The Works of Honore de Balzac Volume 31; Member for Arcis (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. 1901 Excerpt: ... INTRODUCTION Le DSpute cCArois, like the still lees generally known Les Petits Bourgeois, stands on a rather different footing from the rest of Balzac's work. Both were posthumous, and both, having been left unfinished, were completed by the author's friend, Charles Rabou. Babou is not much known nowadays as a man of letters; he must not be confused with the writer Hippolyte Babou, the friend of Baudelaire, the reputed inventor of the title Fleurs du Mai, and the author of some very acute articles in the great collection of Crepet's Poetes Franqais. But he figures pretty frequently in association of one kind or another with Balzac, and would appear to have been thoroughly imbued with the scheme and spirit of the Comedie. At the same time, it does not appear that even ths indefatigable and most competent M. de Lovenjoul is perfectly certain where Balzac's labors end and those of Eabou begin. It would seem, however (and certainly internal evidence has nothing to say on the other side), that the severance, or rather the junction, must have taken place somewhere about the point where, after the introduction of Maxime de Trailles, the interest suddenly shifts altogether from the folk of Arcis and the conduct of their election to the hitherto unknown Comte de Sallenauve. It would, no doubt, be possible, and even easy, to discover in Balzac's undoubted work--for instance, in Le Cure de Village and Illusions Perdues--instances of shiftings of interest nearly as abrupt and of changes in the main centre of the story nearly as decided. Nor is it possible, considering the weakness of constructive finish which always marked Balzac, to rule out offhand the substitution, after an unusually lively and business-like beginning, of the nearly always frigid scheme of letters, ...