Chapter 3 Honoré de Balzac, “observateur poète” of the Parisian Gutter
In: Marginal ParisSearch for other papers by Céline Duverne in
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Abstract
Despite his fascination with the aristocratic elite, the microcosm of finance, and the rising bourgeoisie, it is above all in the most sordid neighborhoods of Paris that Honoré de Balzac finds an unprecedented laboratory of creativity. But as they are fundamentally unclassifiable, the margins defy the unitary coherence of the taxonomic pattern by which the novelist intends to make the changing city more intelligible. The observation of urban life therefore mixes the realistic purpose with a more lyrical approach based on flânerie, initiated by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Rêveries du promeneur solitaire (1782). By adopting a writing style that is itself hybridized, privileging poetic contemplation over the efficient march of the plot, Balzac can apprehend the mystery of these dregs of society. Prefiguring Charles Baudelaire, the representation of the margins in La Comédie humaine is thus remarkable by a fusion of the “hideux dans le joli,” which breaks with the traditional canons of ideal beauty. This is how this treatment of the underworld differs from that of Victor Hugo or Eugène Sue. Designating himself as an “observateur poète,” Balzac proposes a paradoxical poetization of the prosaism of the gutter, an aestheticization of depravity.