starvation allowance. So he went 00:09:11.559 --> 00:09:13.779 from observing the machine. to being crushed 00:09:13.779 --> 00:09:16.000 by it. He was now living the life of the struggling 00:09:16.000 --> 00:09:18.320 artist he would write about so many times. But 00:09:18.320 --> 00:09:20.659 success did not come quickly. His first attempts 00:09:20.659 --> 00:09:23.639 at writing were, well, they were spectacular 00:09:23.639 --> 00:09:26.580 failures. He tried an opera libretto, a tragedy 00:09:26.580 --> 00:09:28.879 in verse called Cromwell. Which his family read 00:09:28.879 --> 00:09:31.279 and universally declared to be awful. So he tivets. 00:09:31.500 --> 00:09:33.559 Desperate for money, the constant theme of his 00:09:33.559 --> 00:09:35.720 life, he starts churning out commercial fiction 00:09:35.720 --> 00:09:38.700 under pseudonyms. Right. Horace de Saint -Aubin. 00:09:39.240 --> 00:09:41.980 These were the potboilers, designed to be sensational 00:09:41.980 --> 00:09:45.120 and sell fast. Like Vickerti's Ardenne, which 00:09:45.120 --> 00:09:47.100 was banned for being too scandalous. Exactly. 00:09:47.100 --> 00:09:49.700 The critics called them curiously, interestingly, 00:09:50.039 --> 00:09:53.259 almost enthrallingly bad. But they were essential 00:09:53.259 --> 00:09:55.559 training, weren't they? That habit of writing 00:09:55.559 --> 00:09:57.960 under immense financial pressure. It was his 00:09:57.960 --> 00:10:00.720 boot camp. Without the potboilers, he never could 00:10:00.720 --> 00:10:03.370 have produced La Comédie Humaine. And at the 00:10:03.370 --> 00:10:06.129 same time, he's failing as a writer. He's failing 00:10:06.129 --> 00:10:08.950 even more spectacularly as a businessman. This 00:10:08.950 --> 00:10:11.570 is the great paradox. The man who understood 00:10:11.570 --> 00:10:14.330 the oily wheels of fortune better than anyone 00:10:14.330 --> 00:10:17.870 alive was a terrible businessman. He tried publishing 00:10:17.870 --> 00:10:21.250 cheap one -volume classics. That failed. The 00:10:21.250 --> 00:10:23.639 books were sold as scrap paper. Then he tried 00:10:23.639 --> 00:10:25.539 to build a printing business and then a type 00:10:25.539 --> 00:10:28.799 foundry. All with grand ambition and zero practical 00:10:28.799 --> 00:10:31.559 sense. He had no capital, no experience. The 00:10:31.559 --> 00:10:34.639 sources show he racked up massive debts. 50 ,000 00:10:34.639 --> 00:10:37.620 francs owed just to his mother by 1828. That's 00:10:37.620 --> 00:10:39.899 a huge amount of money for the time. It's enough 00:10:39.899 --> 00:10:42.080 to buy a very comfortable apartment in Paris. 00:10:42.320 --> 00:10:44.659 It's years of income for a successful professional. 00:10:45.059 --> 00:10:47.419 And that suffocating debt, which he carried for 00:10:47.419 --> 00:10:50.120 most of his life, shaped everything he wrote. 00:10:50.639 --> 00:10:52.960 his critique of money wasn't intellectual it 00:10:52.960 --> 00:10:56.059 was visceral it was a lived reality absolutely 00:10:56.059 --> 00:10:59.659 his fascination with misers and avarice in books 00:10:59.659 --> 00:11:02.919 like eugenie grande that came from hiding from 00:11:02.919 --> 00:11:05.240 bailiffs not from reading philosophy and he never 00:11:05.240 --> 00:11:07.669 learned his lesson Even after he was famous, 00:11:07.730 --> 00:11:10.370 he was still chasing these get -rich -quick schemes. 00:11:10.590 --> 00:11:12.649 He traveled all the way to Sardinia, hoping to 00:11:12.649 --> 00:11:15.450 reprocess slag from ancient Roman mines. What 00:11:15.450 --> 00:11:18.090 a ridiculous idea. And later he had this scheme 00:11:18.090 --> 00:11:21.090 to buy 20 ,000 acres of oak wood in Ukraine and 00:11:21.090 --> 00:11:23.029 ship it to France. He was always chasing the 00:11:23.029 --> 00:11:25.350 one big score that would free him from the grind 00:11:25.350 --> 00:11:27.649 of writing for money. So the man who had become 00:11:27.649 --> 00:11:29.889 the great documentarian of society's pursuit 00:11:29.889 --> 00:11:33.710 of wealth was himself a frantic, chaotic speculator. 00:11:33.809 --> 00:11:36.450 And every failure just gave him more raw material 00:11:36.450 --> 00:11:39.750 for his work. And that cycle of ambition and 00:11:39.750 --> 00:11:43.629 failure leads us right to 1832, to that moment 00:11:43.629 --> 00:11:46.250 in his sister's apartment where he realizes he 00:11:46.250 --> 00:11:48.289 doesn't need to escape his world. He needs to 00:11:48.289 --> 00:11:50.750 capture it whole. That's the conception of the 00:11:50.750 --> 00:11:53.190 whole project, this enormous series that would 00:11:53.190 --> 00:11:55.710 paint a panoramic portrait of all aspects of 00:11:55.710 --> 00:11:58.009 society. By this point, he'd had his first real 00:11:58.009 --> 00:12:01.149 success under his own name, Le Chouin, in 1829. 00:12:01.490 --> 00:12:03.309 That was his passage into the promised land. 00:12:03.490 --> 00:12:06.289 It proved he could do serious literature. And 00:12:06.289 --> 00:12:08.029 then the masterpieces started coming quickly. 00:12:08.490 --> 00:12:11.909 La peau de chagrin, the wild ass's skin, in 1831. 00:12:12.370 --> 00:12:14.990 It's this fantastic story about a magical piece 00:12:14.990 --> 00:12:17.669 of skin that grants wishes but shrinks each time, 00:12:17.809 --> 00:12:20.470 consuming the owner's life force. A perfect metaphor 00:12:20.470 --> 00:12:22.690 for the ambition and burnout he saw all around 00:12:22.690 --> 00:12:25.970 him. And in 1833, we get Eugénie Grande, his 00:12:25.970 --> 00:12:28.649 first real bestseller, a harrowing story of a 00:12:28.649 --> 00:12:30.870 young woman whose spirit is just crushed by her 00:12:30.870 --> 00:12:33.429 miserly father. It is the perfect distillation 00:12:33.429 --> 00:12:35.509 of that avarice he knew so well. And then in 00:12:35.509 --> 00:12:38.610 1835, Le Père Goriot. which is often seen as 00:12:38.610 --> 00:12:40.809 the keystone of the whole series. It's basically 00:12:40.809 --> 00:12:43.889 King Lear, but set in a dingy Parisian boarding 00:12:43.889 --> 00:12:47.629 house in the 1820s. A father who gives everything 00:12:47.629 --> 00:12:50.850 to his daughters and is abandoned by them. It's 00:12:50.850 --> 00:12:53.789 this bitter rage against a society where money 00:12:53.789 --> 00:12:56.090 has replaced love. And these works establish 00:12:56.090 --> 00:12:59.830 him as this new thing. A literary realist. He 00:12:59.830 --> 00:13:01.990 was influenced by romantics like Walter Scott, 00:13:02.210 --> 00:13:05.139 but he took a radical turn. He wanted to depict 00:13:05.139 --> 00:13:08.299 human existence through cold, hard particulars, 00:13:08.299 --> 00:13:10.899 a sociological approach to fiction. He even said 00:13:10.899 --> 00:13:14.120 it himself. He believed that details alone will 00:13:14.120 --> 00:13:16.320 henceforth determine the merit of works. And 00:13:16.320 --> 00:13:18.419 he proved it on the page. His descriptions of 00:13:18.419 --> 00:13:20.519 decor, of clothing, of architecture, they're 00:13:20.519 --> 00:13:22.440 exhaustive, but they're not just descriptive 00:13:22.440 --> 00:13:24.580 flair, they're functional. They tell you everything. 00:13:24.799 --> 00:13:27.179 A character's social standing, their credit rating, 00:13:27.279 --> 00:13:29.539 their moral state. Think about the famous opening 00:13:29.539 --> 00:13:31.860 of Le Père Goriot, the description of the penchant 00:13:31.860 --> 00:13:34.110 vocaire. He describes the wall. Wallpaper cheap, 00:13:34.309 --> 00:13:37.169 faded, peeling, stained with grease in such minute 00:13:37.169 --> 00:13:40.190 detail. The wallpaper itself has a history. It 00:13:40.190 --> 00:13:42.190 speaks of the identities of those living inside. 00:13:42.669 --> 00:13:44.690 Right. And that's why someone like Emil Zola 00:13:44.690 --> 00:13:47.049 later called Balzac the father of the naturalist 00:13:47.049 --> 00:13:49.669 novel. He saw the world through clear glass. 00:13:50.090 --> 00:13:53.210 He connected human behavior directly to the environment. 00:13:53.750 --> 00:13:56.990 Poverty isn't an abstract idea. It's the physical 00:13:56.990 --> 00:14:00.309 reality of cheap, greasy wallpaper defining your 00:14:00.309 --> 00:14:03.269 life. And beyond the setting, his great innovation 00:14:03.269 --> 00:14:06.909 was his characters. They were complex, morally 00:14:06.909 --> 00:14:10.620 ambiguous. fully human. He was aiming for this 00:14:10.620 --> 00:14:13.240 high psychological realism. He said writers should 00:14:13.240 --> 00:14:16.179 use whatever literary device seems capable of 00:14:16.179 --> 00:14:18.360 giving the greatest intensity of life to their 00:14:18.360 --> 00:14:20.740 characters. And his characters manage this incredible 00:14:20.740 --> 00:14:23.039 balancing act. They represent a social type. 00:14:23.159 --> 00:14:25.539 The ambitious young man from the provinces, the 00:14:25.539 --> 00:14:28.240 criminal mastermind, the fallen aristocrat. But 00:14:28.240 --> 00:14:30.360 they're never just cartoons. They're messy and 00:14:30.360 --> 00:14:32.639 individual. And the mechanism that elevates the 00:14:32.639 --> 00:14:34.440 whole project, that turns it from a collection 00:14:34.440 --> 00:14:37.019 of novels into a single interconnected world, 00:14:37.159 --> 00:14:40.259 is his use of recurring characters. Right. Characters 00:14:40.259 --> 00:14:42.379 like Eugene de Rastignac, the ambitious social 00:14:42.379 --> 00:14:44.659 climber, or the terrifying criminal Vautrin. 00:14:44.759 --> 00:14:47.200 They pop up in dozens of different books. This 00:14:47.200 --> 00:14:50.019 was revolutionary for fiction at the time. When 00:14:50.019 --> 00:14:52.159 a character reappears, they bring their entire 00:14:52.159 --> 00:14:54.940 history with them. They emerge from the privacy 00:14:54.940 --> 00:14:58.570 of their own lives. It solidifies the sense that 00:14:58.570 --> 00:15:01.950 Balzac's fictional Paris is a real, living, breathing 00:15:01.950 --> 00:15:05.289 world. It was so powerful that it blurred the 00:15:05.289 --> 00:15:08.629 lines between fiction and reality for his readers. 00:15:08.789 --> 00:15:11.529 Yeah. The anecdote about Oscar Wilde is the perfect 00:15:11.529 --> 00:15:13.649 example. Oh, it's incredible. When the character 00:15:13.649 --> 00:15:16.529 Lucien de Ribempre dies in one of the novels, 00:15:16.769 --> 00:15:19.570 Wilde confessed it was, quote, one of the greatest 00:15:19.570 --> 00:15:21.789 tragedies of my life. It haunts me in my moments 00:15:21.789 --> 00:15:24.230 of pleasure. I remember it when I laugh. People 00:15:24.230 --> 00:15:26.590 were grieving fictional characters as if they 00:15:26.590 --> 00:15:28.990 were real people. They were real to them. And 00:15:28.990 --> 00:15:31.029 what drives these characters is this intense 00:15:31.029 --> 00:15:34.669 energy. Balzac was fascinated by the pseudoscience 00:15:34.669 --> 00:15:37.470 of his day, like Mesmer's theories on animal 00:15:37.470 --> 00:15:40.029 magnetism. The kind of life force. Exactly. A 00:15:40.029 --> 00:15:42.190 nervous and fluid force. And his characters are 00:15:42.190 --> 00:15:44.230 just burning with it. They're constantly struggling 00:15:44.230 --> 00:15:46.570 against society. And they often burn themselves 00:15:46.570 --> 00:15:48.929 out in the process. It's that energy that is 00:15:48.929 --> 00:15:51.710 literally consumed in Le Pot de Chagrin. And 00:15:51.710 --> 00:15:54.549 the final piece of his realism is the character 00:15:54.549 --> 00:15:58.190 of place, particularly Paris. He was meticulous. 00:15:58.250 --> 00:16:01.169 He would walk the city for hours, studying neighborhoods, 00:16:01.389 --> 00:16:03.970 taking notes. His descriptions can go on for 00:16:03.970 --> 00:16:06.809 15 or 20 pages of intricate detail. Because for 00:16:06.809 --> 00:16:09.539 him, Paris wasn't just a backdrop. He said, The 00:16:09.539 --> 00:16:12.200 streets of Paris possess human qualities. It 00:16:12.200 --> 00:16:15.000 was the artificial metropolis, this labyrinth 00:16:15.000 --> 00:16:17.700 where man -made chaos had overwhelmed nature. 00:16:17.879 --> 00:16:21.039 It became the model for every great city novelist 00:16:21.039 --> 00:16:24.279 who followed, from Dickens in London to Gostoevsky 00:16:24.279 --> 00:16:26.840 in St. Petersburg. The critic Peter Brooks put 00:16:26.840 --> 00:16:29.899 it perfectly. Realism is nothing if not urban. 00:16:30.539 --> 00:16:32.860 The story of the young man coming to the city 00:16:32.860 --> 00:16:35.559 to make his fortune. That's the central story 00:16:35.559 --> 00:16:37.830 of Bolzac's world. And here's another fascinating 00:16:37.830 --> 00:16:40.529 link to his own chaotic life. Some of his most 00:16:40.529 --> 00:16:42.330 tormenting characters were written while he was 00:16:42.330 --> 00:16:44.710 staying at the Chateau de Sachet. Okay. This 00:16:44.710 --> 00:16:47.110 estate was owned by his friend, Jean de Margon, 00:16:47.350 --> 00:16:49.690 who was also his mother's lover and the father 00:16:49.690 --> 00:16:52.509 of her youngest child. Wait, what? His mother 00:16:52.509 --> 00:16:54.529 was having a long -term affair with the man whose 00:16:54.529 --> 00:16:57.509 house Balzac used as a writing retreat. Exactly. 00:16:57.509 --> 00:17:00.509 Even the physical place he created from was tangled 00:17:00.509 --> 00:17:03.730 up in the same web of domestic secrets and moral 00:17:03.730 --> 00:17:06.609 ambiguity that defined his novels. He could never 00:17:06.609 --> 00:17:09.049 escape it. Which leads us right into the sheer 00:17:09.049 --> 00:17:11.849 intensity of his personal life, which was obviously 00:17:11.849 --> 00:17:15.069 required to produce this mountain of work. We 00:17:15.069 --> 00:17:18.029 have to talk about his work habits. They're legendary 00:17:18.029 --> 00:17:21.589 and, frankly, terrifying. They were inhuman, 00:17:21.769 --> 00:17:24.950 completely. His standard schedule was to eat 00:17:24.950 --> 00:17:27.190 a light meal in the afternoon, sleep until midnight, 00:17:27.410 --> 00:17:30.150 then get up at 1 a .m. and write nonstop until 00:17:30.150 --> 00:17:33.130 8 in the morning. Fueled by coffee. Innumerable 00:17:33.130 --> 00:17:36.289 cups of black coffee. The sources suggest his 00:17:36.289 --> 00:17:38.750 consumption was so prolific, some say over 50 00:17:38.750 --> 00:17:41.230 cups a day, though that's debated, that modern 00:17:41.230 --> 00:17:43.109 researchers think it was a factor in his death. 00:17:43.289 --> 00:17:45.470 He was literally burning himself out for his 00:17:45.470 --> 00:17:48.740 art. And the physical pace was incredible. Writing 00:17:48.740 --> 00:17:51.200 with a quill, he could compose at a rate that's 00:17:51.200 --> 00:17:53.460 like 30 words per minute on a modern typewriter. 00:17:53.619 --> 00:17:55.559 But the real obsession was in the revision process. 00:17:55.839 --> 00:17:57.440 He was a publisher's nightmare, right? Oh, a 00:17:57.440 --> 00:18:00.359 total nightmare. He'd send the pages to the printer, 00:18:00.539 --> 00:18:02.839 get the proofs back, and then just cover them 00:18:02.839 --> 00:18:06.200 with changes, additions, rewrites, and then do 00:18:06.200 --> 00:18:09.109 it again. And again. It cost a fortune in printing 00:18:09.109 --> 00:18:11.869 fees. A fortune. And it meant the finished book 00:18:11.869 --> 00:18:14.170 was often vastly different from the first draft. 00:18:14.410 --> 00:18:16.849 It speaks to this mind that was just constantly 00:18:16.849 --> 00:18:19.450 running, never satisfied. And that perpetual 00:18:19.450 --> 00:18:22.289 motion, that intensity, it defined his romantic 00:18:22.289 --> 00:18:25.170 life, too. It was as complex as any of his plots. 00:18:25.450 --> 00:18:28.920 To put it mildly. Let's start with Maria du Fresne 00:18:28.920 --> 00:18:32.779 in 1833. She was 24, a writer, and married to 00:18:32.779 --> 00:18:35.440 an older man. A classic Balzacian setup. It was 00:18:35.440 --> 00:18:38.279 an illicit affair, and in 1834, she gave birth 00:18:38.279 --> 00:18:40.900 to their secret daughter, Marie Caroline, and 00:18:40.900 --> 00:18:43.440 significantly, Maria was the person to whom he 00:18:43.440 --> 00:18:46.539 dedicated Eugénie Grandet. His lovers were often 00:18:46.539 --> 00:18:48.519 his muses. And there's another footnote here, 00:18:48.539 --> 00:18:50.900 right? That he was also listed in the Paris police 00:18:50.900 --> 00:18:53.710 records. Of known homosexuals, yes. indicating 00:18:53.710 --> 00:18:55.730 at least suspicion that he was attracted to men 00:18:55.730 --> 00:18:58.309 as well. His emotional life was a secret history, 00:18:58.490 --> 00:19:00.809 just like the ones in his novels. But the central 00:19:00.809 --> 00:19:03.750 love of his life was someone else entirely, someone 00:19:03.750 --> 00:19:06.569 he courted for years by letter. Countess Ewelina 00:19:06.569 --> 00:19:09.589 Hoska, a Polish aristocrat living near Kyiv, 00:19:09.589 --> 00:19:12.359 his sweetest dream. And it started completely 00:19:12.359 --> 00:19:15.460 anonymously. In 1832, she sends him a letter 00:19:15.460 --> 00:19:18.539 from Odessa, signed only l 'étranger, the foreigner, 00:19:18.779 --> 00:19:21.440 criticizing his work. And a 15 -year correspondence 00:19:21.440 --> 00:19:23.920 begins with him placing a classified ad in a 00:19:23.920 --> 00:19:26.680 newspaper, hoping she'll see it. She was also 00:19:26.680 --> 00:19:29.180 in a marriage of convenience to a man 20 years 00:19:29.180 --> 00:19:31.809 older. It's the same pattern. Their letters are 00:19:31.809 --> 00:19:34.450 this incredible dance of passion, intellectual 00:19:34.450 --> 00:19:37.109 debate, and proper decorum, all conducted across 00:19:37.109 --> 00:19:39.910 thousands of miles. And after her husband died 00:19:39.910 --> 00:19:43.289 in 1841, Balzac finally went to pursue her in 00:19:43.289 --> 00:19:46.369 person. He visited her in St. Petersburg in 1843, 00:19:46.650 --> 00:19:49.490 and despite some serious competition, including 00:19:49.490 --> 00:19:52.279 from the composer Franz Liszt, He won her heart. 00:19:52.460 --> 00:19:54.660 But getting to the altar was fraught with classic 00:19:54.660 --> 00:19:57.259 Balzac problems. Of course. Financial collapse, 00:19:57.619 --> 00:19:59.759 his health was failing, and he even had to get 00:19:59.759 --> 00:20:02.480 approval from Tsar Nicholas I, who wasn't keen 00:20:02.480 --> 00:20:04.640 on one of his noblewomen marrying a foreigner. 00:20:04.940 --> 00:20:06.960 They finally got permission and were married 00:20:06.960 --> 00:20:10.640 in 1850. A tragic fulfillment of a lifetime of 00:20:10.640 --> 00:20:12.779 waiting. It really was. The wedding was in March 00:20:12.779 --> 00:20:16.220 1850 in what is now Ukraine. And the journey 00:20:16.220 --> 00:20:19.059 itself, a 10 -hour carriage ride, just physically 00:20:19.059 --> 00:20:21.000 devastated him. He was already in a state of 00:20:21.000 --> 00:20:23.880 collapse. Completely. They arrived back in Paris 00:20:23.880 --> 00:20:27.440 on his 51st birthday, May 20th. His wife reported 00:20:27.440 --> 00:20:30.079 he was in a state of extreme weakness. And just 00:20:30.079 --> 00:20:32.119 five months later. Five months after finally 00:20:32.119 --> 00:20:34.339 achieving the marriage and stability he'd craved 00:20:34.339 --> 00:20:37.019 his whole life. Honoré de Balzac died on August 00:20:37.019 --> 00:20:41.279 18, 1850. Gangrene, associated with congestive 00:20:41.279 --> 00:20:43.220 heart failure. His mother was at his deathbed, 00:20:43.339 --> 00:20:47.059 but his new wife, Eve, had gone to bed. A final, 00:20:47.079 --> 00:20:49.619 profoundly human moment of attachment. And the 00:20:49.619 --> 00:20:52.059 funeral was the ultimate social event. Victor 00:20:52.059 --> 00:20:54.920 Hugo gave the eulogy, declaring, A nation in 00:20:54.920 --> 00:20:57.559 mourning for a man of genius. Almost every writer 00:20:57.559 --> 00:21:00.420 in Paris was there. Dumas, father and son. A 00:21:00.420 --> 00:21:02.519 suitably dramatic end for a life lived in service 00:21:02.519 --> 00:21:05.539 of drama. Okay, this is where Balzac, the objective 00:21:05.539 --> 00:21:08.630 observer, becomes almost shocking. Because the 00:21:08.630 --> 00:21:11.309 man who wrote the blueprint for literary realism, 00:21:11.490 --> 00:21:14.769 who captured the cold, hard reality of bourgeois 00:21:14.769 --> 00:21:18.029 France, was politically an extreme conservative. 00:21:18.410 --> 00:21:20.930 He was a legitimist. Meaning he supported the 00:21:20.930 --> 00:21:23.289 royal house of Bourbon. He believed in the divine 00:21:23.289 --> 00:21:26.250 right of the king and rejected the new, more 00:21:26.250 --> 00:21:29.289 liberal July monarchy that came in after the 00:21:29.289 --> 00:21:32.319 1830 revolution. He was looking backward. idealizing 00:21:32.319 --> 00:21:35.099 the old aristocratic order. He was heavily influenced 00:21:35.099 --> 00:21:37.779 by counter -revolutionary philosophers. He once 00:21:37.779 --> 00:21:41.019 said that when Louis VI was beheaded, The revolution 00:21:41.019 --> 00:21:43.619 beheaded in his person all fathers of families. 00:21:43.759 --> 00:21:45.920 He saw the breakdown of political order as the 00:21:45.920 --> 00:21:47.920 destruction of the family itself. And he had 00:21:47.920 --> 00:21:50.059 this lifelong admiration for the Catholic Church. 00:21:50.259 --> 00:21:52.279 Right. And the preface to La Comédie Humaine, 00:21:52.299 --> 00:21:54.759 he calls it a complete system for the repression 00:21:54.759 --> 00:21:57.420 of the depraved tendencies of man. And crucially, 00:21:57.480 --> 00:22:00.240 the most powerful element of social order. So 00:22:00.240 --> 00:22:03.420 here's the first huge contradiction. The writer 00:22:03.420 --> 00:22:05.900 who spent his career meticulously cataloging 00:22:05.900 --> 00:22:10.160 human corruption, greed, lust, ambition, was 00:22:10.160 --> 00:22:12.640 convinced that only the strictest, most repressive 00:22:12.640 --> 00:22:15.200 institutions could keep it all in check. Exactly. 00:22:15.240 --> 00:22:18.180 He chronicled the rise of the financial bourgeoisie, 00:22:18.180 --> 00:22:21.720 but politically he despised them. His work is 00:22:21.720 --> 00:22:24.539 a monumental record of the very society he thought 00:22:24.539 --> 00:22:27.119 was morally bankrupt. And surprise, surprise. 00:22:27.880 --> 00:22:30.619 Balzac the politician was just as much a failure 00:22:30.619 --> 00:22:33.720 as Balzac the businessman. He genuinely saw himself 00:22:33.720 --> 00:22:35.980 as a potential political leader. He called for 00:22:35.980 --> 00:22:39.460 a young and vigorous man to mediate things, not 00:22:39.460 --> 00:22:41.900 so subtly suggesting himself. But a freak accident 00:22:41.900 --> 00:22:44.859 in 1832, he slipped on the street and cracked 00:22:44.859 --> 00:22:46.859 his head, prevented him from actually standing 00:22:46.859 --> 00:22:49.160 for election. So political action was closed 00:22:49.160 --> 00:22:52.160 to him. Only observation remained. He tried journalism. 00:22:52.730 --> 00:22:54.710 to have a more direct impact, but that failed 00:22:54.710 --> 00:22:56.710 too. He ran a couple of magazines. And they both 00:22:56.710 --> 00:22:59.369 folded almost immediately. The market rejected 00:22:59.369 --> 00:23:01.589 his attempts to impose political order, just 00:23:01.589 --> 00:23:03.630 like it rejected his businesses. He was only 00:23:03.630 --> 00:23:05.849 successful when he was depicting the chaos, not 00:23:05.849 --> 00:23:08.289 when he was trying to control it. And this brings 00:23:08.289 --> 00:23:11.430 us to the most stunning paradox of all. The thing 00:23:11.430 --> 00:23:14.990 that confirms his objective genius. Because he 00:23:14.990 --> 00:23:17.849 was such a keen, unflinching observer of class 00:23:17.849 --> 00:23:21.029 and money and ambition, his work became a central 00:23:21.029 --> 00:23:23.529 reading for his bitterest ideological opponents. 00:23:23.849 --> 00:23:25.710 We're talking about Marxists and socialists, 00:23:25.809 --> 00:23:28.130 the founders of modern political thought. They 00:23:28.130 --> 00:23:30.829 used Balzac's novels as their primary textbook 00:23:30.829 --> 00:23:33.609 on how 19th century capitalism actually worked. 00:23:33.750 --> 00:23:35.940 It's the ultimate intellectual twist. Despite 00:23:35.940 --> 00:23:38.680 Balzac's fervent monarchist views, Friedrich 00:23:38.680 --> 00:23:41.460 Engels, co -founder of Marxism, said he learned 00:23:41.460 --> 00:23:43.940 more from Balzac than from all the professional 00:23:43.940 --> 00:23:46.460 historians, economists and statisticians put 00:23:46.460 --> 00:23:48.700 together. Karl Marx references Balzac in Das 00:23:48.700 --> 00:23:51.079 Kapital. And the anecdote about Leon Trotsky 00:23:51.079 --> 00:23:53.799 is just incredible. What's that? Trotsky would 00:23:53.799 --> 00:23:56.660 famously read Balzac's novels right in the middle 00:23:56.660 --> 00:23:58.680 of meetings of the Central Committee. Seriously? 00:23:58.680 --> 00:24:01.200 To the annoyance of his colleagues. He was reading 00:24:01.200 --> 00:24:04.400 fiction for factual political truth. Think about 00:24:04.400 --> 00:24:07.339 the weight of that. The very men who wanted to 00:24:07.339 --> 00:24:10.519 overthrow the society Balzac politically revered 00:24:10.519 --> 00:24:14.059 were using his work as the key document showing 00:24:14.059 --> 00:24:17.400 exactly how that system operated and why it needed 00:24:17.400 --> 00:24:19.680 to be destroyed. His political intentions became 00:24:19.680 --> 00:24:22.940 totally irrelevant. The truth and the scope of 00:24:22.940 --> 00:24:25.460 his observations were simply too powerful, too 00:24:25.460 --> 00:24:28.480 accurate to be ignored by anyone. And that kind 00:24:28.480 --> 00:24:32.220 of objective, comprehensive truth just fundamentally 00:24:32.220 --> 00:24:34.779 changed the course of literature. Balzac didn't 00:24:34.779 --> 00:24:37.079 just write great books. He basically invented 00:24:37.079 --> 00:24:39.619 the template for the modern social novel. You 00:24:39.619 --> 00:24:41.700 can trace a direct line from Balzac to pretty 00:24:41.700 --> 00:24:44.660 much every major realist, naturalist, and even 00:24:44.660 --> 00:24:47.000 early modernist writer of the next hundred years. 00:24:47.200 --> 00:24:49.720 Let's start with Henry James, the great American 00:24:49.720 --> 00:24:52.259 novelist who was obsessed with European society 00:24:52.259 --> 00:24:54.779 and psychology. James called Balzac really the 00:24:54.779 --> 00:24:57.740 father of us all. He admired Balzac's sheer ambition 00:24:57.740 --> 00:25:00.259 to portray what he called a beast with a hundred 00:25:00.259 --> 00:25:03.200 claws society and all its terror and glory. But 00:25:03.200 --> 00:25:06.099 James had his critiques, too. Oh, he did. He 00:25:06.099 --> 00:25:08.759 felt that the artist of the comedy Humane is 00:25:08.759 --> 00:25:11.880 half smothered by the historian. But that's also 00:25:11.880 --> 00:25:14.559 a compliment, right? It acknowledges that Balzac 00:25:14.559 --> 00:25:16.900 was so successful at being a social historian 00:25:16.900 --> 00:25:19.720 that the facts sometimes overwhelmed the art. 00:25:19.859 --> 00:25:22.759 The debt is still profound. And then there's 00:25:22.759 --> 00:25:24.720 the constant comparison to Charles Dickens. One 00:25:24.720 --> 00:25:27.319 is the French Dickens, the other the English 00:25:27.319 --> 00:25:30.099 Balzac. Balzac was a huge influence on Dickens, 00:25:30.140 --> 00:25:32.759 especially in his use of vivid cityscapes and 00:25:32.759 --> 00:25:35.440 characters that represent social types. And what 00:25:35.440 --> 00:25:38.619 about Flaubert, the ultimate prose stylist? Flaubert 00:25:38.619 --> 00:25:41.160 was hugely influenced by Balzac's commitment 00:25:41.160 --> 00:25:44.140 to detail and his unvarnished look at bourgeois 00:25:44.140 --> 00:25:46.920 life. But Flaubert's critique is legendary. What 00:25:46.920 --> 00:25:48.779 a man he would have been had he known how to 00:25:48.779 --> 00:25:51.559 write. Exactly. The perfectionist in Flaubert 00:25:51.559 --> 00:25:54.319 couldn't handle Balzac's sometimes rough prose. 00:25:54.539 --> 00:25:57.119 But even he had to admit the sheer power of the 00:25:57.119 --> 00:25:59.660 vision. And Flaubert's great novel, L 'Education 00:25:59.660 --> 00:26:02.599 Sentimentale, owes a clear structural debt to 00:26:02.599 --> 00:26:04.799 Balzac's illusions perdue. And we come back to 00:26:04.799 --> 00:26:07.480 Emil Zola. Who declared Balzac the definitive 00:26:07.480 --> 00:26:10.859 father of the naturalist novel. Zola saw that 00:26:10.859 --> 00:26:13.460 Balzac was the first to really get that environment 00:26:13.460 --> 00:26:16.480 is destiny. That your behavior is tied to your 00:26:16.480 --> 00:26:18.880 class, your heredity, your physical surroundings. 00:26:19.279 --> 00:26:22.630 And finally, Marcel Prost. another giant. Proust 00:26:22.630 --> 00:26:25.789 adored Balzac. He studied him carefully and even 00:26:25.789 --> 00:26:27.990 adopted some of his techniques like what's called 00:26:27.990 --> 00:26:30.950 retrospective illumination. Which is what exactly? 00:26:31.269 --> 00:26:33.430 It's when you reveal a character's backstory 00:26:33.430 --> 00:26:36.509 or their full complexity long after they've first 00:26:36.509 --> 00:26:39.390 been introduced. It deepens the sense that the 00:26:39.390 --> 00:26:42.849 world is real and ongoing. Proust used that to 00:26:42.849 --> 00:26:45.390 layer memory and history onto his characters. 00:26:45.450 --> 00:26:47.690 So the influence is just everywhere. And beyond 00:26:47.690 --> 00:26:49.589 the literary giants there are these great little 00:26:49.589 --> 00:26:51.900 stories about his chaos. working life that just 00:26:51.900 --> 00:26:54.380 underline his constant desperate hustle. Like 00:26:54.380 --> 00:26:56.599 the idea of the vanishing man. Right. The idea 00:26:56.599 --> 00:26:59.119 that he was always on the move, escaping creditors, 00:26:59.140 --> 00:27:02.039 and that the only settled, stable home he could 00:27:02.039 --> 00:27:04.440 ever build was the world of the human comedy 00:27:04.440 --> 00:27:06.980 itself. His fictional world was the complete 00:27:06.980 --> 00:27:09.180 opposite of his real one. And then there's that 00:27:09.180 --> 00:27:13.680 ghostwriting anecdote from 1838. It's pure cynical 00:27:13.680 --> 00:27:16.700 Balzac. He ghostwrote a book called Maxime des 00:27:16.700 --> 00:27:20.500 Pensées de Napoléon for a former hatter. A former 00:27:20.500 --> 00:27:23.519 hatter. Why? For the hustle. The goal wasn't 00:27:23.519 --> 00:27:26.259 historical accuracy. It was to get the hatter 00:27:26.259 --> 00:27:28.720 the Legion of Honor medal by dedicating the book 00:27:28.720 --> 00:27:31.539 to King Louis Philippe and flattering him excessively. 00:27:31.720 --> 00:27:34.480 And did it work? It worked. The hatter got his 00:27:34.480 --> 00:27:38.000 medal and Balzac got 4 ,000 francs. But here's 00:27:38.000 --> 00:27:41.079 the kicker. Balzac later admitted he just invented 00:27:41.079 --> 00:27:43.440 some of the Napoleon maxims. He made them up. 00:27:43.579 --> 00:27:46.140 Completely. And critics noted that the invented 00:27:46.140 --> 00:27:49.019 ones seem surprisingly absolutist even for Napoleon. 00:27:49.559 --> 00:27:52.079 It's the ultimate Balzacian scheme monetizing 00:27:52.079 --> 00:27:54.740 reputation and political cynicism to pay off 00:27:54.740 --> 00:27:56.700 a debt. His impact, of course, continues today. 00:27:56.819 --> 00:27:59.200 His novels are constantly being adapted for film 00:27:59.200 --> 00:28:01.240 and TV. The stories are timeless because the 00:28:01.240 --> 00:28:03.900 themes, greed, ambition, social climbing are 00:28:03.900 --> 00:28:06.539 timeless. And he pops up in weird places, like 00:28:06.539 --> 00:28:09.059 in Francois Truffaut's film The 400 Blows, where 00:28:09.059 --> 00:28:11.480 the young hero plagiarizes Balzac and then lights 00:28:11.480 --> 00:28:13.960 a small fire in his honor. And, of course, he's 00:28:13.960 --> 00:28:17.299 a permanent fixture in Paris. The sculptor Auguste 00:28:17.299 --> 00:28:20.240 Rodin created that incredible monument to Balzac, 00:28:20.359 --> 00:28:23.779 this powerful, brooding bronze statue that stands 00:28:23.779 --> 00:28:26.039 in the city today. So we circle all the way back 00:28:26.039 --> 00:28:28.799 to our central truth. Honoré de Balzac was a 00:28:28.799 --> 00:28:31.339 spectacular failure at almost everything practical 00:28:31.339 --> 00:28:34.480 he ever tried. Businessman, politician, lawyer, 00:28:34.720 --> 00:28:38.720 even a successful romantic in the end. He married 00:28:38.720 --> 00:28:41.210 his great love five months before he died. But 00:28:41.210 --> 00:28:43.809 every debt, every failure, every sleepless night 00:28:43.809 --> 00:28:46.990 fueled that obsessive, detailed literary project. 00:28:47.230 --> 00:28:49.490 He took the ugly reality he saw in those law 00:28:49.490 --> 00:28:52.349 offices, the oily wheels of every fortune and 00:28:52.349 --> 00:28:55.309 the hideous wrangling of heirs, and forged it 00:28:55.309 --> 00:28:57.450 into the grandest, most objective picture of 00:28:57.450 --> 00:28:59.890 a society ever attempted. His work proves that 00:28:59.890 --> 00:29:01.990 to really understand a society, you have to observe 00:29:01.990 --> 00:29:04.430 its chaos, its contradictions, its materialism. 00:29:04.470 --> 00:29:06.250 You have to be willing to look through that clear 00:29:06.250 --> 00:29:08.369 glass, no matter how harsh the reflection is. 00:29:08.509 --> 00:29:10.369 He turned personal struggle into unparalleled. 00:29:10.380 --> 00:29:13.660 And that leaves us with our final provocative 00:29:13.660 --> 00:29:16.839 thought for you to take away. Honoré de Balzac 00:29:16.839 --> 00:29:19.680 was a fervent monarchist, a committed Catholic. 00:29:19.880 --> 00:29:22.799 He believed the old aristocratic order was essential. 00:29:23.200 --> 00:29:26.799 Yet his work became the factual foundation for 00:29:26.799 --> 00:29:29.029 the founders of communism. So what does that 00:29:29.029 --> 00:29:31.130 tell us about the power of unfiltered observation? 00:29:31.650 --> 00:29:33.890 That a writer's political intentions can be completely 00:29:33.890 --> 00:29:36.869 overwritten by the sheer truth and scope of the 00:29:36.869 --> 00:29:39.009 world he creates. The world he observed was more 00:29:39.009 --> 00:29:41.170 honest than the world he wished for. Food for 00:29:41.170 --> 00:29:44.029 thought. That was a truly deep dive into the 00:29:44.029 --> 00:29:47.109 genius and the chaos of Honoré de Balzac. We'll 00:29:47.109 --> 00:29:47.569 see you next time.