La Comedie Humaine of Honore de Balzac Volume 39 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1904 Excerpt: ... INTRODUCTION. It is highly probable that" Seraphita " cost its author more than any other of his intellectual offspring. The evidence of this appears in his correspondence. Writing to Madame Zulma Carraud in January, 1834, he any a, "Seraphita is a work more severe than any other upon the writer." What he thought of it may be gathered from another passage in the same letter, in which he speaks of it as " a work as much beyond 'Louis Lambert' as 'Louis Lambert' is beyond 'Gaudissart.'" As he proceeded with it his labor became more intense. In March, 1835, writing to the Duchesse de Castries, he says: "The toil upon this work has been crushing and terrible. I have passed, and must still pass, days and nights upon it. I compose, decompose, and recompose it." He did not delude himself as to the kind of reception it was likely to encounter: "In a few days," he observes, "all will have been said. Either I shall have won fame or the Parisians will have failed to understand me. And inasmuch as, with them, mockery commonly takes the place of understanding, I can hope only for a remote and tardy success. Eventually appreciation will come, and at once here and there. For the rest, I think this book will be a favorite with those souls that like to lose themselves in the spaces of infinity." There is a legend to the effect that Balzac first conceived the idea embodied in " Seraphita" while contemplating a beautiful sculptured figure of an angel in the studio of a friend. It is possible that he himself may have made this statement, for he was fond of picturesque and dramatic incidents, and might easily have ascribed to a trivial occurrence a significance greater than it was entitled to. The true genesis of this, perhaps the most remarkable and unquestionably the most el...