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PARTISAN
R'EVIEW
the novel of manners as philosophical history, and, in general, Balzac's
conception (which he upholds energetically elsewhere) of his own
activity as the writing of history, to which we shall later return; also
his justification of all stylistic genres and levels in works of this
nature; finally his design of going beyond Walter Scott by making
all his novels compose a single whole, a general presentation of French
society
in
the nineteenth century, which he here again calls a his–
torical work.
But this does not exhaust his plan; he intends also to render
a separate account of
ules raisons au la raison de ces efforts sociaux/'
and when he has succeeded
in
at least investigating
uce moteur social,"
his final intention is
umediter sur les principes naturels et voir en quoi
les Societes s'ecartent ou se rapprochent de la regle eternelle, du vrai,
du beau?"
We need not here discuss the fact that it was not given
to him to make a successful theoretical presentation, outside the frame
of a narrative, and hence he could only attempt to realize his theore–
tical plans in the form of novels; here it is only of interest to note
that the "immanent" philosophy of his novels of manners did not
satisfy him and that in the passage before us this dissatisfaction, after
so many biological and historical expositions, induces him to employ
classical model-concepts
(Ula regle eternelle du vrai, du beau")–
categories which he can no longer utilize practically in his novels.
All these motifs-biological, historical, classicizing-moral- are
in
fact scattered through his work. He has a great fondness for bio–
logical comparisons; he speaks of physiology or zoology in connection
with social phenomena, with the
Uanatomie du coeur humain";
in
the passage commented on above he compares the effect of a social
milieu to the exhalations which produce typhoid, and in another
passage from
Pere Coriot
he says of Rastignac that he had given
himself up to the lessons and the temptations of luxury
«avec l'ardeur
dont est saisi l'impatient calice d'un dattier femelle pour les fecon–
dantes poussieres de son hymenh."
It is needless to cite historical
motifs, for the spirit of Historicism with its emphasis upon ambient
and individual atmospheres is the spirit of his entire work; I will,
however, quote at least one of many passages to show that historical
concepts were always in his mind. The passage is from the provincial
novel
La vieille Pille;
it concerns two elderly gentlemen who live in
Alenc;on, the one a typical
ci-devant,
the other a bankrupt Revolu-
