Glory and misery of the courtesans
Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes is a novel by Honoré de Balzac . It appeared in four parts between 1838 and 1846 and, in terms of content, follows on from the novel Lost Illusions, which was partly written at the same time . The glamor and misery of courtesans is one of the scenes from Parisian life within the Comédie Humaine ( The Human Comedy ) .
content
After the opaque Abbé Carlos Herrera, who is actually the escaped convict Vautrin alias Collin, saved the young poet Lucien de Rubempré from suicide ( Lost Illusions ended ), he returned to social life in Paris in 1824. Protected by Herrera / Vautrin / Collin, he is considered a secret employee of various politicians and becomes a lover of society women such as the Duchess de Maufrigneuse and Madame de Sérizy. Lucien is secretly in a relationship with the courtesan Esther, whom Collin had temporarily brought up in a convent. She has been purified and now lives only for her love for Lucien. Collin continues to work on Lucien's rise in good society and provides him with generous financial means for this; Lucien is supposed to achieve social status and recognition on behalf of what Collin is denied as an outlaw (in Father Goriot , Collin already approached Eugène de Rastignac with a similar request, but was rejected by him). Lucien has the prospect of marrying the wealthy but ugly Clotilde de Grandlieu around 1829, but has to show a fortune as a prerequisite. But that is even beyond Collins's capabilities.
When the banker Nucingen happened to see Esther on a nocturnal drive and promptly fell in love with her, Collin saw his chance: He urged Esther to respond to Nuingen's recruitment - that is, despite, but also because of, the love for Lucien to act as a courtesan again - and exempt the banker until Lucien has the wealth necessary for his marriage to Clotilde. After the inauguration of a lavishly furnished palace that Nucingen bought for Esther, Esther, broken inside, commits suicide. She no longer learns that she is the sole heir of the usurer Gobseck, who left her a fortune in the millions that could have solved all of Lucien's problems.
Meanwhile, Corentin and Peyrade, the police spies who Nucingen had hired to track down Esther, have found Collins. Nucingen is cheated by Esther's death, all the more since two domestic servants with securities that he had given Esther disappear. Everything speaks against Collin and Lucien, who are both arrested.
During the police interrogation, Collin can deceive the officers and hide his identity. However, the examining magistrate Camusot manages to coax the secret from Lucien in no time. Lucien now realizes that even if his innocence turns out to be stolen when the securities are stolen, he is socially defunct as an accomplice of a wanted criminal. Above all, however, he has now betrayed the last person, Collin, who has always been faithful to him, out of stupidity and selfishness, after he had previously disappointed his friends and cheated on his relatives. Collin, who knows how unstable Lucien is, is still trying to mobilize Diane de Maufrigneuse and Madame de Sérizy to rescue Lucien from prison, but the ladies are too late: Lucien has hanged himself in his cell. The news of Lucien's death makes Collin collapse: He now wants to end his decades-long struggle against justice and society and put his skills at the service of the other side. He leverages compromising letters from the Duchess de Maufrigneuse, Madame de Sérizy and Clotilde de Grandlieu to Lucien, which he keeps in a safe hiding place and which, if published, could trigger a state affair. Attorney General Granville realizes that Collins' proposal will bring him advantages in this situation, and so Collin actually succeeds the corrupt police chief Bibi-Lupine (similar to his real-life role model Vidocq). "After Jacques Collin had performed his functions for about fifteen years, he retired around 1845."
How Illusions perdues counts splendor and misery of the courtesans of the core pieces of the Comédie Humaine . “In no other work by Balzac is the cross-section through contemporary society so broad, in no one is the sudden change from happiness to despair, to which the headings refer, depicted in so many fates ... The arc of the social groups represented extends from the Parisian aristocracy to the underworld ... "
Emergence
The splendor and misery of the courtesans is divided into four parts:
- Comment aiment les filles ( How easy girls love )
- À combien l'amour revient aux vieillards ( What old gentlemen can taste for love )
- Où mènent les mauvais chemins ( Where bad roads lead )
- La dernière incarnation de Vautrin ( The last figure of Vautrin )
The first part is based on Balzac's fragment of the novel La Torpille , which was written before Illusions perdues and was first published in book form in 1839. It was revised and printed with parts of the second part in 1843 in the features section of the newspaper Le Parisien . Together with the entire second part, everything was published in 1844 under the title Splendeurs et Misères des Courtisanes and now also included in the Comédie Humaine . The third part appeared in L'Epoche in 1846 and for the first time in book form in 1847. The fourth part in the feature pages of La Presse in 1847 and as a book that same year; this part was not included in the Comédie Humaine until 1855, five years after Balzac's death .
The complicated and long history of genesis is reflected in the structure of the novel: The central themes and the characters change much more than in other Balzac novels. Lucien de Rubempré is initially still the focus of attention, but as a vain, weak personality increasingly loses interest and is finally removed from the plot, while Esther and then Vautrin / Collin come more and more to the fore. This “becomes the dominant figure in the course of the novel. This diabolical and at the same time ingenious person embodies the evil of human society in his wild energy. "
expenditure
- La comédie humaine , Paris 1977, vol. 6
- Splendor and misery of the courtesans I. In: The human comedy. Munich 1998 (TB), vol. VI, gloss and misery of the courtesans II. In: The human comedy. Munich 1998 (TB), Vol. VII
Film adaptations
- Splendor and misery of courtesans , Germany 1927, directed by M. Noa
- Vautrin , France 1943, directed by Pierre Billon
- Splendeurs et Misères des Courtisanes , France 1975, TV series