For Love or for Money For Love or for Money Balzac’s Rhetorical Realism Armine Kotin Mortimer THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS | COLUMBUS Copyright © 2011 by The Ohio State University. All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mortimer, Armine Kotin, 1943– For love or for money : Balzac’s rhetorical realism / Armine Kotin Mortimer. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8142-1169-4 (cloth : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-8142-9268-6 (cd) 1. Balzac, Honoré de, 1799–1850. Comédie humaine. 2. Realism in literature. 3. Love in literature. 4. Money in literature. I. Title. PQ2159.C72M57 2011 843'.7—dc23 2011019881 Cover design by James Baumann Text design by Juliet Williams Type set in Adobe Sabon Printed by Thomson-Shore, Inc. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Mate- rials. ANSI Z39.48–1992. 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents List of Illustrations vii Acknowledgments ix Chapter 1 Introduction: The Prime Movers 1 I Rhetorical Forms of Realism Chapter 2 Mimetic Figures of Semiosis 15 Chapter 3 From Heteronomy to Unity: Les Chouans 32 Chapter 4 Tenebrous Affairs and Necessary Explications 47 Chapter 5 Self-Narration and the Fakery of Imitation 63 Chapter 6 The Double Representation of the History of César Birotteau 80 Chapter 7 La Maison Nucingen, a Financial Narrative 94 II Semiotic Images of Realism Chapter 8 Myth and Mendacity: Pierrette and Beatrice Cenci 109 Chapter 9 The Corset of La vieille fille 128 Chapter 10 Genealogy and the Unmarried in La Rabouilleuse 139 Chapter 11 Ursule Mirouët: Genealogy and Inheritance 152 Chapter 12 Un prince de la bohème and Pierre Grassou, or How Love Makes Money 167 Chapter 13 Voyages of Reflection, Reflections on Voyages 175 vi Contents III Mimetic Structures of Realism Chapter 14 Balzac and Poe: Realizing Magnetism 195 Chapter 15 Chemistry and Composition: La recherche de l’Absolu 208 Chapter 16 The Capital of Money and the Science of Magnetism: Melmoth réconcilié 221 Chapter 17 Love, Music, and Opium: Medical Semiotics of Massimilla Doni 230 Chapter 18 The Language of Sex 242 Chapter 19 Composed Past and Historical Present 259 Chapter 20 Problems of Closure 270 Chapter 21 Conclusion: Balzac’s Invention of Realism 292 Bibliography 307 Index 317 Illustrations Figure 8.1 Pierrette genealogy 111 Figure 8.2 Presumed portrait of B. Cenci 125 Figure 10.1 Handwritten La Rabouilleuse genealogy 142 Figure 10.2 Computer-generated genealogy 143 Figure 11.1 Ursule Mirouët genealogy 156 Figure 14.1 Waltz by Reissiger 197 vii Acknowledgments I would like to thank three research assistants who were doctoral students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Juliette Dade helped with translations and became proficient at rendering Balzac (and sometimes Mor- timer) into English. In addition, she tracked down references and typed up my illegible handwritten notes from pre-computer days. Ingrid Ilinca con- tributed speedy and thorough background research on several topics. Leila Ennaïli brought her intelligence and fine mind to a reading of the manuscript and provided judicious criticisms. All three gave generously of their consider- able intellectual gifts, and I am grateful to them for their contributions. It does not fail to amaze me how valuable teaching Balzac has been, and I have much to acknowledge from the students in all the classes where I have taught Balzac. In particular, let me mention Jordan Stump, who has since translated Balzac’s L’envers de l’histoire contemporaine and whose under- standing of the opus grew deep and broad; and James Madden, whose excel- lent reading skills and ability to retain the myriad details of La Comédie humaine outshone anyone’s, and to whom the whole class would turn when a point needed remembering and verifying. Colleagues of the Nineteenth Century French Studies Association heard me deliver papers mostly on Balzac at the annual conferences and gave me the benefit of their reactions. I am grateful for their listening and to the lead- ership of this organization and the hosts of the annual meetings for affording ix x Acknowledgments me this opportunity to try out my ideas and to pursue them from year to year, I hope without becoming too predictable. I also thank the members of the Groupe international de recherches bal- zaciennes who invited me to present a paper on voyages in Balzac in 2001 in the suitably Balzacian location of Tours, in particular Paule Pétitier, who hosted the conference, and the GIRB’s chief animator, Nicole Mozet. Simi- larly, I thank the England-based Society of Dix-Neuviémistes who heard my papers on La recherche de l’Absolu and on Melmoth réconcilié in 2002 and 2003. Illinois colleagues Larry Schehr and Andrea Goulet provided helpful com- ments and always fine, stimulating dialogue. I also thank a good reader and a hearty supporter for many years, Allan Pasco, one of the distinguished Amer- ican Balzacians, for his valuable and encouraging criticism. Finally, I cannot omit recognizing the person who started me on this jour- ney through La Comédie humaine, Peter Brooks, whose graduate seminar on Balzac at Yale in 1971 opened the vein I have continued to mine for my entire professional career. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has supported my research in the form of travel funding and research assistants. The editors of the journals and the collective volumes in which earlier versions of parts of some chapters were published have allowed me to reuse those materials in this book, and I thank them. And I am grateful to the two anonymous readers of the manuscript for The Ohio State University Press, whose reports provided insightful feedback and helped me improve the manuscript. T A word about translations: I have translated French quotations for the convenience of the non-Franco- phone reader, with the hope that the presence of both French and English will not distract either sort of reader. I thank Juliette Dade for her collaboration in the task of translating. T The following articles contained earlier versions of certain parts of this book: “La Maison Nucingen, ou le récit financier.” Romanic Review 69 (1978): 60–71. “Problems of Closure in Balzac’s Stories.” French Forum 10 (1985): 20–39. Acknowledgments xi “Mimetic Figures of Semiosis in Balzac.” In Repression and Expression: Social Codes and Literary Visions in Nineteenth-Century France, ed. Car- rol Coates, 47–54. New York: Lang, 1996. “Le corset de La Vieille Fille de Balzac.” In L’œuvre d’identité: Essais sur le romantisme de Nodier à Baudelaire, ed. Didier Maleuvre and Catherine Nesci, 39–48. Paragraphes 13. Université de Montréal, 1996. “Balzac: Tenebrous Affairs and Necessary Explications.” In The Play of Ter- ror in Nineteenth-Century France, ed. John T. Booker and Allan H. Pasco, 241–55. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1997. “Balzac’s Ursule Mirouët: Genealogy and Inheritance.” The Modern Lan- guage Review 92 (1997): 851–63. “Myth and Mendacity: Balzac’s Pierrette and Beatrice Cenci.” Dalhousie French Studies 51 (Summer 2000): 12–25. “Balzac and Poe: Realizing Magnetism.” Dalhousie French Studies 63 (Sum- mer 2003): 22–30. “Voyages de réflexion, réflexions de voyages.” In Balzac voyageur: Parcours, déplacements, mutations, ed. Nicole Mozet and Paule Petitier, 119–36. Tours: Université François Rabelais, 2004. 1 Introduction The Prime Movers Toutes les femmes, tous les hommes créés par Balzac peuvent répéter le mot de Mme de Beauséant: “J’ai voulu vivre.” [All the women, all the men created by Balzac could repeat Mme de Beau- séant’s mot: “I wanted to live.”] —Gadenne Eugène and Delphine Consider the effect of money on Eugène de Rastignac when he is still a poor student in Le père Goriot: A l’instant où l’argent se glisse dans la poche d’un étudiant, il se dresse en lui-même une colonne fantastique sur laquelle il s’appuie. Il marche mieux qu’auparavant, il se sent un point d’appui pour son levier, il a le regard plein, direct, il a les mouvements agiles; la veille, humble et timide, il aurait reçu des coups; le lendemain il en donnerait à un premier ministre. Il se passe en lui des phénomènes inouïs: il veut tout et peut tout, il désire à tort et à travers, il est gai, généreux, expansif. Enfin, l’oiseau naguère sans ailes a retrouvé son envergure. Paris lui appartient tout entier. (3: 131)1 1. All references to La Comédie humaine, including editorial material, are to the Pléiade edition listed at the head of the bibliography, except where noted. 1 2 Chapter 1 [The instant money finds its way into a student’s pocket, there arises inside him a fantastic column on which he leans. He walks better than before, he feels a fulcrum for his lever, his gaze is full and direct, his movements are agile; humble and timid the night before, he would have accepted blows; the next day he would strike a prime minister. Unheard-of phenomena occur within him. He wishes for everything and can do everything, he desires wildly, he is cheerful, generous, and expansive. In all, the once wingless bird has recovered his wingspan. All Paris belongs to him.] This apparently minor moment in the student’s life gives a rhetorical image of the power of money to make things happen. It is typical of Balzac’s rhetoric that the small event—money finding its way into the pocket—con- nects to the momentous by means of rhetorical embellishment. A metaphori- cal column rises up, the first result of the agency of money; the pocket change metamorphoses into a major support, such as one might find not only in the pompous façade of a monumental building, but also, suggestively, as the base upholding the statue of a famous person; money is that support instantly raising the indebted student to ranks of power.