The Hall of Uselessness: Collected Essays (New York Review Books Classics) by Simon Leys Page B

of puzzlement for some of the best connoisseurs (who were also his warmest admirers), from Baudelaire to Flaubert. The paradox was aptly summed up by Flaubert himself: “What a man Balzac would have been had he known how to write! But that was the only thing he lacked. After all, an artist would never have accomplished so much, nor had such breadth.”
    French literary taste always finds it difficult to deal with those aspects of genius that do not readily fit within a classical frame. An early illustration of this tendency was provided by Voltaire when he apologised for having foolishly introduced Shakespeare on the French stage: “I first showed the French a few pearls I had retrieved from his huge heap of dung . . . I did not realise at the time that I was actually trampling upon the laurels of Racine and Corneille in order to adorn the head of this barbaric play-actor.”[ 1 ] Later on, native literary giants did not fare much better. Victor Hugo, who was Balzac’s junior by only three years (but whose career lasted nearly twice as long), came to enjoy even greater popularity; yet, for all his triumphs, he never fully succeeded in disarming the reservations of the purists. In our own time, two comments that summarise, with cruel wit, the critical ambivalence that still persists towards Hugo would fit Balzac much better. On being asked who was the greatest French poet, André Gide replied: “Victor Hugo—alas!” And Jean Cocteau added: “Victor Hugo was a madman who believed he was Victor Hugo.” Both in greatness and in lunacy, Balzac certainly scaled heights that were at least as spectacular.
    Balzac’s claim to the title of Greatest French Novelist of All Time can hardly be disputed: he simply bulldozed his way into that position, propelled by the sheer mass and energy of his production. The total cast of his Comédie humaine amounts to some 3,500 characters (including a few animals)—in all Western literature, only Shakespeare and Dickens approached such a bewildering fecundity.
    To engage in a complete reading of his Comédie humaine is akin to climbing onto a raft and attempting the descent of a huge wild river: once you start, you cannot get off, you are powerless to stop, you are carried away into another world—more exciting, more intense, more real than the dull scene you left ashore. Everything is larger than life, loaded with energy. In Balzac’s novels, Baudelaire observed, even doorkeepers have genius, and Oscar Wilde added:
    A steady course of Balzac reduces our living friends to shadows, and our acquaintances to the shadows of shades. His characters have a kind of fervent, fiery coloured existence. They dominateus and defy scepticism . . . Balzac is no more a realist than Holbein was. He created life, he did not copy it.
    If the ride is exhilarating, it can also be rough. At times you will surge and soar, but you will also be bumped about and struck by absurdities: “Children, said the old marquess, as he took all three of them by the hand .” You will have to swallow a ration of indigestible, insipid or silly images: “She was more than a woman, she was a masterpiece!” “Socrates, the pearl of mankind.” Sometimes, however, the tastelessness is relieved by grotesquerie: “The Countess’s breasts, which were lightly veiled by a translucid gauze, were devoured by the charmed eyes of the young man, who could, in the silence of the night, hear the murmur of these ivory globes.” (In fact, women’s breasts seem to have fed some of Balzac’s oddest inspirations. Elsewhere, he describes the visual impact produced by a middle-aged woman’s “low-cut dress”: “Mlle. Cormon’s treasures were violently thrust out of their jewel-cases.”) In some passages the gap that usually separates literature from cheap sentimental fiction is boldly bridged, for instance in this description of a loose actress falling passionately in love with a handsome young poet:
    Coralie took advantage of the