Marcel Proust
SAINTE-BEUVE AND BALZAC *
One of the writers of his day that Sainte-Beuve was wrong
about is Balzac. You look down your nose. You don't care for him,
I know. And there you have some right on your side. The vulgarity
of his mind was so massive that a lifetime could not leaven it. I t
was not only that when he was no older than was Rastignac at
the outset of his career he set before him as his goal in life the grati–
fication of the most groveling ambitions-or at least, confused these
ambitions so thoroughly with other and better ones that it is almost
impossible to disentangle them; but in the year before his death, when
the fulfilment of the love of his life, the marriage to Mme. Hanska
whom he had loved for sixteen years, was in sight, he writes to his
sister like this:
Say what you like, Laure, in Paris it means something to be able, when
one wants to, to throw open one's house and entertain the cream of
society, who will meet there a woman who is polished, stately as a
queen, of high descent, related to the grandest families, witty, well–
educated and handsome. That's a great step toward becoming a power
in the land. I can't help it, this business that's going on, quite apart
from my feelings (failure would as good as kill me), means all or noth–
ing to me, double or quits. Heart, soul, ambition, everything about me
is set on just this one thing that I've been in pursuit of for the last
sixteen years: if this stupendous happiness slips through my fingers,
there's nothing else I want. Don't suppose that I love luxury. I t's the
luxury of the Rue Fortunee that I love, and all that goes with it: a
beautiful woman, well-born, comfortably off, and knowing all the best
people.
Elsewhere he agam speaks of Mme. H anska in like terms: "This
*
From On
Art and Literature:
1896-1919, a volume of Proust's criticism,
soon to be published by Meridian Books.
