The parish priest of Tours
The pastor of Tours (also The Vicar of Tours , original title: Le Curé de Tours ) is a novella by the French writer Honoré de Balzac from 1832. It is part of the Scènes de la vie de province within Balzac's work La Comédie humaine .
content
The meek and somewhat naive Abbé Birotteau found on his nightly way home across the cloister courtyard that the front door was not opened immediately despite several rings. After he finally got into the house, he is annoyed that the candlestick is not in its usual place. When he got to his apartment on the first floor, contrary to all custom, he found it unheated; his slippers are also out of place. The flashback tells how the Abbé got to this apartment, including its furniture and the extensive library. It comes from his long-time friend, Abbé Chapeloud, who was the canon of Tours Cathedral, who died the year before . Although he recognized his friend Birotteau's greed to get to his cozy apartment and furnishings, he bequeathed it to his friend.
Chapeloud lived in the secularized part of the cloister for rent with Mademoiselle Sophie Gamard, an old maid. When she was looking for a new tenant after Capeloup's death, it initially seemed to her to be an advantage to accept Birotteau as a new tenant, as she hoped that it would enable her to gain social advancement and access to the better circles of the city, which Birotteau also frequented. But she soon finds out that her plan doesn't work out; she then decides to take revenge on Birroteau.
On the morning after the nightly incident, Birotteau noticed with irritation that his attempts to initiate the usual conversation at the breakfast table had come to nothing; only his table companion, Abbé Troubert, replies politely, but as usual in monosyllables. When returning to lunch in a hurry, he has to wait for the first course to be cleared; however, he notices that the clock in the dining room has been set. After the attempt at a discussion with Abbé Troubert, with the attempt to win him over as a mediator, remained fruitless, the vicar fled desperately to the country residence of his noble friend, the Baroness of Listomère, a few kilometers outside Tours, where those present were trying to find Birotteau cheer up. A few days later the lawyer Mademoiselle Gamards appears and demands that the vicar give up the apartment. Birroteau asked for a day to think about it before signing the waiver, not knowing that he would lose the furniture inherited from the Abbé Chapeloud. In his naivete, he had failed to recognize that the lease agreed that the furniture and the library would be assigned if the vicar died or moved out prematurely. This would offset Birroteau's lower rent compared to that of its predecessor. Birotteau angrily rushes to his former house and wants to confront his landlady. Instead, he learns from the domestic servant that Abbé Troubert has exchanged his damp and small apartment in the house for the more comfortable one from Birotteau. Only now does Birroteau learn in horror about the loss of the beloved furniture. When he reported this to his friends in the country, some advised him to try the landlady, but one, Monsieur de Bourbonne, took him aside and advised him to leave Tours and choose a parish where nobody knew him.
Meanwhile, Birotteau suspects nothing of the intrigues of the ambitious Abbé Troubert, who wants to destroy the meek Abbé Birotteau in his striving for power towards the bishopric. Meanwhile in Tours the two parties are irreconcilably opposed to each other, on the one hand the “liberals”, noble empires who support Birroteau, and on the other the “clericals” who are on the side of Mademoiselle Gamard and Abbé Troubert. When the Baroness von Listomère notices that Troubert's long arm reaches as far as Paris and that her nephew's military career is in jeopardy, she cautiously retreats, drops Birotteau diplomatically and, in a long conversation, concludes an agreement with Troubert, which both of them Pages satisfied. Poor Birotteau is deported to a poor parish in a suburb.
reception
For André Maurois , Balzac's Le Curé de Tours was “both a wonderful novel and a courageous act”. Balzac created “a painting of all social classes of Tours, the secret power of the Congregation and the underground influence of the Grand Almosenier. The novella became a precious document in the history of the Restoration and also demonstrated an astonishing knowledge of human souls and those minor details that mean everything. There is no doubt that Dilecta inspired him ”.
Edition history
The novella first appeared in 1832 under the title Les Célibataires by Mame-Delaunay in the series of stories Scènes de la vie privée within La Comédie humaine . In 1834 it was published in the Édition Béchet, as Scènes de la vie de province , together with the stories Pierrette, La Rabouilleuse and Un ménage de garçon . The novella was not given the final title Le Curé de Tours until 1843 in the Balzac edition of the Édition Furne.
Quotes
- "Weak people calm down just as easily as they are frightened."
- "In Touraine , as in most provinces, envy is the basis of the language."
- "If great things are understandably easy to understand and easy to express, the little details of life require many details."
- "Mindless people are like weeds that fall in good soil, and they are all the more likely to be scattered as they are bored with themselves."
- “Few people openly show their mistakes right from the start. In general, everyone tries to give themselves an attractive bowl. "
German editions
- Balzac, Honore de: Ursula Mirouet. Eugenie Grandet. The parish priest of Tours. The old maid. Women study. Translated by Johannes Schlaf, Gisela Etzel, Hedwig Lachmann and Max Christian Wegner. Leipzig, Insel 1924
- The parish priest of Tours . Novella. Transferred by Johannes Schlaf . Leipzig, Insel, [1925]. ( Insel Library No. 98/2)
- Pierrette . From the French v. Rosa Schapire. Berlin, Rowohlt, [1924]. Content: Pierrette - The parish priest of Tours
- Caesar Birotteau's greatness and decline. Eugene Grandet. The parish priest of Tours. The secrets of the Princess of Cadignan . Compiled by Franz Hessel . Leipzig, Fikentscher, 1926
- Master novels Translated from the French by Eva Rechel-Mertens . Zurich, Manesse, 1953
- Bachelor business . Novellas, from d. Franz. Transl. v. Anna Wagenknecht. Weimar, Aufbau-Verlag, 1970
literature
- Doris Kuhn-Meierhans: Le Cure de Tours. Study of the power and impotence of man in the work of Honore de Balzac . Zurich, Juris, 1958
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Archive link ( Memento from December 5, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ http://www.kritiker.de/Honore_de_Balzac/Der_Pfarrer_von_Tours