Maître Cornélius

Maître Cornélius (German also Meister Cornelius ) is a novella by the French writer Honoré de Balzac , which he wrote in November and December 1831 in Saché Castle . It is set in 15th century French Tours .

Maître Cornélius first appeared in the Revue de Paris in 1831 . The novella was published in book form by Gosselin in Nouveaux contes philosophiques in 1832 , together with Madame Firmiani , L'Auberge rouge and Louis Lambert . In 1836 the work of Edmond Werdet was reissued in the series Études philosophiques , then in the edition Études philosophiques as part of the Comédie humaine , which appeared in 1846. In Germany, Maitre Cornelius was the last volume in 1964 of the thin print edition published by Rowohlt Verlag , which had already appeared in 44 volumes before the Second World War and comprised 40 volumes in the new edition.

content

Louis XI. , Unknown portrait of the 15th century.

The young Marie de Saint-Vallier, daughter of the French King Louis XI. , is married to a despotic and brutal old man, Aymar de Poitiers , the Count of Saint-Vallier. At the same time she falls in love with the young nobleman Georges d'Estouteville, who tries to free her from her martyrdom, to have the marriage annulled with the help of her father and to obtain a divorce from the Pope in Rome. The old Count of Saint-Vallier had established himself in a fortress-like palace that was directly adjacent to that of the Flemish moneylender and usurer Cornélius Hoogworst. This, formerly one of the richest merchants in Ghent , had fallen out with Duke Charles of Burgundy and in Tours the protection of King Louis XI. found, with whom he was in an intimate relationship and acted as its treasurer.

The novella begins with a description of the atmosphere at the end of the mass on All Saints' Day 1479 in Tours Cathedral , when the crowd breaks up and the last organ tones fade away. A citizen leaves his place; A nobleman who has been waiting for the moment hurries to take it and now to address a few words to the praying young woman next to him, Marie, the Comtesse de Saint-Vallier, whose husband is asleep:

Georges d'Estouteville, Marie and the sleeping Count of Saint-Vallier in Tours Cathedral. Historical illustration by Pierre Vidal (1897)

“Don't be frightened when you come to the exit; let everything happen. "

After the secret meeting of the two lovers at the end of the mass, Georges staged a traffic jam at the exit of the church with the help of his loyal friends, the aim of which is to briefly separate the old despot from his wife. Georges manages to bring Marie to a chapel inside the building, where he reveals his plan to her how he wants to get to her that evening. Soon afterwards the old count managed to get into the building to his wife; however, he does not become suspicious and leaves the church with her.

In a second narrative thread, the stingy and misanthropic Maître Cornélius is introduced, who lives withdrawn with his sister in the gloomy house on the outskirts of Tours, in the immediate vicinity of the house of the Count of Saint-Vallier. Maître Cornélius is notorious and feared in the city for accusing young employees of theft and handing them over to the king's executioners; he should also have alchemical powers. The young lover now arrives at Maître Cornélius' house, shrouded in mystery, after he had previously changed his clothes and is now acting as a little scribe. He pretends to be Philippe Goulenoire , who presents a letter of recommendation from the Brussels financier Oosterlinck when he approaches Cornélius. Philippe is watched suspiciously by him and questioned without arousing suspicion. When Cornélius released him to hire him the next day, he argued that he was a stranger in Tours and asked to be allowed to spend the night in the house. Despite the protests of Cornélius' sister, who is concerned about the jewels of the Counts of Bavaria in the house, Cornélius allows him to sleep in the tower room, which he locks behind him. Cornelius says goodbye with the subtle words:

"Good night! Just stay in there and don't do it like the others. "

Philippe waits for Cornélius and his sister to go to sleep and frees himself from the room with a specially made dagger. To his horror, he finds out that Cornélius is climbing up; but before he reaches Philippe, Cornélius' lamp goes out, who then turns around, and Philippe can jump through the window and over the roof to the neighboring house, where his lover, Madame de Vallier, is waiting, to which he reaches through the fireplace. This points to her sleeping husband, the Count of Saint-Vallier, to whom she had previously administered a sleeping pill.

She abruptly changes scene to the king's court in which Maitre Cornelius appears with his executioners. He rushes to his friend Louis XI to tell him dramatically about the robbery of his treasures, including the jewels of the Duke of Bavaria, and to accuse the young man in his house. In retrospect it is said that the young nobleman spends the rest of the night carefree in Cornélius' tower room. In the morning he is captured by Tristan, the king's executioner; he recognizes in “Philippe” Georges d'Estouteville. When Georges is led away by Tristan and his captors, the crowd in the city grumbles about the new outrage of the old usurer Cornélius. When he is being led away, Georges can take a look at his lover, who silently lets him know that she will help him.

Unknown artist: Plessis-lès-Tours castle, pen and ink drawing, 17th century, Paris, BnF

The following is a description of the royal palace of Plessis-lez-Tours and the condition of the sick king, a few years before his death. The Saint-Valliers are invited to dinner by the King; Before that, Marie succeeds in informing her father about Georges' false suspicions. She admits that she spent the night with him. When it becomes apparent how much the old count has neglected his young wife, the king jumps up angrily and catches Count de Saint-Vallier listening at the door.

"In three devil names," he exclaimed, "for this boldness you deserve the hangman's ax."

During the meal that followed, Tristan informed the king that Georges was "in the care of the monks", a paraphrase for the imminent execution. Louis then orders Georges to be released immediately and, in return, orders the Count of Saint-Vallier to immediately go on a mission to Venice, which in fact means his exile . Louis now decides to solve the case of the missing jewels himself.

Maitre Cornélius, his sister and King Louis XI, who sprinkles flour on the ground. Historical illustration by Pierre Vidal (1897)

The king asked Maitre Cornélius to report his theory of a thief entering through the chimney, which quickly turned out to be impossible because the chimney shaft turned out to be too narrow. After no trace of the use of force could be found, the king's suspicions quickly turned to the usurer Cornélius himself. Louis asked the old woman to bring him a sack of flour, which he dumped on the floor. He then looks like he's leaving the house, but spends the night at his friend's house. All windows of the house are locked and the house is guarded from the outside. The next morning you find the traces of Cornelius in the flour on the ground and one night you have observed a man on the roof. It turns out: Maitre Cornélius suffers from somnambulism and doesn't know where he hid his treasures at night. The king is angry that several innocent men lost their lives because they were accused of theft and demands financial damages from Cornélius. When Cornélius' sister learns of her brother's actions, she collapses and dies soon after.

For the next few days Cornelius remains alone in his house; he roams restlessly looking for his hidden treasures and becomes increasingly confused before eventually dying lonely. Finally, the progress of the story of the young couple is briefly told.

background

Nicole Mozet sees parallels to Victor Hugo's 1831 novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame , in which Louis XI also appears as a cruel monarch. In Mozet's view, Maitre Cornélius is a “story of power. Saint-Vallier, Cornélius, Tristan, Louis, Coyctier: a husband, a banker, an executioner, a king, a doctor - all men of power. The extraordinary night tête-à-tête between Louis XI. and Cornélius draws his peculiarity from this decisive confrontation. "

Victor Hugo's echo can already be found at the beginning of the novella in Tours Cathedral:

“ Cà et là, des yeux brillaient dans le creux des piliers, la pierre jetait des regards, les marbres parlaient, les voûtes répétaient des soupirs, l'édifice entier était doué de vie. "

"Here and there, the eyes shone in the bulges of the pillars, the stone sent glances, the marble spoke, the crypts echoed sighs, the entire building was filled with life!"

Coming from Tours himself, Balzac is one of the scenes in the life of King Louis XI. trusts and creates partly a historical novel , partly a realistic novel, when he promoted the king from his castle to Maitre Cornélius in the rue de Murier. In addition, there is the influence of Walter Scott and his 1823 novel Quentin Durward on Balzac.

However, the abracadabra aspect of such a story does nothing to expose Balzac's mystical fears. One could assign this text to the Proscrits , which occur noticeably at the same time, not far from a cathedral, that of Tours here, (Notre-Dame de Paris in the Proscrits ) Balzac evokes the inexplicable phenomenon of spirituality , the highly electrifying power of prayer.

The philosophical theses of Balzac let the reading of Swedenborg shine through and it is without a doubt this mystical aspect of the narrative, religious exaltation on the one hand and profane love on the other, that caught the attention of the criticism of the Revue Européenne 1832. This peculiar novella is admitted to have some successful details mixed with false ideas about the Middle Ages .

Even if the text that appeared in the magazine was well received by the readership, this fact does not hide the fact that it was also exposed to the criticism of the era. Today's Balzac connoisseurs are divided on the attention to be paid to this novella, which is to be classified between the fantasy novel by ETA Hoffmann and the historical novel by Walter Scott. Samuel S. de Sacy thinks that Maître Cornélius could also leave out La comédie humaine , and Maître Cornélius remains a curiosity in Comédie humaine . René Guise takes the opposite view that the text only fulfills its meaning when viewed in perspective in connection with the Comédie humaine . It cannot be denied that the novella is a little excessive, subtle, with contradictions and inconsistencies.

expenditure

• Honoré de Balzac: Nouveaux contes philosophiques . Paris, Ch.Gosselin 1832
• Honoré de Balzac: Œuvres complètes de H. de Balzac, XV . Paris, Alexandre Houssiaux, 1855
• Honoré de Balzac: Les Marana [Adieu - Le Requisitionnaire - El Verduco - Un drame au bord de la mer - L'Auberge rouge - L'Elixir de longue vie - Maitre Cornelius]. Paris, Librairie nouvelle, 1858

• German editions:
  • Honoré de Balzac: The red hostel. Master Cornelius . Acc .: Hans Georg Brenner. Wildbad, Edition Pan, 1949
  • Honoré de Balzac, Collected Works. Maitre Cornelius. The rejected son, two short stories. Acc .: Sigrid von Massenbach. Rowohlt. Hamburg 1964.
  • Honoré de Balzac: The Human Comedy, Volume 19. The Shagreen Leather - The Elixir of Life - The Red Hostel - Maitre Cornelius . Novellas. Acc .: Christel Gersch, Wilhelm Rücker. Berlin, Weimar Setup 1974

Web links

Wikisource: Maître Cornélius  - sources and full texts (French)

• Content description (English)
• Maitre Cormelius (English translation by Katherine Prescott Wormely) (PDF file; 145 kB)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} All quotations from the Rowohlt edition, 1964
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Nicole Mozet: La ville de province dans l ́oeuvre de Balzac: l ́espace romanesque, fantasme , p. 58
3. ↑ Maître Cornélius, La Pléiade, 1980 t.XI, p. 16 ISBN 2070108767 .
4. ^ René Guise, Introduction to Maître Cornélius. La Pléiade, 1980, t.XI, pp.368-369
5. ^ René Guise, Introduction to Maître Cornélius. La Pléiade, 1980, t.XI, p. 3 ISBN 2070108767 .
6. ↑ Œuvre de Balzac, Club Français du livre, tX, p. 996 cité par René Guise.
7. ↑ La Pléiade, 1979, tX, p. 4