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Thursday, July 24, 2014

"Facino Cane" by Honore de Balzac (1836, A short story component of La Comedie Humaine)







"Facino Cane" (estimated reading time is 14 minutes) is a short story component of Balzac's La Comedie Humaine.  He placed it in the Scenes de la Vie Parusienne section.  For the time being I am approaching the cycle by reading short stories and novellas.  

"Facino Cane" is in the format of one man telling a story to another.  This is a common narrative mode as one goes back in the short story's history.  A man encounters a blind musician at a social gathering. He engages the obviously impoverished old man in conversation and discovers he was once a member of the senate of Vienna, a position held only by the quite wealthy.  He asks the man what happened to him.  The old man tells him a long story about his life history in Vienna and how he got to Paris, how he lost his sight and his fortune.  It was interesting and involved a lot of intrigue.  Dumas would have turned it into a 1000 page novel.

"Facino Cane" depicts the French fascination with Vienna, shown strongly in the works of Stendhal. It makes use of an early narrative method.  

I am including this written and set in Paris short story as part of my participation in Paris in July, 2014.



Mel u




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