Volume 7, Number 1 · July 28, 1966
Balzac the Great
By V.S. Pritchett
Prometheus: The Life of Balzac
by André Maurois, translated by Norman Denny
Harper & Row, 560 pp., $10.00
'On n'a jamais peint les exigences de la gueule': the crude, sardonic introduction to the character of le cousin Pons serves Balzac himself. The fat, plebeian, butcher-like figure, shorts legged and larded with the pâtés of Tours, toothless at thirty-two, whose natural openness, goodness, and burning brilliance captivated Paris almost against its will, is the novelist of our appetites. He is Appetite itself—appetite for power, fame, money, things, women, life, mystery, and work. Until the last months of his life he makes nonsense of the moral of Le Peau de chagrin: the skin grows larger with every desire fulfilled. All his desires fed one another and, united, they fed the artist: arresting them by drinking strong coffee killed him. No wonder that at the end of his new biography, M. André Maurois exclaims with emotion, Who would not be Balzac? Any novelist would give his eyes for Balzac's energy and vitality.
Review, 2358 words
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