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Pere Goriot (La Comédie Humaine)

by Honoré de Balzac, A.J. Krailsheimer (Translator)

3.71 · rating details · 5,870 ratings · 321 reviews

This fine example of the French realist novel contrasts the social progress of an impoverished but ambitious aristocrat with the tale of a father, whose obsessive love for his daughters leads to his personal and financial ruin.
About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each aff...more

Paperback, 274 pages

Published May 5th 2009 by Oxford University Press, USA (first published 1835)

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Mar 13, 2011

brian rated it

many pre-20th century novels have the nasty habit of presenting their author's beliefs as hard, solid fact. y'know what i mean: sentences which flatly state that 'Women believe' such and such or, as per balzac (pg. 51), "Young men's eyes take everything in; their spirits react to..." (<-- to which i'd argue: no! young men's eyes don't take in shit. and if i was gonna write either/or i'd find some elegant means to qualify it). now, wishy-washy apologetic sentences deserve destruction...moremany pre-20th century novels have the nasty habit of presenting their author's beliefs as hard, solid fact. y'know what i mean: sentences which flatly state that 'Women believe' such and such or, as per balzac (pg. 51), "Young men's eyes take everything in; their spirits react to..." (<-- to which i'd argue: no! young men's eyes don't take in shit. and if i was gonna write either/or i'd find some elegant means to qualify it). now, wishy-washy apologetic sentences deserve destruction by sharpie and a knuckle-punch to their author's neck, of course, but those simple, declarative sentences which aim to embody an entire gender or race or people or pathology are almost equally as frustrating. i suppose the confused haze which 20th century modernism and pomo dropped on everything blew all that 'belief = fact' stuff outta the water. once einstein laid it down that the part of the world we see and experience is not only a sliver but vastly different from actual physical reality, when picasso duchamp & warhol redefined art and our relation to the visual world, when freud reconfigured all we did and thought and believed as part of a long and complex causal chain, with marx's (amongst other's) reinterpretation of history, and so on and on... there was little room left for those epic all-encompassing statements. so there's a never-to-be-returned-to place occupied by the great brains of the past few centuries that is now taken up by novelists and creators either skirting the issue altogether or working to make sense of the confusion.

so pere goriot. a kind of cross b/t king lear and the giving tree: a kind-hearted old coot gives and gives and gives to some seriously awful daughters until he's flat broke and the aforementioned awfuls are just too busy to make a deathbed drop-by. a well told tale, genuinely felt, if, at times, the machinery was a bit visible, a few too many glimpses of the man behind the curtain... but overall my first balzac was a positive experience. wanna check out cousin bette and colonel chabert.

worth noting that within pere goriot there's a great spin-off crime novel waiting to be written. vautrin*, the most entertaining character in the book, is revealed as the notorious criminal nicknamed 'The Death-Dodger' who's part of a gang called The Ten Thousand -- b/c they have ten thousand partner thieves or b/c they'll only heist jobs bigger than ten thousand francs? i get fantomas fever just thinking about a vast network of thieves stalking the streets of paris. sign me up, frère, i'm in.

* here goes some of vautrin's dialogue:

"You see, I have an idea. My idea is to go off and live like a patriarch in the middle of some big estate, a hundred thousand acres for example, in the United States, in the South. I want to become a planter out there, own slaves, earn a cool few million from the sale of my cattle, tobacco, and timber, living like a king, doing whatever I want, leading the sort of life you can't imagine here, where people hide away in burrows made of plaster. I am a great poet. My poetry is not something I write down, it is composed of action and emotions. At this moment I possess fifty thousand francs, which would hardly buy me forty niggers. I need two hundred thousand, because I want two hundred niggers to satisfy my taste for the patriarchal life. Niggers, do you see? They are children, but fully grown, and you can do what you like with them without some Public Prosecutor coming along to ask you questions."(less)

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Sep 10, 2011

Matteo Di Maggio rated it

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È proprio grazie a papà Goriot che capisci il vero amore di un padre verso i propri figli! Un capolavoro ottocentesco e post rivoluzionario che marchia la vecchia società parigina come spietata e discriminante verso le persone più umili, come appunto il Goriot.
Il suo amore e la sua devozione rappresentano un grande esempio di umanità, di rispetto verso la famiglia.
Papà Goriot è veramente un capolavoro!

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Sep 16, 2011

Lee rated it

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It's good to study up on the history of the novel -- this one's apparently a founding father. Maybe if I'd read it with nothing to do for a week my experience would've been different, but I was too often distracted to commit to the concerns of early-19th century Paris. As such, my feelings about this one are mixed, like with Stendhal's The Red and the Black last year.

I love the expository jags, the proclamations about the behavior of all young men, all women in Paris. The essayistic...moreIt's good to study up on the history of the novel -- this one's apparently a founding father. Maybe if I'd read it with nothing to do for a week my experience would've been different, but I was too often distracted to commit to the concerns of early-19th century Paris. As such, my feelings about this one are mixed, like with Stendhal's The Red and the Black last year.

I love the expository jags, the proclamations about the behavior of all young men, all women in Paris. The essayistic asides seem perfectly phrased, always calling for enthusiastic dog-earing, as though I'll one day find on the page the bit of wisdom that struck me the first time through. I'd love to read essays by Balzac, or even a collection of insights into human nature culled from his hundred million novels. Sometimes I was reminded of that bit in Reality Hunger: A Manifesto where David Shields comes clean and says he thinks novels are life-support systems for eloquent articulation of wisdom/theme.

I often sort of muddled through the dramatization, not always sure who was who and what was happening where. (The names/surnames of too many characters start with "V" for me?) Reading this, it became real clear how much we modern readers (ie, "I") rely on chapter breaks and white space between sections or at least clear transitions between scenes. In this, once a scene ends, in the next paragraph a character is propelled across Paris by no more than a hard return. This sort of thing requires an attention I might not always have paid, in part because I wasn't so engaged in the young social climber's upwardly mobile quest? The title character's unconditional love for his daughters is undeniably moving, and maybe also more cloying than Balzac's statements that it's Christ-like. But his daughters I didn't see nearly as well -- and if you don't see someone so well that character is pretty much screwed since being seen by readers gives characters a heartbeat and breath.

So: Loved the wisdom zingers throughout, liked the two major male characters, thought less of minor characters (even Cheat-Death), wasn't so engaged by the plot, and wasn't always sure what was going down in the dramatized bits. Seven stars for the expository jags, but maybe 3.25 stars overall, with respect for the writer's perception and humility for my abilities as a distractable 21st century reader.(less)

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Jun 08, 2007

Cleyton Boson rated it

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Balzac is perfect in this book where the good sensibility is mere moral pretend. At first view, Father Goriot is just a good old man that wants the happiness to his daughters. But they don’t love him as he would must be loved. His daughters have shame of him and blame him of his poverty. The good old man suffers cause of this relationship through all novel and end his life in a horrible and pathetic condition.
This is a sad history to you? However, Balzac get become it much more cruel yet....more

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Mar 18, 2011

K.D. rated it

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Recommended to K.D. by: 501 Must Read Books; 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (2006-2010)

Shelves: 1001-core, 501, classics

No doubts on my part. This novel deserves a 5-star rating. Challenge my rating if you want and I know I can defend it, tooth and nail.

At first, this seems to be just a story of an old man, Pere Goriot and how he ends up in the pupper's grave despite being a rich businessman when he's still strong. His fault is that he loves and cares for his 2 spoiled uncaring ungrateful daughters who get all his riches and in the end don't even care going to his deathbed. However, that plot seems to...more

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Sep 27, 2008

Tyler rated it

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Recommends it for: Anyone; Dads; Guys

Recommended to Tyler by: BBC Big Read list

Shelves: 19th-century

A distinctive element of this novel stems from its compactness. Most of the action takes place at a boarding house or a couple of other locations in Paris. The setup highlights the interaction between people, and the author’s astute observations about human nature set the story off. Balzac’s prose is superb, and his command of detail gives readers a palpable feel for the lives of people so far removed in time (1819) from us.

Goriot is a father who, among the fellow boarders, finds tha...more

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Apr 04, 2007

علی rated it

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Shelves: classic-fictions

I read Balzac first, when I was very young, and I enjoyed the stories very much. The second time was when I became interested in history. That was even better. One (who?) has said that ”for better understanding France in 19. century, you’d better read Balzac”. He is the auther of ”Studies of Manners in the 19th. century”!

بار اول بی آن که به تاریخ علاقمند باشم، از خواندن بالزاک لذت بردم. سال ها بعد که تاریخ برایم به شیرینی رمان بود، خواندن دوباره ی بالزاک چندین برابر لذت داشت. "ک...more

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Dec 07, 2007

Nick rated it

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The legend of Balzac- the 3-day writing marathons fueled by gallons of coffee, the monks robe, the ridiculously grandiose ambition, the secret passage leading to a back alley used to flee from his creditors- is a most delightful one, and so I was hoping to like this, his most famous book, rather better than I did. Oscar Wilde claimed that Balzac invented the 19th century, which is probably true, but Flaubert's comment rings truer: "What a man he would have been if only he'd known how to wri...more

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May 20, 2008

Liza rated it

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Recommends it for: people who like stuff (or people who don't like people who like stuff but want to read about them)

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Jun 09, 2008

Stewart rated it

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This is a grand novel from the old school, pre-Hemingway: long passages of description, speeches that go on for a page, the seeking of fortunes by marrying rich men or women, dowries, and deathbed scenes. But I enjoyed this 1834 novel by Honore de Balzac, the first book I had read of this French author. The novel painstakingly depicts life in Paris after the fall of Napoleon and the Bourbon restoration, the class divisions, the poverty of most of the residents, and the status-seeking of the rich...more

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Dec 15, 2008

Jim rated it

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Considered one of Balzac's finest, the action centers around an empoverished boarding house where the father of two society women is living out his days. Once a successful businessman, he has given them almost all the wealth he had accumulated and is now living in poverty. Among the many characters living there is a young student who is neglecting his studies in his quest to enter high society in Paris. He manages to meet the two daughters and is subsequently introduced in all the more desira...more

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Jan 18, 2012

Charles rated it

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Old Man Goriot - Old Goriot - Pere Goriot - whatever the translation's title, know that this is one of the great books of all literature. A masterpiece in its own right, Goriot is also a cornerstone of Balzac's Comedie Humaine. For the Balzac novice, this is the one to start with: If you don't like it, you probably won't like much else he wrote; if you do enjoy it, you're very fortunate because there's so much more Balzac waiting for you. And thanks to Balzac's system of recurring characters, ma...moreOld Man Goriot - Old Goriot - Pere Goriot - whatever the translation's title, know that this is one of the great books of all literature. A masterpiece in its own right, Goriot is also a cornerstone of Balzac's Comedie Humaine. For the Balzac novice, this is the one to start with: If you don't like it, you probably won't like much else he wrote; if you do enjoy it, you're very fortunate because there's so much more Balzac waiting for you. And thanks to Balzac's system of recurring characters, many of the people you meet here will turn up elsewhere in his fiction, at different stages of their lives and viewed from different angles.

Among the many vividly depicted characters in this novel is one of my own favorites, Vautrin, about whom I'll say little lest I spoil your initial acquaintance with him. But I can say this: Many people claim that a particular book is life-changing. For me, this book was literally so, in part. I first read it in January 1986, on my way back to the second term of my first year of law school. I vividly remember reading Vautrin's long speech to the student Eugene de Rastignac while I was flying in an airplane from the midwest to Washington, DC. Vautrin's cynical and brilliant anatomizing of the kind of money and the type of ambition needed to succeed in the turbulent society of 1819 Paris left me shaken. I had to set the book aside for a few hours after reading that part. I had the thoroughly disturbing and dispiriting feeling that someone had suddenly told me how life really was. Balzac, speaking across a century and a half made me realize that I didn't have either the desire for money or the career drive to push me on to success in the law. This combined with other personal issues and doubts would lead to me not taking the bar or pursuing that profession, among other associated life decisions.

Balzac had an almost obsessive fascination with money and how it shapes the actions of modern people. His interest in it was deemed vulgar by the critics of his day, and has been seen as prescient in the last hundred years. When I first encountered his work in the "Greed is good" 1980s, he seemed utterly contemporary in outlook. Oddly enough, he's just as current in these early years of a new millennium. As for his characters, well, as Baudelaire famously put it, "In Balzac, even the door-keepers have genius. All his minds are weapons loaded to the muzzle with will - just like Balzac himself." So, if you're interested in reading a prose King-Lear crime-thriller sentimental-education romance-novel social-realist slice-of-life comico-tragedy, with humor and human cruelty and sociological/historical detail of Parisian life in the early 1800s, narrated by one of the most interesting and opinionated voices in fiction, this 250-page novel is the one for you. It was for me and, 26 years on, looks like it always will be.(less)

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Nov 10, 2011

Jim Coughenour rated it

Shelves: classics

"It's a great shame that so many readers owe their first (and often last) contact with French literature to the opening pages of Le Père Goriot," writes Graham Robb in his resplendent biography of Balzac. Balzac begins his book with a pages-long description of the Pension Vaquer, an impoverished boarding house where key characters will come together. I'd have to disagree; Balzac's minute description of this seedy setting, which is also a description of its landlady, Madame Vaquer, is a...more"It's a great shame that so many readers owe their first (and often last) contact with French literature to the opening pages of Le Père Goriot," writes Graham Robb in his resplendent biography of Balzac. Balzac begins his book with a pages-long description of the Pension Vaquer, an impoverished boarding house where key characters will come together. I'd have to disagree; Balzac's minute description of this seedy setting, which is also a description of its landlady, Madame Vaquer, is as over-the-top hilarious as anything in Dickens. The drawing room "gives off a smell for which our language has no special word; it can only be described as a boarding house smell. It smells stuffy, mouldy, rancid; it is chilly, clammy to breathe, permeates one's clothing; it leaves the stale taste of a room where people have been eating; it stinks of backstairs, scullery, workhouse. It could only be described if some process were invented for measuring the quantity of disgusting elementary particles contributed by each resident, young or old, from his own catarrhal and sui generis exhalations. Even so, despite these dull horrors, compared to the dining-room next door the drawing room seems as elegant and sweet smelling as a boudoir." — And we're off…

A long time ago I tried to read Père Goriot in French, and failed. I picked it up recently with bland expectations and found myself chuckling all the way through. Here's where we first meet two of the key characters from his Human Comedy – the young Rastignac and the Mephistophelean arch-criminal Vautrin – but the entire ensemble is pure pleasure: grande dames deserted by their feckless lovers, mean old biddies and faithless daughters and conniving capitalists, all commingling in ambition. No one is virtuous, but some are more clever than others.

As Stephen Vizinczey observed 30 years ago,* "the greatest 19th-century English and American novelists are Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Stendhal and Balzac in English." I'm a fan of this translation by A.J. Krailsheimer; it's never fusty and frequently funny. And if you've never read Balzac, this is a great place to begin.
______________________
* Speaking of forgotten classics, I just rated Vizinczey's collection Truth and Lies in Literature, which any lover of literature will love.

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Oct 17, 2011

Justin Bendana rated it

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Perhaps it is a good time as ever to read such a book as Old Goriot. Well, I am 20 years old, young, ambitious, a novice, and most of all innocent to the ways of how society works. Of course, I will feel much inclined to like the character of young Eugene Rastignac. Like Eugene, I wanted to be accepted into the upper echelon of society by entering into the legal profession as my parents and i have always dreamed of, but I wanted most of all to be accepted in so called 'modern society' through th...more

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Jun 21, 2011

David Lentz rated it

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Balzac was a most enthusiastic participant of high society in Paris in his heyday principally because it yielded so many characters for his human comedy. Despite the artifice of glamor, wealth and nobility, a young attorney named Rastignac learns that it is shallow, materialistic and vain beyond all sense. Aspiring to make a name for himself, Rastignac stays in a bording house where he meets old Goriot, a vermicelli merchant with two daughters prominent in Paris society. Like King Lear, Goriot l...more

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Jan 08, 2011

Larry Gordon rated it

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Another of Balzac’s studies of Parisian society and class divisions in early 19th century France. The story was initially published in serial form in 1834.

The shady character Vautrin summarized Parisian society to the young student Eugene Rastignac in this way: “If you get splashed with mud riding in a carriage you’re an honest fellow, while you’re a rogue if you get dirty on foot. If you have the bad luck to nab something from somebody you become a peepshow for the crowd at the Plac...more

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Feb 28, 2010

Shelley rated it

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I don't know how I missed ever reading Balzac but I am glad I found him. I really enjoyed this book. It was depressing and sad but also had a bit of twisted humor in it. Ah the lengths that parents will go to in the pursuit of their children's happiness. That pretty much sums up the whole story. Old Goriot had a comfortable life at one time. He married his daughters to wealthy men but felt he was an embarassment to them (his own daughters and sons in law helped foster these feelings). So ...more

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Sep 05, 2009

Stephen rated it

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"Jamais une oeuvre plus majesteuesement terrible n'a commandé le cerveau humaine," Balzac wrote in 1834. Almost certainly so! Two main stories cross in this great novel: the story of a young, ambitious provincial, Eugène de Rastignac, who loses innocence in the complex society and moral corruption of Paris; and the tragic story of Old Goriot, who has destroyed himself financially for two daughters who care not at all for him--this latter story somewhat reminiscent of "King Lear...more"Jamais une oeuvre plus majesteuesement terrible n'a commandé le cerveau humaine," Balzac wrote in 1834. Almost certainly so! Two main stories cross in this great novel: the story of a young, ambitious provincial, Eugène de Rastignac, who loses innocence in the complex society and moral corruption of Paris; and the tragic story of Old Goriot, who has destroyed himself financially for two daughters who care not at all for him--this latter story somewhat reminiscent of "King Lear." For someone who both loves and fears Paris, as this part-time resident does, the "City of Lights" itself almost functions as the key character in this work. Balzac's comments on Paris, particularly upper-class Parisian society, are magnificent . . . and devilish: "I defy you to walk a couple of yards anywhere in Paris without stumbling on some infernal complication" (p. 90); "Surely Paris ignores the existence of these faces bleached by moral or physical suffering; but then Paris is in truth an ocean that no line can plumb" (p. 10); "life in Paris is one continual battle" (p. 70); "You have to sit up at night, it seems, if you really want to know all that is going on about you in Paris" (p. 31), etc. And the novel, after all, culminates with Eugène now thoroughly disillusioned, climbing to the heights of Montmarte, looking out over Paris and famously saying, "A nous deux maitenant!" which is rather loosely translated in the Everyman's Library edition as "We'll fight this out, you and I" (I would translate something like, "It's down to the two of us now!") "Old Goriot" is in many ways also a companion novel to "Eugenie Grandet." Both, like so much 19th century literature, is fundamentally about the woes of economic transaction. "Eugenie Grandet" is a story of the destructiveness of a father's stinginess; "Old Goriot" about the destructiveness of a father's generosity. The latter, in the end, is far more tragic . . . as terrible as anything the human brain has conceived, to paraphrase the great author!(less)

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Sep 09, 2011

Juanita Rice rated it

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Intrigued by the frequency with which 20th-century theorists Bakhtin and Lukacs cite Balzac as the quintessential modern novelist , I decided to read some Balzac at last, and found a 1959 Penguin translation by M.A. Crawford. I had amazingly missed Balzac altogether in my undergraduate French major. The very name Balzac causes a delicious shudder for the Iowa ladies in the musical play Music Man, so perhaps Balzac was too socially radical for my era in the Bible Belt. Curious.
I had a h...more Intrigued by the frequency with which 20th-century theorists Bakhtin and Lukacs cite Balzac as the quintessential modern novelist , I decided to read some Balzac at last, and found a 1959 Penguin translation by M.A. Crawford. I had amazingly missed Balzac altogether in my undergraduate French major. The very name Balzac causes a delicious shudder for the Iowa ladies in the musical play Music Man, so perhaps Balzac was too socially radical for my era in the Bible Belt. Curious.
I had a hard time getting started with the book, partly because protracted description of a boarding house in a poor area of Paris in 1819 failed to give me a clear picture or to make me understand why Balzac insisted it was dreary. The other cause of resistance was fear that it would be too pitiful, with innocents suffering either in silence or in page after page of mournful emotions. Somehow, however, I began to trust Balzac, whose authorial voice from the very beginning seems almost contemporary, sensible and serious, and even intimate. He stresses his intention to tell the story truthfully: "All is true!" he avers, writing it in English in the original for emphasis. "Will it be understood outside Paris? One may doubt it. Only between the heights of Montmartre and Montrouge are there people who can appreciate how exactly, with what close observation, it is drawn from life." I finally became enrapt with the story and the narrator so much that I plan to read more Balzac, perhaps even tackling it in French!
A sketch of the story: young Eugene Rastignac has come to Paris from the provinces to study law and lives on the meagre support of his family who, although poor, have distant connections to nobility, and provide him with an introduction to a pivotal Paris socialite. He becomes dazzled and obsessed with wealth and success and infatuated with its elegant beauties, both the women and the lifestyle. Meanwhile he lives in the aforesaid "dreary boarding house" with an aged man, Goriot, who is "despised by all the others." "There always is such a laughing-stock" in social groups, Balzac observes. "By what chance had the oldest lodger drawn on him this half-spiteful
contempt, this half-pitying persecution, this lack of respect for misfortune? Perhaps he had laid himself open to them by those vagaries and eccentricities which the world forgives less easily than vices. These questions go to the root of many social injustices."
When Eugene discovers and discloses that Goriot is, incredibly, the father of two of the most bewitching and extravagant young women Eugene has seen, the boarders change their attitudes toward the impoverished man whom they had thought dreary, probably dissolute, certainly mindless, and the stage is nearly set.
In addition to being a counterpoint to young Eugene's personal ambitions with those same daughters, Goriot's relevance lies precisely in his "fatherhood." I find translators' decisions to call English version Old Goriot, strange: it is not Goriot's age that is at issue, but what the French title Pere Goriot means in full. It means most directly "Father Goriot," and Goriot is an absolutely devoted father, his joys only those of his daughters and his personal griefs reduced to theirs also. A joking medical student interested in one of the century's early pseudo-sciences, phrenology, feels Goriot's skull for keys to his personality: "I've had a look at his head," says Bianchon. "There's only one bump on it—the bump of paternity; he will be an Eternal Father," (a joke on "Heavenly Father" as we say it in today's English). Already, when Eugene meets Goriot, the retired merchant had settled his fortune almost completely between the daughters to procure them good marriages, and been reduced by his own consent to living more austerely than any of the other boarders. We can also see "Pere Goriot" as "Pops" Goriot, and thus "Pere" can mean both a kind of old humble fool, as well as being a beatific symbol
As the story unfolds, the characters all take on more personality, and more involvement in the plot. A fascinating temptation is laid out for Eugene by another most interesting lodger, a well-spoken rather bold and influential man. This Monsieur Vautrin outlines for him the endless drudgery that awaits Eugene if he should try to work himself up into the freedom and pleasures of the world he sees with such desire, the world of wealth and influence and beauty and leisure. On the other hand, he offers Eugene immediate access to that world, in a wife worth at least a million francs, a fresh young girl who is already half in love with him, if Eugene will only consent to share 200,000 of it, that and consent to the death which Vautrin assures him will instantly befall the only person who stands in the way, a selfish dolt, a simpleton.
What will Eugene choose? What awaits him as he attempts to win the hearts of elegant society beauties, women about whose happiness he is constantly asked by Father Goriot who begs Eugene to recount their social successes at a ball or at the opera, their clothes, their appearances. What will become of Father Goriot? When does affection become foolish infatuation? When do principles represent only a shallow naivete?
It's a simple but intricate plot, and even the Countess Anastasie and Baroness Delphine, as well as several of the seemingly "untouchable" nobles, develop complexities of character that I did not expect. In short, this is indeed a "modern novel" and not a melodrama, although suffering is extreme. But the suffering is extreme because the social system is extreme: Eugene early learns that, in Balzac's words, "human beings are packed in strata, layer above layer, in the framework of society." The way these strata relentlessly press, influence, and shape human destiny is Balzac's real subject matter. and it is this "realistic" sense of class that marks Balzac as such an original writer at the time, prefiguring modernism at its full more than naturalism or the realism of mere verisimilitude.
Pere Goriot is one of forty-four Balzac novels published from 1828 until the author's death, in a sequence that Balzac designated in 1842 as The Human Comedy (La Comedie Humaine). He envisioned the eventual creation of many more with perhaps 4,000 characters in all, and explained this intention in a famous Preface that year, sketching the way he wanted to portray characters from every aspect of society during his era: from the civil wars of the French Revolution, to Napoleon, and the Restoration. He did not then know about the abortive Parisian Revolution to come in 1850, the year of his death and the year in which all hope of a society of equality for nineteenth-century France finally ended, perhaps. Or was that what killed him?
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Apr 29, 2011

Elisa rated it

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Shelves: classici, letteratura-francese

Vedeva il mondo come un oceano di fango nel quale un uomo sprofondava fino al collo se solo v'immergeva il piede.
«Vi si commettono solo delitti meschini», si disse. «Vautrin è superiore».
Egli aveva visto le tre grandi manifestazioni della società: l'Obbedienza, la Lotta e la Rivolta; la Famiglia, il Mondo e Vautrin. E non osava decidersi.

Parigi, diciannovesimo secolo. Lo scenario della storia è diviso fra due teatri, quello misero e cadente della pensione di Madame Vauquer...more Vedeva il mondo come un oceano di fango nel quale un uomo sprofondava fino al collo se solo v'immergeva il piede.
«Vi si commettono solo delitti meschini», si disse. «Vautrin è superiore».
Egli aveva visto le tre grandi manifestazioni della società: l'Obbedienza, la Lotta e la Rivolta; la Famiglia, il Mondo e Vautrin. E non osava decidersi.

Parigi, diciannovesimo secolo. Lo scenario della storia è diviso fra due teatri, quello misero e cadente della pensione di Madame Vauquer e quello dorato e tintinnante dei salotti dell'aristocrazia. Vi sono personaggi che occupano solo uno dei due palchi, altri che passano dall'uno all'altro attraverso un piccolo corridoio buio. Le pedine in movimento sul nostro tabellone sono Eugène de Rastignac, studente di Giurisprudenza arrivista e assetato dei buoni profumi della società; Monsieur Goriot, soprannominato dalle malelingue "papà" per la sua totale dedizione alle due figlie; Madame de Restaud e Madame de Nuncingen, figlie di Goriot, affezionate alle sete pregiate e agli amanti, ricche di "ragionamenti" ma povere di cuore. Eugène tenta continuamente di spiccare il salto dal lerciume della sua stanza in affitto al salotto di qualche ricca famiglia, aiutato dalla prestigiosa parentela di Madame de Beausant. Mentre lo studente e le figlie di Goriot posano il piede sul pavimento sporco della pensione solo per ottenerne uno slancio che possa portarli più in alto nella scala sociale, Goriot si muove tra i due spazi solo per uscirne impoverito. Dopo aver passato una vita all'insegna del lavoro, che l'ha portato a mettere da parte una considerevole ricchezza, il buon uomo si è votato alla felicità delle sue uniche figlie, donando loro a più riprese tutti i suoi averi per ottenere in cambio "solo una carezza". Il cuore dell'uomo l'ha portato a immolarsi sull'altare della ricchezza filiale, come prova il suo processo di graduale decomposizione: si trasferisce in stanze via via più economiche, i capelli gli si imbiancano per l'abbandono del parrucchiere, i suoi vestiti si impoveriscono, la sua proprietà si riduce a un mucchio di posate. Contro questa vita ridotta ai minimi termini si staglia la frivolezza delle figlie, che corrono dal padre solo nei momenti in cui hanno bisogno di batter cassa per intonacare i loro visi in vista di un evento in società. Cuore e freddo calcolo si avviluppano violentemente sulla scena, e l'unico sconfitto appare sempre e solo il povero Goriot.

I personaggi statici dimostrano come l'uomo sia il medesimo in ogni frangia della società: una gazza avida di denaro e vanità. La vita stessa non è che una lotta continua. Il testo è letteralmente invaso di termini mutuati dal linguaggio bellico. Assedio, inganno, strategia: questi sono i valori che mantengono in vita la Parigi che rantola nella corruzione.
Madame Vauquer è come un mobile che completa la meschinità della sua pensione, e non ha certo più cuore di un cassettone malandato. I pensionanti sono uno più meschino dell'altro, sempre pronti a colpirsi alle spalle per ottenerne un vantaggio personale. La questione non cambia se diamo un'occhiata alla buona società: ne è un esempio il crudele accorrere degli invitati alla festa della ricca signora che è appena stata colpita al cuore dal suo amante, per gioire della sua sfortuna e della sua caduta. L'oro che luccica sui corpi e sulle mani non rende diverso lo spettacolo da un'impiccagione in piazza, a cui il popolo più ignorante assiste come al passare di un carrozzone del circo. E' una meschinità umana che supera le barriere sociali: la decadenza altrui rende la nostra figura felice della propria stabilità.

In mezzo a questa giungla umana in cui le parole d'ordine sono "lotta" e "inganno", spicca la figura dell'audace Vautrin. Inizialmente odioso nei comportamenti, con lo scorrere della narrazione diventa paradossalmente puro nella sua crudeltà. "Vautrin è superiore", come dice Rastignac. Il suo pregio sta nel riconoscere la natura dell'uomo, e nel trarne vantaggio senza ipocrisia. A differenza delle altre sagome del racconto, che preparano come ragni la loro tela di inganni e fingono di amare in modo teatrale, Vautrin non finge. E' avido e non se ne vergogna, prepara la strada al suo successo cercando di raggiungere anche quello altrui per ottenerne dei vantaggi. E' forse il suo comportamento peggiore di quello di chi finge di amare per ottenere il passpartout per la buona società? "Forse l'opera opposta, la pittura delle tortuosità nelle quali un uomo di mondo, un ambizioso, fa rotolare la coscienza cercando di rasentare il male per arrivare allo scopo salvando le apparenze, non sarebbe né meno bella né meno drammatica".

Signore e signori, ecco a voi la Commedia Umana.(less)

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Nov 14, 2011

Mark Picketts rated it

· review of another edition

When I returned Balzac and the Little Seamstress to the school library, the librarian commented on how it was interesting that the book was so popular but how few people who read it had any interest in Balzac's works. This simple statement intrigued me and with some time i thought i would do a little investigating it to what Balzac had written that so moved the little seamstress. The librarian told me that Balzac was the first of the gossip girl books. This genre didn't really excite me but i...moreWhen I returned Balzac and the Little Seamstress to the school library, the librarian commented on how it was interesting that the book was so popular but how few people who read it had any interest in Balzac's works. This simple statement intrigued me and with some time i thought i would do a little investigating it to what Balzac had written that so moved the little seamstress. The librarian told me that Balzac was the first of the gossip girl books. This genre didn't really excite me but i picked it up anyway.

In Pere Goriot i didn't find "gossip girl*" - sure there was the gambling, games, and affairs of high society (and Vautrin's take on the ways to get into it - “Do you know how a man makes his way here? By brilliant genius or by skillful corruption. You must either cut your way through these masses of men like a cannon ball, or steal among them like a plague.” pg.111) but I found more connection in a story about a passionate father who loved his two daughters far beyond any rationale understanding. I found the writing to be a little disconnected, a number of stories somewhat lashed together - but within these stories the flow and imagery brought to mind by Balzac's words was astounding.

A couple of passages that jumped out at me:

"Almost all young men are subject to law, apparently inexplicable but actually inherent in youth itself and in the near-frenzy with which young men hurl themselves at pleasure. Rich or poor they never have any money for the prosaic necessities of life, though they can always find enough to gratify the desires of the moment." (160)

"He seemed to know all about the little protests, the struggles men put up to reassure themselves and justify their own wrongdoing in their own eyes" (167)

"It'll be very dull for me, where I'm going. For a father, hell means being away from his children." (265)

"I was always willing to give them the very heart out of my body - and that's taken the value out of everything i did." (271)

It wasn't a mind blowing incredible read, but in revisiting my motivation - to get a little perspective on the little seamstress - i was treated to an excellent book that i enjoyed much more than the book which had brought me to it.

* and likely wouldn't have known if I did.(less)

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Jul 31, 2011

Teb rated it

· review of another edition

It's been the hardest book to judge so far. The most important factor for me is the main attitude - here, in my opinion, it's money and the way it changes people for worse. Presumably (I am not sure about that) I agree with the author, but sometimes I felt too much indifference - for example, Balzac, when describing a man from the upper classes and the impression he makes on Eugene (his clothing, looks - today more adequate for women, not men) makes me think that such thing is completely natural...more

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Apr 30, 2011

Luana rated it

· review of another edition

I colori della tavolozza stanno ad un pittore, così come le parole stanno a Balzac il quale, con un tocco di pennello, ha disegnato l'umanità del diciannovesimo secolo parigino, ma in realtà anche quella del ventunesimo secolo italiano, e del diciottesimo inglese. Come un sommozzatore scandaglia il fondo marino, così Balzac è stato in grande di scandagliare l'animo umano arrivando nel fondo più profondo e descrivendo maschere sociali che, nella vita di tutti i giorni, smettono di mimare se stes...moreI colori della tavolozza stanno ad un pittore, così come le parole stanno a Balzac il quale, con un tocco di pennello, ha disegnato l'umanità del diciannovesimo secolo parigino, ma in realtà anche quella del ventunesimo secolo italiano, e del diciottesimo inglese. Come un sommozzatore scandaglia il fondo marino, così Balzac è stato in grande di scandagliare l'animo umano arrivando nel fondo più profondo e descrivendo maschere sociali che, nella vita di tutti i giorni, smettono di mimare se stesse per diventare le persone che ci circondano, o che siamo.

'Papà Goriot' è un palco sul quale si succedono, inseguono e sfuggono una serie di personaggi talmente ben descritti e approfonditi che sembra di conoscerli da sempre e di vederli mentre partecipano a balli, risiedono in una squallida pensione borghese, si travestono da buoni cittadini essendo invece pericolosi criminali. E' forte e viscerale l'empatia che si percepisce nel venire a conoscenza delle vicende di questi nostri personaggi verso i quali è inevitabile provare pena, rabbia, disapprovazione, voglia di entrare nel romanzo e prenderli a schiaffi. Da una parte la Parigi dei balli, dei titoli, delle rendite, dei matrimoni combinati, dall'altra quella dei pensionanti di casa Vauquer dove persino la carta da parati ricorda la grettezza della vita dei poveri. I due volti di Parigi sono, nel romanzo di Balzac, intimamente legati dal segreto di un padre e le sue due figlie, in maniera inspiegabile rispettivamente pastaio, contessa e baronessa. Il sangue versato da uno, il suo sudore, i suoi sacrifici si trasformano, per una logica perversa e tuttavia giustificata da un amore paterno cieco, in diamanti, carrozze, mussoline, vestiti di stoffe pregiate delle altre. Uno residente nella suddetta pensione, le altre in dimore decorate con sfarzo e lusso. A rendere noto questo legame e a fungere da ponte tra questo padre dilaniato e queste figlie meschine è Eugene de Rastignac, studente di legge che proviene da un paese di campagna dove, al contrario di quanto succede a Parigi, regnano ancora i valori puri della famiglia, dell'amore sincero, del sacrificio come forma d'amore, e non di sfruttamento. Rastignac, avvolto dall'atmosfera parigina, vuole infilare gli artigli nella società aristocratica, inserirsi puntando le sue radici nel più alto borgo parigino. E', insomma, un arrampicatore sociale.

Personaggi, quindi, senza alcuna morale, disposti ad ottenere ciò che vogliono a qualunque costo, impoverire un padre, privare la propria famiglia del cibo pur di avere dei guanti nuovi, personaggi le cui colpe vengono aggravate dall'ipocrisia, dal nascondere a se stessi e agli altri le proprie azioni miserevoli con giustificazioni che mettono a tacere anche l'ombra dei rimorsi. Ad elevarsi rispetto a questa massa deforme, è Vautrin, uomo sfinge dal passato misterioso, che non ha paura né di commettere azioni scellerate, né di confessarle, né di rendere nota la meschina morale che lo porta ad essere attore di tali malvagi sceneggiati. Ed è anche Madame de Beauseant, viscontessa ancora capace di amare di quell'amore privo di interessi, la cui esistenza è fine solo a se stessa.

Parigi ieri, come il mondo oggi e sempre. Balzac punta il dito contro tutti i personaggi, li smaschera e li accusa, accusa il lettore con le sue intuizioni vere e forti che rendono chiaro come la morale umana, il contratto sociale siano solo il frutto di interessi individuali, mai di interessi rivolti al benessere generale. Forse abbiamo dismesso le vesti aristocratiche per indossare i jeans, comunichiamo per sms e tramite mail, e non con biglietti mandati dal servetto di turno, ma anche noi siamo parte di quella 'Commedia umana' che Balzac aveva intenzione di descrivere in un imponente ciclo di romanzi che mette a nudo i difetti del nostro animo. Della nostra invidia, della nostra sete di vendetta e di rivalsa. Balzac ha giudicato gli uomini del suo tempo, ma giudica anche coloro che leggono nel 2011. Incisivo e forte spiraglio per la riflessione, 'Papà Goriot' ha ancora tanto da dire, quindi, ascoltatelo.(less)

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Jun 13, 2011

Edward rated it

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Balzac, Honore de, PERE GORIOT (1834)
I had no expectations of this l9th century French effort by the prolific Balzac, but it's a fine novel, as timely now as when it was written. The question it raises is one of how a parent shows his love for his children. In Goriot's case, as with many parents today, it was to try to give the children every advantage in life he could. In his case, the resource most at his disposal was money and what it could provide.
Goriot is a pl...more Balzac, Honore de, PERE GORIOT (1834)
I had no expectations of this l9th century French effort by the prolific Balzac, but it's a fine novel, as timely now as when it was written. The question it raises is one of how a parent shows his love for his children. In Goriot's case, as with many parents today, it was to try to give the children every advantage in life he could. In his case, the resource most at his disposal was money and what it could provide.
Goriot is a plain man, lacking social connections in the Paris where he finds himself in his old age. But he has made a lot of money in the grain trade, and so his way of helping his two daughters, Anastasia and Delphine, is by giving them money, and of course, they both attract men to whom money is important. They marry these men, and both become victims of loveless marriages. One is married to a gambler who squanders the money, and the other to a man who gets control of his wife's money and gives her a pittance of an allowance. They are both socially ambitious, and the mainteance of appearances – clothing, balls, parties - is everything to them.
Their widowed father moves to Paris to be near them but discovers that his sons-in-law find him embarrassing and refuse to let him in their houses. Of course, the daughters stay in contact with him, visiting him in his shabby rooming house, but it's as much to continue getting money from him as out of any daughterly love. They're not evil women, just weak and foolish, and are always making resolutions that they should be kinder to their old father.
Goriot knows he's made mistakes rasiing them, commenting that "I sinned through love, I spoiled them," and asks the question, "Why could they not always be little girls?" when they were innocent and sweet. In spite of their indifference and even cruelty to him, if he cuts them off, he knows he will have no contact with them at all, and what dos he gain from that? As he says, "My real life is in my two girls." In the end he dies penniless and abandoned by his daughters who both find excuses for ignoring his death and his funeral.
With him, though, is Eugene Rastignac, a young man from the provinces who lives in Goriot's rooming house. He is determined to make his way up in Parisian society, even though it is described as an "ocean of mud," referring as much to its corruption as to its physical aspects. He decides quickly that three things are important - youth, wealth, and social rank, and one has to act fast to attain these. He borrows money from his mother and sisters, all struggling too make ends meet in the provinces, buys some fancy clothes, and he is on his way, soon meeting and beginning an affair with the married Delphine. Now he has a double connection with Goriot, both through the rooming house and through his daughter.
The rooming house, interestingly provides a way for Balzac to expand his examination of this l830’s post-Napoleonic society to all levels. It is made up of people who are barely hanging on. Money is crucially important to these people, too, but in their lower social strata, it is for the necessities of life – heat, food, shelter. It includes a criminal mastermind who instantly and cynically sees through Rastignac and makes him, with all of his pretensions, very uncomfortable.
Eugene becomes fond of Goriot and at the end of the book faces a moral crisis - does he turn his back on decadence and stand up for decency, knowing it means hardship and an abandonment of a life of luxury? Or does he give in to the soft life? He goes off to dinner with his mistress in a beautifully understated ending. And Goriot? He gets a pauper's burial at Pere Lachaise cemetery
(less)

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Feb 22, 2011

Sara rated it

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Shelves: classici

Non è papà Goriot il vero protagonista della vicenda. Balzac lo caratterizza come spettatore di una società che non dà nessun valore ai sentimenti ai quali egli si aggrappa con una dedizione disperata, amando le figlie fin quasi al patologico. Non è più il tempo per lui di capire verso che direzione sta andando Parigi, né deve cercare di tenere il passo. Quello è lo scopo di Rastignac che, come in un Bildungsroman negativo, viene formato alla corruzione e alla falsità, nel tentativo di ricavarsi...moreNon è papà Goriot il vero protagonista della vicenda. Balzac lo caratterizza come spettatore di una società che non dà nessun valore ai sentimenti ai quali egli si aggrappa con una dedizione disperata, amando le figlie fin quasi al patologico. Non è più il tempo per lui di capire verso che direzione sta andando Parigi, né deve cercare di tenere il passo. Quello è lo scopo di Rastignac che, come in un Bildungsroman negativo, viene formato alla corruzione e alla falsità, nel tentativo di ricavarsi un microspazio nel bel mondo. Parte completamente ingenuo, ma Vautrin, con esperienza decennale alle spalle, sa consigliargli i passi giusti, disgustandolo e affascinandolo allo stesso tempo, finchè nelle ultime pagine accetterà la sfida e saprà come muoversi astutamente tra salotti e palchi di teatro.
Come tema è decisamente attuale e fa anzi riflettere sul fatto che la mancanza di valori morali sia vecchia come il mondo. A forza di risalire a ritroso nel tempo, viene da pensare quando mai ci siano stati, questi valori, visto che si è sempre parlato solo della loro perdita. Comunque. Vautrin non mi pare sia così da condannare. E’ viscido, vive di sotterfugi, truffa, ma è solo il risultato di un’intelligenza messa a servizio dell’ambiente nel quale si trova. Non cerca di cambiare niente, ci si adatta. Tanto poi lo condannano, ma Balzac non vuole un finale di buoni sentimenti (per fortuna).
La trama non è sempre scorrevole e si fa presto ad impantanarsi in una girandola di personaggi, Mmes e Mlles, mariti infedeli, amanti che vanno e vengono, gente incipriata e con scarpini di raso. La parte più interessante è quindi la seconda, verso il finale, quando l’azione prende il sopravvento e si capiscono le sorti dei protagonisti. Anche la lingua non è proprio sciolta, ma qui credo dipenda dalla traduzione – mi è piaciuto molto solo qualche passo iniziale, descrittivo, quando, con la ricchezza tipica del francese, Balzac appioppa ai vari pensionati di casa Vauquer tutta una serie di aggettivi divertenti e similitudini originali. Poi, a dire il vero, l’ho trovato abbastanza macchinoso da portare a termine. Pardon :)(less)

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Jul 19, 2011

Tasia rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: deep-thoughts-books

I found this book on the bookshelves at my grandma's summer house. And I started reading, and it took over me.
Neither the story of young Rastignac, as a story of a young middle-class man from province, who aspires to gain his own high position in the upper-class, captured me the most, and nor did the sad story of father Goriot, as a story of a loving-to-death parent, who deifies his ungrateful, callous and self-affected daughters, who, for me, are doomed to suffer for the end of their live...more

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Sep 22, 2011

Isaac rated it

· review of another edition

Pere Goriot is really quite good. It's an idea book and it's exciting to read about Rastignac's young ambition and Vautrin's Godlike awareness of existence. Balzac's only real shortcoming is that he's not a fantastic writer, though to give him the benefit of the doubt, it might read a little better in French.

I also can't help being irritated by Free Indirect Discourse, unless it's really clear in its fogginess. You can't cloak ambiguous narration in ambiguity. I mean, lots of litera...more

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Sep 21, 2011

Patrick McCoy rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: classics

Old Goriot by Honore de Balzac is considered one of his masterpieces, but has been seen as being to hard on humanity. Perhaps, but humans are quite capable of despicable behavior. Here’s an apt quote from the novel: “I should go on forever if I had to describe the deals that are made for lovers, finery, children, housekeeping, or for vanity, rarely for the sake of virtue, you may be sure. So the honest man is the common enemy.” Old Goriot is one of those enemies he adores his two daughter above ...more

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Aug 09, 2008

Teresa rated it

· review of another edition

This is my third Balzac novel, and I've enjoyed every one. Each read easy with wonderful descriptions, vivid characters, great dialogue and interesting plots. Balzac is hard on every strata of society, but there's still plenty enough good qualities in at least a few characters and enough humor sprinkled here and there to alleviate the grim reality.

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Jan 05, 2012

Nicholas Whyte rated it

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http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1796152.ht...

A short classic French novel, whose central character isn't so much Goriot as Eugène de Rastignac, who shares a Paris boarding-house with Goriot and falls in love with one of his daughters. The Goriot daughters have some nasty emotional manipulation going on with their father and their ennobled husbands, and Eugène is way out of his depth. One of his other fellow tenants is a master criminal in disguise, who makes Eugène the original offer tha...more

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About Honoré de Balzac

Honoré de Balzac was a nineteenth-century French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of almost 100 novels and plays collectively entitled La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the fall of Napoléon Bonaparte in 1815.

Due to his keen observation of detail and unfiltered representation of society, Balzac is regarded as one of th...moreHonoré de Balzac was a nineteenth-century French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of almost 100 novels and plays collectively entitled La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the fall of Napoléon Bonaparte in 1815.

Due to his keen observation of detail and unfiltered representation of society, Balzac is regarded as one of the founders of realism in European literature. He is renowned for his multi-faceted characters; even his lesser characters are complex, morally ambiguous and fully human. Inanimate objects are imbued with character as well; the city of Paris, a backdrop for much of his writing, takes on many human qualities. His writing influenced many famous authors, including the novelists Marcel Proust, Émile Zola, Charles Dickens, Gustave Flaubert, Henry James and Jack Kerouac, as well as important philosophers such as Friedrich Engels. Many of Balzac's works have been made into films, and they continue to inspire other writers.

An enthusiastic reader and independent thinker as a child, Balzac had trouble adapting himself to the teaching style of his grammar school. His willful nature caused trouble throughout his life, and frustrated his ambitions to succeed in the world of business. When he finished school, Balzac was apprenticed as a legal clerk, but he turned his back on law after wearying of its inhumanity and banal routine. Before and during his career as a writer, he attempted to be a publisher, printer, businessman, critic, and politician. He failed in all of these efforts. La Comédie Humaine reflects his real-life difficulties, and includes scenes from his own experience.

Balzac suffered from health problems throughout his life, possibly due to his intense writing schedule. His relationship with his family was often strained by financial and personal drama, and he lost more than one friend over critical reviews. In 1850, he married Ewelina Hańska, his longtime paramour; he died five months later.
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“Women are always true, even in the midst of their greatest falsities, because they are always influenced by some natural feeling.” — 26 people liked it

“It is always assumed by the empty-headed, who chatter about themselves for want of something better, that people who do not discuss their affairs openly must have something to hide.” — 15 people liked it

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