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Sunday, March 1, 2015

Béatrix by Honore de Balzac (1839, A Novel - A Component of The Human Comedy)




 “The man who was producing the greatest creative work of the century and could have walked in the presence of kings and princes with the unconcern of a Beethoven suffered from an absurd mania for the aristocracy”. - from Balzac by Stefan Zweig 







Béatrix is perhaps of special intetest because Balzac drew upon the characters of real people for it.  George Sand, a very close friend and correspondent of Balzac, Marie d'Agoult, once a well known but now faded to obscurity writer, and the composer Franz Litz.

It is set among rural aristocrats and centers around a handsome young man and his various romances.  The best thing in Béatrix to me was the long characterizations of the George Sand character and the personage model on Marie d'Agoult.

I think this is mostly a novel  for Balzac completionists but Stefan Zweig felt if was among the best of the work of Balzac so maybe I need to reread it one day.

As I read on it Balzac I am also reading various online articles and have started Balzac by Stefan Zweig.  Zweig does a wonderful job of describing "a day in the life of Honore de Balzac".

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I will,give the last word on Béatrix to Stefan Zweig

"The novel Béatrix, of which only the earlier chapters have any literary value, was provided with a sentimental ending lacking in any truth to life” 

Mel u

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