Art Criticism and the Novel: Diderot and BalzacAuthor(s): Stephen J. GendzierReviewed work(s):Source: The French Review, Vol. 35, No. 3 (Jan., 1962), pp. 302-310Published by: American Association of Teachers of FrenchStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/383978 .Accessed: 23/09/2012 17:29

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

American Association of Teachers of French is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extendaccess to The French Review.

http://www.jstor.org

Art Criticism and the Novel: Diderot and Balzac

by Stephen J. Gendzier

A CHERISHED OPINION of nineteenth-century criticism which deserves to be questioned is that French realism after 1850 received its principles from the plastic arts and not from literature.' It can not be denied that Courbet and other painters were responsible for many of the current theories on the novel, yet it is also true that Balzac and his disciple, Champfleury, the leader of the realist movement, were keen students of Diderot's salon techniques and pictorial descriptions.

Bernard Guyon, in an introduction to Le Cousin Pons,2 has main- tained that Balzac rigorously constructed his novels with the aid of tech- niques learned from painting and dramaturgy. From the former disci- pline, he discovered the value of concentrating a spotlight on the prin- cipal characters and using contrasts in the description of their physical and mental traits. After the drama has been prepared with background material, suggestive dialogues, and characteristic utterances of people, the conflict bursts upon the novelistic stage with the force of a thea- trical production.

Balzac's interest in the classic, romantic, melodramatic, and bourgeois plays at the beginning of his career as a writer is paralleled by a pre- occupation with painting. From Les Chouans in 1829 to Les Parents pauvres at the end of his life, Balzac's use of plastic description in- creases in almost geometric proportions. In the first novel to which he signed his name, he realistically painted several scenes before the vogue and taste for the "true detail" had set in. Balzac remarked, in one scene of Les Chouans, that a painter would have admired the effects of night on a dog examining two strangers near a thatched cottage (Bg., XI, 942). After 1830, his vague interest in realistic painting became a conscious technique which he employed in almost every succeeding novel. In Gob- seck (January 1830), scenes are described in a plastic manner with an artist's perspective. When the usurer visits Fanny Malvaut, every object in the room tells a story about the occupant: "Son lit offrait le tableau

1 Ren6 Dumesnil, Le Rdalisme et le naturalisme (Paris: del Duca de Gigord, 1955), p. 15.

2 L'(Euvre de Balzac. Publid dans un ordre nouveau sous la direction d'Albert BWguin et de Jean A. Ducourneau. 16 v. (Paris: Le Club francais du livre, 1953), X, 467-485. This edition of Balzac will henceforth be abbreviated Bg.

302

DIDEROT AND BALZAC 303

d'un d6sordre produit sans doute par un sommeil agit6. Un peintre aurait pay6 pour rester pendant quelques moments au milieu de cette schne" (Bg., VI, 1340). Gobseck himself is portrayed as an unforgettable tableau (p. 1359), and as a "Hollandais digne du pinceau de Rem- brandt" (p. 1389). In La Peau de chagrin (1831), Balzac mentions the

paintings of Greuze for the first time (Bg., VII, 1143). Along with Wat- teau, the eighteenth-century painter of middle-class life will be cited

many times in La Comedie humaine. The tableaux that Balzac will

"paint" were to become living scenes in the style of Diderot's "drame

bourgeois." Theatrical scenes, Diderot believed, could never influence the art of

painting. "On n'a point encore fait, et l'on ne fera jamais un morceau de peinture supportable, d'apres une scene thb6trale."3 The converse, he remarked elsewhere, is true, since the painter could supply fresh tech-

niques for the dramatist in his depiction of the mores of the period. The genre painting of Greuze was a good example of the realism re-

quired by domestic and serious tragedy. Even though Diderot utlimately appraised Greuze in purely artistic terms,4 he was originally attracted to the painter because they were both preachers of family morality (A.-T., X, 336). Diderot entertained the same extra-artistic moral considerations with respect to the theater (similar to Balzac's conception of the thea-

ter). A play could highlight major ethical questions, provided it did not interfere with what he called the violent and rapid pace of the dramatic action. Of more importance was the type of scenes that Greuze painted, which could be reproduced on the stage. Diderot described many of these large canvases in his Salons. The titles adequately summarize the

subject matter: Un Pare qui vient de payer la dot de sa fille (known as

L'Accordde de village), the Pidt' filiale (known as the Paralytique, se- couru par ses enfants, subtitled by Diderot De la rdcompense de la bonne Mducation donnie), La Mere bien-aimde, Le Fils ingrat or La Malediction

paternelle, and Le Mauvais Fils puni. In Le Fils naturel, Diderot care- fully prepared several tableaux with doubtful success and in Le Ptre de famille there are a few awkward attempts to arrange the actors around the father (Act II, scene I and final scene), but the "philosophe" was not as accomplished a painter and a stage director as he was a theorist. It can be proven that Balzac was thoroughly aware of Diderot's theatri- cal, literary, and art criticism. The novelist was certainly introduced to Greuze through Diderot's Salons.

3 (Euvres completes. Eds. J. Assbzat and M. Tourneux. 20 v. (Paris: Gamier, 1875-

1877), X, 498. This edition will henceforth be abbreviated A.-T. 4 See Gita May, Diderot et Baudelaire: critiques d'art (Genbve: Droz, 1957), pp.

149-150.

304 FRENCH REVIEW

Up to 1848, the Louvre had very few eighteenth-century canvases, none by Boucher, Chardin, and Fragonard, only one sketch of Watteau, nothing of the school of Watteau, and perhaps not one Greuze.5 Even Baudelaire does not discuss Greuze in his Salons.6 Balzac not only spoke to his friends about Diderot's sublime pages on Greuze's portrayal of his wife in the Salons,7 he owned a sketch of a portrait the painter had made of his mistress, as well as other works.8 In Pierre Grassou (De- cember 1839), the mediocre, but socially successful painter begins his career by presenting to the jury of the Louvre a painting representing a village marriage that was laboriously copied from Greuze's canvas,

L'Accordde de village. Schinner, a friend of Grassou, tells him frankly

5 See Gita May, p. 55. In 1844, Theophile Thore complained about the absence of these painters in the Louvre (cited from L'Histoire des peintres au musde du Louvre). Harold Armitage explained in his study Greuze (London: George Bell & Sons, 1902), that during the turmoil of the post-revolutionary period, most of the painter's can- vases were sold abroad. "Thus the largest collection of pictures by Greuze is not found in Greuze's own country" (p. 59). That Greuze did not achieve any form of public acclaim is further attested by the inventory of the Louvre by P.-J. Angoul- vent, La Chalcographie du Louvre: Inventaire gendral et tables de recherche (Paris: Musbes Nationaux 1926). Not a single drawing, engraving, or painting by Greuze was acquired before 1881.

6 Gita May does not mention Greuze among the celebrated painters that appeared in Baudelaire's Salons, although she notes the artist among those whose works Bau- delaire had collected (p. 54, n. 23).

7 LUon Gozlan, one of Balzac's intimate friends for many years, related that one evening in Balzac's apartment in Passy, the novelist pointed to a sketch by Greuze and exclaimed: "Voici maintenant le portrait de Mme Greuze peint par I'inimitable Greuze. C'est la premiere esquisse de tous les portraits de Mme Greuze. Le premier traitl celui que I'artiste ne retrouve plus. Diderot a 6crit sur cette esquisse suave vingt pages dtlicates, sublimes, divines dans son Salon. Lisez son Salon; voyez l'ar- ticle Greuze, lisez cet adorable morceaul" Balzac en pantoufles (Paris: Delmas, 1949), p. 166. Volume VIII of the Bribre edition (1821-1823) has this famous passage in which Diderot describes Greuze's paintings of his wife and various other subjects. See the Salon of 1765 in A.-T., X, 341-359.

8 The "esquisse du portrait de la maitresse [sic] de Greuze par Greuze" hung in the salon of the first floor of Balzac's "h6tel de la rue Fortun&e" according to an inventory the novelist made around 1847, Lovenjoul Collection, Chantilly, File A 329. Balzac is probably mistaken in assuming that it was the mistress and not the wife of the painter. When he wrote to Mme. Hanska (the 24th and the 29th of July, 1846) he said that he had received a gift of "la tite de madame Greuze" by Greuze Lettres a l'Etrangtre (Paris: Calmann-L6vy, 1933), III, 331. Balzac outdid Diderot in his praise of Greuze. In describing the new present to his future wife, he said: "C'est la femme de Greuze, faite par Greuze pour lui servir de

module pour sa fameuse Accordde de village (trois cents francs). Tant que vous n'aurez pas vu cela, vous ne saurez pas ce que c'est que l'6cole frangaise. Rubens, Van Dyck, Rembrandt, Raphael et Titien ne sont pas plus forts" (p. 351).

DIDEROT AND BALZAC 305

that the composition is merely a pastiche of Greuze which does not redeem the faults of the great painter by new personal qualities (Bg., VIII, 172-173). It is unlikely that Balzac could have become so thor-

oughly acquainted with Greuze through private collections or by en- gravings which were not to be found in public museums. He undoubt-

edly read many of Diderot's Salons and was attracted to the painter for similar moral, artistic, dramatic, and literary reasons.

In La Cousine Bette (1847), which opens with Balzac's praise of Dide- rot's Ceci n'est pas un conte, a scene is devoted to Baron Hulot's visit to Mlle. Mirah's apartment in which many paintings hang. The list

begins with two canvases of Greuze and two of Watteau (Bg., IX, 795). Greuze is mentioned in Le Cousin Pons (1847) at least six times, as would be expected in the story of the collector. Watteau is often paired with Greuze as a great painter. In these two final masterpieces, the blend of techniques from painting and dramaturgy becomes so impor- tant in the structure of the novels that Balzac underlined his intentions in black pencil for the reader.

Ici commence le drame, ou, si vous voulez, la comedie terrible de la mort d'un cdlibataire livrd par la, force des choses a la rapacitd des na- tures cupides qui se groupent & son lit, et qui, dans ce cas, eurent pour auxiliaires la passion la plus vive, celle d'un tableaumane, I'aviditd du sieur Fraisier, qui, vu dans sa caverne, va vous faire frdmir, et la soif d'un Auvergnat capable de tout, mime d'un crime pour se faire un ca- pital. Cette comedie, &i laquelle cette partie du rdcit sert en quelque sorte d'avant-scine, a d'ailleurs pour acteurs tous les personnages qui jusqu'& present ont occupd la scene. (Bg. X, 675).

In many other places, as Balzac frames scenes and tableaux, he points this out to the reader (for example Bg., X, 704), and thereby helps him visualize the pictorial representation of an animated theatrical scene. After 1830, Balzac experimented with all these techniques in a number of works. L'Etude de femme (March 12, 1830) imitates the structure of

Molibre's Tartuffe (Bg., VI, 1283). In Le Colonel Chabert (Feb.-March 1832), there is a carefully painted tableau of clients assembled in a law- yer's office, exactly like Balzac's later reproduction in his play Pamnla Giraud (Bg., I, 1149). At one point in the novel, two children meet their mother after a temporary separation. "Les mains 6taient 6tendues vers la m&re, et les deux voix enfantines se mdlaient. Ce fut un tableau sou- dain et dclicieux" (p. 1161). Ga-tan Picon has remarked that La Bourse

(May 1832) ends with a composition "t la Greuze" in which all the characters are assembled in a tearful pictorial tableau (Bg., II, 803).

306 FRENCH REVIEW

Balzac asked in Ferragus (March-April 1833) why no painter had repro- duced the physiognomy of a swarm of Parisians grouped under the damp porch of a house in a rainy moment. "OAi rencontrer un plus riche tableau?" (Bg., II, 412). Genestas visits with the doctor of Le Medecin de campagne (1832-1833), in a scene which produced what Balzac de- scribed as "un effet theitral," the death of the "phre de famille" sur- rounded at the bedside by his children and closest relatives. Men and women are kneeling and praying, most of those present are weeping (Bg., VII, 109-110). Few artists besides Greuze or Diderot would have conceived of such a scene as being worthy of serious art.

In Le Curd de Tours (April 1832), both techniques are repeatedly used. Balzac prepared the conflict of the novel by the usual descriptions, character sketches, scattered conversations, and then he editorialized: "Les ev~nements qui constituent en quelque sorte l'avant-scene de ce drame bourgeois, mais oii les passions se retrouvent tout aussi violentes

que si elles 6taient excitees par de grands inteirets, exigeaient cette longue introduction, et il efit ete difficile a un historien exact d'en resserrer les minutieux deiveloppements" (Bg., VI, 558-559). The story is then com-

pleted by a few events, and Balzac excuses himself for then sketching in a last tableau (p. 611).

In one of his best-known novels, Eugenie Grandet is described as a celestial type of Mary, who could be used as a painter's model. Her eyes are meek yet proud, the kind which Raphael had portrayed (Bg., V, 784). The theatrical examples which Balzac followed in this novel were not only the bourgeois tragedy "a la Diderot," but also the Greek drama, with the fatal play of destiny. Balzac's realistic eye drew most of the imposing characters of the entire Comedie humaine on enlarged can- vases. He began the description of his most famous figure by suggest- ing the artistic value of his countenance. "Ce Patiras 6tait l'ancien ver- micellier, le pdre Goriot, sur la t&te duquel un peintre aurait, comme l'historien [Balzac was both], fait tomber toute la lumibre du tableau" (Bg., IV, 35). Cesar Birotteau, the "drama of a bankruptcy," ends with the Abbe Loraux saying, " 'Voila la mort du juste,' . . . d'une voix grave en montrant Cesar par un de ces gestes divins que Rembrandt a su de- viner pour son tableau du Christ rappelant Lazare a la vie" (Bg., II, 363).

Whether or not Balzac explicitly labeled his scenes as tableaux, he often arranged the characters in a domestic group "a la Greuze." The old man Sechard in Illusions perdues is described in the bedroom of his family with the grandchildren smiling in their cradles (Bg., IV, 955). Bette is surrounded on her deathbed by the entire Hulot family in tears (La Cousine Bette, Bg., IX, 1204). These techniques of painting were a

DIDEROT AND BALZAC 307

conscious instrument in Balzac's repertory of devices for realistic descrip- tion. Even the vocabulary of art criticism was useful in defining the goals of the novel.

When discussing one of Fenimore Cooper's tableaux of nature, Bal- zac remarked that aside from a very young girl, "ces figures sont nature, pour employer le mot des ateliers."g The novelist's criteria for a well- constructed novel can be found in his famous "Etudes sur M. Beyle." One negative comment in these studies illustrates the mixture of plastic and fictional criticism. "Figurez-vous que les plans les plus savamment

compliques de Walter-Scott n'arrivent pas a l'admirable simplicit& qui regne dans le r&cit des ces 6venements si nombreux, si feuillus, pour employer la c6~lbre expression de Diderot."10 The word feuillus cannot be found in any of Diderot's works, although feuilles is part of the phi- losophe's critical art vocabulary." The idea itself was not only used in the Salons, but was expressed in most of his critical studies on the novel and particularly on the novel of the seventeenth century. In the Bijoux indiscrets, the Eloge de Richardson, and Jacques le fataliste, Diderot

opposed the picaresque accumulation of unbelievable, frivolous, and un-

ending adventures, to the simple, direct, and true expression of man's interests and passions. These were Balzac's criteria. As for the expres- sion feuillus, Diderot had actually created this neologism in a conver- sation with Rousseau.12 It was eventually handed down to Balzac

through Rousseau and other writers as a well-known symbol, as a crys- tallization of an extensive literary idea derived from art criticism.

Balzac's interest in art criticism dates from the early 1830's. Le Chef-

9 Balzac, (Euvres diverses. Eds. Marcel Bouteron and Henri Longnon. (Paris: L. Conard, 1940), III, 283.

10 Ibid., p. 377. 11 Salon de 1781 (A.-T., XII, 58). 12 Emile Littre in his Suppldment (p. 158), Dictionnaire de la langue franaise, 4

v. and Suppldment (Paris: Hachette, 1863-1872, 1877) cites a passage in the Confes- sions, book IX of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, then defines feuillu by Diderot's definition. Here is the entire passage from Rousseau: "I1 y avait pr6s de six mois que je lui [Diderot] avais envoye les deux premieres parties de Julie pour m'en dire son avis. Il ne les avait pas encore lues. Nous en luGmes un cahier ensemble. Il trouva tout cela feuillet, ce fut son terme, c'est-a-dire charg6 de paroles et redondant. Je l'avais ddjit bien senti moi-meme" (Rousseau, Ecrits autobiographiques, Ed. Jean Massin [Paris: Le Club frangais du livre, 1959], pp. 518-519). Littr6 received a note from M. Ch. Berthoud de Gingings (Vaud) who explained that the spelling of feuillet was the result of a mistake by the copyist Jeanvin. The original text read feuillu and Balzac was correct, even if many of the subsequent editions of the Confessions re- mained in error. Rousseau, in a letter to Duclos (November 19, 1760) repeated the expression: "A la 4e partie [de l'Hdloise] vous trouvez que le style n'est pas feuillu; tant mieux" (Littr6, Suppldmnent, p. 158).

308 FRENCH REVIEW

d'ceuvre inconnu was published in l'Artiste from the 31st of July to the 6th of August. As Margaret Gilman discovered, the principal ideas with which Balzac supplied his mad painter Frenhofer can be found in Diderot's Salons: "the conception of imitation, of the 'moddle ideal'; the necessity for close correspondence between effects and cause in painting; and the various technical means by which truth to life is obtained."'3 When Balzac retouched the text of the original 1831 articles for a new edition in 1837, the passages on art criticism were all reworked. One view of the changes is that his close friend and collaborator on the Chronique de Paris, Theophile Gautier, was responsible for all the pas- sages which appear copied from Diderot.14 Margaret Gilman believed it might have been either Delacroix or another painter-critic. In the former case, we know that Gautier hailed Diderot in the 1830's as one of the younger generations' idols, and in regard to Delacroix, it has been proven that many of his ideas originate in Diderot's Salons.'5

Baudelaire related that one day Balzac was looking at a beautiful painting of a winter scene, rather melancholy in tone and covered with frost. Scattered around were poor huts and wretched peasants. Balzac noticed a small house from which a thin line of smoke arose, and he exclaimed: "Que c'est beau.l Mais que font-ils dans cette cabane? a quoi pensent-ils, quels sont leurs chagrins? les r&coltes ont-elles 6td bonnes? Ils dont sans doute des 6ch6ances 'a payer?"'1 The lesson in art appre- ciation that Balzac gleaned from this experience is that a painting can often be appreciated solely by the combination of ideas and reveries which it brings to mind. Many passages of Diderot's Salons were con- jectures on his part concerning the personal, moral, and social life of the painted figures. He wove intimate and sentimental tales (such as La Jeune Fille qui pleure son oiseau mort) which were lessons in fic- tional representation of reality as well as art appreciation. Even if some of the esthetic ideas came to Balzac through his friends and acquain- tances, we know that Balzac himself read Diderot's Salons, and that the original source, no matter how many the intermediaries, was the en- cyclopedist.

13 Margaret Gilman, "Balzac and Diderot: Le Chef-d'ceuvre inconnu," PMLA, LXV (June 1950), 644-648.

14 Bg., XII, x-xi, Notes to Le Chef-d'ceuvre inconnu by the editors. See also Charles Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, "Honord de Balzac et Th6ophile Gautier: A propos du Chef-d'ceuvre inconnu," in Autour de Honord de Balzac (Paris: Calmann-LUvy, 1899), pp. 3-88.

15 Gita May, op. cit., pp. 27-37. See also Louis Hautecceur, Littdrature et peinture en France du XVIIe au XXe siecle (Paris: Armand Colin, 1942), pp. 50-53.

16 Baudelaire, Curiositds esthdtiques, in (Euvres completes, Ed. Y. G. Le Dantec, Bibliothbque de la Pleiade, (Paris: Gallimard, 1954), p. 692.

DIDEROT AND BALZAC 309

Balzac did not have to transfer Diderot's theories on painting to the novel, since the latter had already made the transition in his own com- ments on realistic fiction. Diderot remarked about Greuze that he was "le premier qui se soit avis6, parmi nous, de donner des moeurs a l'art, et d'enchainer des &vdnements d'apr6s lesquels il serait facile de faire un roman" (A.-T., X, 341). If paintings could serve as scenes for tableaux in novels, the converse was also true: novels could furnish the subject matter for paintings. Diderot stated in a letter he sent to Meister with La Religieuse, which was to be published in the Correspondance littd- raire: "C'est un ouvrage ta feuilleter sans cesse par les peintres, et si la vanit6 ne s'y opposait, sa veritable 6pigraphe serait: son pittor anch'io."'7 Georges May has shown how the pictorial method of Greuze in L'Ac- cordee de village is employed in La Religieuse.s1 The framing of scenes is a recurrent technique, although Diderot used it sparingly in his nov- els. He interrupted the dialogues and the narration of several stories in

Jacques le fataliste to paint one such scene (which Champfleury admired in Le Rdalisme, p. 90). The story of Mme. de la Pommeraye, told in the Inn of the Grand-Cerf, is left suspended in mid-air with this realistic tableau:

Lecteur, j'avais oublid de vous peindre le site des trois personnages dont il s'agit ici, Jacques, son maitre et l'hdtesse; faute de cette attention, vous les avez entendus parler, mais vous ne les avez point vus; il vaut mieux tard que jamais. Le maltre, a gauche, en bonnet de nuit, en robe de chambre, dtait dtald nonchalamment dans un grand fauteuil de tapis- serie, son mouchoir jetd sur le bras du fauteuil, et sa tabatiere a la main. L'hdtesse sur le fond, en face de la porte, proche la table, son verre devant elle. Jacques, sans chapeau, ia sa droite, les deux coudes appuyds sur la table, et la tete penchde entre deuxs bouteilles: deux autres dtaient & terre a ctde' de lui. (A.-T., VI, 135)

With the exception of a few suggestions for settings, Diderot could not create in his own theater the tableaux which he recommended to

playwrights, but he did successfully incorporate them into his novels, thereby creating an additional third dimension and a sense of reality that could not have been achieved through conversation and plot alone. The Cafe de la Rjgence is sketched in Le Neveu de Rameau. Through-

17 Quoted by Georges May, Quatre Visages de Denis Diderot (Paris: Boivin, 1951), p. 196. The correct expression is anch'io son pittore, I too am a painter, attributed to Correggio on seeing a picture by Raphael.

18 Georges May, Diderot et "la Religieuse," (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954), pp. 200-202.

310 FRENCH REVIEW

out La Religieuse there are many dramatic moments which are preceded by physical descriptions of the characters as if they were posed by a

stage director and a painter. Domestic and intimate scenes, which would have pleased Balzac, are appropriately drawn in the Entretien d'un pare avec ses enfants and Sur l'inconsequence des jugements publics. The tale which Balzac greatly admired, Ceci n'est pas un conte, has a num- ber of striking (and pathetic) tableaux. Tanid, the deserted lover, pleads with Mme. Reymer on his knees at the foot of her bed, his lips pressed to her hand and his face half hidden in the covers. Mme. de La Chaux, abandoned by Gardeil, throws herself into an armchair, thrusts her arms forward to Dr. Le Camus, and cries out in despair. Diderot's scenes are

rarely painted in full detail. He generally used a deft and quick brush stroke to suggest the arrangement of figures, but they were soon ani- mated (as in Balzac) with pantomime, dialogue, and movement. When Balzac borrowed a literary technique, such as the use of tableaux, he never did so in a mechanical fashion, for his novels are certainly com-

plex syntheses of many personal demands and devices. Yet even if his

acknowledged masters are kept in mind when comparing fictional tech-

niques, the inescapable conclusion is that Diderot's artistic ideas had a

powerful impact on Balzac's conception of the novel, and consequently on future generations of writers.

MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY