1.2.1 Napoleonic and Restoration Cultures
In Les Marana Balzac juxtaposes the culture of the Restoration with that of the preceding Napoleonic period. This technique allows Balzac to cover the actual present, the near past of the Restoration and the ‘historic’ past of the Napoleonic period, and throws a common historiography over the different time frames that Lukács recognises as a ‘figuration du présent comme histoire’.70It endows the
present and near past with the same settled, authoritative status of historical review without sacrificing a sense of the immediate. The historic equivalence highlights the contrast in cultures between the two periods and the diversity of cultural influences on moral values.
The incipit to Les Marana, with its reflections on the siege of Tarragone during the Peninsula War between the Spanish and the invading French army, forms an immediate link with the Napoleonic past. The era takes on a deeper significance when Balzac introduces a dramatic, circumscribed cultural forum operating within the French military from which emerges ‘cette espèce d’honneur chevaleresque qui, à l’armée, fait excuser les plus grands excès’. (Ma, X, 1038) The honour code provides
a justification for behaviour ‘la plus détestable’ (Ibid.) and a sanctioning of pillage.
This is not a deprivation that results from deception, common in the vol décent of the Restoration, but a deprivation that results from the direct exercise of autonomous authority. The contrast in cultures that is exposed here, between the Napoleonic and Restoration, is indicative of Balzac’s preference for Napoleonic order, certainty and decisive execution, the prerogatives of the exceptional individual.
Focusing on the Italians, Balzac shows the capacity to compromise the representation of reality for the purpose of dramatic impact, stereotyping the Mediterranean character as both fickle and susceptible:
Le débris de la légion italienne […] dont l’existence peut devenir, ou belle au gré d’un sourire de femme qui les relève de leur brillante ornière, ou épouvantable à la fin d’une orgie, sous l’influence de quelque méchante réflexion échappée à leurs compagnons d’ivresse (Ma, X, 1037-8).
He places the ‘débris’ in a ‘régiment, souvent décimé’ where they are subject ‘aux ravages de la mort’ (Ma, X, 1038). Constant company with the imminent finality of
death is shown to result in a loss of sensibility, a condition that Balzac vividly
70 George Lukács, quoted by Damien Zanonein Balzac dans l’Histoire ed. by Mozet and Petitier (Paris: Sedes, 2001), p. 70.
depicts in the novel. The atrocious conduct is isolated from the mechanisms of social control, a situation that ferments its own morality. It highlights the capacity of the Napoleonic military of the period, effectively a hegemony of force, to operate outside the confines of a legal framework. This is not a manipulation but an annihilation of social controls. A regimental notoriety earns, by way of a quid pro quo, the sanction of unflinchingly amoral acts. The amorality puts the action beyond the scope of deception, a necessary element of the vol décent, which is reliant on the operative presence of a moral order.
Whilst Balzac emphasises the nature of such actions, he is clearly aware of the expedient subjectivity of moral judgements in a wider social context when he says of Bianchi ‘il eût été, dans l’autre siècle, un admirable flibustier’ (Ma, X, 1038).
He simultaneously seeks to underplay any association between depravity and the Napoleonic culture. He does this by introducing a Napoleonic aspiration to change these ‘mauvais sujets’ but ‘les calculs de l’Empéreur ne furent parfaitement justes que relativement aux ravages de la mort’ (Ma, X, 1038), an apparent failure of good
intention in the face of an unpalatable reality. There is a lack of correspondence between Balzac’s literary artistry and historical reality here. Balzac seeks an ideal in the ‘heroic attitudes, always immaculate, spotless and with a highly polished Mme Tussaud’ surface’,71 that were seen in the art of Jacques-Louis David, firstly
adopted for the benefit of the French Republicans and subsequently retread for Napoleon. Simon Schama refers to this as ‘servile threnody to the glories of the military Empire […] with nothing more than la gloire and their own gaudy finery’.72
Nevertheless, it is this residual sense of glory from the Napoleonic period that Balzac will show through the lens of nostalgia, still to linger in the Restoration and colour its response to the recent past. Bernard Berenson observes that ‘it is but a step from realizing the greatness of an event to believing that the persons concerned in it were equally great’.73 Although he is speaking of the renaissance period it is
equally apposite to Balzac, a person who, despite his assertion of ‘la nécessité du principe monarchique’ (Avant-propos, I, 13) cannot resist the common view that the
genius of Napoleon comes with a new religion of glory, the essence of which is
71 Roger Fry, Vision and Design (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1961[1920]), p. 16. 72 Simon Schama, Power of Art (London: BBC Books, 2006), p. 231.
73 Bernard Berenson, Italian Painters of the Renaissance (London: Phaidon Press, 1968[1952]), p. 3.
human esteem. The heroic stature of Napoleon, stimulated by his presence and that of ‘les militaires, [et] les vertues que l’imagination leur accord’ (Ma, X, 1072).
It is interesting to note that Balzac, who chooses to re-play the startling Bianchi incident from the Contes bruns, strictly limits his involvement with the phenomenon, leaving this fertile ground for moral debate in favour of Montefiore ‘le premier capitaine d’habillement, officier moitié militaire, moitié civil, passait, en style soldatesque, pour faire ses affaires’ (Ma, X, 1039). Balzac moves away from
the extreme forms of the Napoleonic military culture of the period into the social milieu. Montefiore, the Italian outsider, exploits the myths of Napoleonic military culture to feed a wider personal and commercial aspiration. It is an example of how image can triumph over substance:
Il se prétendait brave, se vanter dans le monde […] il sentait la poudre d’une lieue, et fuyait les coups de fusil à tire-d’aile; [il] était un des plus jolis garçons de l’armée. […] Un de ces visages mélancoliques dont les femmes sont presque toujours les dupes. […] Le capitaine Montefiore avait donc un très bel avenir, et ne se souciait pas de le jouer contre un méchant morceau de ruban rouge. Si ce n’était pas un brave, c’était au moins un philosophe (Ma, X, 1039).
The pretence of bravery, which failed to impress his military comrades, yields to the capitalisation of good looks and military glamour by way of an opportune act of deception in private life. The propitious and purposeful nature of that deceit anticipates Balzac’s representation of Restoration commercial chicanery. Montefiore accurately reads a military culture whose social power rests in the images of heroism and the sense of glory it inspires. While Diard, in a link to the romantic dimension of Balzac's work, ‘cherche des madones peintes’ in Tarragone, Montefiore searches for ‘des madones vivantes’, (Ma, X, 1041) a division of labour
that maximises opportunities for both commercial and sexual exploitation by the victors.
F.W.J. Hemmings in Culture and Society in France 1789-1848 makes a perceptive connection between the pillage of art during the Peninsula War, its part in Les Marana,and the cultural contribution it makes to the notion of theft by the state:
In Les Marana, a story written in 1832, Balzac introduces one such ‘art collector’, a quartermaster from Nice named Diard, who he shows robbing a convent during the sack of Tarragona (1811). Most of these marauders kept their loot only until such time as they could find purchases; adventurous dealers, French and English, drove a profitable trade.74
Diard’s handling of the ‘loot’ follows exactly this pattern, as he sells his art collection in Paris and uses the funds to finance his stay in the capital. Art, as legitimate spoils of war, provides evidence of a precursor to the vol décent in operation during the Napoleonic period, where the authority of the victor legitimises an additional deprivation of the vanquished. This is an act justified by a mix of aesthetic, political and moral opportunism. While the ancien régime aristocracy had an admiration for works of antiquity, the anti-royalist sentiment of the Revolution led to the destruction of many statues of royalty and of those whose fame rested on association with the crown. A solution to this destruction of works of art with their pre-revolutionary association, whilst retaining their international status and value, was ‘to purge the art […] of its pernicious ideological content, leaving only the residual aesthetic element, […and] place it in the disinfected environment of the Musée du Louvre’.75The practice served Napoleon’s armies throughout Europe,
resulting in the ‘liberation’ of works of art ‘from the shackles of monarchical tyranny and religious oppression. [...] by removing such works from the palaces of princes and prelates and installing them in Republican France’.76This ‘theft’ of the
national assets of other nations continued into Empire, justified by an opportune idealism, legitimised by force and sanctioned by the state.
It is Restoration response to the sense of opportunism associated with the Napoleonic Empire which Diard is unable to read when he takes up residence in Paris. His paintings attract from ‘les railleurs de Paris un malin sourire […] Les chefs-d’œuvre achetés la veille furent enveloppés dans le reproche’ (Ma, X, 1072).
Similarly, his attempts to obtain office in the Paris Préfecture, at the end of empire, were unsuccessful because he did not realise that ‘ces empires au petit pied’ had already been awarded to ‘des chambellans de S.M. l’empereur et roi’ (Ma, X, 1074).
Diard’s naivety is offset to some extent by a notion of honour carried over from the Napoleonic era. He offers to marry Juana when she isabandoned; he secures the removal of Montefiore from the regiment and seeks, albeit unsuccessfully, to establish himself socially. In a reflection of the Bianchi incident there is a further return to the events in Tarragone, when Diard ‘enfonça le couteau à plusieurs
75 Hemmings, Culture and Society in France 1789-1848, p. 77. 76 Ibid.
reprises dans le cœur, où la lame se cassa’ (Ma, X, 1086). In an illegal act, ‘la plus
détestable de toutes dans la vie privée’ (Ma, X, 1038) he kills Montefiore.
1.2.2 Character, Milieu and History
Balzac portrays Diard as neither an effective participant in, nor a shaper of, events. When seeking success or remedy he instinctively searches beyond conventional practice. The Balzacian narrator ironically highlights that inclination by introducing Montefiore and Diard, both officers in the French invasion force to Spain in 1811, as ‘deux philosophes’. The reference is derisive, signalling dispositions that mistakenly incline toward a form of speculative, rather than pragmatic opportunism. The narrator establishes the fundamental Balzacian notion that success in worldly affairs only comes from an exclusive confrontation with hard reality.
Montefiore et Diard étaient deux philosophes qui se consolaient de la vie par l’entente du vice, comme deux artistes endorment les douleurs de leur vie par l’espérance de la gloire. Tous deux voyaient la guerre dans ses résultats, non dans son action, et ils donnaient tout simplement aux morts le nom de niais. Le hasard en avait fait des soldats, tandis qu’ils auraient dû se trouver assis autour des tapis verts d’un congrès. […] Tous deux étaient doués de cette organisation fébrile, mobile, à demi féminine, également forte pour le bien et pour le mal, mais dont il peut émaner, suivant le caprice de ces singuliers tempéraments, un crime aussi bien qu’une action généreuse, un acte de grandeur d’âme ou une lâcheté. Leur sort dépend à tout moment de la pression plus ou moins vive produite sur leur appareil nerveux par des passions violentes et fugitives
(Ma, X, 1040).
The balancing of ‘également pour le bien et pour le mal’ anticipates the balance of opposites in the vol décent. It is a hybrid state that works without resort to resolution, a notion that Balzac is to develop. Where frustrated artists find hope in their dreams of glory rather than in their work, a fatal inclination that Balzac is to later repeatedly expose, (a compelling example is found in the exchanges between Lisbeth Fischer and Steinbock in Cousine Bette 77) Diard finds his consolation in ‘l’entente du vice’.
The two ephemeral forms of satisfaction, one based on aspirant imaginations and the other on chance, avoid direct confrontation with social reality. Diard’s natural milieu is a contrived and artificial one ‘autour des tapis verts d’un congrès’ an ‘organisation fébrile, mobile, à demi féminine’, where, as gambler, he is involved in a circumscribed activity played out under fixed rules capable of delivering uncertain results.
Diard is capricious by nature and his lack of fixed resolve sees him equally satisfied ‘pour le bien et pour le mal’. His easy, natural intimacies with apparently
contradictory forces provide an interesting, early association with the oxymoronic
vol décent. In Diard’s case, such acceptable, yet contradictory associations, arise because he is driven by ‘passions violentes et fugitives’ rather than by rational pursuit of financial gain.
In the Balzacian world order, as I propose in Chapter 2 of the thesis, those under the influence of uncontrolled sensibilities are critically hampered in the determination or manipulation of circumstances.78 In the narrator’s references to
‘philosophes’ and ‘le creuset des diplomates’, Diard is shown to be destined for a role distanced from direct involvement in social combat. The references display the disposition of the observer, rather than that of the activist, who views war in terms of ‘ses résultats, non dans son action’. However, the capricious disposition of Diard is counterbalanced by a capacity that ‘ne manquait ni de bravoure ni d’une sorte de générosité juvénile’ (Ma, X, 1041), a kind and generous spirit that operates alongside
his social and commercial limitations. However, the inclination only acts as a subsidiary influence unable to overcome a determining disposition that remains stubbornly irresolute, not ‘assez fort, assez compact, assez persistant pour commander au monde de cette époque’ (Ma, X, 1071).
The generous, spontaneous spirit is displayed in ‘s’il lui faut un mari, me voilà’ (Ma, X, 1065) and he subsequently seeks to maintain that generosity.
Nevertheless, even when ‘il était devenu passionnément amoureux de Juana’ (Ma, X, 1067) his love is never reciprocated. His frustrations, internally driven yet socially
recognisable, extend beyond the family milieu. He even fails to earn the confidence of those friends who acknowledge his capability as ‘un assez bon comptable’ [yet…] ‘aucun soldat ne lui aurait confié ni sa bourse ni son testament’ (Ma, X, 1040).
His irresolution is palpable, sufficiently conspicuous to inspire a similar response in comrades, who are ‘fort embarrassés d’asseoir un jugement vrai sur lui’ (Ma, X, 1041).
His ability as accountant and as astute collector of valuable pieces of art is submerged beneath the reality that ultimately ‘il était joueur, et les joueurs n’ont rien en propre’ (Ma, X, 1041). The apparently positive aspects of Diard’s character,
instead of providing an effective equilibrium in his personality contribute, along with his capricious inclinations and irresolution, to his downfall. Balzac brings
together two apparent opposites to compose a single, recognisable, oxymoronic identity.
Diard’s failure to bridge the space between aspiration and its satisfaction is typical of his performance in both the familial milieu and in the wider context of Parisian society. In La Comédie humaine Balzac proposes the notion that expectations are realised through a judiciously focused concentration of energy; a force that cannot be deviated from its purpose. In Gobseck, published in 1830, two years earlier than Les Marana, Balzac has already demonstrated in this singular person the necessity for direct, unequivocable confrontation with social reality and the capacity to act with relentless, focused power in harmony with its dictates:
Quant aux mœurs, l’homme est le même partout: partout le combat entre le pauvre et le riche est établi, partout il est inévitable; il vaut donc mieux être l’exploitant que d’être l’exploité (Gb, II, 969).
Diard’s failure to confront social reality directly provides a counterpoint to the example of Gobseck despite Diard being in the thrall of ‘une de ces passions qui changent momentanément les plus détestables caractères et mettent en lumière tout ce qu’il y a de beau dans une âme’ (Ma, X, 1070). Again Balzac takes a particular and,
in an assertion of prescriptive authority, turns it into a generalisation: He places stress on the provisional nature of such a passion in his choice of the loaded, uneasy word ‘momentanément’, delivering a signal of the inevitable failure of good intent. The vol décent attracts Diard, unlike most of its other practitioners in La Comédie humaine,because of his inability to convert concept into reality. His ultimate resort to deception, in his embrace of the vol décent, will be a move away from the demands of reality.
The narrator again establishes that a combination of irresolution and idealism is, in terms of Balzacian philosophy, (if not in his personal practice), doomed to failure. In his marital union with Juana, the provincial Diard places himself in a triadic confrontation with an acquired taste for luxury, an idealistic approach to marriage and an absence of love or esteem:
Le Provençal n’était ni beau, ni bien fait. Ses manières dépourvues de distinction se ressentaient également du mauvais ton de l’armée, des mœurs de sa province et d’une incomplète éducation. […] Cette jeune fille toute grâce et toute élégance, mue par un invincible instinct de luxe et de bon goût, et que sa nature entraînait d’ailleurs vers la sphère des hautes classes sociales. (Ma, X, 1067).
By acquiring the reputation of a man of honour, Diard hopes to win over Juana’s respect and so overcome his handicaps. He is, however, no longer a participant in the ephemeral trade of military glory that relied on ‘les vertus que l’imagination leur
accord’ (Ma, X, 1072) that so characterised Napoleonic culture. He becomes a
member of a commercial order that is judged solely on financial result. Nevertheless, he does succeed in forcing Montefiore, seducer of Juana and father of her first child, to leave the regiment and to obtain for himself a transfer to the prestigious Garde impériale. In trying to ‘acquérir un titre, des honneurs et une considération en rapport avec sa grande fortune’ (Ma, X, 1070) his lack of judgement
is again revealed. Although he fights courageously in bloody conflict and is badly wounded, he has to leave the Garde and take retirement ‘sans le titre de baron, sans les récompenses qu’il avait désiré gagner, et qu’il aurait peut-être obtenues, s’il