Promenade Littéraire #14: Honoré de Balzac, Le Havre, Seine-Maritime (76)

#14, Honoré de Balzac (1903-1976), La Côte d'Ingouville. Balzac set the action of his novel Modeste Mignon (1844) in this former commune. He says Ingouville is to Le Havre what Montmartre is to Paris.

Honoré de Balzac in Saché (37), Indre-et-Loire (37)

Le Château de Saché has its origins in the Renaissance, although wings were added in the seventeeth and eighteenth centuries, and other alterations were made in the nineteenth century by the owner Jean Margonne. Margonne – a friend of Balzac's parents – often received Balzac (1799–1850) here, who affectionately referred to it as a 'vieux reste de château' in opposition to the other very impressive châteaux in the Loire valley. Balzac was born in Tours, which by car now is twenty-five kilometres from Saché, although then it was just over twenty on foot – a journey Balzac made. Between 1825 and 1848 Balzac regularly visited Margonne, finding peace and freedom from his debtors in Paris. He worked between twelve and sixteen hours a day, writing Le Père Goriot, César Birotteau, Louis Lambert and in part Illusions perdues here. His novel Le Lys dans la vallée is of course inspired by the area.

Paul Fournier's Honoré de Balzac, on which Fournier based his statue which was erected in Tours in 1889, and which the Nazis later took down for melting.

The dining room. The wealthy Margonnes lived in Tours and Paris but frequently returned to Saché. His surroundings inevitably influenced Balzac's novels.

Le Grand Salon, where Balzac played whist and tric-trac (a dice game) with Margonne.

The Cabinet de travail, representing Balzac's Derville in Le Colonel Chabert.

A representation of an ideal boudoir such as Fœdora's in La Peau de chagrin.

A representation of the luxurious bedroom of l'abbé Birotteau from Le Curé de Tours.

Reconstruction of Balzac's study, bedroom and cabinet de toilette.

Balzac by Alexandre Falguière.

In the Salle Rodin, a rather familiar representation of Balzac.

Balzac was a printer from 1826 to 1828. This is a reconstruction of a printing house of the day.

Horace Hennion, by Horace Delpérier (1910). Hennion was the originator of the Balzac museum collection, amongst which is the work below:

This bas-relief is by François Sicard, and was affixed to Balzac's birthplace, 39 rue Nationale, Tours, in 1899, the centenary of his birth. The house was destroyed in 1940.

A fascinating place, although we were initially very annoyed by an over-enthusiastic female 'guide' who tried to provide services we neither asked for nor welcomed: I would have liked to be far more blunt in my refusal. Ugh!

My Honoré de Balzac posts:
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Honoré de Balzac in Passy
Honoré de Balzac in Saché
Balzac and statue, 8th arrondissement

Paris 2017: Cimetière du Père-Lachaise #3: Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

 

 Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755–1826) was a lawyer and wrote on law and political economy, but is best known for his culinary works, particularly Physiologie du goût, ou méditations de gastronomie transcendante (1825), which was published in two volumes. It was re-issued after Brillat-Savarin's death with an Afterword by Balzac, Traité des excitants modernes (1839).

Marie d'Agoult: Le Cimetière du Père-Lachaise #10

The tomb of Marie d'Agoult (1805–76), who also wrote under the pseudonym Daniel Stern (as recognised here). Agoult is noted for her (sometimes stormy) relationship with George Sand, and for her depiction as Béatrix in Balzac's Béatrix (1839).

 

 

Goethe appears prominently in the background here: Agoult is noted for her writing on Dante and Goethe.

Link to my earlier post on Père-Lachaise:

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Le Cimetière du Père-Lachaise / Père Lachaise Cemetery

Patrick Besson: Belle-soeur (2004)

Not everything is as might be expected in Belle-soeur ('Sister-in-Law'), including the title. The narrator is Gilles, a journalist in Paris and therefore, as his mother says, a fouteur de merde, or shit stirrer. It's the family that's of central importance in this novel, as the title indicates. Gilles is the elder brother of Fabien, a famous (but alcoholic and coked-up) film star who is (off and on) engaged to Annabel, with whom Gilles falls in love and over whom he obsesses. But Gilles's relationship with Annabel is slow to start and it seems she's playing with him at first.

And then Gilles takes Sophie (a girl he doesn't, indeed can't, love) to Hungary, where Fabien is on location for a new movie and staying with Annabel until she falls out with him again and Gilles takes Annabel back to Paris, leaving Sophie to spend the rest of the holiday in Hungary.

And for three weeks Gilles's dreams come true and Annabel welcomes him into her bed and he lives with her in her flat. But Fabien returns, Gilles thinks Annabel will go back to him, gathers his belongings and leaves the key in the letter box. To Annabel's anger.

When Fabien buys a place in Neuilly and Annabel moves in with him she finds she's pregnant. She's told Fabien that she had a relationship with a man far older than Gilles (just to put her fiancé off the scent) while they split up, and when the child is born Gilles advises his brother to have a DNA test: it proves negative, and Fabien throws Annabel out.

Meanwhile Gilles has gone back to Sophie (although of course he's never stopped loving Annabel), who gives birth at the same time as Annabel, and Gilles knows, but doesn't care, that the baby is really Fabien's, and he's still marrying Sophie.

And then there's a potential atom bomb when Gilles tells Fabien that Annabel's baby is really his, although he knows that she'll deny it. Gilles's mother Catherine disowns him, but then her affections are for Fabien anyway, and shortly after Catherine tells her younger son that his father is in fact not the man who brought him up, he dies in a motorcycle accident.

So Fabien is only Gilles's half-brother, his wife's baby is not his but his half-brother's, he's the father of Annabel's child, and as Annabel and Fabien never marry, the 'Sister-in-Law' of the title must refer to Fabien's posthumous relation to Sophie!

Gilles says that Sophie and Catherine know that Annabel's lied about the true father, but they just continue to make believe that he's the liar. Well, has the reader ever suspected Gilles as an unreliable narrator? What does Gilles care: he only loves Annabel, who's bringing up their son, and every day he gets to take care of his reborn (half-)brother.

(In an article published in the magazine Le Point on 1 December 2011 and entitled 'Eva Joly, présidente de la République', Patrick Besson mocked the French-Norwegian green presidential candidate's accent by writing the whole piece in a kind of mock-Germanic style which began: 'Zalut la Vranze ! Auchourt'hui est un krand chour : fous m'afez élue brézidente te la République vranzaise'. It was the subject of some debate, and Joly called the article a 'racist attack', whereas Le Point didn't see what the fuss was about, and spoke of 'the dictatorship of the politically correct'. Some internautes tried to defend Besson by turning to the world of fiction and pointing out that Balzac too made fun of accents, as in the Alsatian Schmucke in Le Cousin Pons. Besson's article (with comments)).

My other Patrick Besson post:

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Patrick Besson: Assessible à certaine melancolie

Balzac and statue, 8th arrondissement, Paris, France: Literary Île-de-France #39

Hôtel Balzac (formerly rue Fortunée where Balzac's last home was) is on the street of the same name.

And it's just on the corner of rue Lord Byron.

Balzac's statue stands on place Georges-Guillaumin by the junction of the avenue de Friedland with rue Balzac . It was erected in 1902, and built first by Alexandre Falguière, then finished by Paul Dubois.

My Honoré de Balzac posts:
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Honoré de Balzac in Passy
Honoré de Balzac in Saché
Balzac and statue, 8th arrondissement

The Rodin Museum / Le Musée Rodin, 7th arrondissement, Paris, France: Literary Île-de-France #33

The Rodin Museum was established in 1916 after three donations by Auguste Rodin (1840—1917) to the French state of his works, collections, library, letters, and manuscripts. It is where the former hôtel Biron was, which Rodin had rented from 1908.

A plaque stating that (the poet) Rainer-Maria Rilke lived there from 1908-1911.

The museum gardens have a number sculptures relating to literature. This in bronze (1902—04) is The Three Shadows (Les Trois Ombres), and is a representation from Dante's The Divine Comedy (La Divina Commedia), with its warning: 'Abandon hope all you who enter here'. The three figures are identical, and Rodin gives them back the hands missing from them at the top of his work The Door to Hell (La Porte de'L'enfer) (1880—1917).

Rodin worked on La Porte de l'Enfer for many years, drawing on the figures (over 200) here for the rest of his working life.

He died before seeing the full masterpiece put together in cast iron.

The Victor Hugo monument.

A detail of the monument to Hugo.

In a gallery of marble exhibits there are several representations of Hugo.

There is also a bust of George Bernard Shaw, made in 1906.

On the other side of the hotel is the statue of Balzac.

Finally, it would probably be a mistake to exclude Le Penseur (The Thinker).

6th and 7th arrondissements, by the Seine, Paris, France: Literary Île-de-France #29

7 rue des grands Augustins.

'PABLO PICASSO

VÉCUT DANS CET IMMEUBLE DE 1936 À 1955

C'EST DANS CET ATELIER QU'IL PEIGNAIT

"GUERNICA" EN 1937'

'PABLO PICASSO

LIVED IN THIS BUILDING FROM 1936 TO 1955

IT IS IN THIS WORKSHOP THAT HE PAINTED

"GUERNICA" IN 1937'.

'C'EST ICI ÉGALEMENT QUE BALZAC

SITUE L'ACTION DE SA NOUVELLE

"LE CHEF D'OUEUVRE INCONNU"'.

'IT IS HERE TOO THAT BALZAC

SITUATED THE ACTION OF HIS SHORT STORY

"THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE"'.

In rue de Seine, at the back of the Institut de France, is a small enclosed grassy area with a bust and a statue of two noted French writers:

The more evident is Voltaire.

Although Montesquieu is hiding there.

L'Hôtel, rue des Beaux-Arts, 6th arrondissement.

Oscar Wilde (1854—1900).

'OSCAR WILDE

Poète et Dramaturge

NÉ À DUBLIN

LE 15 OCTOBRE 1856

EST MORT DANS CETTER MAISON

LE 30 NOVEMBRE 1900'

'OSCAR WILDE

Poet and Playwright

BORN IN DUBLIN

15 OCTOBER 1856

DIED IN THIS HOUSE

30 NOVEMBER 1900'

 

'ICI VÉCUT

JORGE LUIS BORGES

1899 — 1986

Écrivain Argentin

LORS DE SES FRÉQUENTS SÉJOURS

À PARIS DE 1977 À 1984'

'HERE LIVED

JORGE LUIS BORGES

1899 — 1986

Argentinian Writer

DURING HIS FREQUENT STAYS

IN PARIS FROM 1977 TO 1984'

At 19 quai Malaquais, a barely visible sign around the scaffolding:

'ANATOLE FRANCE

NÉ LE 16 AVRIL 1844

QUAI MALAQUAIS NO. 19

HABITA DANS CET HÔTEL

DE 1844 À 1853'

And at 19 Quai Voltaire:

'ICI 

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

JEAN SIBELIUS

RICHARD WAGNER

OSCAR WILDE

ONT HONORÉ PARIS

DE LEVR SÉJOVR'

'L'AURORE GRELOTTANTE EN ROBE ROSE ET VERTE
S'AVANÇAIT LENTEMENT SUR LA SEINE DÉSERTE
ET LE SOMBRE PARIS, EN SE FROTTANT LES YEUX,
EMPOINGNAIT SES OUTILS, VIEILLARD LABORIEUX'.

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
"Le CRÉPUSCULE du MATIN"
LES FLEURS du MAL'

Le Voltaire, the house where Voltaire died.

'VOLTAIRE

NÉ À PARIS

LE 21 NOVEMBRE 1694

EST MORT

DANS CETTE MAISON

LE 30 MAI 1778'