Honoré de Balzac

>>9400523
Are you really willing to compare two translations both of which are done by different people?

Illusiones Perdu
d'Arthez
Stupid comparison

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>>9400523
I feel as if I'm missing out not having read Balzac, but I can't motivate myself to read anyone without really knowing anything about him
Who was Balzac, what's he about?

>>9401677
He was a career writer that wrote for a living. He therefore published over 100 books of varying quality. He was an early realist/naturalist writing about post-napoleon France.
His political views are the antithesis of Hugo's.
Engels said Balzac was his favorite writer.

LOL BALZAC? WHAT KIND OF NAME IS THAT IT SOUNDS LIKE BALL SACK LMAO

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>>9401715
>HONOR THE BALLSACK

I liked Le Chef-d’œuvre inconnu

I read Pere Goriot and thought it was pretty good. Kind of boring. I don't see how he is in any way comparable too Tolstoy

La Rabouilleuse (The Black Sheep)
Vautrin
Too variable, wrote too much too quickly under pressure of his debts.

>>9402844
>I don't see how he is in any way comparable too Tolstoy
Who tf ever implied that ?

>>9403196
OP?

This thread is dangerously philosophical. Balzac and Tolstoy both wrote philosophies of their era, spawning the Painter of Modern Life and The Kingdom of God is Within You.

>>>/pol/

>>9403341
Painter of Modern Life is Baudelaire, you div

>>9403341
you suck at jokes, read more Balzac

>>9403347
if you're into sucking balzac, that good for you but just not everyone's thing

>>9403360
further evidence of your jokes falling flat, read a book

>>9403382
everyone likes the balzac/ballsack joke, anon. it's just never getting old

>>9401677
He despised coffee.

i read eugenie grandet as part of a french lit class on money and thought it was alright

my french is pretty good, but not good enough to really appreciate literary fiction. id like to take another stab at him once ive improved- currently im slogging through madame bovary.

anyone know any good french short stories? like 20-100 pages?

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>>9401677
Here in our french country we had to read him a lot in highschool/college. He's a trash paid-by-word writer with no quality content but extremely long winded purple prose for obvious reasons. Avoid at all cost. Read Maupassant and Hugo instead.

>>9403783
un homme qui dort

>>9404168
>actively dispelling the urban myth of French being highly cultured people through his aggressive plebeianism
Doing God's work, anon.

>>9400523

I've only read a smattering of his work, but I really enjoyed 'The Atheist's Mass'

>translations

>>9403783
Boule de suif

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I read Eugénie Grandet in December and Felix Grandet was a fantastic character. I also wanted to know more about Charles Grandet's life as a merchant/smuggler/slave trafficker.

I should read more Balzac. Any suggestions?

I don't like books with too many descriptions of everything, it's dull desu

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>>9404168
yeah no
you're wrong, hugo is not that profound and while seen as a national poet, he comes off as kitsch to most in the milieu. obviously you're talking out of your ass and don't actually know Balzac well, and as with saying that he has no quality content, think about the hundred-and-more works in the Human Comedy, and consider that he wrote books that are not counted in this cycle. Statistically speaking, what you're squealing is utter drivel. To encompass the entire span of his era, this is the ambition that he sought to achieve, and he did so with enough brio that he was acclaimed globally. Nietzsche said he was the best psychologist there is, the young dostoievsky red the complete Human comedy, and his social acumen is indeed striking if you ACTUALLY read him

plus how dare you talk about the quality of his prose when you clearly dont speak french ? translations arent sufficient to judge

>''but i k-know french ! i studied it like two years at high school !''

now please, je ne parle pas de baragouinage qui te limite à une compréhension médiocre. If you cant savor good style as you should, have the decency to not influence other anons. Everybody ITT should him properly

>>9404168
>low quality bait

Balzac's work is uneven, but staggering in its ambition. The more of him you read, the more you start to boggle at what he was attempting. His best novels are vividly realised and have a unique theatrical quality. They're as good as anything produced in 19th century France.

Can you read any books of his comedie humaine and not start with the first one he wrote?