Father Goriot
Father Goriot (French: Le Père Goriot ) is a novel by Honoré de Balzac published in 1834 and 1835 . As part of Balzac's novel cycle La Comédie humaine (German: The human comedy ) , Father Goriot is one of the Scènes de la vie privée (scenes from private life).
Thematic classification
Balzac's novel Vater Goriot deals with an ensemble of people from almost all social classes, both on the rise of society and its depressions and abysses in the context of the restoration of the early 19th century. Using the example of the former noodle manufacturer Goriot - who only lives in the lives of his daughters, is exploited in return and ultimately dies "like a dog" - Balzac provides a glimpse of the ideal orientation of society towards fame, power, the appearance of decor and the emerging capitalism , an ever stronger penetration of money into all areas of life. The 'chariots of civilization', which is emblematic of optimism for progress and rationalism, overruns and breaks the "cœur" (heart) that stands in its way and for the reader clearly indicates at the beginning of the novel Balzac's exemplary writing and literary self-image.
Fictional characters
- Madame Vauquer, pension owner
- Vautrin , unscrupulous crook named Jacques Collin in the disguise of a respectable citizen
- Father Goriot, former grain speculator and noodle maker
- Anastasie de Restaud, his elder daughter, wife of a nobleman
- Delphine de Nucingen, his younger daughter, wife of a banker
- Victorine Taillefer, young penniless girl
- Madame Couture, your governess
- Eugène de Rastignac , ambitious, destitute young man from the country
- Mademoiselle Michonneau, greedy pensioner
- Poiret, obsequious official
Narrative technique
The specialty of Balzac's narrative technique lies in its stylistic and perspective programming, which mainly relies on an authorial narrator, who in turn is in tension with the protagonist Rastignac , who at times appears as a reflector figure . The narrator is first and foremost a messenger of a story that has been proclaimed to be true, in which limitless, ad absurdum, fatherly love ultimately leads to ruin in a society based on moral disparities such as egoism, unscrupulousness, vanity and, of course, greed for money. For those who have these qualities, social advancement seems assured. Goriot, however, who claims no more from his daughters than the "petit chien" (little dog) to be near them, is literally dog-like and finally has to be "comme un chien" (like a dog) to die. In these key scenes, the narrative perspective changes to the proximity of the characters, so that the reader, through the suggested, immediate proximity with the characters Goriot on his deathbed, who has seen through his daughters, nevertheless wishes their presence, or Rastignacs , in his inner conflict between moral integrity and social striving for success, can identify emotionally. Balzac's "realistic" storytelling has a strong mythologizing component in some passages in the text, such as the arrest of the criminal in the boarding house when he is associated with the devil .
Image of society
Social science function
The claim to truth on which the novel is based is nevertheless embedded in a larger framework, it is about more than the representation of the fate of an individual. Through his narrator, Balzac works as an empirical social scientist who is at the same time an analyst, critic and visionary. Mindful of authenticity and analytical precision, he intertwines reality and fiction within the framework of a poetics of scientific imagination and enables himself and thereby also the recipient to be able to make statements about society from a global perspective. Balzac thus justifies the novel as a (social) scientific form which, with the help of imagination and genius, exceeds the dimensions of what is tangible with the means of traditional natural sciences, but is methodically derived from them. The zoologist Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire , to whom he dedicated this book, is also of great importance for his work . Following the example of the espèces zoologiques, Balzac creates the espèces humaines in his work (e.g. Mademoiselle Michonneau as a viper ).
Socially critical function
The often relentless portrayal of society ultimately leads to criticism. According to Balzac's analysis, social mobility is possible, just like a Goriot through skillful grain speculation, as a revolutionary winner, so to speak, who initially climbs the social ladder, but does not find his way in a society based on corruption and decor, and because of his monomaniac - and exploitable - fatherly love can survive. Or like a Rastignac , whose social initiation takes place step by step, but he has to detach himself from his integrity roots, metaphorically represented by his origins in the province that is still undisturbed in contrast to Paris. Social mobility inevitably leads to moral chaos, which in turn is shown to the reader through poetic refinements such as moral space semantization, in which topological heights, such as the Père Lachaise cemetery as Goriot's final resting place, are indicators of the respective moral level. The portrayal of the obsession with money and insatiability as the mainspring of society in the post-Napoleonic era not only leads to a disillusionment of the reader, but also to a criticism of contemporary social behavior that lacks any traditional or ethical basic values.
Translations
Le Père Goriot was founded by Gisela Etzel (Insel 1909), Rosa Schapire (Rowohlt 1923), Franz Hessel (Insel 1923, List 1950), Siever Johanna Meyer-Bergmann (Gutenberg-Verlag Hamburg / Vienna / Zurich / Budapest 1928) and Ernst Sander (Bertelsmann 1971) translated into German.
Bibliography
- Balzac, Honoré de. Le Père Goriot . 1834. Vachon, Stéphane (eds.). Librairie Générale Française, 1995.
- Dethloff, Uwe . Le Père Goriot. Honoré de Balzac's representation of society in the context of the realism debate . Tübingen: Francke, 1989.
- Dubois, Jacques. Les romanciers du réel. De Balzac à Simenon . Editions du Seuil, 2000
- Warning, Rainer. The imagination of the realists . Munich: Fink, 1999.
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