Balzac, une éthique de la description (review)

Jérôme David’s wide-reaching and rigorous analysis of the ontological basis of Balzac’s ‘realism’ may be counted one of the most significant contributions to Balzac studies in recent decades. His conjoined points of entry into Balzac’s textual universe are provided by the latter’s alleged dialogue with the contemporary devotion to types and detail, which he situates within an oscillation, on Balzac’s part, between the contrasting imperatives of sentimental and historical fiction. With the aid of an astute deployment of the history of medicine and natural history that revitalizes, for example, our understanding of Balzac’s use of the term ‘pathologie’, he demonstrates that the seemingly unpromising figure of the ‘type’ is far from uniform across the ages, and that ‘les traits principaux de la typicité balzacienne [. . .] n’ont pas d’équivalent dans les rares théorisations du “type” littéraire des années 1830–1860’ (p. 220). Not the least of the merits of his study is the mortal blow dealt to the view that Harpagon and Grandet may be regarded as comparable figures. Close consideration of the contrasting practices of the Romantic historians and Michelet serves to highlight with unprecedented precision the nature of Balzac’s use of detail. The account of Balzacian representation that emerges is as convincing as it is unfamiliar. Deploying an admirable command of formal logic (derived largely from Anglo-Saxon philosophy) that leads him to eschew definition, and with due insistence on the immutable difference between fiction and philosophical or scientific reason, David constructs a complex model of the way the text explicitly solicits from its readers acknowledgment of its legitimacy. Through a range of examples, the novelist’s attempts at representation are shown, via a demonstration of the ontologically ‘weak’ nature of the description, to reflect an awareness of the impossibility (for identifiable sociological and historical reasons that are occulted by analyses conducted in terms of poetics) of articulating a shifting social reality. One of the great strengths of this study is indeed its demonstration of the wrongheadedness of attempts to extract from Balzac’s works a single, unchanging ‘sociologie’. While in many ways eminently revisionist in nature, it maintains a belief that the Balzacian text is characterized by aporia and a lack of narratorial authority. The implications of this impressive analysis are countless, so it is disappointing that it loses momentum towards the end, through: a disruptively positioned return to a consideration of the type as seen, in turn, by Nodier, Montégut, and a little-known follower of Fourier; a sometimes contestable discussion of Balzac’s recourse to anonymity and the use of pseudonyms; and a comparison, albeit valid in itself, of Balzac and Sand. It remains the case that Balzac, une éthique de la description will be essential reading for all students of the novelist, who will discover brief but incisive readings of, among other texts, the ‘Avant-propos’, Eugénie Grandet, Les Chouans, and Les Proscrits. It will also be read with profit by scholars working on Walter Scott and Romantic historiography, as well as by those engaged in a reflection on intentionality.