L’Année balzacienne, 2000 ed. by Michel Lichtlé (review)

Abstract

240 Reviews L'Annee balzacienne, 2005. Ed. by MICHEL LICHTLE. (Troisieme Serie, 6) Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. 2005. 501 pp. ?43. ISBN 978-2-I3-055433 2. This edition ofL'Annee balzacienne contains a coherent cluster of six articles empha sizing different aspects of the constructedness of the 'le personnage balzacien' and thus usefully complementing the recentBalzac et la crise des identites,ed. by Em manuelle Cullmann and others (Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire: Christian Pirot, 2005). This constructedness of character can be kaleidoscopic, as in the disparate but cumula tively revealing portrayals of le colonel Chabert (Jacques-David Ebguy), or physical, as in the unrepresentative emphasis on black hair, dark eyes, and pale complexions in thepremiers romans (Marie-Benedicte Diethelm, inspired byAbraham's Creatures chezBalzac (Paris: Gallimard, I931)), or self-consciously linguistic, aswith Balzac's many 'bavards', whose verbal excesses echo, parody, and thus potentially reverse and redeem a similar expansiveness inBalzac's own fictions (Michael Tilby). Thus, con trary towhat Robbe-Grillet claimed, Balzac's characters are neither monolithic nor all-invasive, but shifting,self-aware, and above all subordinate to 'la transpositionsous la formed'un recit,deroule dans le temps et centre autour d'evenements' (Ebguy, p. 7). The three remaining articles in this section give further examples of the ways inwhich Balzac's fictions explore and exploit the constructedness of his charac ters. While the inclusion of actual historical figures, such as Catherine de Medicis, might seem to inhibit character construction, such historical personages can, asAude Deruelle demonstrates, enable Balzac to reassess and even reconstructtheircharacters, turning them into a particular kind of 'personnage reparaissant'. Equally capable of reconstruction, and of an evenmore dynamic kind, are, according to Isabelle Michelot, those characters who are sufficientlyskilful actors to (re-)create their own identities and roles. For Mireille Labouret, in a subtle study of 'le personnage reparaissant', Balzac's readers also have a part toplay in theconstruction/reconstruction of his char acters: 'La construction du personnage passe alors par la reconstruction syntheique qu'elabore le lecteur' (p. 139). Apart, perhaps, from Marie-Benedicte Diethelm's exhaustive investigation of tra vel inBalzac's time, a second, seemingly more disparate section pursues these themes of self-consciousness and ambivalence. In Illusions perdues, for example, the 'es prit' which Balzac belittles in journalists and even aristocrats (Jose-Luis Diaz) and the 'bizarre' associated with themonstrous and the grotesque (Regine Borderie) are shown nevertheless to informand inspire theBalzacian aesthetic. However ultimately reactionary in outcome, Balzac's royalist plots are also a nexus of complex, shifting gender relationships (Lucienne Frappier-Mazur) and, however imbued with melan choly,memory in theComedie humaine still invitesmoral and social critique (Danielle Dupuis). In termsof language and themes, then, as forthe characters, Balzac's novels are agonistic, dynamic, oxymoronic (Diaz, p. 174). As if to show the inexhaustibility of the perspective adopted, a thirdgroup of ar ticles includes well-researched excavations of camouflaged or undervalued subtexts Jewishness in Les Marana (Anne-Marie Baron), female, not to say feminist, self awareness inMemoires de deux jeunesmariees (Ye Young Chung), and whist-playing as textual/sexual mise en abyme in Modeste Mignon (Vincent Laisney). Furthermore, as JoelleGleize shows in her examination of the status and implications of the self conscious ironies in thePathologie de la vie sociale, it is a similar, culminating combi nation of play and seriousness in theEtudes analytiques which, aswith Diaz's 'esprit', can lead to 'la reevaluation de l'importance epist&mologique du projet balzacien' (Gleize, p. 301). Articles on Balzac and Rossini by Liliane Lascoux and theusual reviews and docu MLR, I03.1, 2oo8 24I mentation complete the volume, on whose consistency, quality, and interestMichel Lichtle and theGroupe d'Etudes balzaciennes are, as ever, to be congratulated. UNIVERSITY OF BRADFORD OWEN HEATHCOTE Music Writing Literature, from Sand via Debussy toDerrida. By PETER DAYAN. Aldershot: Ashgate. 2006. Xi+ 14I PP. ?45. ISBN 978-O-7546-5I93-2. This broad-ranging interdisciplinary study highlights two conflicting approaches to theproblem of defining the essence ofmusic and literature,which Peter Dayan labels Berlioz's First and Second Principles. The former, at the root of cultural studies, deals with 'the objectively verifiable features that a given interpretive community associates with the terms' (p...