Stronger than ever, even than under the spell of first acquaintance and of the early time, is the sense—thanks to a renewal1 of intimacy2 and, I am tempted3 to say, of loyalty—that Balzac stands signally apart, that he is the first and foremost member of his craft, and that above all the Balzac-lover is in no position till he has cleared the ground by saying so. The Balzac-lover alone, for that matter, is worthy4 to have his word on so happy an occasion as this[4] about the author of “La Comédie Humaine,” and it is indeed not easy to see how the amount of attention so inevitably5 induced could at the worst have failed to find itself turning to an act of homage6. I have been deeply affected7, to be frank, by the mere8 refreshment9 of memory, which has brought in its train moreover consequences critical and sentimental10 too numerous to figure here in their completeness. The authors and the books that have, as we say, done something for us, become part of the answer to our curiosity when our curiosity had the freshness of youth, these particular agents exist for us, with the lapse11 of time, as the substance itself of knowledge: they have been intellectually so swallowed, digested and assimilated that we take their general use and suggestion for granted, cease to be aware of them because they have passed out of sight. But they have passed out of sight simply by having passed into our lives. They have become a part of our personal history, a part of ourselves, very often, so far as we may have succeeded in best expressing ourselves. Endless, however, are the uses of great persons and great things, and it may easily happen in these cases that the connection, even as an “excitement”—the form mainly of the connections of youth—is never really broken. We have largely been living on our benefactor—which is the highest acknowledgment one can make; only, thanks to a blest law that operates in the long run to rekindle12 excitement, we are accessible to the sense of having neglected him. Even when we may not constantly have read him over the neglect is quite an illusion, but the illusion perhaps prepares us for the finest emotion we are to have owed to the acquaintance. Without having abandoned or denied our author we yet come expressly back to him, and if not quite in tatters and in penitence13 like the Prodigal14 Son, with something at all events of the tenderness with which we revert15 to the parental16 threshold and hearthstone, if not, more fortunately, to the parental presence. The beauty of this adventure, that of seeing the dust blown off a relation that had been put away as on a shelf, almost out of reach, at the back of one’s mind, consists in finding the precious object not only fresh and intact, but with its firm lacquer still further figured, gilded17 and enriched. It is all overscored with traces and impressions—vivid, definite, almost as valuable as itself—of the recognitions and agitations18 it originally produced in us. Our old—that is our young—feelings are very nearly what page after page most gives us. The case has become a case of authority plus association. If Balzac in himself is indubitably wanting in the sufficiently19 common felicity we know as charm, it is this association that may on occasion contribute the grace.
The impression then, confirmed and brightened, is of the mass and weight of the figure and of the extent of ground it occupies; a tract20 on which we might all of us together quite pitch our little tents, open our little booths, deal in our little wares21, and not materially either diminish the area or impede22 the circulation of the occupant. I seem to see him in such an image moving about as Gulliver among the pigmies, and not less good-natured than Gulliver for the exercise of any function, without exception, that can illustrate23 his larger life. The first and the last word about the author of “Les Contes Drolatiques” is that of all novelists he is the most serious—by which I am far from meaning that in the human comedy as he shows it the comic is an absent quantity. His sense of the comic was on the scale of his extraordinary senses in general, though his expression of it suffers perhaps exceptionally from that odd want of elbow-room—the penalty somehow of his close-packed, pressed-down contents—which reminds us of some designedly beautiful thing but half-disengaged from the clay or the marble. It is the scheme and the scope that are supreme24 in him, applying this moreover not to mere great intention, but to the concrete form, the proved case, in which we possess them. We most of us aspire25 to achieve at the best but a patch here and there, to pluck a sprig or a single branch, to break ground in a corner of the great garden of life. Balzac’s plan was simply to do everything that could be done. He proposed to himself to “turn over” the great garden from north to south and from east to west; a task—immense, heroic, to this day immeasurable—that he bequeathed us the partial performance of, a prodigious26 ragged27 clod, in the twenty monstrous28 years representing his productive career, years of concentration and sacrifice the vision of which still makes us ache. He had indeed a striking good fortune, the only one he was to enjoy as an harassed30 and exasperated31 worker: the great garden of life presented itself to him absolutely and exactly in the guise32 of the great garden of France, a subject vast and comprehensive enough, yet with definite edges and corners. This identity of his universal with his local and national vision is the particular thing we should doubtless call his greatest strength were we preparing agreeably to speak of it also as his visible weakness. Of Balzac’s weaknesses, however, it takes some assurance to talk; there is always plenty of time for them; they are the last signs we know him by—such things truly as in other painters of manners often come under the head of mere exuberance33 of energy. So little in short do they earn the invidious name even when we feel them as defects.
What he did above all was to read the universe, as hard and as loud as he could, into the France of his time; his own eyes regarding his work as at once the drama of man and a mirror of the mass of social phenomena34 the most rounded and registered, most organised and administered, and thereby35 most exposed to systematic36 observation and portrayal37, that the world had seen. There are happily other interesting societies, but these are for schemes of such an order comparatively loose and incoherent, with more extent and perhaps more variety, but with less of the great enclosed and exhibited quality, less neatness and sharpness of arrangement, fewer categories, sub-divisions, juxtapositions39. Balzac’s France was both inspiring enough for an immense prose epic40 and reducible enough for a report or a chart. To allow his achievement all its dignity we should doubtless say also treatable enough for a history, since it was as a patient historian, a Benedictine of the actual, the living painter of his living time, that he regarded himself and handled his material. All painters of manners and fashions, if we will, are historians, even when they least don the uniform: Fielding, Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Hawthorne among ourselves. But the great difference between the great Frenchman and the eminent41 others is that, with an imagination of the highest power, an unequalled intensity42 of vision, he saw his subject in the light of science as well, in the light of the bearing of all its parts on each other, and under pressure of a passion for exactitude, an appetite, the appetite of an ogre, for all the kinds of facts. We find I think in the union here suggested something like the truth about his genius, the nearest approach to a final account of him. Of imagination on one side all compact, he was on the other an insatiable reporter of the immediate43, the material, the current combination, and perpetually moved by the historian’s impulse to fix, preserve and explain them. One asks one’s self as one reads him what concern the poet has with so much arithmetic and so much criticism, so many statistics and documents, what concern the critic and the economist44 have with so many passions, characters and adventures. The contradiction is always before us; it springs from the inordinate45 scale of the author’s two faces; it explains more than anything else his eccentricities46 and difficulties. It accounts for his want of grace, his want of the lightness associated with an amusing literary form, his bristling47 surface, his closeness of texture48, so rough with richness, yet so productive of the effect we have in mind when we speak of not being able to see the wood for the trees.
A thorough-paced votary49, for that matter, can easily afford to declare at once that this confounding duality of character does more things still, or does at least the most important of all—introduces us without mercy (mercy for ourselves I mean) to the oddest truth we could have dreamed of meeting in such a connection. It was certainly a priori not to be expected we should feel it of him, but our hero is after all not in his magnificence totally an artist: which would be the strangest thing possible, one must hasten to add, were not the smallness of the practical difference so made even stranger. His endowment and his effect are each so great that the anomaly makes at the most a difference only by adding to his interest for the critic. The critic worth his salt is indiscreetly curious and wants ever to know how and why—whereby Balzac is thus a still rarer case for him, suggesting that exceptional curiosity may have exceptional rewards. The question of what makes the artist on a great scale is interesting enough; but we feel it in Balzac’s company to be nothing to the question of what on an equal scale frustrates50 him. The scattered51 pieces, the disjecta membra of the character are here so numerous and so splendid that they prove misleading; we pile them together, and the heap assuredly is monumental; it forms an overtopping figure. The genius this figure stands for, none the less, is really such a lesson to the artist as perfection itself would be powerless to give; it carries him so much further into the special mystery. Where it carries him, at the same time, I must not in this scant52 space attempt to say—which would be a loss of the fine thread of my argument. I stick to our point in putting it, more concisely53, that the artist of the Comédie Humaine is half smothered54 by the historian. Yet it belongs as well to the matter also to meet the question of whether the historian himself may not be an artist—in which case Balzac’s catastrophe55 would seem to lose its excuse. The answer of course is that the reporter, however philosophic56, has one law, and the originator, however substantially fed, has another; so that the two laws can with no sort of harmony or congruity57 make, for the finer sense, a common household. Balzac’s catastrophe—so to name it once again—was in this perpetual conflict and final impossibility, an impossibility that explains his defeat on the classic side and extends so far at times as to make us think of his work as, from the point of view of beauty, a tragic58 waste of effort.
What it would come to, we judge, is that the irreconcilability59 of the two kinds of law is, more simply expressed, but the irreconcilability of two different ways of composing one’s effect. The principle of composition that his free imagination would have, or certainly might have, handsomely imposed on him is perpetually dislocated by the quite opposite principle of the earnest seeker, the inquirer to a useful end, in whom nothing is free but a born antipathy60 to his yoke-fellow. Such a production as “Le Curé de Village,” the wonderful story of Madame Graslin, so nearly a masterpiece yet so ultimately not one, would be, in this connection, could I take due space for it, a perfect illustration. If, as I say, Madame Graslin’s creator was confined by his doom61 to patches and pieces, no piece is finer than the first half of the book in question, the half in which the picture is determined62 by his unequalled power of putting people on their feet, planting them before us in their habit as they lived—a faculty63 nourished by observation as much as one will, but with the inner vision all the while wide-awake, the vision for which ideas are as living as facts and assume an equal intensity. This intensity, greatest indeed in the facts, has in Balzac a force all its own, to which none other in any novelist I know can be likened. His touch communicates on the spot to the object, the creature evoked64, the hardness and permanence that certain substances, some sorts of stone, acquire by exposure to the air. The hardening medium, for the image soaked in it, is the air of his mind. It would take but little more to make the peopled world of fiction as we know it elsewhere affect us by contrast as a world of rather gray pulp65. This mixture of the solid and the vivid is Balzac at his best, and it prevails without a break, without a note not admirably true, in “Le Curé de Village”—since I have named that instance—up to the point at which Madame Graslin moves out from Limoges to Montégnac in her ardent66 passion of penitence, her determination to expiate67 her strange and undiscovered association with a dark misdeed by living and working for others. Her drama is a particularly inward one, interesting, and in the highest degree, so long as she herself, her nature, her behaviour, her personal history and the relations in which they place her, control the picture and feed our illusion. The firmness with which the author makes them play this part, the whole constitution of the scene and of its developments from the moment we cross the threshold of her dusky stuffy68 old-time birth-house, is a rare delight, producing in the reader that sense of local and material immersion69 which is one of Balzac’s supreme secrets. What characteristically befalls, however, is that the spell accompanies us but part of the way—only until, at a given moment, his attention ruthlessly transfers itself from inside to outside, from the centre of his subject to its circumference70.
This is Balzac caught in the very fact of his monstrous duality, caught in his most complete self-expression. He is clearly quite unwitting that in handing over his data to his twin-brother the impassioned economist and surveyor, the insatiate general inquirer and reporter, he is in any sort betraying our confidence, for his good conscience at such times, the spirit of edification in him, is a lesson even to the best of us, his rich robust71 temperament72 nowhere more striking, no more marked anywhere the great push of the shoulder with which he makes his theme move, overcharged though it may be like a carrier’s van. It is not therefore assuredly that he loses either sincerity73 or power in putting before us to the last detail such a matter as, in this case, his heroine’s management of her property, her tenantry, her economic opportunities and visions, for these are cases in which he never shrinks nor relents, in which positively74 he stiffens75 and terribly towers—to remind us again of M. Taine’s simplifying word about his being an artist doubled with a man of business. Balzac was indeed doubled if ever a writer was, and to that extent that we almost as often, while we read, feel ourselves thinking of him as a man of business doubled with an artist. Whichever way we turn it the oddity never fails, nor the wonder of the ease with which either character bears the burden of the other. I use the word burden because, as the fusion76 is never complete—witness in the book before us the fatal break of “tone,” the one unpardonable sin for the novelist—we are beset77 by the conviction that but for this strangest of dooms78 one or other of the two partners might, to our relief and to his own, have been disembarrassed. The disembarrassment, for each, by a more insidious79 fusion, would probably have conduced to the mastership of interest proceeding80 from form, or at all events to the search for it, that Balzac fails to embody81. Perhaps the possibility of an artist constructed on such strong lines is one of those fine things that are not of this world, a mere dream of the fond critical spirit. Let these speculations82 and condonations at least pass as the amusement, as a result of the high spirits—if high spirits be the word—of the reader feeling himself again in touch. It was not of our author’s difficulties—that is of his difficulty, the great one—that I proposed to speak, but of his immense clear action. Even that is not truly an impression of ease, and it is strange and striking that we are in fact so attached by his want of the unity83 that keeps surfaces smooth and dangers down as scarce to feel sure at any moment that we shall not come back to it with most curiosity. We are never so curious about successes as about interesting failures. The more reason therefore to speak promptly84, and once for all, of the scale on which, in its own quarter of his genius, success worked itself out for him.
It is to that I should come back—to the infinite reach in him of the painter and the poet. We can never know what might have become of him with less importunity85 in his consciousness of the machinery86 of life, of its furniture and fittings, of all that, right and left, he causes to assail87 us, sometimes almost to suffocation88, under the general rubric of things. Things, in this sense with him, are at once our delight and our despair; we pass from being inordinately89 beguiled90 and convinced by them to feeling that his universe fairly smells too much of them, that the larger ether, the diviner air, is in peril91 of finding among them scarce room to circulate. His landscapes, his “local colour”—thick in his pages at a time when it was to be found in his pages almost alone—his towns, his streets, his houses, his Saumurs, Angoulêmes, Guérandes, his great prose Turner-views of the land of the Loire, his rooms, shops, interiors, details of domesticity and traffic, are a short list of the terms into which he saw the real as clamouring to be rendered and into which he rendered it with unequalled authority. It would be doubtless more to the point to make our profit of this consummation than to try to reconstruct a Balzac planted more in the open. We hardly, as the case stands, know most whether to admire in such an example as the short tale of “La Grenadière” the exquisite92 feeling for “natural objects” with which it overflows93 like a brimming wine-cup, the energy of perception and description which so multiplies them for beauty’s sake and for the love of their beauty, or the general wealth of genius that can calculate, or at least count, so little and spend so joyously94. The tale practically exists for the sake of the enchanting95 aspects involved—those of the embowered white house that nestles on its terraced hill above the great French river, and we can think, frankly96, of no one else with an equal amount of business on his hands who would either have so put himself out for aspects or made them almost by themselves a living subject. A born son of Touraine, it must be said, he pictures his province, on every pretext97 and occasion, with filial passion and extraordinary breadth. The prime aspect in his scene all the while, it must be added, is the money aspect. The general money question so loads him up and weighs him down that he moves through the human comedy, from beginning to end, very much in the fashion of a camel, the ship of the desert, surmounted98 with a cargo99. “Things” for him are francs and centimes more than any others, and I give up as inscrutable, unfathomable, the nature, the peculiar100 avidity of his interest in them. It makes us wonder again and again what then is the use on Balzac’s scale of the divine faculty. The imagination, as we all know, may be employed up to a certain point in inventing uses for money; but its office beyond that point is surely to make us forget that anything so odious101 exists. This is what Balzac never forgot; his universe goes on expressing itself for him, to its furthest reaches, on its finest sides, in the terms of the market. To say these things, however, is after all to come out where we want, to suggest his extraordinary scale and his terrible completeness. I am not sure that he does not see character too, see passion, motive102, personality, as quite in the order of the “things” we have spoken of. He makes them no less concrete and palpable, handles them no less directly and freely. It is the whole business in fine—that grand total to which he proposed to himself to do high justice—that gives him his place apart, makes him, among the novelists, the largest weightiest presence. There are some of his obsessions—that of the material, that of the financial, that of the “social,” that of the technical, political, civil—for which I feel myself unable to judge him, judgment104 losing itself unexpectedly in a particular shade of pity. The way to judge him is to try to walk all round him—on which we see how remarkably105 far we have to go. He is the only member of his order really monumental, the sturdiest-seated mass that rises in our path.
[4]
The appearance of a translation of the “Deux Jeunes Mariées” in A Century of French Romance.
II
We recognise none the less that the finest consequence of these re-established relations is linked with just that appearance in him, that obsession103 of the actual under so many heads, that makes us look at him, as we would at some rare animal in captivity106, between the bars of a cage. It amounts to a sort of suffered doom, since to be solicited107 by the world from all quarters at once, what is that for the spirit but a denial of escape? We feel his doom to be his want of a private door, and that he felt it, though more obscurely, himself. When we speak of his want of charm therefore we perhaps so surrender the question as but to show our own poverty. If charm, to cut it short, is what he lacks, how comes it that he so touches and holds us that—above all if we be actual or possible fellow-workers—we are uncomfortably conscious of the disloyalty of almost any shade of surrender? We are lodged108 perhaps by our excited sensibility in a dilemma109 of which one of the horns is a compassion110 that savours of patronage111; but we must resign ourselves to that by reflecting that our partiality at least takes nothing away from him. It leaves him solidly where he is and only brings us near, brings us to a view of all his formidable parts and properties. The conception of the Comédie Humaine represents them all, and represents them mostly in their felicity and their triumph—or at least the execution does: in spite of which we irresistibly112 find ourselves thinking of him, in reperusals, as most essentially113 the victim of a cruel joke. The joke is one of the jokes of fate, the fate that rode him for twenty years at so terrible a pace and with the whip so constantly applied114. To have wanted to do so much, to have thought it possible, to have faced and in a manner resisted the effort, to have felt life poisoned and consumed by such a bravery of self-committal—these things form for us in him a face of trouble that, oddly enough, is not appreciably115 lighted by the fact of his success. It was the having wanted to do so much that was the trap, whatever possibilities of glory might accompany the good faith with which he fell into it. What accompanies us as we frequent him is a sense of the deepening ache of that good faith with the increase of his working consciousness, the merciless development of his huge subject and of the rigour of all the conditions. We see the whole thing quite as if Destiny had said to him: “You want to ‘do’ France, presumptuous116, magnificent, miserable117 man—the France of revolutions, revivals118, restorations, of Bonapartes, Bourbons, republics, of war and peace, of blood and romanticism, of violent change and intimate continuity, the France of the first half of your century? Very well; you most distinctly shall, and you shall particularly let me hear, even if the great groan119 of your labour do fill at moments the temple of letters, how you like the job.” We must of course not appear to deny the existence of a robust joy in him, the joy of power and creation, the joy of the observer and the dreamer who finds a use for his observations and his dreams as fast as they come. The “Contes Drolatiques” would by themselves sufficiently contradict us, and the savour of the “Contes Drolatiques” is not confined to these productions. His work at large tastes of the same kind of humour, and we feel him again and again, like any other great healthy producer of these matters, beguiled and carried along. He would have been, I dare say, the last not to insist that the artist has pleasures forever indescribable; he lived in short in his human comedy with the largest life we can attribute to the largest capacity. There are particular parts of his subject from which, with our sense of his enjoyment120 of them, we have to check the impulse to call him away—frequently as I confess in this relation that impulse arises.
The relation is with the special element of his spectacle from which he never fully121 detaches himself, the element, to express it succinctly122, of the “old families” and the great ladies. Balzac frankly revelled123 in his conception of an aristocracy—a conception that never succeeded in becoming his happiest; whether, objectively, thanks to the facts supplied him by the society he studied, or through one of the strangest deviations124 of taste that the literary critic is in an important connection likely to encounter. Nothing would in fact be more interesting than to attempt a general measure of the part played in the total comedy, to his imagination, by the old families; and one or two contributions to such an attempt I must not fail presently to make. I glance at them here, however, the delectable125 class, but as most representing on the author’s part free and amused creation; by which too I am far from hinting that the amusement is at all at their expense. It is in their great ladies that the old families most shine out for him, images of strange colour and form, but “felt” as we say, to their finger-tips, and extraordinarily126 interesting as a mark of the high predominance—predominance of character, of cleverness, of will, of general “personality”—that almost every scene of the Comedy attributes to women. It attributes to them in fact a recognised, an uncontested supremacy127; it is through them that the hierarchy128 of old families most expresses itself; and it is as surrounded by them even as some magnificent indulgent pasha by his overflowing129 seraglio that Balzac sits most at his ease. All of which reaffirms—if it be needed—that his inspiration, and the sense of it, were even greater than his task. And yet such betrayals of spontaneity in him make for an old friend at the end of the chapter no great difference in respect to the pathos—since it amounts to that—of his genius-ridden aspect. It comes to us as we go back to him that his spirit had fairly made of itself a cage in which he was to turn round and round, always unwinding his reel, much in the manner of a criminal condemned130 to hard labour for life. The cage is simply the complicated but dreadfully definite French world that built itself so solidly in and roofed itself so impenetrably over him.
It is not that, caught there with him though we be, we ourselves prematurely131 seek an issue: we throw ourselves back, on the contrary, for the particular sense of it, into his ancient superseded132 comparatively rococo133 and quite patriarchal France—patriarchal in spite of social and political convulsions; into his old-time antediluvian134 Paris, all picturesque135 and all workable, full, to the fancy, of an amenity136 that has passed away; into his intensely differentiated137 sphere of la province, evoked in each sharpest or faintest note of its difference, described systematically138 as narrow and flat, and yet attaching us if only by the contagion139 of the author’s overflowing sensibility. He feels in his vast exhibition many things, but there is nothing he feels with the communicable shocks and vibrations140, the sustained fury of perception—not always a fierceness of judgment, which is another matter—that la province excites in him. Half our interest in him springs still from our own sense that, for all the convulsions, the revolutions and experiments that have come and gone, the order he describes is the old order that our sense of the past perversely141 recurs142 to as to something happy we have irretrievably missed. His pages bristle143 with the revelation of the lingering earlier world, the world in which places and people still had their queerness, their strong marks, their sharp type, and in which, as before the platitude144 that was to come, the observer with an appetite for the salient could by way of precaution fill his lungs. Balzac’s appetite for the salient was voracious145, yet he came, as it were, in time, in spite of his so often speaking as if what he sees about him is but the last desolation of the modern. His conservatism, the most entire, consistent and convinced that ever was—yet even at that much inclined to whistling in the dark as if to the tune29 of “Oh how medi?val I am!”—was doubtless the best point of view from which he could rake his field. But if what he sniffed146 from afar in that position was the extremity147 of change, we in turn feel both subject and painter drenched148 with the smell of the past. It is preserved in his work as nowhere else—not vague nor faint nor delicate, but as strong to-day as when first distilled149.
It may seem odd to find a conscious melancholy150 in the fact that a great worker succeeded in clasping his opportunity in such an embrace, this being exactly our usual measure of the felicity of great workers. I speak, I hasten to reassert, all in the name of sympathy—without which it would have been detestable to speak at all; and the sentiment puts its hand instinctively151 on the thing that makes it least futile152. This particular thing then is not in the least Balzac’s own hold of his terrible mass of matter; it is absolutely the convolutions of the serpent he had with a magnificent courage invited to wind itself round him. We must use the common image—he had created his Frankenstein monster. It is the fellow-craftsman who can most feel for him—it being apparently153 possible to read him from another point of view without getting really into his presence. We undergo with him from book to book, from picture to picture, the convolutions of the serpent, we especially whose refined performances are given, as we know, but with the small common or garden snake. I stick to this to justify154 my image just above of his having been “caged” by the intensity with which he saw his general matter as a whole. To see it always as a whole is our wise, our virtuous155 effort, the very condition, as we keep in mind, of superior art. Balzac was in this connection then wise and virtuous to the most exemplary degree; so that he doubtless ought logically but to prompt to complacent156 reflections. No painter ever saw his general matter nearly so much as a whole. Why is it then that we hover157 about him, if we are real Balzacians, not with cheerful chatter158, but with a consideration deeper in its reach than any mere moralising? The reason is largely that if you wish with absolute immaculate virtue159 to look at your matter as a whole and yet remain a theme for cheerful chatter, you must be careful to take some quantity that will not hug you to death. Balzac’s active intention was, to vary our simile160, a beast with a hundred claws, and the spectacle is in the hugging process of which, as energy against energy, the beast was capable. Its victim died of the process at fifty, and if what we see in the long gallery in which it is mirrored is not the defeat, but the admirable resistance, we none the less never lose the sense that the fighter is shut up with his fate. He has locked himself in—it is doubtless his own fault—and thrown the key away. Most of all perhaps the impression comes—the impression of the adventurer committed and anxious, but with no retreat—from the so formidably concrete nature of his plastic stuff. When we work in the open, as it were, our material is not classed and catalogued, so that we have at hand a hundred ways of being loose, superficial, disingenuous161, and yet passing, to our no small profit, for remarkable162. Balzac had no “open”; he held that the great central normal fruitful country of his birth and race, overarched with its infinite social complexity163, yielded a sufficiency of earth and sea and sky. We seem to see as his catastrophe that the sky, all the same, came down on him. He couldn’t keep it up—in more senses than one. These are perhaps fine fancies for a critic to weave about a literary figure of whom he has undertaken to give a plain account; but I leave them so on the plea that there are relations in which, for the Balzacian, criticism simply drops out. That is not a liberty, I admit, ever to be much encouraged; critics in fact are the only people who have a right occasionally to take it. There is no such plain account of the Comédie Humaine as that it makes us fold up our yard-measure and put away our note-book quite as we do with some extraordinary character, some mysterious and various stranger, who brings with him his own standards and his own air. There is a kind of eminent presence that abashes164 even the interviewer, moves him to respect and wonder, makes him, for consideration itself, not insist. This takes of course a personage sole of his kind. But such a personage precisely165 is Balzac.
III
By all of which have I none the less felt it but too clear that I must not pretend in this place to take apart the pieces of his immense complicated work, to number them or group them or dispose them about. The most we can do is to pick one up here and there and wonder, as we weigh it in our hand, at its close compact substance. That is all even M. Taine could do in the longest and most penetrating166 study of which our author has been the subject. Every piece we handle is so full of stuff, condensed like the edibles167 provided for campaigns and explorations, positively so charged with distilled life, that we find ourselves dropping it, in certain states of sensibility, as we drop an object unguardedly touched that startles us by being animate168. We seem really scarce to want anything to be so animate. It would verily take Balzac to detail Balzac, and he has had in fact Balzacians nearly enough affiliated169 to affront170 the task with courage. The “Répertoire de la Comédie Humaine” of MM. Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Christophe is a closely-printed octavo of 550 pages which constitutes in relation to his characters great and small an impeccable biographical dictionary. His votaries171 and expositors are so numerous that the Balzac library of comment and research must be, of its type, one of the most copious172. M. de Lovenjoul has laboured all round the subject; his “Histoire des ?uvres” alone is another crowded octavo of 400 pages; in connection with which I must mention Miss Wormeley, the devoted173 American translator, interpreter, worshipper, who in the course of her own studies has so often found occasion to differ from M. de Lovenjoul on matters of fact and questions of date and of appreciation174. Miss Wormeley, M. Paul Bourget and many others are examples of the passionate175 piety176 that our author can inspire. As I turn over the encyclopedia177 of his characters I note that whereas such works usually commemorate178 but the ostensibly eminent of a race and time, every creature so much as named in the fictive swarm179 is in this case preserved to fame: so close is the implication that to have been named by such a dispenser of life and privilege is to be, as we say it of baronets and peers, created. He infinitely180 divided moreover, as we know, he subdivided181, altered and multiplied his heads and categories—his “Vie Parisienne,” his “Vie de Province,” his “Vie Politique,” his “Parents Pauvres,” his “études Philosophiques,” his “Splendeurs et Misères des Courtisanes,” his “Envers de l’Histoire Contemporaine” and all the rest; so that nominal182 reference to them becomes the more difficult. Yet without prejudice either to the energy of conception with which he mapped out his theme as with chalk on a huge blackboard, or to the prodigious patience with which he executed his plan, practically filling in with a wealth of illustration, from sources that to this day we fail to make out, every compartment184 of his table, M. de Lovenjoul draws up the list, year by year, from 1822 to 1848, of his mass of work, giving us thus the measure of the tension represented for him by almost any twelvemonth. It is wholly unequalled, considering the quality of Balzac’s show, by any other eminent abundance.
I must be pardoned for coming back to it, for seeming unable to leave it; it enshrouds so interesting a mystery. How was so solidly systematic a literary attack on life to be conjoined with whatever workable minimum of needful intermission, of free observation, of personal experience? Some small possibility of personal experience and disinterested185 life must, at the worst, from deep within or far without, feed and fortify186 the strained productive machine. These things were luxuries that Balzac appears really never to have tasted on any appreciable187 scale. His published letters—the driest and most starved of those of any man of equal distinction—are with the exception of those to Madame de Hanska, whom he married shortly before his death, almost exclusively the audible wail188 of a galley-slave chained to the oar183. M. Zola, in our time, among the novelists, has sacrificed to the huge plan in something of the same manner, yet with goodly modern differences that leave him a comparatively simple instance. His work assuredly has been more nearly dried up by the sacrifice than ever Balzac’s was—so miraculously189, given the conditions, was Balzac’s to escape the anti-climax. Method and system, in the chronicle of the tribe of Rougon-Macquart, an economy in itself certainly of the rarest and most interesting, have spread so from centre to circumference that they have ended by being almost the only thing we feel. And then M. Zola has survived and triumphed in his lifetime, has continued and lasted, has piled up and, if the remark be not frivolous190, enjoyed in all its agréments the reward for which Balzac toiled191 and sweated in vain. On top of which he will have had also his literary great-grandfather’s heroic example to start from and profit by, the positive heritage of a fils de famille to enjoy, spend, save, waste. Balzac had frankly no heritage at all but his stiff subject, and by way of model not even in any direct or immediate manner that of the inner light and kindly192 admonition of his genius. Nothing adds more to the strangeness of his general performance than his having failed so long to find his inner light, groped for it almost ten years, missed it again and again, moved straight away from it, turned his back on it, lived in fine round about it, in a darkness still scarce penetrable193, a darkness into which we peep only half to make out the dreary194 little waste of his numerous ?uvres de jeunesse. To M. Zola was vouchsafed195 the good fortune of settling down to the Rougon-Macquart with the happiest promptitude; it was as if time for one look about him—and I say it without disparagement196 to the reach of his look—had sufficiently served his purpose. Balzac moreover might have written five hundred novels without our feeling in him the faintest hint of the breath of doom, if he had only been comfortably capable of conceiving the short cut of the fashion practised by others under his eyes. As Alexandre Dumas and George Sand, illustrious contemporaries, cultivated a personal life and a disinterested consciousness by the bushel, having, for their easier duration, not too consistently known, as the true painter knows it, the obsession of the thing to be done, so Balzac was condemned by his constitution itself, by his inveterately197 seeing this “thing to be done” as part and parcel, as of the very essence, of his enterprise. The latter existed for him, as the process worked and hallucination settled, in the form, and the form only, of the thing done, and not in any hocus-pocus about doing. There was no kindly convenient escape for him by the little swinging back-door of the thing not done. He desired—no man more—to get out of his obsession, but only at the other end, that is by boring through it. “How then, thus deprived of the outer air almost as much as if he were gouging198 a passage for a railway through an Alp, did he live?” is the question that haunts us—with the consequence for the most part of promptly meeting its fairly tragic answer. He did not live—save in his imagination, or by other aid than he could find there; his imagination was all his experience; he had provably no time for the real thing. This brings us to the rich if simple truth that his imagination alone did the business, carried through both the conception and the execution—as large an effort and as proportionate a success, in all but the vulgar sense, as the faculty when equally handicapped was ever concerned in. Handicapped I say because this interesting fact about him, with the claim it makes, rests on the ground, the high distinction, that more than all the rest of us put together he went in, as we say, for detail, circumstance and specification199, proposed to himself all the connections of every part of his matter and the full total of the parts. The whole thing, it is impossible not to keep repeating, was what he deemed treatable. One really knows in all imaginative literature no undertaking200 to compare with it for courage, good faith and sublimity201. There, once more, was the necessity that rode him and that places him apart in our homage. It is no light thing to have been condemned to become provably sublime202. And looking through, or trying to, at what is beneath and behind, we are left benevolently203 uncertain if the predominant quantity be audacity205 or innocence206.
It is of course inevitable207 at this point to seem to hear the colder critic promptly take us up. He undertook the whole thing—oh exactly, the ponderous208 person! But did he “do” the whole thing, if you please, any more than sundry209 others of fewer pretensions211? The retort to this it can only be a positive joy to make, so high a note instantly sounds as an effect of the inquiry212. Nothing is more interesting and amusing than to find one’s self recognising both that Balzac’s pretensions were immense, portentous213, and that yet, taking him—and taking them—altogether, they but minister in the long run to our fondness. They affect us not only as the endearing eccentricities of a person we greatly admire, but fairly as the very condition of his having become such a person. We take them thus in the first place for the very terms of his plan, and in the second for a part of that high robustness214 and that general richness of nature which made him in face of such a project believe in himself. One would really scarce have liked to see such a job as La Comédie Humaine tackled without swagger. To think of the thing really as practicable was swagger, and of the very rarest order. So to think assuredly implied pretensions, pretensions that risked showing as monstrous should the enterprise fail to succeed. It is for the colder critic to take the trouble to make out that of the two parties to it the body of pretension210 remains215 greater than the success. One may put it moreover at the worst for him, may recognise that it is in the matter of opinion still more than in the matter of knowledge that Balzac offers himself as universally competent. He has flights of judgment—on subjects the most special as well as the most general—that are vertiginous216 and on his alighting from which we greet him with a special indulgence. We can easily imagine him to respond, confessing humorously—if he had only time—to such a benevolent204 understanding smile as would fain hold our own eyes a moment. Then it is that he would most show us his scheme and his necessities and how in operation they all hang together. Naturally everything about everything, though how he had time to learn it is the last thing he has time to tell us; which matters the less, moreover, as it is not over the question of his knowledge that we sociably217 invite him, as it were (and remembering the two augurs218 behind the altar) to wink219 at us for a sign. His convictions it is that are his great pardonable “swagger”; to them in particular I refer as his general operative condition, the constituted terms of his experiment, and not less as his consolation220, his support, his amusement by the way. They embrace everything in the world—that is in his world of the so parti-coloured France of his age: religion, morals, politics, economics, physics, esthetics, letters, art, science, sociology, every question of faith, every branch of research. They represent thus his equipment of ideas, those ideas of which it will never do for a man who aspires221 to constitute a State to be deprived. He must take them with him as an ambassador extraordinary takes with him secretaries, uniforms, stars and garters, a gilded coach and a high assurance. Balzac’s opinions are his gilded coach, in which he is more amused than anything else to feel himself riding, but which is indispensably concerned in getting him over the ground. What more inevitable than that they should be intensely Catholic, intensely monarchical222, intensely saturated223 with the real genius—as between 1830 and 1848 he believed it to be—of the French character and French institutions?
Nothing is happier for us than that he should have enjoyed his outlook before the first half of the century closed. He could then still treat his subject as comparatively homogeneous. Any country could have a Revolution—every country had had one. A Restoration was merely what a revolution involved, and the Empire had been for the French but a revolutionary incident, in addition to being by good luck for the novelist an immensely pictorial224 one. He was free therefore to arrange the background of the comedy in the manner that seemed to him best to suit anything so great; in the manner at the same time prescribed according to his contention225 by the noblest traditions. The church, the throne, the noblesse, the bourgeoisie, the people, the peasantry, all in their order and each solidly kept in it, these were precious things, things his superabundant insistence226 on the price of which is what I refer to as his exuberance of opinion. It was a luxury for more reasons than one, though one, presently to be mentioned, handsomely predominates. The meaning of that exchange of intelligences in the rear of the oracle227 which I have figured for him with the perceptive228 friend bears simply on his pleading guilty to the purport229 of the friend’s discrimination. The point the latter makes with him—a beautiful cordial critical point—is that he truly cares for nothing in the world, thank goodness, so much as for the passions and embroilments of men and women, the free play of character and the sharp revelation of type, all the real stuff of drama and the natural food of novelists. Religion, morals, politics, economics, esthetics would be thus, as systematic matter, very well in their place, but quite secondary and subservient230. Balzac’s attitude is again and again that he cares for the adventures and emotions because, as his last word, he cares for the good and the greatness of the State—which is where his swagger, with a whole society on his hands, comes in. What we on our side in a thousand places gratefully feel is that he cares for his monarchical and hierarchical and ecclesiastical society because it rounds itself for his mind into the most congruous and capacious theatre for the repertory of his innumerable comedians231. It has above all, for a painter abhorrent232 of the superficial, the inestimable benefit of the accumulated, of strong marks and fine shades, contrasts and complications. There had certainly been since 1789 dispersals and confusions enough, but the thick tradition, no more at the most than half smothered, lay under them all. So the whole of his faith and no small part of his working omniscience233 were neither more nor less than that historic sense which I have spoken of as the spur of his invention and which he possessed234 as no other novelist has done. We immediately feel that to name it in connection with him is to answer every question he suggests and to account for each of his idiosyncrasies in turn. The novel, the tale, however brief, the passage, the sentence by itself, the situation, the person, the place, the motive exposed, the speech reported—these things were in his view history, with the absoluteness and the dignity of history. This is the source both of his weight and of his wealth. What is the historic sense after all but animated235, but impassioned knowledge seeking to enlarge itself? I have said that his imagination did the whole thing, no other explanation—no reckoning of the possibilities of personal saturation—meeting the mysteries of the case. Therefore his imagination achieved the miracle of absolutely resolving itself into multifarious knowledge. Since history proceeds by documents he constructed, as he needed them, the documents too—fictive sources that imitated the actual to the life. It was of course a terrible business, but at least in the light of it his claims to creatorship are justified—which is what was to be shown.
IV
It is very well even in the sketchiest236 attempt at a portrait of his genius to try to take particulars in their order: one peeps over the shoulder of another at the moment we get a feature into focus. The loud appeal not to be left out prevails among them all, and certainly with the excuse that each as we fix it seems to fall most into the picture. I have so indulged myself as to his general air that I find a whole list of vivid contributive marks almost left on my hands. Such a list, in any study of Balzac, is delightful237 for intimate edification as well as for the fine humour of the thing; we proceed from one of the items of his breathing physiognomy to the other with quite the same sense of life, the same active curiosity, with which we push our way through the thick undergrowth of one of the novels. The difficulty is really that the special point for which we at the moment observe him melts into all the other points, is swallowed up before our eyes in the formidable mass. The French apply the happiest term to certain characters when they speak of them as entiers, and if the word had been invented for Balzac it could scarce better have expressed him. He is “entire” as was never a man of his craft; he moves always in his mass; wherever we find him we find him in force; whatever touch he applies he applies it with his whole apparatus238. He is like an army gathered to besiege239 a cottage equally with a city, and living voraciously240 in either case on all the country about. It may well be, at any rate, that his infatuation with the idea of the social, the practical primacy of “the sex” is the article at the top of one’s list; there could certainly be no better occasion than this of a rich reissue of the “Deux Jeunes Mariées” for placing it there at a venture. Here indeed precisely we get a sharp example of the way in which, as I have just said, a capital illustration of one of his sides becomes, just as we take it up, a capital illustration of another. The correspondence of Louise de Chaulieu and Renée de Maucombe is in fact one of those cases that light up with a great golden glow all his parts at once. We needn’t mean by this that such parts are themselves absolutely all golden—given the amount of tinsel for instance in his view, supereminent, transcendent here, of the old families and the great ladies. What we do convey, however, is that his creative temperament finds in such data as these one of its best occasions for shining out. Again we fondly recognise his splendid, his attaching swagger—that of a “bounder” of genius and of feeling; again we see how, with opportunity, its elements may vibrate into a perfect ecstasy241 of creation.
Why shouldn’t a man swagger, he treats us to the diversion of asking ourselves, who has created from top to toe the most brilliant, the most historic, the most insolent242, above all the most detailed243 and discriminated244 of aristocracies? Balzac carried the uppermost class of his comedy, from the princes, dukes, and unspeakable duchesses down to his poor barons245 de province, about in his pocket as he might have carried a tolerably befingered pack of cards, to deal them about with a flourish of the highest authority whenever there was the chance of a game. He knew them up and down and in and out, their arms, infallibly supplied, their quarterings, pedigrees, services, intermarriages, relationships, ramifications246 and other enthralling247 attributes. This indeed is comparatively simple learning; the real wonder is rather when we linger on the ground of the patrician248 consciousness itself, the innermost, the esoteric, the spirit, temper, tone—tone above all—of the titled and the proud. The questions multiply for every scene of the comedy; there is no one who makes us walk in such a cloud of them. The clouds elsewhere, in comparison, are at best of questions not worth asking. Was the patrician consciousness that figured as our author’s model so splendidly fatuous249 as he—almost without irony250, often in fact with a certain poetic251 sympathy—everywhere represents it? His imagination lives in it, breathes its scented252 air, swallows this element with the smack253 of the lips of the connoisseur254; but I feel that we never know, even to the end, whether he be here directly historic or only quite misguidedly romantic. The romantic side of him has the extent of all the others; it represents in the oddest manner his escape from the walled and roofed structure into which he had built himself—his longing255 for the vaguely-felt outside and as much as might be of the rest of the globe. But it is characteristic of him that the most he could do for this relief was to bring the fantastic into the circle and fit it somehow to his conditions. Was his tone for the duchess, the marquise but the imported fantastic, one of those smashes of the window-pane of the real that reactions sometimes produce even in the stubborn? or are we to take it as observed, as really reported, as, for all its difference from our notion of the natural—and, quite as much, of the artificial—in another and happier strain of manners, substantially true? The whole episode, in “Les Illusions Perdues,” of Madame de Bargeton’s “chucking” Lucien de Rubempré, on reaching Paris with him, under pressure of Madame d’Espard’s shockability as to his coat and trousers and other such matters, is either a magnificent lurid256 document or the baseless fabric257 of a vision. The great wonder is that, as I rejoice to put in, we can never really discover which, and that we feel as we read that we can’t, and that we suffer at the hands of no other author this particular helplessness of immersion. It is done—we are always thrown back on that; we can’t get out of it; all we can do is to say that the true itself can’t be more than done and that if the false in this way equals it we must give up looking for the difference. Alone among novelists Balzac has the secret of an insistence that somehow makes the difference nought258. He warms his facts into life—as witness the certainty that the episode I just cited has absolutely as much of that property as if perfect matching had been achieved. If the great ladies in question didn’t behave, wouldn’t, couldn’t have behaved, like a pair of nervous snobs259, why so much the worse, we say to ourselves, for the great ladies in question. We know them so—they owe their being to our so seeing them; whereas we never can tell ourselves how we should otherwise have known them or what quantity of being they would on a different footing have been able to put forth260.
The case is the same with Louise de Chaulieu, who besides coming out of her convent school, as a quite young thing, with an amount of sophistication that would have chilled the heart of a horse-dealer, exhales—and to her familiar friend, a young person of a supposedly equal breeding—an extravagance of complacency in her “social position” that makes us rub our eyes. Whereupon after a little the same phenomenon occurs; we swallow her bragging261, against our better reason, or at any rate against our startled sense, under coercion262 of the total intensity. We do more than this, we cease to care for the question, which loses itself in the hot fusion of the whole picture. He has “gone for” his subject, in the vulgar phrase, with an avidity that makes the attack of his most eminent rivals affect us as the intercourse263 between introduced indifferences at a dull evening party. He squeezes it till it cries out, we hardly know whether for pleasure or pain. In the case before us for example—without wandering from book to book, impossible here, I make the most of the ground already broken—he has seen at once that the state of marriage itself, sounded to its depths, is, in the connection, his real theme. He sees it of course in the conditions that exist for him, but he weighs it to the last ounce, feels it in all its dimensions, as well as in all his own, and would scorn to take refuge in any engaging side-issue. He gets, for further intensity, into the very skin of his jeunes mariées—into each alternately, as they are different enough; so that, to repeat again, any other mode of representing women, or of representing anybody, becomes, in juxtaposition38, a thing so void of the active contortions264 of truth as to be comparatively wooden. He bears children with Madame de l’Estorade, knows intimately how she suffers for them, and not less intimately how her correspondent suffers, as well as enjoys, without them. Big as he is he makes himself small to be handled by her with young maternal265 passion and positively to handle her in turn with infantile innocence. These things are the very flourishes, the little technical amusements of his penetrating power. But it is doubtless in his hand for such a matter as the jealous passion of Louise de Chaulieu, the free play of her intelligence and the almost beautiful good faith of her egotism, that he is most individual. It is one of the neatest examples of his extraordinary leading gift, his art—which is really moreover not an art—of working the exhibition of a given character up to intensity. I say it is not an art because it acts for us rather as a hunger on the part of his nature to take on in all freedom another nature—take it by a direct process of the senses. Art is for the mass of us who have only the process of art, comparatively so stiff. The thing amounts with him to a kind of shameless personal, physical, not merely intellectual, duality—the very spirit and secret of transmigration.
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renewal
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| adj.(契约)延期，续订，更新，复活，重来 | |
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intimacy
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| n.熟悉，亲密，密切关系，亲昵的言行 | |
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tempted
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| v.怂恿（某人）干不正当的事；冒…的险（tempt的过去分词） | |
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worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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homage
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| n.尊敬，敬意，崇敬 | |
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affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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refreshment
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| n.恢复，精神爽快，提神之事物；（复数）refreshments:点心，茶点 | |
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sentimental
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| adj.多愁善感的，感伤的 | |
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lapse
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| n.过失，流逝，失效，抛弃信仰，间隔；vi.堕落，停止，失效，流逝；vt.使失效 | |
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rekindle
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| v.使再振作；再点火 | |
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penitence
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| n.忏悔，赎罪；悔过 | |
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prodigal
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| adj.浪费的，挥霍的，放荡的 | |
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revert
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| v.恢复，复归，回到 | |
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parental
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| adj.父母的；父的；母的 | |
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gilded
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| a.镀金的，富有的 | |
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agitations
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| （液体等的）摇动( agitation的名词复数 )； 鼓动； 激烈争论； （情绪等的）纷乱 | |
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sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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tract
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| n.传单，小册子，大片(土地或森林) | |
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wares
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| n. 货物, 商品 | |
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impede
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| v.妨碍，阻碍，阻止 | |
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illustrate
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| v.举例说明，阐明；图解，加插图 | |
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supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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25
aspire
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| vi.(to，after)渴望，追求，有志于 | |
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prodigious
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| adj.惊人的，奇妙的；异常的；巨大的；庞大的 | |
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ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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28
monstrous
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| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
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29
tune
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| n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整 | |
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30
harassed
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| adj. 疲倦的，厌烦的 动词harass的过去式和过去分词 | |
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31
exasperated
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| adj.恼怒的 | |
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32
guise
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| n.外表，伪装的姿态 | |
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33
exuberance
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| n.丰富；繁荣 | |
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34
phenomena
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| n.现象 | |
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35
thereby
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| adv.因此，从而 | |
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36
systematic
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| adj.有系统的，有计划的，有方法的 | |
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37
portrayal
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| n.饰演；描画 | |
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38
juxtaposition
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| n.毗邻，并置，并列 | |
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39
juxtapositions
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| n.并置，并列( juxtaposition的名词复数 ) | |
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40
epic
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| n.史诗，叙事诗；adj.史诗般的，壮丽的 | |
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41
eminent
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| adj.显赫的，杰出的，有名的，优良的 | |
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42
intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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43
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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44
economist
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| n.经济学家，经济专家，节俭的人 | |
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45
inordinate
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| adj.无节制的；过度的 | |
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46
eccentricities
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| n.古怪行为( eccentricity的名词复数 )；反常；怪癖 | |
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47
bristling
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| a.竖立的 | |
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48
texture
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| n.(织物)质地；(材料)构造；结构；肌理 | |
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49
votary
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| n.崇拜者；爱好者；adj.誓约的，立誓任圣职的 | |
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50
frustrates
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| v.使不成功( frustrate的第三人称单数 )；挫败；使受挫折；令人沮丧 | |
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51
scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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52
scant
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| adj.不充分的，不足的；v.减缩，限制，忽略 | |
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53
concisely
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| adv.简明地 | |
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54
smothered
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| （使）窒息， （使）透不过气( smother的过去式和过去分词 )； 覆盖； 忍住； 抑制 | |
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55
catastrophe
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| n.大灾难，大祸 | |
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56
philosophic
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| adj.哲学的，贤明的 | |
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57
congruity
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| n.全等，一致 | |
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58
tragic
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| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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59
irreconcilability
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| Irreconcilability | |
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60
antipathy
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| n.憎恶；反感，引起反感的人或事物 | |
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61
doom
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| n.厄运，劫数；v.注定，命定 | |
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62
determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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63
faculty
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| n.才能；学院，系；(学院或系的)全体教学人员 | |
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64
evoked
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| [医]诱发的 | |
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65
pulp
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| n.果肉，纸浆；v.化成纸浆，除去...果肉，制成纸浆 | |
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66
ardent
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，强烈的，烈性的 | |
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67
expiate
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| v.抵补，赎罪 | |
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68
stuffy
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| adj.不透气的，闷热的 | |
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69
immersion
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| n.沉浸；专心 | |
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70
circumference
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| n.圆周，周长，圆周线 | |
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71
robust
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| adj.强壮的，强健的，粗野的，需要体力的，浓的 | |
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72
temperament
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| n.气质，性格，性情 | |
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73
sincerity
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| n.真诚，诚意；真实 | |
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74
positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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75
stiffens
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| （使）变硬，（使）强硬( stiffen的第三人称单数 ) | |
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76
fusion
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| n.溶化；熔解；熔化状态，熔和；熔接 | |
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77
beset
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| v.镶嵌；困扰，包围 | |
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78
dooms
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| v.注定( doom的第三人称单数 )；判定；使…的失败（或灭亡、毁灭、坏结局）成为必然；宣判 | |
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79
insidious
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|
| adj.阴险的，隐匿的，暗中为害的，（疾病）不知不觉之间加剧 | |
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80
proceeding
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|
| n.行动，进行，(pl.)会议录，学报 | |
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81
embody
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|
| vt.具体表达，使具体化；包含，收录 | |
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82
speculations
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| n.投机买卖( speculation的名词复数 )；思考；投机活动；推断 | |
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83
unity
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|
| n.团结，联合，统一；和睦，协调 | |
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84
promptly
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| adv.及时地，敏捷地 | |
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85
importunity
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|
| n.硬要，强求 | |
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86
machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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87
assail
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| v.猛烈攻击，抨击，痛斥 | |
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88
suffocation
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| n.窒息 | |
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89
inordinately
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|
| adv.无度地，非常地 | |
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90
beguiled
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|
| v.欺骗( beguile的过去式和过去分词 )；使陶醉；使高兴；消磨（时间等） | |
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91
peril
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| n.(严重的)危险；危险的事物 | |
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92
exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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93
overflows
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|
| v.溢出，淹没( overflow的第三人称单数 )；充满；挤满了人；扩展出界，过度延伸 | |
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94
joyously
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| ad.快乐地, 高兴地 | |
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95
enchanting
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| a.讨人喜欢的 | |
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96
frankly
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|
| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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97
pretext
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|
| n.借口，托词 | |
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98
surmounted
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|
| 战胜( surmount的过去式和过去分词 )； 克服（困难）； 居于…之上； 在…顶上 | |
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99
cargo
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| n.(一只船或一架飞机运载的)货物 | |
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100
peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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101
odious
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| adj.可憎的，讨厌的 | |
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102
motive
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| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
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103
obsession
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| n.困扰，无法摆脱的思想(或情感) | |
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104
judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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105
remarkably
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| ad.不同寻常地，相当地 | |
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106
captivity
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| n.囚禁；被俘；束缚 | |
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107
solicited
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| v.恳求( solicit的过去式和过去分词 )；（指娼妇）拉客；索求；征求 | |
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108
lodged
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| v.存放( lodge的过去式和过去分词 )；暂住；埋入；（权利、权威等）归属 | |
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109
dilemma
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| n.困境，进退两难的局面 | |
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110
compassion
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| n.同情，怜悯 | |
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111
patronage
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| n.赞助，支援，援助；光顾，捧场 | |
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112
irresistibly
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| adv.无法抵抗地，不能自持地；极为诱惑人地 | |
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113
essentially
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| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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114
applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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115
appreciably
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| adv.相当大地 | |
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116
presumptuous
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| adj.胆大妄为的，放肆的，冒昧的，冒失的 | |
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117
miserable
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|
| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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118
revivals
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| n.复活( revival的名词复数 )；再生；复兴；（老戏多年后）重新上演 | |
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119
groan
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| vi./n.呻吟，抱怨；(发出)呻吟般的声音 | |
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120
enjoyment
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| n.乐趣；享有；享用 | |
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121
fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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122
succinctly
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| adv.简洁地；简洁地，简便地 | |
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123
revelled
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| v.作乐( revel的过去式和过去分词 )；狂欢；着迷；陶醉 | |
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124
deviations
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| 背离，偏离( deviation的名词复数 )； 离经叛道的行为 | |
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125
delectable
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| adj.使人愉快的；美味的 | |
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126
extraordinarily
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| adv.格外地；极端地 | |
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127
supremacy
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| n.至上；至高权力 | |
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128
hierarchy
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| n.等级制度；统治集团，领导层 | |
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129
overflowing
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| n. 溢出物,溢流 adj. 充沛的，充满的 动词overflow的现在分词形式 | |
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130
condemned
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| adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词 | |
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131
prematurely
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| adv.过早地，贸然地 | |
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132
superseded
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| [医]被代替的，废弃的 | |
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133
rococo
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| n.洛可可；adj.过分修饰的 | |
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134
antediluvian
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| adj.史前的，陈旧的 | |
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135
picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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136
amenity
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| n.pl.生活福利设施，文娱康乐场所；（不可数）愉快，适意 | |
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137
differentiated
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| 区分，区别，辨别( differentiate的过去式和过去分词 )； 区别对待； 表明…间的差别，构成…间差别的特征 | |
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138
systematically
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| adv.有系统地 | |
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139
contagion
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| n.(通过接触的疾病)传染；蔓延 | |
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140
vibrations
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| n.摆动( vibration的名词复数 )；震动；感受；（偏离平衡位置的）一次性往复振动 | |
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141
perversely
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| adv. 倔强地 | |
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142
recurs
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| 再发生，复发( recur的第三人称单数 ) | |
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143
bristle
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| v.（毛发）直立，气势汹汹，发怒；n.硬毛发 | |
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144
platitude
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| n.老生常谈，陈词滥调 | |
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145
voracious
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| adj.狼吞虎咽的，贪婪的 | |
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146
sniffed
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| v.以鼻吸气，嗅，闻( sniff的过去式和过去分词 )；抽鼻子（尤指哭泣、患感冒等时出声地用鼻子吸气）；抱怨，不以为然地说 | |
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147
extremity
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| n.末端，尽头；尽力；终极；极度 | |
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148
drenched
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| adj.湿透的；充满的v.使湿透( drench的过去式和过去分词 )；在某人（某物）上大量使用（某液体） | |
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149
distilled
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|
| adj.由蒸馏得来的v.蒸馏( distil的过去式和过去分词 )；从…提取精华 | |
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150
melancholy
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|
| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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151
instinctively
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| adv.本能地 | |
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152
futile
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| adj.无效的，无用的，无希望的 | |
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153
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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154
justify
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| vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护 | |
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155
virtuous
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| adj.有品德的，善良的，贞洁的，有效力的 | |
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156
complacent
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| adj.自满的；自鸣得意的 | |
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157
hover
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| vi.翱翔，盘旋；徘徊；彷徨，犹豫 | |
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158
chatter
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| vi.／n.喋喋不休；短促尖叫；(牙齿)打战 | |
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159
virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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160
simile
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| n.直喻，明喻 | |
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161
disingenuous
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| adj.不诚恳的，虚伪的 | |
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162
remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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163
complexity
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| n.复杂(性)，复杂的事物 | |
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164
abashes
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| v.使羞愧，使局促，使窘迫( abash的第三人称单数 ) | |
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165
precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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166
penetrating
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| adj.（声音）响亮的，尖锐的adj.（气味）刺激的adj.（思想）敏锐的，有洞察力的 | |
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167
edibles
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| 可以吃的，可食用的( edible的名词复数 )； 食物 | |
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168
animate
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| v.赋于生命，鼓励；adj.有生命的，有生气的 | |
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169
affiliated
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| adj. 附属的, 有关连的 | |
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170
affront
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| n./v.侮辱，触怒 | |
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171
votaries
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| n.信徒( votary的名词复数 )；追随者；（天主教）修士；修女 | |
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172
copious
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| adj.丰富的，大量的 | |
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173
devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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174
appreciation
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| n.评价；欣赏；感谢；领会，理解；价格上涨 | |
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175
passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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176
piety
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| n.虔诚，虔敬 | |
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177
encyclopedia
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| n.百科全书 | |
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178
commemorate
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| vt.纪念，庆祝 | |
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179
swarm
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| n.(昆虫)等一大群；vi.成群飞舞；蜂拥而入 | |
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180
infinitely
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| adv.无限地，无穷地 | |
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181
subdivided
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| 再分，细分( subdivide的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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182
nominal
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| adj.名义上的；(金额、租金)微不足道的 | |
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183
oar
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| n.桨，橹，划手；v.划行 | |
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184
compartment
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| n.卧车包房，隔间；分隔的空间 | |
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185
disinterested
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| adj.不关心的，不感兴趣的 | |
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186
fortify
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| v.强化防御，为…设防；加强，强化 | |
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187
appreciable
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| adj.明显的，可见的，可估量的，可觉察的 | |
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188
wail
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| vt./vi.大声哀号，恸哭；呼啸，尖啸 | |
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189
miraculously
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| ad.奇迹般地 | |
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190
frivolous
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| adj.轻薄的；轻率的 | |
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191
toiled
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| 长时间或辛苦地工作( toil的过去式和过去分词 )； 艰难缓慢地移动，跋涉 | |
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192
kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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193
penetrable
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| adj.可穿透的 | |
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194
dreary
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| adj.令人沮丧的，沉闷的，单调乏味的 | |
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195
vouchsafed
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| v.给予，赐予( vouchsafe的过去式和过去分词 )；允诺 | |
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196
disparagement
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| n.轻视，轻蔑 | |
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197
inveterately
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| adv.根深蒂固地，积习地 | |
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198
gouging
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| n.刨削[槽]v.凿( gouge的现在分词 )；乱要价；（在…中）抠出…；挖出… | |
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199
specification
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| n.详述；[常pl.]规格，说明书，规范 | |
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200
undertaking
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| n.保证，许诺，事业 | |
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201
sublimity
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| 崇高，庄严，气质高尚 | |
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202
sublime
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| adj.崇高的，伟大的；极度的，不顾后果的 | |
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203
benevolently
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| adv.仁慈地，行善地 | |
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204
benevolent
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| adj.仁慈的，乐善好施的 | |
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205
audacity
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| n.大胆，卤莽，无礼 | |
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206
innocence
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| n.无罪；天真；无害 | |
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207
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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208
ponderous
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| adj.沉重的，笨重的，(文章)冗长的 | |
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209
sundry
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| adj.各式各样的，种种的 | |
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210
pretension
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| n.要求；自命，自称；自负 | |
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211
pretensions
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| 自称( pretension的名词复数 )； 自命不凡； 要求； 权力 | |
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212
inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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213
portentous
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| adj.不祥的，可怕的，装腔作势的 | |
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214
robustness
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| 坚固性，健壮性；鲁棒性 | |
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215
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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216
vertiginous
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| adj.回旋的；引起头晕的 | |
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217
sociably
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| adv.成群地 | |
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218
augurs
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| n.（古罗马的）占兆官( augur的名词复数 )；占卜师，预言者v.预示，预兆，预言( augur的第三人称单数 )；成为预兆；占卜 | |
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219
wink
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| n.眨眼，使眼色，瞬间；v.眨眼，使眼色，闪烁 | |
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220
consolation
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| n.安慰，慰问 | |
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221
aspires
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| v.渴望，追求( aspire的第三人称单数 ) | |
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222
monarchical
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| adj. 国王的，帝王的，君主的，拥护君主制的 =monarchic | |
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223
saturated
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| a.饱和的，充满的 | |
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224
pictorial
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| adj.绘画的；图片的；n．画报 | |
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225
contention
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| n.争论，争辩，论战；论点，主张 | |
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226
insistence
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| n.坚持；强调；坚决主张 | |
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227
oracle
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| n.神谕，神谕处，预言 | |
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228
perceptive
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| adj.知觉的，有洞察力的，感知的 | |
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229
purport
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| n.意义，要旨，大要；v.意味著，做为...要旨，要领是... | |
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230
subservient
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| adj.卑屈的，阿谀的 | |
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231
comedians
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| n.喜剧演员，丑角( comedian的名词复数 ) | |
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232
abhorrent
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| adj.可恶的，可恨的，讨厌的 | |
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233
omniscience
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| n.全知，全知者，上帝 | |
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234
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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235
animated
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| adj.生气勃勃的，活跃的，愉快的 | |
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236
sketchiest
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| adj.概要的，不完全的，粗略的( sketchy的最高级 ) | |
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237
delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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238
apparatus
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| n.装置，器械；器具，设备 | |
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239
besiege
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| vt.包围，围攻，拥在...周围 | |
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240
voraciously
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| adv.贪婪地 | |
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241
ecstasy
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| n.狂喜，心醉神怡，入迷 | |
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242
insolent
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| adj.傲慢的，无理的 | |
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243
detailed
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| adj.详细的，详尽的，极注意细节的，完全的 | |
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244
discriminated
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| 分别，辨别，区分( discriminate的过去式和过去分词 )； 歧视，有差别地对待 | |
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245
barons
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| 男爵( baron的名词复数 )； 巨头； 大王； 大亨 | |
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246
ramifications
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| n.结果，后果( ramification的名词复数 ) | |
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247
enthralling
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| 迷人的 | |
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248
patrician
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| adj.贵族的，显贵的；n.贵族；有教养的人；罗马帝国的地方官 | |
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249
fatuous
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| adj.愚昧的；昏庸的 | |
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250
irony
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| n.反语，冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事，嘲弄 | |
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251
poetic
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| adj.富有诗意的，有诗人气质的，善于抒情的 | |
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252
scented
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| adj.有香味的；洒香水的；有气味的v.嗅到(scent的过去分词) | |
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253
smack
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| vt.拍，打，掴；咂嘴；vi.含有…意味；n.拍 | |
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254
connoisseur
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| n.鉴赏家，行家，内行 | |
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255
longing
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| n.（for）渴望 | |
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256
lurid
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| adj.可怕的；血红的；苍白的 | |
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257
fabric
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| n.织物，织品，布；构造，结构，组织 | |
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258
nought
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| n.／adj.无，零 | |
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259
snobs
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| （谄上傲下的）势利小人( snob的名词复数 )； 自高自大者，自命不凡者 | |
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260
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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261
bragging
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| v.自夸，吹嘘( brag的现在分词 )；大话 | |
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262
coercion
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| n.强制，高压统治 | |
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263
intercourse
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| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
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264
contortions
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| n.扭歪，弯曲；扭曲，弄歪，歪曲( contortion的名词复数 ) | |
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265
maternal
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| adj.母亲的，母亲般的，母系的，母方的 | |
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