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The Thirteen #2
La Duchesse de Langeais
A l'égal de la princesse de Clèves et de la Sanseverina, la duchesse de Langeais est l'une des grandes divinités féminines de notre littérature. Elle réunit en sa personne le triple prestige de la beauté, de la naissance et du malheur. Issue d'un sang illustre, Antoinette de Navarreins voit le jour en 1794, sous la Terreur, une bien sombre étoile qui sera pour elle la marque du destin. Quelque vingt ans plus tard, séparée de son mari abhorré que lui avait imposé un père indifférent, c'est l'une des gloires mondaines du Faubourg Saint-Germain. Mais que dissimule la coquetterie glacée de cette aristocratique Célimène ? Et par quel étrange sortilège l'incandescente passion d'Armand de Montriveau va-t-elle à son tour la consumer ? Comme tout vrai chef-d'œuvre, ce " roman noir " - primitivement intitulé " Ne touchez pas à la hache " - est pour partie une autobiographie sublimée, c'est-à-dire le contraire d'un roman à clefs. " Moi seul sais ce qu'il y a d'horrible dans La Duchesse de Langeais ", confiait Balzac à l'un de ses proches. C'est pourquoi l'œuvre conserve, depuis plus d'un siècle et demi, son mystère et sa force de séduction.
252 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1834
41 people are currently reading
891 people want to read
About the author
Honoré de Balzac
9,539 books4,363 followersFrench writer Honoré de Balzac (born Honoré Balzac), a founder of the realist school of fiction, portrayed the panorama of society in a body of works, known collectively as
La comédie humaine
.
Honoré de Balzac authored 19th-century novels and plays. After the fall of Napoléon in 1815, his magnum opus, a sequence of almost a hundred novels and plays, entitled, presents life in the years.
Due to keen observation of fine detail and unfiltered representation, European literature regards Balzac. He features renowned multifaceted, even complex, morally ambiguous, full lesser characters. Character well imbues inanimate objects; the city of Paris, a backdrop, takes on many qualities. He influenced many famous authors, including the novelists Marcel Proust, Émile Zola, Charles John Huffam Dickens, Gustave Flaubert, Henry James, and Jack Kerouac as well as important philosophers, such as Friedrich Engels. Many works of Balzac, made into films, continue to inspire.
An enthusiastic reader and independent thinker as a child, Balzac adapted with trouble to the teaching style of his grammar. His willful nature caused trouble throughout his life and frustrated his ambitions to succeed in the world of business. Balzac finished, and people then apprenticed him as a legal clerk, but after wearying of banal routine, he turned his back on law. He attempted a publisher, printer, businessman, critic, and politician before and during his career. He failed in these efforts From his own experience, he reflects life difficulties and includes scenes.
Possibly due to his intense schedule and from health problems, Balzac suffered throughout his life. Financial and personal drama often strained his relationship with his family, and he lost more than one friend over critical reviews. In 1850, he married Ewelina Hańska, his longtime paramour; five months later, he passed away.
Honoré de Balzac authored 19th-century novels and plays. After the fall of Napoléon in 1815, his magnum opus, a sequence of almost a hundred novels and plays, entitled, presents life in the years.
Due to keen observation of fine detail and unfiltered representation, European literature regards Balzac. He features renowned multifaceted, even complex, morally ambiguous, full lesser characters. Character well imbues inanimate objects; the city of Paris, a backdrop, takes on many qualities. He influenced many famous authors, including the novelists Marcel Proust, Émile Zola, Charles John Huffam Dickens, Gustave Flaubert, Henry James, and Jack Kerouac as well as important philosophers, such as Friedrich Engels. Many works of Balzac, made into films, continue to inspire.
An enthusiastic reader and independent thinker as a child, Balzac adapted with trouble to the teaching style of his grammar. His willful nature caused trouble throughout his life and frustrated his ambitions to succeed in the world of business. Balzac finished, and people then apprenticed him as a legal clerk, but after wearying of banal routine, he turned his back on law. He attempted a publisher, printer, businessman, critic, and politician before and during his career. He failed in these efforts From his own experience, he reflects life difficulties and includes scenes.
Possibly due to his intense schedule and from health problems, Balzac suffered throughout his life. Financial and personal drama often strained his relationship with his family, and he lost more than one friend over critical reviews. In 1850, he married Ewelina Hańska, his longtime paramour; five months later, he passed away.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 92 reviews
June 12, 2018
Balzac was quite a theatrical writer. Had he lived in the late 20th century, he certainly would have several award-winning Netflix series under his belt. The Duchess of Langeais is part of a trilogy (starting with Ferragus and ending with The Girl with the Golden Eyes) featuring spurned romance and a search for lost, unrequited love. The pace is typically balzacienne as are the highly realistic character portrayals. This one was probably mostly dictated to ghost writers but still retains high readability and a relatively original plot.
September 27, 2019
Schiava o regina d'autore
Ma cosa poteva aver fatto a Honoré, innamorato respinto, Claire Clemence Henriette Claudine de Maillé de La Tour -Landry, duchessa di Castries?
Certo la lunghezza del nome già era un tormento ma gli altri quali furono se lo costrinsero, dico lo costrinsero, a tramar vendetta, tremenda vendetta tramite la parola e si sa che la lingua colpisce più della spada?
La povera duchessa Antonietta di Langeais non ebbe pertanto scampo: non appena la sua figura divenne nero su bianco, il suo destino fu segnato nonostante lei ogni tanto sfuggisse alla penna determinata del suo creatore inanellando sensati discorsi, basati sull'interesse personale e sulla considerazione pubblica della sua virtù, sacre per lei e la nobiltà e superiori anche all'amore più travolgente.
Quando si faceva prendere la mano dalla bella Antonietta, Honoré la riportava subito all'ordine, cioè alla riprovazione del lettore – e lui ne aveva tanti! – contrapponendole lo spasimante capricciosamente respinto con tutta la civetteria del “si guarda ma non si tocca”: il generale Armand de Montriveau croccante fuori e morbido dentro che più morbido non si può.
Fino a qua potremmo parlare di maschilismo strisciante: lei ti respinge e tu ti vendichi ignorandola per farla soffrire fino a quando non cadrà ai tuoi piedi: diciamo che siamo dalle parti di “Schiava o Regina” di Delly.
Ma il nostro è armato di sacro furore: riesce a farci digerire anche il macabro scherzo della marchiatura a mo’ di vacca; la cosa più tragica è che la fa digerire anche alla duchessa la quale, grazie a quest’attentato alla sua reputazione, passa dalla passioncella al fuoco dell’amore. Non bastando, la trasforma in una stolking assatanata che invoca “perdono, perdono sarò tua”, tapinandolo giornalmente ma sadicamente ignorata dall'uomo che non deve chiedere mai e se chiede poi sono ca**i amari.
Non si deve rinunciare anche alla propria dignità di donna davanti a uno per cui “ non esistono eventi minimi per il cuore: il cuore ingrandisce tutto, pone sulla stessa bilancia la caduta di un impero di quattordici anni e la caduta di un guanto femminile: e quasi sempre il guanto femminile pesa più dell’impero”?
La poveretta viene perciò immolata e volentieri si immola sull'altare delle convenzioni che per lei è stato imbandito e che l’ha condizionata a essere sempre “sottomessa” anche quando si prende delle libertà, fittizie come un guinzaglio lungo fermamente tenuto da maschie mani.
Questa sottomissione letteraria quanto si vuole era così ben riuscita da esaltare lo scrittore che scrive, alla sua amata madame Hanska, che lei stessa avrebbe trasalito e palpitato per Antoniette de Langenais ma soprattutto per il generale Armande: voleva, Honoré, farsi perdonare qualcosa dalla sua gelosa amante?
Ma siamo in pieno romanticismo, e in ogni opera che si rispetti non possono mancare né i pentimenti melodrammatici né i conventi arroccati su rupi inaccessibili dove stanno monache più o meno religiose. E si sa che i monasteri femminili possono riservare di solito sorprese. Non mancano nemmeno i misteri e i colpi di scena che risolvono situazioni ingarbugliate.
Raccontato così può sembrare un romanzetto ma Balzac è Balzac. Reazionario fino al midollo e fino ad appropriarsi, soprattutto psicologicamente, di un “de” che non c’entrava con i suoi natali, ha per il ceto cui si sente di appartenere gli stessi sentimenti di Don Fabrizio Salina: disprezzo e nostalgia.
Sospetto che Tomasi di Lampedusa sia passato e si sia soffermato a lungo dalle parti di Balzac, come il sommo Proust e Flaubert e Zola e perché no: Houellebecq, che ha, però, preso il peggio del maschilismo e della misoginia dell’immortale.
Comunque la pensiate è un gran bel leggere.
Ma cosa poteva aver fatto a Honoré, innamorato respinto, Claire Clemence Henriette Claudine de Maillé de La Tour -Landry, duchessa di Castries?
Certo la lunghezza del nome già era un tormento ma gli altri quali furono se lo costrinsero, dico lo costrinsero, a tramar vendetta, tremenda vendetta tramite la parola e si sa che la lingua colpisce più della spada?
La povera duchessa Antonietta di Langeais non ebbe pertanto scampo: non appena la sua figura divenne nero su bianco, il suo destino fu segnato nonostante lei ogni tanto sfuggisse alla penna determinata del suo creatore inanellando sensati discorsi, basati sull'interesse personale e sulla considerazione pubblica della sua virtù, sacre per lei e la nobiltà e superiori anche all'amore più travolgente.
Quando si faceva prendere la mano dalla bella Antonietta, Honoré la riportava subito all'ordine, cioè alla riprovazione del lettore – e lui ne aveva tanti! – contrapponendole lo spasimante capricciosamente respinto con tutta la civetteria del “si guarda ma non si tocca”: il generale Armand de Montriveau croccante fuori e morbido dentro che più morbido non si può.
Fino a qua potremmo parlare di maschilismo strisciante: lei ti respinge e tu ti vendichi ignorandola per farla soffrire fino a quando non cadrà ai tuoi piedi: diciamo che siamo dalle parti di “Schiava o Regina” di Delly.
Ma il nostro è armato di sacro furore: riesce a farci digerire anche il macabro scherzo della marchiatura a mo’ di vacca; la cosa più tragica è che la fa digerire anche alla duchessa la quale, grazie a quest’attentato alla sua reputazione, passa dalla passioncella al fuoco dell’amore. Non bastando, la trasforma in una stolking assatanata che invoca “perdono, perdono sarò tua”, tapinandolo giornalmente ma sadicamente ignorata dall'uomo che non deve chiedere mai e se chiede poi sono ca**i amari.
Non si deve rinunciare anche alla propria dignità di donna davanti a uno per cui “ non esistono eventi minimi per il cuore: il cuore ingrandisce tutto, pone sulla stessa bilancia la caduta di un impero di quattordici anni e la caduta di un guanto femminile: e quasi sempre il guanto femminile pesa più dell’impero”?
La poveretta viene perciò immolata e volentieri si immola sull'altare delle convenzioni che per lei è stato imbandito e che l’ha condizionata a essere sempre “sottomessa” anche quando si prende delle libertà, fittizie come un guinzaglio lungo fermamente tenuto da maschie mani.
Questa sottomissione letteraria quanto si vuole era così ben riuscita da esaltare lo scrittore che scrive, alla sua amata madame Hanska, che lei stessa avrebbe trasalito e palpitato per Antoniette de Langenais ma soprattutto per il generale Armande: voleva, Honoré, farsi perdonare qualcosa dalla sua gelosa amante?
Ma siamo in pieno romanticismo, e in ogni opera che si rispetti non possono mancare né i pentimenti melodrammatici né i conventi arroccati su rupi inaccessibili dove stanno monache più o meno religiose. E si sa che i monasteri femminili possono riservare di solito sorprese. Non mancano nemmeno i misteri e i colpi di scena che risolvono situazioni ingarbugliate.
Raccontato così può sembrare un romanzetto ma Balzac è Balzac. Reazionario fino al midollo e fino ad appropriarsi, soprattutto psicologicamente, di un “de” che non c’entrava con i suoi natali, ha per il ceto cui si sente di appartenere gli stessi sentimenti di Don Fabrizio Salina: disprezzo e nostalgia.
Sospetto che Tomasi di Lampedusa sia passato e si sia soffermato a lungo dalle parti di Balzac, come il sommo Proust e Flaubert e Zola e perché no: Houellebecq, che ha, però, preso il peggio del maschilismo e della misoginia dell’immortale.
Comunque la pensiate è un gran bel leggere.
July 24, 2022
Qui m'havia de dir a mi que aquest estiu llegiria Balzac. Si m'ho haguéssiu dit fa un parell de mesos hauria pensat que teníeu un cop de calor. Però aquí em teniu per parlar-vos d'una novel·la curta ambientada en els palaus de la noblesa francesa d'ara fa uns 200 anys, escrita pel seu principal cronista.
Tot comença quan Armand de Montriveau, general de les tropes napoleòniques, troba Antoinette de Langeais en un convent de carmelites descalces en una illa perduda prop de les costes d'Andalusia, a la Mediterrània. Es fa passar per la germana Teresa, una monja respectable, però no fa tant temps havia estat una de les dames més cobejades de l'alta societat parisenca i té un passat en comú amb el general.
Balzac descriu una història d'amor tòxica, forçada i exagerada, emmarcada en les convencions i les dinàmiques d'una aristocràcia que també retrata molt bé. Un joc de seducció, una partida d'escacs de final incert. Ho fa amb un llenguatge recarregat i descriptiu, però que serveix per expressar bé els sentiments humans en el sentit més ampli. La gran traducció de Jordi Raventós ens apropa l'obra, però cal tenir en compte que no hem d'analitzar el que explica des de l'òptica actual, sinó la d'algú que observava la realitat segles enrere. Algunes de les idees i opinions ens sobtaran, és clar.
Si deixem de banda una llarga dissertació sobre la noblesa francesa i sobre la pròpia França, i certs graus de reflexió i introspecció que fan que sigui un text una mica més dens del que caldria, per la història, pels personatges i per l'ambientació aquest podria ser perfectament un Petit Plaer. Només li falten les flors a la coberta. No sé si arribaré a llegir les grans obres de Balzac, però m'ha agradat poder-ne fer aquest breu tastet.
(SERGI)
Tot comença quan Armand de Montriveau, general de les tropes napoleòniques, troba Antoinette de Langeais en un convent de carmelites descalces en una illa perduda prop de les costes d'Andalusia, a la Mediterrània. Es fa passar per la germana Teresa, una monja respectable, però no fa tant temps havia estat una de les dames més cobejades de l'alta societat parisenca i té un passat en comú amb el general.
Balzac descriu una història d'amor tòxica, forçada i exagerada, emmarcada en les convencions i les dinàmiques d'una aristocràcia que també retrata molt bé. Un joc de seducció, una partida d'escacs de final incert. Ho fa amb un llenguatge recarregat i descriptiu, però que serveix per expressar bé els sentiments humans en el sentit més ampli. La gran traducció de Jordi Raventós ens apropa l'obra, però cal tenir en compte que no hem d'analitzar el que explica des de l'òptica actual, sinó la d'algú que observava la realitat segles enrere. Algunes de les idees i opinions ens sobtaran, és clar.
Si deixem de banda una llarga dissertació sobre la noblesa francesa i sobre la pròpia França, i certs graus de reflexió i introspecció que fan que sigui un text una mica més dens del que caldria, per la història, pels personatges i per l'ambientació aquest podria ser perfectament un Petit Plaer. Només li falten les flors a la coberta. No sé si arribaré a llegir les grans obres de Balzac, però m'ha agradat poder-ne fer aquest breu tastet.
(SERGI)
September 9, 2022
Calificación final: 5/5
Honore de Balzac fue un genio literario, definitivamente.
Esta pequeña novela de ese mundo que quiso crear y que quedó inconcluso “La comedia humana” es ejemplo de ello. Si has empezado a descubrir a Balzac este es un buen modo de ir empezando a leer y comprender su basta obra.
Esta gran tragedia de una mujer casada que se enamora de un hombre y con el cual pretende hacer un juego de amores frustrados es una conexión a otras historias como “Papá Goriot”.
Todo el toque de Balzac y su profundo conocimiento de las pasiones humanas y esa sociedad parisina rancia, hipócrita y que ve siempre por sí misma sin importar a quien destruya a su paso. Súper recomendado.
Honore de Balzac fue un genio literario, definitivamente.
Esta pequeña novela de ese mundo que quiso crear y que quedó inconcluso “La comedia humana” es ejemplo de ello. Si has empezado a descubrir a Balzac este es un buen modo de ir empezando a leer y comprender su basta obra.
Esta gran tragedia de una mujer casada que se enamora de un hombre y con el cual pretende hacer un juego de amores frustrados es una conexión a otras historias como “Papá Goriot”.
Todo el toque de Balzac y su profundo conocimiento de las pasiones humanas y esa sociedad parisina rancia, hipócrita y que ve siempre por sí misma sin importar a quien destruya a su paso. Súper recomendado.
November 3, 2024
❤️🩹"Il n'y a que le dernier amour d'une femme qui satisfasse le premier amour d'un homme".
"Il n'y a point de petits évènements pour le cœur; il grandit tout; il met dans les mêmes balances la chute d'un empire de quatorze ans et la chute d'un gant de femme, et presque toujours le gant y pèse plus que l'empire".
La duchesse de Langeais raconte la tragédie de soeur Thérèse du cloître des Carmélites que le général Montriveau, figure illustre de la garde royale, retrouve en Espagne, après des années de recherches vaines à travers les couvents du monde entier.
La nonne cache un passé trouble, elle qui était encore il y a quelques années la Duchesse Antoinette de Langeais, une femme à la beauté envoûtante, aux multiples amants et figure incontournable des salons Parisiens.
Pour quelles raisons est-elle entrée dans les ordres pour fuir la vie mondaine, elle qui régnait sur les salons et qui côtoyait les nobles familles du boulevard Saint-Germain?
Et surtout, pourquoi a-t-elle mis un terme à la relation passionnelle qu’elle a entretenue avec le général Montriveau?
Une plume exquise, une histoire poignante, une fin déchirante (j'avoue avoir versé quelques larmes et mon petit cœur n'a pas été épargné), du Balzac tout simplement!🧡
"La beauté fraîche, colorée, unie, le joli en un mot, est l'attrait vulgaire auquel se prend la médiocrité. Montriveau devait aimer ces visages où l'amour se réveille au milieu des plis de la douleur et des ruines de la mélancolie. Un amant ne fait-il pas alors saillir, à la voix de ses puissants désirs, un être tout nouveau, jeune, pal-pitant, qui brise pour lui seul une enveloppe belle pour lui, détruite pour le monde. Ne possède-t-il pas deux femmes : celle qui se présente aux autres pâle, décolorée, triste; puis celle du cœur que personne ne voit, un ange qui comprend la vie par le sentiment, et ne paraît dans toute sa gloire que pour les solennités de l'amour?".
"Il n'y a point de petits évènements pour le cœur; il grandit tout; il met dans les mêmes balances la chute d'un empire de quatorze ans et la chute d'un gant de femme, et presque toujours le gant y pèse plus que l'empire".
La duchesse de Langeais raconte la tragédie de soeur Thérèse du cloître des Carmélites que le général Montriveau, figure illustre de la garde royale, retrouve en Espagne, après des années de recherches vaines à travers les couvents du monde entier.
La nonne cache un passé trouble, elle qui était encore il y a quelques années la Duchesse Antoinette de Langeais, une femme à la beauté envoûtante, aux multiples amants et figure incontournable des salons Parisiens.
Pour quelles raisons est-elle entrée dans les ordres pour fuir la vie mondaine, elle qui régnait sur les salons et qui côtoyait les nobles familles du boulevard Saint-Germain?
Et surtout, pourquoi a-t-elle mis un terme à la relation passionnelle qu’elle a entretenue avec le général Montriveau?
Une plume exquise, une histoire poignante, une fin déchirante (j'avoue avoir versé quelques larmes et mon petit cœur n'a pas été épargné), du Balzac tout simplement!🧡
"La beauté fraîche, colorée, unie, le joli en un mot, est l'attrait vulgaire auquel se prend la médiocrité. Montriveau devait aimer ces visages où l'amour se réveille au milieu des plis de la douleur et des ruines de la mélancolie. Un amant ne fait-il pas alors saillir, à la voix de ses puissants désirs, un être tout nouveau, jeune, pal-pitant, qui brise pour lui seul une enveloppe belle pour lui, détruite pour le monde. Ne possède-t-il pas deux femmes : celle qui se présente aux autres pâle, décolorée, triste; puis celle du cœur que personne ne voit, un ange qui comprend la vie par le sentiment, et ne paraît dans toute sa gloire que pour les solennités de l'amour?".
November 13, 2017
نکتهی جالب توجه راجعبه این داستان برام این بود که تمام مدت حس کردم نویسنده داره یه اتفاق واقعی رو بیطرفانه روایت میکنه و نمیخواد واضح نکته یا پیامی رو پررنگ کنه؛
در عین حال، برداشتم از بعضی جملات این بود که نویسنده به عاشق شدن اعتقادی نداره و حتی مضر هم میدونه شاید!
اما بنظرم شورانگیزترین درام عشقی هم نبود.
از کتاب، این جمله مرا بس:
"شدیدترین انتقامها نفرت از یک انتقام امکانپذیر است."
در عین حال، برداشتم از بعضی جملات این بود که نویسنده به عاشق شدن اعتقادی نداره و حتی مضر هم میدونه شاید!
اما بنظرم شورانگیزترین درام عشقی هم نبود.
از کتاب، این جمله مرا بس:
"شدیدترین انتقامها نفرت از یک انتقام امکانپذیر است."
November 6, 2019
Balzac, Castries Düşesi'yle ilişkisini öykülendirdiği eserini karşılıksız aşkının intikamı amacıyla yazmış diyorlar.
Dilin, betimlemelerin, tespitlerin güzelliğine karşın yer yer tasvirler, yer yer denemeye dönüşen serimler konudan, eserden kopmaya neden olmaktadır.
Sadece 3 anlatı/Olay var. Bu da daha mı uzun olmalıydı dedirttiriyor insana.
Dilin, betimlemelerin, tespitlerin güzelliğine karşın yer yer tasvirler, yer yer denemeye dönüşen serimler konudan, eserden kopmaya neden olmaktadır.
Sadece 3 anlatı/Olay var. Bu da daha mı uzun olmalıydı dedirttiriyor insana.
April 20, 2009
This is one of the three novelettes that are grouped together as The History of the Thirteen, along with Ferragus: Chief of the Companions of Duty and The Girl with the Golden Eyes. The whole notion is that there is a secret society of wealthy gentlemen in Paris called The Thirteen which has powers approaching the supernatural.
In this book, Antoinette, the Duchesse de Langeais trifles with the feelings of General Armande de Montriveau, who is a member of the Thirteen. On the advice of one of his fellow members, Armande kidnaps the Duchesse and threatens to have her branded in the forehead as a criminal. Instead, he returns her unharmed.
At this point, the Duchesse suddenly conceives a grand passion for Armande, who at this point will have nothing to do with her. After repeated attempts, including having all of Paris thinking she is visiting him (by having her empty carriage with its identifying family insignia parked at his apartments), she disappears.
Balzac shows us that love is strange. As soon as she disappears, Armande once again conceives a grand passion for her.
The ending is romantic and highly tumultuous, but I don't want to spoil it for anyone who is interested in this relatively obscure work in the Balzac canon.
There is at one and the same time a lot of adolescent mummery regarding the Thirteen, and at the same time a subtle comedy of the impossibility of two such desirable creatures unable to love each other at the same time. Well, timing is everything, as they always say.
In this book, Antoinette, the Duchesse de Langeais trifles with the feelings of General Armande de Montriveau, who is a member of the Thirteen. On the advice of one of his fellow members, Armande kidnaps the Duchesse and threatens to have her branded in the forehead as a criminal. Instead, he returns her unharmed.
At this point, the Duchesse suddenly conceives a grand passion for Armande, who at this point will have nothing to do with her. After repeated attempts, including having all of Paris thinking she is visiting him (by having her empty carriage with its identifying family insignia parked at his apartments), she disappears.
Balzac shows us that love is strange. As soon as she disappears, Armande once again conceives a grand passion for her.
The ending is romantic and highly tumultuous, but I don't want to spoil it for anyone who is interested in this relatively obscure work in the Balzac canon.
There is at one and the same time a lot of adolescent mummery regarding the Thirteen, and at the same time a subtle comedy of the impossibility of two such desirable creatures unable to love each other at the same time. Well, timing is everything, as they always say.
January 17, 2015
Existe uma razão do porquê Simone de Beauvoir escolheu Stendhal e não Balzac para fazer suas elucubrações a respeito de como um bom autor descreve suas personagens femininas, Balzac tão famoso por suas mulheres comete pecado atrás de pecado ao descrevê-las de maneira uniforme sem explorar a subjetividade – como se ser mulher consistisse de um amalgama social e não apenas um constructo. Resumindo, ele escreve bem pra caralho e aquela descrição do Fairbourg Saint German é uma obra prima à parte, mas não entende lhufas de mulheres e apenas reproduz o discurso do patriarcado.
February 17, 2015
2015 Reading Challenge: ORIGINALY WRITTEN IN ANOTHER LANGUAGE
The descriptions are so long, chapter-long, as usual. But if you are patient enough to read that, I'm sure you will enjoy the book. Too bad that I like dialogues a lot more than descriptions, so I did not like this book as much as I first thought I would when I picked it up.
The descriptions are so long, chapter-long, as usual. But if you are patient enough to read that, I'm sure you will enjoy the book. Too bad that I like dialogues a lot more than descriptions, so I did not like this book as much as I first thought I would when I picked it up.
October 28, 2014
The reason I got married was to effectively release myself from the pains and vicissitudes of a life led looking for love, so as to be able to concentrate my energies on reading, thus I am not all that interested in books about the pains and vicissitudes of lives led looking for love.
December 30, 2015
هیچوقت فکر نمیکردم آخرین کتابی که در دسامبر ۲۰۱۵ بخونم یک رمان عاشقانه باشه! این کتاب علی رغم تمام تفاوت هایی که داشت برای من یادآور داستان رومئو و ژولیت بود. به هر صورت داستان دلنشینی بود و به خوبی این مطلب که در عشق تا کجا باید به غرور پایبند بود رو مطرح کرده بود و همچنین تفاوت دیدگاه های مردان و زنان رو هم خیلی با مهارت در قالب این داستان به خواننده نشون میداد. بخش ابتدایی کتاب و به خصوص توصیفات افراد شاید کمی آزار دهنده باشه اما جذابیت و سرعتی که تقریبا از نیمه ی دوم کتاب شاهدش هستیم به جد جبران کننده ی این ایراد هست. البته پایان داستان به نظر من میتونست خیلی بهتر باشه، برخورد و جملات آرماند در پایان داستان خیلی بی روح وغیرتاثیرگذار بود و این ضعفی بود که در همچین اثری به دور از انتظار بود.
October 10, 2022
۱۴۰۱/۷/۱۷
مهرماه
این داستان یکی از داستانهای مجموعه کمدی انسانیِ بالزاک است که از ۹۱ رمان تشکیل شده. اسم این داستان در اصل مادام دولانژه است.
آنتوانت دوشس بسيار زيبايي است كه بنا بر مصلحت خانوادگي با مردي نامدار ازدواج كرده اما زن و شوهر علاقهاي به هم ندارند و هر كدام به دنبال زندگي خود است. در اين شرايط آنتوانت سعي ميكند براي خود عشاقي فراهم كند با آنها خوش باشد از اظهار عشقشان لذت ببرد اما خود دل نميبندد و پا را از محدودهاي فراتر نمينهد اما...
مهرماه
این داستان یکی از داستانهای مجموعه کمدی انسانیِ بالزاک است که از ۹۱ رمان تشکیل شده. اسم این داستان در اصل مادام دولانژه است.
آنتوانت دوشس بسيار زيبايي است كه بنا بر مصلحت خانوادگي با مردي نامدار ازدواج كرده اما زن و شوهر علاقهاي به هم ندارند و هر كدام به دنبال زندگي خود است. در اين شرايط آنتوانت سعي ميكند براي خود عشاقي فراهم كند با آنها خوش باشد از اظهار عشقشان لذت ببرد اما خود دل نميبندد و پا را از محدودهاي فراتر نمينهد اما...
March 1, 2011
This is Part 2 of the Ferragus trilogy about 'The Thirteen' which showcases the power and reach of the Devorants, a secret society of companions who look out for each other's interets without morals or scruples. I read the translation by by Ellen Marriage. This is not a review, it's a summary so that I can keep track of these stories from Scenes of Parisian Life, in La Comedie Humaine.
SO BEWARE: IT'S ALL SPOILERS
This story takes place on an island in the Mediterranean after the French had taken Cadiz and restored Ferdinand VII to the throne. There is a convent of the Barefoot Carmelites there which had escaped the effects of the Revolution, where the nuns live in total seclusion. It was a place of refuge for many women who had reasons to withdraw from the world, but the tale begins with the determination of a French general to breach the fortress...
Despite the risks to his career, he is searching for someone special to him. As the new government is established a mass is held, but he sees nothing of the nuns except that he hears one of the Sisters play the organ. She plays Moses in Egypt, a piece of sacred music by Rossini, to whom Balzac dedicates some effusive praise as the composer who brings most human passion into his art. The general can tell that the Sister is a Frenchwoman by the passion with which she plays the fugue in the Te Deum and her inclusion of the air of Fleuve du Tage as an interlude reveals her to be his exiled lady-love expressing her pent-up emotion.
What to do? Well, when his division marches out of town, he stays behind and he goes to church. The town is farewelling the army; there is no one there at the service but him. He clanks his spurs and he talks to himself to let the nuns know there is one Frenchman left behind, and the organist plays the Magnificat with enthusiastic passion so he knows his message has been understood. Indeed she plays with such passion as to subvert the holy role of the organ in communicating religious devotion but eventually she succumbs to that once more, ending her recital with an Amen which tells the general that their souls can only meet again in Heaven.
Back to the church next day and it's a different organist but his disappointment is only momentary, for the soprano is his lover. He has to behave himself because his host is with him; it is he who explains the strictness of the order and that an exception can only be made for visits for very serious reasons such as illness. Permission may only be granted by the Mother Superior, and among the other foreigners is a Frenchwoman, Sister Theresa, who directs the music. However, in the context of the fall of the Bourbons, since the general brings news from France, he is granted an interview!
The Mother Superior is there as a witness, but she speaks only Latin and Spanish so the General is emboldened to address Sister Theresa aka the Duchesse as Antoinette. However when the Mother Superior realises that they know each other she curtails the interview. Antoinette thinks quickly and identifies the General as her 'brother' and the interview is allowed to resume, passion restrained by the need to maintain the fiction and by Antoinette's insistence that she can now be only Sister Theresa to him.
He, now named as Armand unburdens himself, revealing that he and his powerful friends (i.e. the Thirteen have been helping him) have searched high and low for her. He begs her to join him, he can have her vows renounced by the Pope and they can live in seclusion but she refuses, and in anger he accuses her of no longer loving him. She says she does, and that he is with her all the time in her thoughts, but unable to bear his remonstrances any longer she cries out to the Mother Superior that this man is her lover and the interview is terminated. The general takes leave from his duties and goes back to France.
So, next comes the flashback. Balzac starts by describing the Faubourg Saint-Germain as the locus of society in Paris at that time. Aristocrats, he says, have always liked to live away from the hoi-polloi, and as fast as a city grows up around them to serve their needs, the sooner they take themselves off to build a new mansion somewhere else. Balzac declares that there is nothing incongruous in this and goes on to have a little rant about there being a natural order of things where an aristocracy will always rise to the top and it would be a good thing for France if they knew it:
An aristocracy is in a manner the intellect of the social system, as the middle classes and the proletariat may be said to be its organizing and working power. It naturally follows that these forces are differently situated; and of their antagonism there is bred a seeming antipathy produced by the performance of different functions, all of them, however, existing for one common end. (Kindle Location 2074)
This distinction between the upper and lower spheres of social activity, emphasized by differences in their manner of living, necessarily implies that in the highest aristocracy there is real worth and some distinguishing merit. In any state, no matter what form of "government" is affected, so soon as the patrician class fails to maintain that complete superiority which is the condition of its existence, it ceases to be a force, and is pulled down at once by the populace. The people always wish to see money, power, and initiative in their leaders, hands, hearts, and heads; they must be the spokesmen, they must represent the intelligence and the glory of the nation. Nations, like women, love strength in those who rule them; they cannot give love without respect; they refuse utterly to obey those of whom they do not stand in awe. An aristocracy fallen into contempt is a roi faineant, a husband in petticoats; first it ceases to be itself, and then it ceases to be. (Location 2099)
The mistake that aristocrats made, he says, was to hand over power to the bourgeois, leaving themselves only with the trappings of it, which brought them into contempt. There were a few intelligent ones around, but not enough, and most aristocrats were so conscious of having lost real power that they comforted themselves by acting as if they had not. They were undisciplined, they were weak, and they were selfish. Sidetracked by petty issues like etiquette, they wasted opportunities in 1814 and 1820 and emigrated into the countryside out of their own self-interest. Frenchwomen who might have done much to create salons for the emergence of intelligent leadership did little too.
The Duchesse de Langeais had been married for four years when the Restoration took place. Women in her family always married above their station and she was no exception. Their families had quietly supported the King during the Empire and they happily resumed the trappings of their rank when he returned. However the marriage of Antoinette and the Duke was a marriage only of convenience, and they lived apart without breaching convention, the Duchesse never forgiving her husband for some grave unspecified offence (homosexuality? Some barbarity in the bedroom?) She was a star in society but she recognised that she would never achieve her ambition to have a grand reputation unless she were loved – and she discovers that it is possible to invoke love without giving it.
She meets her match one day with the Marquis de Montriveau, Armand of the clanking spurs. His social credentials had been poor because he was in the wrong corps to impress either Napoleon or the Bourbons. He was shy, he was modest, he had no swagger. He was diffident because he has learned young that life is cheap in the army. He was respected but not popular. But all that changed when he came back from Africa. He was an adventurous soul but his exotic expeditions in Egypt and Africa were ruinous. His sojourn in the desert and miraculous escape from the savage tribes might well have made a most interesting novel in itself had Balzac written it - but his discoveries and research were all lost and he came back to Paris in 1818 with nothing but a reputation for courage and daring, qualities much admired in the salons of Paris. The King's government was looking for loyal men and his friends saw to it that he was given favours including promotion. (He would, of course, was too noble to seek any favours himself.)
Despite his shyness masquerading as hauteur he then became a success in society and Antoinette is interested in him at once. Hearing the amazing tale of his trek across the desert, she decides on a whim that she wants him as her lover, never intending to fall for him herself, but rather to have him as a conquest before any else can claim him. (He is of course, also handsome).
Alas for Armand, Antoinette is his first love, and smitten, he little realises what's in store. He visits, and she plays the coquette with him. This goes on too long for her however, and her friends tease that she will be stuck with him so she engineers a quarrel and almost breaks his heart by telling him that she wants only to be his friend. She claims that this is because she is not free, and he (man-of-action) suggests that the obstacle could easily be overcome. She, mindful of what she would lose if that happened and confident that she can 'tire him out', agrees to see him ostensibly as one of many, and warns him that if 'an accident' were to befall the duke they could never be together.
But inevitably she falls for him herself, and has to use religion as a shield to prevent all but the occasional chaste kiss. Confused herself, because this was her first love too, she did not know how to control her emotions and was cruel because she feared the loss of her position as the Duke's wife. Her refusal stings Armand:
"I am in despair that God should have invented no way for a woman to confirm the gift of her heart save by adding the gift of her person. The high value which you yourself put upon the gift teaches me that I cannot attach less importance to it. If you have given me your inmost self and your whole heart, as you tell me, what can the rest matter? And besides, if my happiness means so painful a sacrifice, let us say no more about it. But you must pardon a man of spirit if he feels humiliated at being taken for a spaniel."
To which she replies
"M. le Marquis, I am in despair that God should not have invented some nobler way for a man to confirm the gift of his heart than by the manifestation of prodigiously vulgar desires. We become bond-slaves when we give ourselves body and soul, but a man is bound to nothing by accepting the gift. Who will assure me that love will last? The very love that I might show for you at every moment, the better to keep your love, might serve you as a reason for deserting me. I have no wish to be a second edition of Mme de Beauseant. Who can ever know what it is that keeps you beside us? Our persistent coldness of heart is the cause of an unfailing passion in some of you; other men ask for an untiring devotion, to be idolized at every moment; some for gentleness, others for tyranny. No woman in this world as yet has really read the riddle of man's heart."
Her sole wish is for his obedience and her liberty, but she understands (too late) that Armand is capable of killing her if he realises that she is only playing with him.
It is the Marquis de Ronquerolles, (no friend of Armand's at that time) who enlightens him. He mocks his boyish folly, and advises him, if he must persist with a woman not worth his passion, to be firm and refuse to take no for an answer.
So Armand surprises Antoinette in her boudoir, and makes his demands to her lofty refusals. He realises that Ronquerolles is right and resolves to make her pay, 'steel against steel'. He ignores her for a week and then at the ball of the Comtesse de Serizy (Ronquerolles' sister) he makes his move.
He tells an old anecdote from his travels to London, about the axe which was used to chop off the head of Charles the First, and the edict that no one should touch the axe. When Antoinette teases him about this old story, he warns her quietly that she has 'touched the axe', and is in peril of some misfortune, perhaps to the hair on her pretty head. She scorns the prophecy but lo! he kidnaps her at home time with the old switch-the-carriage trick and she wakes from her shock to find herself bound hand and foot in his rooms.
To her astonishment he unbinds her, declaring that he will not take by force what she refuses to give. He merely wants her to listen as she will not listen when she is in her own rooms.
He tells her that it's any man's lookout if he cannot make a woman love him, and she would be within her rights to refuse him if she does not care for him. But he knows she does, and she has robbed him of a sublime happiness and poisoned his future with her caprice. God may forgive her but she needs to expiate her sin here on Earth. (It is quite a long speech). These words unfreeze her heart but it is too late; he says he no longer feels anything for her. He means to brand her with a cross on the forehead and his friends enter to do it.
He weakens, however, and sends them away, and she, victorious, sees his tears in the mirror. She tries again to reconcile but he refuses, and he leads her back to Madame Serizy's where she pretends that nothing has happened except that Armand's prophecy has unnerved her. She now tries to retrieve his love but to no avail. He is obdurate; he is silent; he has withdrawn. She saw him once, at a review, two months later, and then threw caution to the winds and went, publicly to his home. Scandal erupts.
At court the aging Princess with her encyclopaedic knowledge of aristocrat ancestry tells her gossip, and she reveals to the Duke that Armand de Montriveau indeed has good prospects not widely known if the the Dulmen branch of the Arschoot Rivaudoults should conveniently die out in Galicia, for then the Montriveaus would succeed to the title and estates. Oh dear, Antoinette could have had it all, eh? The Princess seeks to smooth over the scandal, her uncle the Vidame reminds Antoinette about all she might lose, and the Princess urges her not to give up the right to bear a future Duc de Langeais but when Antoinette finally agrees to discretion Ronquerolles interferes again and the on-again-off-again romance falters because Armand is angered by Antoinette's duplicity all over again.
Antoinette then seeks the help of the Vidame to get Armand to read her letters, and he, old cynic, agrees to indulge her. In despair she writes to Armand, telling him that if he refuses her she will take herself off to a convent, and then – believing he is at home – in disguise as a maid she goes to his house to wait for an answer. But he is not there, and she – believing she is rejected - takes herself off to the nunnery, which leads to the frantic, and then international search for her. All to no avail.
Until 1823. Then the Duke de Langeais dies, and Armand and his trusty friends mount an audacious rescue mission involving disguise as American sailors, an ingenious ascent of an impregnable cliff, chocolate and some house-breaking tools. All this enterprise and daring however is too late: worn out by years of fasting and fruitless passion, the Duchesse has died. That very day, of course. All that remains for the Thirteen is to remove her body, (and mystify the nuns) but ignominy awaits her. As they stand on deck together Ronquerolles cynically says
"That was a woman once, now it is nothing. Let us tie a cannon ball to both feet and throw the body overboard; and if ever you think of her again, think of her as of some book that you read as a boy."
"Yes," assented Montriveau, "it is nothing now but a dream."
"That is sensible of you. Now, after this, have passions; but as for love, a man ought to know how to place it wisely; it is only a woman's last love that can satisfy a man's first love."
No wonder they made a Hollywood movie out of it!
SO BEWARE: IT'S ALL SPOILERS
This story takes place on an island in the Mediterranean after the French had taken Cadiz and restored Ferdinand VII to the throne. There is a convent of the Barefoot Carmelites there which had escaped the effects of the Revolution, where the nuns live in total seclusion. It was a place of refuge for many women who had reasons to withdraw from the world, but the tale begins with the determination of a French general to breach the fortress...
Despite the risks to his career, he is searching for someone special to him. As the new government is established a mass is held, but he sees nothing of the nuns except that he hears one of the Sisters play the organ. She plays Moses in Egypt, a piece of sacred music by Rossini, to whom Balzac dedicates some effusive praise as the composer who brings most human passion into his art. The general can tell that the Sister is a Frenchwoman by the passion with which she plays the fugue in the Te Deum and her inclusion of the air of Fleuve du Tage as an interlude reveals her to be his exiled lady-love expressing her pent-up emotion.
What to do? Well, when his division marches out of town, he stays behind and he goes to church. The town is farewelling the army; there is no one there at the service but him. He clanks his spurs and he talks to himself to let the nuns know there is one Frenchman left behind, and the organist plays the Magnificat with enthusiastic passion so he knows his message has been understood. Indeed she plays with such passion as to subvert the holy role of the organ in communicating religious devotion but eventually she succumbs to that once more, ending her recital with an Amen which tells the general that their souls can only meet again in Heaven.
Back to the church next day and it's a different organist but his disappointment is only momentary, for the soprano is his lover. He has to behave himself because his host is with him; it is he who explains the strictness of the order and that an exception can only be made for visits for very serious reasons such as illness. Permission may only be granted by the Mother Superior, and among the other foreigners is a Frenchwoman, Sister Theresa, who directs the music. However, in the context of the fall of the Bourbons, since the general brings news from France, he is granted an interview!
The Mother Superior is there as a witness, but she speaks only Latin and Spanish so the General is emboldened to address Sister Theresa aka the Duchesse as Antoinette. However when the Mother Superior realises that they know each other she curtails the interview. Antoinette thinks quickly and identifies the General as her 'brother' and the interview is allowed to resume, passion restrained by the need to maintain the fiction and by Antoinette's insistence that she can now be only Sister Theresa to him.
He, now named as Armand unburdens himself, revealing that he and his powerful friends (i.e. the Thirteen have been helping him) have searched high and low for her. He begs her to join him, he can have her vows renounced by the Pope and they can live in seclusion but she refuses, and in anger he accuses her of no longer loving him. She says she does, and that he is with her all the time in her thoughts, but unable to bear his remonstrances any longer she cries out to the Mother Superior that this man is her lover and the interview is terminated. The general takes leave from his duties and goes back to France.
So, next comes the flashback. Balzac starts by describing the Faubourg Saint-Germain as the locus of society in Paris at that time. Aristocrats, he says, have always liked to live away from the hoi-polloi, and as fast as a city grows up around them to serve their needs, the sooner they take themselves off to build a new mansion somewhere else. Balzac declares that there is nothing incongruous in this and goes on to have a little rant about there being a natural order of things where an aristocracy will always rise to the top and it would be a good thing for France if they knew it:
An aristocracy is in a manner the intellect of the social system, as the middle classes and the proletariat may be said to be its organizing and working power. It naturally follows that these forces are differently situated; and of their antagonism there is bred a seeming antipathy produced by the performance of different functions, all of them, however, existing for one common end. (Kindle Location 2074)
This distinction between the upper and lower spheres of social activity, emphasized by differences in their manner of living, necessarily implies that in the highest aristocracy there is real worth and some distinguishing merit. In any state, no matter what form of "government" is affected, so soon as the patrician class fails to maintain that complete superiority which is the condition of its existence, it ceases to be a force, and is pulled down at once by the populace. The people always wish to see money, power, and initiative in their leaders, hands, hearts, and heads; they must be the spokesmen, they must represent the intelligence and the glory of the nation. Nations, like women, love strength in those who rule them; they cannot give love without respect; they refuse utterly to obey those of whom they do not stand in awe. An aristocracy fallen into contempt is a roi faineant, a husband in petticoats; first it ceases to be itself, and then it ceases to be. (Location 2099)
The mistake that aristocrats made, he says, was to hand over power to the bourgeois, leaving themselves only with the trappings of it, which brought them into contempt. There were a few intelligent ones around, but not enough, and most aristocrats were so conscious of having lost real power that they comforted themselves by acting as if they had not. They were undisciplined, they were weak, and they were selfish. Sidetracked by petty issues like etiquette, they wasted opportunities in 1814 and 1820 and emigrated into the countryside out of their own self-interest. Frenchwomen who might have done much to create salons for the emergence of intelligent leadership did little too.
The Duchesse de Langeais had been married for four years when the Restoration took place. Women in her family always married above their station and she was no exception. Their families had quietly supported the King during the Empire and they happily resumed the trappings of their rank when he returned. However the marriage of Antoinette and the Duke was a marriage only of convenience, and they lived apart without breaching convention, the Duchesse never forgiving her husband for some grave unspecified offence (homosexuality? Some barbarity in the bedroom?) She was a star in society but she recognised that she would never achieve her ambition to have a grand reputation unless she were loved – and she discovers that it is possible to invoke love without giving it.
She meets her match one day with the Marquis de Montriveau, Armand of the clanking spurs. His social credentials had been poor because he was in the wrong corps to impress either Napoleon or the Bourbons. He was shy, he was modest, he had no swagger. He was diffident because he has learned young that life is cheap in the army. He was respected but not popular. But all that changed when he came back from Africa. He was an adventurous soul but his exotic expeditions in Egypt and Africa were ruinous. His sojourn in the desert and miraculous escape from the savage tribes might well have made a most interesting novel in itself had Balzac written it - but his discoveries and research were all lost and he came back to Paris in 1818 with nothing but a reputation for courage and daring, qualities much admired in the salons of Paris. The King's government was looking for loyal men and his friends saw to it that he was given favours including promotion. (He would, of course, was too noble to seek any favours himself.)
Despite his shyness masquerading as hauteur he then became a success in society and Antoinette is interested in him at once. Hearing the amazing tale of his trek across the desert, she decides on a whim that she wants him as her lover, never intending to fall for him herself, but rather to have him as a conquest before any else can claim him. (He is of course, also handsome).
Alas for Armand, Antoinette is his first love, and smitten, he little realises what's in store. He visits, and she plays the coquette with him. This goes on too long for her however, and her friends tease that she will be stuck with him so she engineers a quarrel and almost breaks his heart by telling him that she wants only to be his friend. She claims that this is because she is not free, and he (man-of-action) suggests that the obstacle could easily be overcome. She, mindful of what she would lose if that happened and confident that she can 'tire him out', agrees to see him ostensibly as one of many, and warns him that if 'an accident' were to befall the duke they could never be together.
But inevitably she falls for him herself, and has to use religion as a shield to prevent all but the occasional chaste kiss. Confused herself, because this was her first love too, she did not know how to control her emotions and was cruel because she feared the loss of her position as the Duke's wife. Her refusal stings Armand:
"I am in despair that God should have invented no way for a woman to confirm the gift of her heart save by adding the gift of her person. The high value which you yourself put upon the gift teaches me that I cannot attach less importance to it. If you have given me your inmost self and your whole heart, as you tell me, what can the rest matter? And besides, if my happiness means so painful a sacrifice, let us say no more about it. But you must pardon a man of spirit if he feels humiliated at being taken for a spaniel."
To which she replies
"M. le Marquis, I am in despair that God should not have invented some nobler way for a man to confirm the gift of his heart than by the manifestation of prodigiously vulgar desires. We become bond-slaves when we give ourselves body and soul, but a man is bound to nothing by accepting the gift. Who will assure me that love will last? The very love that I might show for you at every moment, the better to keep your love, might serve you as a reason for deserting me. I have no wish to be a second edition of Mme de Beauseant. Who can ever know what it is that keeps you beside us? Our persistent coldness of heart is the cause of an unfailing passion in some of you; other men ask for an untiring devotion, to be idolized at every moment; some for gentleness, others for tyranny. No woman in this world as yet has really read the riddle of man's heart."
Her sole wish is for his obedience and her liberty, but she understands (too late) that Armand is capable of killing her if he realises that she is only playing with him.
It is the Marquis de Ronquerolles, (no friend of Armand's at that time) who enlightens him. He mocks his boyish folly, and advises him, if he must persist with a woman not worth his passion, to be firm and refuse to take no for an answer.
So Armand surprises Antoinette in her boudoir, and makes his demands to her lofty refusals. He realises that Ronquerolles is right and resolves to make her pay, 'steel against steel'. He ignores her for a week and then at the ball of the Comtesse de Serizy (Ronquerolles' sister) he makes his move.
He tells an old anecdote from his travels to London, about the axe which was used to chop off the head of Charles the First, and the edict that no one should touch the axe. When Antoinette teases him about this old story, he warns her quietly that she has 'touched the axe', and is in peril of some misfortune, perhaps to the hair on her pretty head. She scorns the prophecy but lo! he kidnaps her at home time with the old switch-the-carriage trick and she wakes from her shock to find herself bound hand and foot in his rooms.
To her astonishment he unbinds her, declaring that he will not take by force what she refuses to give. He merely wants her to listen as she will not listen when she is in her own rooms.
He tells her that it's any man's lookout if he cannot make a woman love him, and she would be within her rights to refuse him if she does not care for him. But he knows she does, and she has robbed him of a sublime happiness and poisoned his future with her caprice. God may forgive her but she needs to expiate her sin here on Earth. (It is quite a long speech). These words unfreeze her heart but it is too late; he says he no longer feels anything for her. He means to brand her with a cross on the forehead and his friends enter to do it.
He weakens, however, and sends them away, and she, victorious, sees his tears in the mirror. She tries again to reconcile but he refuses, and he leads her back to Madame Serizy's where she pretends that nothing has happened except that Armand's prophecy has unnerved her. She now tries to retrieve his love but to no avail. He is obdurate; he is silent; he has withdrawn. She saw him once, at a review, two months later, and then threw caution to the winds and went, publicly to his home. Scandal erupts.
At court the aging Princess with her encyclopaedic knowledge of aristocrat ancestry tells her gossip, and she reveals to the Duke that Armand de Montriveau indeed has good prospects not widely known if the the Dulmen branch of the Arschoot Rivaudoults should conveniently die out in Galicia, for then the Montriveaus would succeed to the title and estates. Oh dear, Antoinette could have had it all, eh? The Princess seeks to smooth over the scandal, her uncle the Vidame reminds Antoinette about all she might lose, and the Princess urges her not to give up the right to bear a future Duc de Langeais but when Antoinette finally agrees to discretion Ronquerolles interferes again and the on-again-off-again romance falters because Armand is angered by Antoinette's duplicity all over again.
Antoinette then seeks the help of the Vidame to get Armand to read her letters, and he, old cynic, agrees to indulge her. In despair she writes to Armand, telling him that if he refuses her she will take herself off to a convent, and then – believing he is at home – in disguise as a maid she goes to his house to wait for an answer. But he is not there, and she – believing she is rejected - takes herself off to the nunnery, which leads to the frantic, and then international search for her. All to no avail.
Until 1823. Then the Duke de Langeais dies, and Armand and his trusty friends mount an audacious rescue mission involving disguise as American sailors, an ingenious ascent of an impregnable cliff, chocolate and some house-breaking tools. All this enterprise and daring however is too late: worn out by years of fasting and fruitless passion, the Duchesse has died. That very day, of course. All that remains for the Thirteen is to remove her body, (and mystify the nuns) but ignominy awaits her. As they stand on deck together Ronquerolles cynically says
"That was a woman once, now it is nothing. Let us tie a cannon ball to both feet and throw the body overboard; and if ever you think of her again, think of her as of some book that you read as a boy."
"Yes," assented Montriveau, "it is nothing now but a dream."
"That is sensible of you. Now, after this, have passions; but as for love, a man ought to know how to place it wisely; it is only a woman's last love that can satisfy a man's first love."
No wonder they made a Hollywood movie out of it!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 28, 2017
Publicado em 1834, o livro faz parte da série "História dos Treze", contida em Estudos de Costumes - Cenas da Vida Parisiense.
Dividido em 4 capítulos, inicia-se a história com a descrição de um convento situado na costa espanhola onde uma mulher se retirou da vida parisiense e é procurada loucamente por um homem. A partir daí conheceremos os fatos que os levaram a isso.
Os personagens são a sedutora duquesa de Langeais que resolve brincar com o coração do sr. Montriveau, general de coração puro e apaixonado. Quando ele se descobre ludibriado resolve se vingar e recorre ao Clube dos Treze, sociedade secreta do qual faz parte onde os associados se comprometem a se ajudarem uns aos outros.
De certa forma, achei a história divertida. Até que ponto chegaram esses sócios do tal clube. O final é meio atropelado, acaba de repente e esperava algo diferente.
Como se sabe o objetivo do autor com sua magnífica CH é traçar um painel da sociedade francesa da primeira metade do século XIX e aqui ele dedica páginas bem interessantes ao Fauborg Saint-Germain, local onde se concentra a nata da High Society durante o ano de 1830 quando Luís Felipe sobe ao trono. Esse período se caracterizou pela queda da aristocracia e a ascensão da burguesia.
Histórico de leitura
28/03/2017
"Existe numa velha cidade espanhola, situada em certa ilha do Mediterrâneo, um convento de carmelitas descalças no qual a regra da ordem instituída por Santa Teresa se conservou no rigor da primitiva reforma promovida por essa ilustre mulher."
Dividido em 4 capítulos, inicia-se a história com a descrição de um convento situado na costa espanhola onde uma mulher se retirou da vida parisiense e é procurada loucamente por um homem. A partir daí conheceremos os fatos que os levaram a isso.
Os personagens são a sedutora duquesa de Langeais que resolve brincar com o coração do sr. Montriveau, general de coração puro e apaixonado. Quando ele se descobre ludibriado resolve se vingar e recorre ao Clube dos Treze, sociedade secreta do qual faz parte onde os associados se comprometem a se ajudarem uns aos outros.
De certa forma, achei a história divertida. Até que ponto chegaram esses sócios do tal clube. O final é meio atropelado, acaba de repente e esperava algo diferente.
Como se sabe o objetivo do autor com sua magnífica CH é traçar um painel da sociedade francesa da primeira metade do século XIX e aqui ele dedica páginas bem interessantes ao Fauborg Saint-Germain, local onde se concentra a nata da High Society durante o ano de 1830 quando Luís Felipe sobe ao trono. Esse período se caracterizou pela queda da aristocracia e a ascensão da burguesia.
Histórico de leitura
28/03/2017
"Existe numa velha cidade espanhola, situada em certa ilha do Mediterrâneo, um convento de carmelitas descalças no qual a regra da ordem instituída por Santa Teresa se conservou no rigor da primitiva reforma promovida por essa ilustre mulher."
June 28, 2025
Retour à la littérature classique, départ avec Honoré de Balzac. Je ne sais pas trop quoi dire, je ne l’ai pas détesté, mais ni forcément apprécié. Pour sûr, il est bien écrit, court, dense et complexe, surtout au vu des deux personnages principaux avec leur relation « tu me fuis, je te suis ; je te fuis, tu me suis ».
La comédie humaine a été créée pour dépeindre la société, ses gens et ses torts avec précision. Et il le fait, c’est passionnant. Ce faubourg Saint-Germain habité par une noblesse déchue, qui se repose sur leur grandeur passée qui n’est plus et maintienne leur quotidien comme au temps du Roi, et qui est corrompue de superficialité, de jeu de galanteries, où les femmes détiennent le plein pouvoir. Elles règnent en étant aimées.
Être aimée, c’est être au-dessus, aimer quelqu’un, c’est être à terre.
Je pense que ce qui me gêne au final, c’est de lire comme une réinvention de la Princesse de Clèves qui aurait perdu toute sa grandeur et sa morale. Une version déchue de la princesse. Et c’est certainement cela qui m’empêche d’apprécier un minimum l’œuvre. (peut-être aussi mon âge)
« (…) Il n’y a que le dernier amour d’une femme qui satisfasse le premier d’un homme. »
La comédie humaine a été créée pour dépeindre la société, ses gens et ses torts avec précision. Et il le fait, c’est passionnant. Ce faubourg Saint-Germain habité par une noblesse déchue, qui se repose sur leur grandeur passée qui n’est plus et maintienne leur quotidien comme au temps du Roi, et qui est corrompue de superficialité, de jeu de galanteries, où les femmes détiennent le plein pouvoir. Elles règnent en étant aimées.
Être aimée, c’est être au-dessus, aimer quelqu’un, c’est être à terre.
Je pense que ce qui me gêne au final, c’est de lire comme une réinvention de la Princesse de Clèves qui aurait perdu toute sa grandeur et sa morale. Une version déchue de la princesse. Et c’est certainement cela qui m’empêche d’apprécier un minimum l’œuvre. (peut-être aussi mon âge)
« (…) Il n’y a que le dernier amour d’une femme qui satisfasse le premier d’un homme. »
January 30, 2024
Straight fire 🔥🔥🔥. who hurt him
August 25, 2016
"İnsanlar kendilerinden üstün olmamıza izin verirler ama kendileri kadar alçalmamızı asla bağışlamazlar. Bu yüzden büyük karakterlere karşı besledikleri his azıcık nefret ve korku dolu olmadan olmaz. Onurun fazlası onlar için sessizce geliştirilecek bir şeydir ve bunu ne yaşayanlarda ne de ölülerde bağışlarlar.
"Bir erkeğin arzusu hiç saklanabilir mi ? Her kadın fizyonomideki birtakım sarsıntıların ilmine doğuştan vakıf değil midir ? "
"....Madam Düşes, Tanrı kadına kalbini verdiğinin kanıtı olarak, bu armağana bir de kendini eklemesi gerektiğinden başka bir yol icat etmediği için üzgünüm.
....Mösyö Marki, Tanrı erkeğe kalbini verdiğinin kanıtı olarak, feci şekilde bayağı arzularının teşhirinden daha soylu bir yol icat etmediği için üzgünüm."
"Beklemeyi fırtınaların en korkuncu ve en tatlı zevklerin yaratıcı olarak yaşamayanlara gerçektende çok yazık, onların içinde bizlere hayal kurduran ve bizi nesnelerin gerçekliği kadar özüne de bağlayarak doğayı aşan o alevden eser yoktur."
"Bir erkeğin arzusu hiç saklanabilir mi ? Her kadın fizyonomideki birtakım sarsıntıların ilmine doğuştan vakıf değil midir ? "
"....Madam Düşes, Tanrı kadına kalbini verdiğinin kanıtı olarak, bu armağana bir de kendini eklemesi gerektiğinden başka bir yol icat etmediği için üzgünüm.
....Mösyö Marki, Tanrı erkeğe kalbini verdiğinin kanıtı olarak, feci şekilde bayağı arzularının teşhirinden daha soylu bir yol icat etmediği için üzgünüm."
"Beklemeyi fırtınaların en korkuncu ve en tatlı zevklerin yaratıcı olarak yaşamayanlara gerçektende çok yazık, onların içinde bizlere hayal kurduran ve bizi nesnelerin gerçekliği kadar özüne de bağlayarak doğayı aşan o alevden eser yoktur."
March 22, 2024
Balzac şahane bir yazar. Bu aralar Paris'e dair bir okuma aşkı yaşadığım için Balzac klasiklerinden başladım. Onüçlerin Romanı'nın ilkini okumadım doğrudan ikincisi olan Langeais Düşesi'nden başladım okumaya. Balzac'ın edebi üslubuna hayran kaldım. Edebi bir zevk veriyor satırları okumak. Yer yer çok romantik ve dramatik ilerlediğini hissetsem de hikaye içine alan türdendi. Langeais Düşesi , Ah Antoinette öyle içim buruldu ki ona. Sonlara doğru hele. Kitabin son satırlarında erkeklere -kitaptaki karakterlere- duyduğum öfkem bilendi. Balzac'ın bazı kadına karşı önyargılı yorumlarına şiddetle karşı çıkmış olsam da Paris sosyetesini çok iyi tanımış bir yazarın sivri kaleminden okumak güzeldi. Uzun zamandır Balzac'a dair bir metne dalmadigim için yorumumum biraz çiğ kaldı. Ama kadın erkek ruhunu, özellikle kadın dünyasını bir erkek gözüyle en iyi, en nötr sayılacak noktadan anlatabilen erkek yazarlar özellikle Sabahattin Ali ve Stefan Zweig gibi yazarlar çok nadir. Diğer nice şahane yazarların anlatilarinda ister istemez cinsiyetci söylemlere az çok rastlayabiliyoruz.
Üçüncü kitaba başlamak istiyorum bir an önce, yazar kitabı Delacroix'e ithaf etmiş. En sevdiğim ressamlardandır. Birkaç gün bekleyecek ama. Alfa Rebecca Solnit'in yeni kitabını yayımlamış. Önceliğim olan yazarlarımdandır o (:
Üçüncü kitaba başlamak istiyorum bir an önce, yazar kitabı Delacroix'e ithaf etmiş. En sevdiğim ressamlardandır. Birkaç gün bekleyecek ama. Alfa Rebecca Solnit'in yeni kitabını yayımlamış. Önceliğim olan yazarlarımdandır o (:
March 27, 2022
Sahane bir sosyolojik analiz. Ilk kitapta biraz urkekce ifade edilmeye calisilan konular cesurca ve cok net ifade edilmis. Ilk kitapta anlatilan Onucler'i daha detayli anlatan bir hikaye bekliyordum ama hem din hem politika hem iliskiler uzerine oldukca detayli bir analiz oldugu icin hayal kirikligi yasamadim.
February 18, 2025
Escrito bella y elegantemente, me sorprendió el triste final.
July 28, 2023
Finished on a beach in Tarragona after visiting Catedral Basílica Metropolitana i Primada de Santa Tecla, and it made me think a lot.
December 25, 2023
La música, incluso la del teatro, es un texto que las almas tiernas y poéticas, los corazones dolientes y heridos, interpretan de acuerdo con sus recuerdos.
Si hace falta un corazón de poeta para hacer un músico, ¿no hace falta poesía y amor para escuchar y comprender las grandes obras musicales?
La religión, el amor y la música son la triple expresión de un mismo hecho, la necesidad de expansión que siente toda alma noble.
¡Ay de aquélla cuyo primer amor es más fruto del ardor y el capricho que del sentimiento y el gusto! Sin el temor del diablo, Corina hubiera sido una Lais y el solo respeto humano no hubiera bastado para contenerla.
Una aristocracia es, en cierto modo, el pensamiento de una sociedad, mientras que la burguesía y el proletariado son el organismo y la acción. Esto explica que tales fuerzas se asienten en partes distintas; y de su antagonismo nace una antipatía aparente, que produce la diversidad de movimientos que, sin embargo, se ejercen con una finalidad común.
Las masas tienen un buen sentido que sólo abandonan cuando la gente de mala fe hostiga sus pasiones.
La igualdad será quizás un derecho, pero ninguna potencia humana sabrá convertirlo en un hecho.
Son notorios los beneficios de la armonía política a los ojos de las masas menos inteligentes.
La armonía es la poesía del orden y los pueblos tienen viva necesidad de orden.
Francia es el único país donde una pequeña frase puede armar una gran revolución.
se deja engañar a menudo, pero como se dejan engañar las mujeres: por ideas generosas, por sentimientos cálidos, cuyo alcance escapa de momento a todo cálculo.
En todas las creaciones, la cabeza tiene su lugar señalado. Si por alguna circunstancia una nación hace caer a su jefe a sus pies, tarde o temprano se da cuenta de que se ha suicidado. Como las naciones no quieren morir, entonces se esfuerzan por crearse una nueva cabeza.
El pueblo quiere siempre verles las manos, el corazón y la cabeza, la fortuna, el poder y la acción; la palabra, la inteligencia y la gloria. Sin este triple poderío, todos los privilegios se desvanecen.
Los pueblos, como las mujeres, aman la fuerza en quien los gobierna, y su amor tiene que ir acompañado de respeto; no conceden su obediencia a quien no sabe imponerla. Una aristocracia menospreciada es como un rey holgazán, un marido con faldas; es nula antes de no ser nada.
Debió haber tenido la buena fe de ver a tiempo, cómo lo vio la aristocracia inglesa, que las instituciones tienen sus años climatéricos, en que las mismas palabras no tienen ya el mismo significado, en que las ideas se revisten de otra forma, y en que las condiciones de la vida política cambian totalmente de apariencia, sin que el fondo quede esencialmente alterado.
El arte, la ciencia y el dinero forman el triángulo social donde se inscribe el escudo del poder, y de donde debe proceder la moderna aristocracia.
Un buen teorema vale lo que un gran nombre.
Los Rotschild, estos Fugger modernos, son príncipes de hecho.
¿Cómo se puede conducir a un pueblo sin disponer de los poderes que constituyen el mando?
Una aristocracia, que numéricamente apenas constituye la milésima parte de una sociedad, debe hoy, como antaño, multiplicar sus medios de acción para oponer a ella, durante las grandes crisis, un peso igual al de las masas populares, y no recuerdos históricos.
Al verse todos iguales por su debilidad, se creyeron todos superiores.
En los seres organizados se efectúa un trabajo de armonía íntima.
Cuando un hombre es perezoso, la pereza se revela en cada uno de sus movimientos.
Cuando un ultraje es público, una mujer prefiere olvidarlo, esto le da ocasión de engrandecerse, se muestra mujer en su clemencia; pero las mujeres no absuelven nunca las ofensas secretas, porque no gustan de las cobardías, ni de las virtudes o de los amores secretos.
La más auténtica belleza, la figura más admirable no es nada si no es admirada: un amante y serviles adulaciones son las pruebas de su poder. ¿Qué es un poder desconocido? Nada. Supongamos a la mujer más bella, sola en el rincón de un salón. ¡Qué triste estará! Cuando una de estas criaturas se encuentra en el seno de la magnificencia social, pretende reinar sobre todos los corazones, a menudo porque no puede ser la dichosa soberana de uno solo.
Los hombres permiten que otro se eleve por encima de ellos, pero no perdonan jamás a los que no descienden tan abajo como ellos.
Parecía saber que nada podía oponerse a su voluntad, quizá porque nada quería que no fuese justo.
El perro del hortelano.
Sin la vanidad, decía un profundo moralista del siglo pasado, el amor es un convaleciente. Desde luego, tanto para el hombre como para la mujer, existe un tesoro de placeres en la superioridad de la persona amada.
En París, todo hombre debe haber amado. Ninguna mujer quiere lo que ninguna ha querido.
Las más repentinas revoluciones trastornan únicamente los intereses del hombre, mientras que una pasión trastorna sus sentimientos.
—Señora, en Asia vuestros pies valdrían casi diez mil cequíes.
¿No hay siempre, en el pudor que se apodera de un hombre, cuando ama, algo de vergüenza, y no será precisamente su pequeñez lo que constituye el orgullo de la mujer?
el amor, según los escritores, sólo se alimenta de ilusiones!
vuestra fe católica, a la que queréis convertirme, es una mentira con la que los hombres se engañan; la esperanza es una mentira que descansa en el futuro, el orgullo es una mentira entre nosotros; la piedad, la sabiduría, el terror, son cálculos falaces.
La mayoría de las mujeres quieren sentir violada la moral. ¿No es acaso una de sus lisonjas la de no ceder más que a la fuerza?
¡Los hombres fuertes enamorados tienen tanto de niño en el alma!
no comprendo por qué os negáis a creer en Dios, cuando lo que es imposible es creer en los hombres.
(Pocas mujeres se atreven a ser demócratas, pues entonces están en contradicción flagrante con su despotismo en el terreno sentimental).
¡Aquella resistencia egoísta hacía que la tomase por una criatura santa y virtuosa, y el buen general de artillería se resignaba y hablaba de amor platónico!
El alma tiene el poder desconocido de extender el espacio y de contraerlo.
Los liberales no conseguirían matar, aunque lo deseen, el sentimiento religioso. La religión será siempre una necesidad política.
Para impedir a los pueblos que discurran, hay que imponerles sentimientos.
»La religión, Armand es, como veis, el vínculo de los principios conservadores que permite que los ricos estén tranquilos. La religión está íntimamente ligada a la propiedad. Ciertamente, es más hermoso conducir a los pueblos por medio de ideas morales que por el patíbulo, como en tiempos del Terror, único medio que vuestra detestable Revolución inventó para hacerse obedecer.
Yo no entiendo de política y mis razonamientos se inspiran en el sentimiento; sin embargo, sé lo bastante de ella para adivinar que la sociedad se hundiría si constantemente pusiésemos en duda sus bases…
Los hombres se dejan matar, pero los intereses, no.
Si tantas mujeres, incluso las más virtuosas, son víctimas de individuos hábiles en el amor, a los que el vulgo da un mal nombre, quizá sea porque son grandes experimentadores y muy hábiles en las demostraciones, y el amor requiere, pese a su deliciosa poesía de los sentimientos, un poco más de geometría de lo que muchos piensan.
he llegado a la desesperada conclusión de que Dios no ha inventado para la mujer otra forma de confirmar el don de su corazón, que añadiéndole el de su persona.
Si me dais vuestra alma y todos vuestros sentimientos, como me decís, ¿qué importa el resto?
en amor, dudar, ¿no es morir?
¿qué significa este «quiero»? ¡Yo quiero! Sois la primera persona que me dice esta palabra. Me parece muy ridícula, perfectamente ridícula.
El amor crea en la mujer una mujer nueva; la de la víspera ya no existe al día siguiente.
El derecho de toda mujer es negarse a un amor que comprende que no puede compartir. El hombre que ama sin hacerse amar, no debe inspirar compasión, y no tiene derecho a quejarse.
Si los filósofos pueden definir prontamente el amor, ateniéndose a las leyes de la naturaleza, los moralistas se hallan en un aprieto mucho mayor para explicarlo, cuando quieren considerarlo bajo todos los aspectos en que ha manifestado la sociedad.
Pasión significa simultáneamente sufrimiento y transición; la pasión cesa cuando la esperanza ha muerto.
Hombres y mujeres pueden, sin deshonrarse, concebir varias pasiones; ¡es tan natural lanzarse a la búsqueda de la felicidad!, pero, en la vida, no hay más que un solo amor.
En amor, esperar es agotar, incesantemente, una esperanza cierta, entregarse al flagelo terrible de la pasión, dichosa sin los desencantos de la verdad.
Emanación constante de fuerza y de deseos, la espera es quizás al alma humana lo que son, para ciertas flores, sus perfumadas exhalaciones.
Terminado su aseo, volvió a las agitaciones excesivas, al sobrecogimiento nervioso de aquel horrible poder que pone en fermentación todas las ideas, y que quizá no sea más que una enfermedad, cuyos sufrimientos resultan agradables.
El éxtasis religioso es la locura del pensamiento desprendido de sus lazos corporales; mientras que, en el éxtasis amoroso, se confunden, se unen y abrazan las fuerzas de nuestras dos naturalezas.
para comprender la frase de Tayllerand: Los modales lo son todo, traducción elegante de este axioma jurídico: La forma arrastra el fondo.
La naturaleza le ordenó que comiese ostras; sin duda le eran necesarias, pues, hasta cierto punto, nuestros gustos predominantes se hallan condicionados por nuestra naturaleza.
¿Qué sería de vos sin vuestro marido? Cuidadlo, pues, del mismo modo que cuidáis vuestra belleza, que, si bien se mira, además de marido es el paracaídas de la mujer.
Los niños se hacen hombres, y los hombres son ingratos.
Cuando los hombres no pueden acusar a su padre, ni a su madre, echan la culpa de su mala suerte a Dios.
Voy a resumir lo que he dicho en una frase que debéis meditar: una mujer no debe dar nunca razón a su marido.
la vida no es más que una combinación de intereses y de sentimientos
y para ser feliz, sobre todo en la posición que ocupáis, hay que intentar poner de acuerdo los sentimientos con los intereses.
No conozco a ningún confesor que pueda absolveros de la miseria.
Hoy en día, a decir verdad, parece como si los papeles hubiesen cambiado, y las mujeres tuviesen que perseguir a los hombres.
Quiero ser amada irresistiblemente o dejada despiadadamente.
Si hace falta un corazón de poeta para hacer un músico, ¿no hace falta poesía y amor para escuchar y comprender las grandes obras musicales?
La religión, el amor y la música son la triple expresión de un mismo hecho, la necesidad de expansión que siente toda alma noble.
¡Ay de aquélla cuyo primer amor es más fruto del ardor y el capricho que del sentimiento y el gusto! Sin el temor del diablo, Corina hubiera sido una Lais y el solo respeto humano no hubiera bastado para contenerla.
Una aristocracia es, en cierto modo, el pensamiento de una sociedad, mientras que la burguesía y el proletariado son el organismo y la acción. Esto explica que tales fuerzas se asienten en partes distintas; y de su antagonismo nace una antipatía aparente, que produce la diversidad de movimientos que, sin embargo, se ejercen con una finalidad común.
Las masas tienen un buen sentido que sólo abandonan cuando la gente de mala fe hostiga sus pasiones.
La igualdad será quizás un derecho, pero ninguna potencia humana sabrá convertirlo en un hecho.
Son notorios los beneficios de la armonía política a los ojos de las masas menos inteligentes.
La armonía es la poesía del orden y los pueblos tienen viva necesidad de orden.
Francia es el único país donde una pequeña frase puede armar una gran revolución.
se deja engañar a menudo, pero como se dejan engañar las mujeres: por ideas generosas, por sentimientos cálidos, cuyo alcance escapa de momento a todo cálculo.
En todas las creaciones, la cabeza tiene su lugar señalado. Si por alguna circunstancia una nación hace caer a su jefe a sus pies, tarde o temprano se da cuenta de que se ha suicidado. Como las naciones no quieren morir, entonces se esfuerzan por crearse una nueva cabeza.
El pueblo quiere siempre verles las manos, el corazón y la cabeza, la fortuna, el poder y la acción; la palabra, la inteligencia y la gloria. Sin este triple poderío, todos los privilegios se desvanecen.
Los pueblos, como las mujeres, aman la fuerza en quien los gobierna, y su amor tiene que ir acompañado de respeto; no conceden su obediencia a quien no sabe imponerla. Una aristocracia menospreciada es como un rey holgazán, un marido con faldas; es nula antes de no ser nada.
Debió haber tenido la buena fe de ver a tiempo, cómo lo vio la aristocracia inglesa, que las instituciones tienen sus años climatéricos, en que las mismas palabras no tienen ya el mismo significado, en que las ideas se revisten de otra forma, y en que las condiciones de la vida política cambian totalmente de apariencia, sin que el fondo quede esencialmente alterado.
El arte, la ciencia y el dinero forman el triángulo social donde se inscribe el escudo del poder, y de donde debe proceder la moderna aristocracia.
Un buen teorema vale lo que un gran nombre.
Los Rotschild, estos Fugger modernos, son príncipes de hecho.
¿Cómo se puede conducir a un pueblo sin disponer de los poderes que constituyen el mando?
Una aristocracia, que numéricamente apenas constituye la milésima parte de una sociedad, debe hoy, como antaño, multiplicar sus medios de acción para oponer a ella, durante las grandes crisis, un peso igual al de las masas populares, y no recuerdos históricos.
Al verse todos iguales por su debilidad, se creyeron todos superiores.
En los seres organizados se efectúa un trabajo de armonía íntima.
Cuando un hombre es perezoso, la pereza se revela en cada uno de sus movimientos.
Cuando un ultraje es público, una mujer prefiere olvidarlo, esto le da ocasión de engrandecerse, se muestra mujer en su clemencia; pero las mujeres no absuelven nunca las ofensas secretas, porque no gustan de las cobardías, ni de las virtudes o de los amores secretos.
La más auténtica belleza, la figura más admirable no es nada si no es admirada: un amante y serviles adulaciones son las pruebas de su poder. ¿Qué es un poder desconocido? Nada. Supongamos a la mujer más bella, sola en el rincón de un salón. ¡Qué triste estará! Cuando una de estas criaturas se encuentra en el seno de la magnificencia social, pretende reinar sobre todos los corazones, a menudo porque no puede ser la dichosa soberana de uno solo.
Los hombres permiten que otro se eleve por encima de ellos, pero no perdonan jamás a los que no descienden tan abajo como ellos.
Parecía saber que nada podía oponerse a su voluntad, quizá porque nada quería que no fuese justo.
El perro del hortelano.
Sin la vanidad, decía un profundo moralista del siglo pasado, el amor es un convaleciente. Desde luego, tanto para el hombre como para la mujer, existe un tesoro de placeres en la superioridad de la persona amada.
En París, todo hombre debe haber amado. Ninguna mujer quiere lo que ninguna ha querido.
Las más repentinas revoluciones trastornan únicamente los intereses del hombre, mientras que una pasión trastorna sus sentimientos.
—Señora, en Asia vuestros pies valdrían casi diez mil cequíes.
¿No hay siempre, en el pudor que se apodera de un hombre, cuando ama, algo de vergüenza, y no será precisamente su pequeñez lo que constituye el orgullo de la mujer?
el amor, según los escritores, sólo se alimenta de ilusiones!
vuestra fe católica, a la que queréis convertirme, es una mentira con la que los hombres se engañan; la esperanza es una mentira que descansa en el futuro, el orgullo es una mentira entre nosotros; la piedad, la sabiduría, el terror, son cálculos falaces.
La mayoría de las mujeres quieren sentir violada la moral. ¿No es acaso una de sus lisonjas la de no ceder más que a la fuerza?
¡Los hombres fuertes enamorados tienen tanto de niño en el alma!
no comprendo por qué os negáis a creer en Dios, cuando lo que es imposible es creer en los hombres.
(Pocas mujeres se atreven a ser demócratas, pues entonces están en contradicción flagrante con su despotismo en el terreno sentimental).
¡Aquella resistencia egoísta hacía que la tomase por una criatura santa y virtuosa, y el buen general de artillería se resignaba y hablaba de amor platónico!
El alma tiene el poder desconocido de extender el espacio y de contraerlo.
Los liberales no conseguirían matar, aunque lo deseen, el sentimiento religioso. La religión será siempre una necesidad política.
Para impedir a los pueblos que discurran, hay que imponerles sentimientos.
»La religión, Armand es, como veis, el vínculo de los principios conservadores que permite que los ricos estén tranquilos. La religión está íntimamente ligada a la propiedad. Ciertamente, es más hermoso conducir a los pueblos por medio de ideas morales que por el patíbulo, como en tiempos del Terror, único medio que vuestra detestable Revolución inventó para hacerse obedecer.
Yo no entiendo de política y mis razonamientos se inspiran en el sentimiento; sin embargo, sé lo bastante de ella para adivinar que la sociedad se hundiría si constantemente pusiésemos en duda sus bases…
Los hombres se dejan matar, pero los intereses, no.
Si tantas mujeres, incluso las más virtuosas, son víctimas de individuos hábiles en el amor, a los que el vulgo da un mal nombre, quizá sea porque son grandes experimentadores y muy hábiles en las demostraciones, y el amor requiere, pese a su deliciosa poesía de los sentimientos, un poco más de geometría de lo que muchos piensan.
he llegado a la desesperada conclusión de que Dios no ha inventado para la mujer otra forma de confirmar el don de su corazón, que añadiéndole el de su persona.
Si me dais vuestra alma y todos vuestros sentimientos, como me decís, ¿qué importa el resto?
en amor, dudar, ¿no es morir?
¿qué significa este «quiero»? ¡Yo quiero! Sois la primera persona que me dice esta palabra. Me parece muy ridícula, perfectamente ridícula.
El amor crea en la mujer una mujer nueva; la de la víspera ya no existe al día siguiente.
El derecho de toda mujer es negarse a un amor que comprende que no puede compartir. El hombre que ama sin hacerse amar, no debe inspirar compasión, y no tiene derecho a quejarse.
Si los filósofos pueden definir prontamente el amor, ateniéndose a las leyes de la naturaleza, los moralistas se hallan en un aprieto mucho mayor para explicarlo, cuando quieren considerarlo bajo todos los aspectos en que ha manifestado la sociedad.
Pasión significa simultáneamente sufrimiento y transición; la pasión cesa cuando la esperanza ha muerto.
Hombres y mujeres pueden, sin deshonrarse, concebir varias pasiones; ¡es tan natural lanzarse a la búsqueda de la felicidad!, pero, en la vida, no hay más que un solo amor.
En amor, esperar es agotar, incesantemente, una esperanza cierta, entregarse al flagelo terrible de la pasión, dichosa sin los desencantos de la verdad.
Emanación constante de fuerza y de deseos, la espera es quizás al alma humana lo que son, para ciertas flores, sus perfumadas exhalaciones.
Terminado su aseo, volvió a las agitaciones excesivas, al sobrecogimiento nervioso de aquel horrible poder que pone en fermentación todas las ideas, y que quizá no sea más que una enfermedad, cuyos sufrimientos resultan agradables.
El éxtasis religioso es la locura del pensamiento desprendido de sus lazos corporales; mientras que, en el éxtasis amoroso, se confunden, se unen y abrazan las fuerzas de nuestras dos naturalezas.
para comprender la frase de Tayllerand: Los modales lo son todo, traducción elegante de este axioma jurídico: La forma arrastra el fondo.
La naturaleza le ordenó que comiese ostras; sin duda le eran necesarias, pues, hasta cierto punto, nuestros gustos predominantes se hallan condicionados por nuestra naturaleza.
¿Qué sería de vos sin vuestro marido? Cuidadlo, pues, del mismo modo que cuidáis vuestra belleza, que, si bien se mira, además de marido es el paracaídas de la mujer.
Los niños se hacen hombres, y los hombres son ingratos.
Cuando los hombres no pueden acusar a su padre, ni a su madre, echan la culpa de su mala suerte a Dios.
Voy a resumir lo que he dicho en una frase que debéis meditar: una mujer no debe dar nunca razón a su marido.
la vida no es más que una combinación de intereses y de sentimientos
y para ser feliz, sobre todo en la posición que ocupáis, hay que intentar poner de acuerdo los sentimientos con los intereses.
No conozco a ningún confesor que pueda absolveros de la miseria.
Hoy en día, a decir verdad, parece como si los papeles hubiesen cambiado, y las mujeres tuviesen que perseguir a los hombres.
Quiero ser amada irresistiblemente o dejada despiadadamente.
April 19, 2024
3.5 stars. An engaging novella about a man and woman playing games with their affection for one another and the consequences of their actions. When you are not true to yourself things can spiral out of your control.
An interesting but annoying read!
This book was first published in 1835.
An interesting but annoying read!
This book was first published in 1835.
September 27, 2025
I think someone here has to stop abducting the poor nun………..…
March 21, 2025
desquiciamenta amorosa perfecta i aristocràcia francesa del XIX fent coses d’aristocràcia francesa del XIX. m’ha agradat moooolt. no té cinc estrelles perquè les digressions del narrador se m’han fet un pèl llargues, però és balzac i li perdonem.
May 11, 2023
Novela corta de gran profundidad, describe la época posterior a Napoleon, revolución Francesa y la restauración, aristocracia, y el amor. Muy bien descrito los personajes. Los clásicos no pasan en el tiempo, ahora hay otros protagonistas pero con los mismos pensamientos.
August 31, 2015
it's a great book with beautiful passages in which the sound of the piano is like a sad music for the heart. I loved the fact that many passages are extraordinarily well written, I love Balzac's good writing. However, even if I loved the beggining of this book, I hated the ending. Too much pain, to much cruelty in the end.
August 19, 2021
Long, long, long et trop long. Grosso modo, une histoire qui peut-être résumée en vingt pages, étendue en 252, juste pour l'orgueil d'utiliser une langue beaucoup trop quintessenciée pour pouvoir être appréciable et appréciée.
EDIT : hum je ne comprends pas la fin, je suis vraiment perplexe. Wtf ?
EDIT : hum je ne comprends pas la fin, je suis vraiment perplexe. Wtf ?
February 6, 2025
Pas possible d’être aussi neuneu
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