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Le Faiseur
L'oeuvre romanesque de Balzac est si écrasante qu'elle en fait presque oublier qu'il a voulu aussi s'imposer comme dramaturge. Dans ce domaine, Le Faiseur, qui date de la fin de sa vie, est à coup sûr sa meilleure réussite. La pièce met en scène un spéculateur génial qui, pour attraper les gogos, fait preuve d'une créativité intarissable dans les combinaisons financières les plus douteuses.
Ce « saltimbanque de la Bourse », nommé Mercadet, pratique avant l'heure et avec un art consommé ce que Wall Street nomme aujourd'hui les junk bonds, ces « emprunts pourris » si familiers à Bernard Madoff... Analyse au vitriol des dérives entraînées par un régime affairiste, la monarchie de Juillet, Le Faiseur est aussi le portrait d'un filou à l'énergie sans limites, qu'au-delà de toute condamnation morale Balzac ne peut s'empêcher de considérer avec une certaine connivence : le romancier et son personnage n'ont-ils pas en commun d'appartenir tous deux à la grande famille des fabulateurs ?...
Ce « saltimbanque de la Bourse », nommé Mercadet, pratique avant l'heure et avec un art consommé ce que Wall Street nomme aujourd'hui les junk bonds, ces « emprunts pourris » si familiers à Bernard Madoff... Analyse au vitriol des dérives entraînées par un régime affairiste, la monarchie de Juillet, Le Faiseur est aussi le portrait d'un filou à l'énergie sans limites, qu'au-delà de toute condamnation morale Balzac ne peut s'empêcher de considérer avec une certaine connivence : le romancier et son personnage n'ont-ils pas en commun d'appartenir tous deux à la grande famille des fabulateurs ?...
- GenresTheatre
188 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1840
About the author
Honoré de Balzac
10.2k books4,548 followersFrench writer Honoré de Balzac (born Honoré Balzac), a founder of the realist school of fiction, portrayed the panorama of society in a body of works, known collectively as
La comédie humaine
.
Honoré de Balzac authored 19th-century novels and plays. After the fall of Napoléon in 1815, his magnum opus, a sequence of almost a hundred novels and plays, entitled, presents life in the years.
Due to keen observation of fine detail and unfiltered representation, European literature regards Balzac. He features renowned multifaceted, even complex, morally ambiguous, full lesser characters. Character well imbues inanimate objects; the city of Paris, a backdrop, takes on many qualities. He influenced many famous authors, including the novelists Marcel Proust, Émile Zola, Charles John Huffam Dickens, Gustave Flaubert, Henry James, and Jack Kerouac as well as important philosophers, such as Friedrich Engels. Many works of Balzac, made into films, continue to inspire.
An enthusiastic reader and independent thinker as a child, Balzac adapted with trouble to the teaching style of his grammar. His willful nature caused trouble throughout his life and frustrated his ambitions to succeed in the world of business. Balzac finished, and people then apprenticed him as a legal clerk, but after wearying of banal routine, he turned his back on law. He attempted a publisher, printer, businessman, critic, and politician before and during his career. He failed in these efforts From his own experience, he reflects life difficulties and includes scenes.
Possibly due to his intense schedule and from health problems, Balzac suffered throughout his life. Financial and personal drama often strained his relationship with his family, and he lost more than one friend over critical reviews. In 1850, he married Ewelina Hańska, his longtime paramour; five months later, he passed away.
Honoré de Balzac authored 19th-century novels and plays. After the fall of Napoléon in 1815, his magnum opus, a sequence of almost a hundred novels and plays, entitled, presents life in the years.
Due to keen observation of fine detail and unfiltered representation, European literature regards Balzac. He features renowned multifaceted, even complex, morally ambiguous, full lesser characters. Character well imbues inanimate objects; the city of Paris, a backdrop, takes on many qualities. He influenced many famous authors, including the novelists Marcel Proust, Émile Zola, Charles John Huffam Dickens, Gustave Flaubert, Henry James, and Jack Kerouac as well as important philosophers, such as Friedrich Engels. Many works of Balzac, made into films, continue to inspire.
An enthusiastic reader and independent thinker as a child, Balzac adapted with trouble to the teaching style of his grammar. His willful nature caused trouble throughout his life and frustrated his ambitions to succeed in the world of business. Balzac finished, and people then apprenticed him as a legal clerk, but after wearying of banal routine, he turned his back on law. He attempted a publisher, printer, businessman, critic, and politician before and during his career. He failed in these efforts From his own experience, he reflects life difficulties and includes scenes.
Possibly due to his intense schedule and from health problems, Balzac suffered throughout his life. Financial and personal drama often strained his relationship with his family, and he lost more than one friend over critical reviews. In 1850, he married Ewelina Hańska, his longtime paramour; five months later, he passed away.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
July 20, 2023
بدبختی یک نفر درمان بیچارگی دیگری نیست..
February 4, 2015
Une pièce d'une actualité presque effrayante, sur les déboires du monde financier. Mercadet est criblé par la dette, qui devient presque un personnage de l'histoire, rampant, silencieux. Cette pièce principalement comique porte en elle un potentiel angoissant sinon tragique non négligeable, particulièrement parce qu'au fur et à mesure de la pièce, on ne se sent plus vraiment en sécurité.
J'ai été à la représentation de cette pièce mise en scène par Emmanuel Demarcy-Motta en 2014, que j'ai trouvée formidable parce qu'elle jouait justement sur ces deux tableaux, tout en ajoutant une dimension musicale à la chose, avec une pièce très chorégraphiée, dynamique, et qui jouait beaucoup sur les espaces et les hauteurs.
Je suis par conséquent bien heureuse que le théâtre de Balzac ait été mis en scène parce qu'il est souvent oublié.
J'ai été à la représentation de cette pièce mise en scène par Emmanuel Demarcy-Motta en 2014, que j'ai trouvée formidable parce qu'elle jouait justement sur ces deux tableaux, tout en ajoutant une dimension musicale à la chose, avec une pièce très chorégraphiée, dynamique, et qui jouait beaucoup sur les espaces et les hauteurs.
Je suis par conséquent bien heureuse que le théâtre de Balzac ait été mis en scène parce qu'il est souvent oublié.
December 13, 2022
About seven years ago I began a reading project to read Balzac in the original French and in Balzac's preferred order, a few books or stories a month; from time to time I got busy with other reading and dropped it for a while, or cut back to one every two or three months. I started with the Avant-propos of the Comédie Humaine, and read all of the first (and longest) two divisions, Scènes de la vie privée and Scènes de la vie de province, then from the other divisions I read the best-known works or those which I happened to have physical copies of in my garage/library. Altogether I read 52 works of the Comédie (about three-quarters of the whole series), of which about 40% were novels and the rest novellas or short stories. This month I read two more works not part of the Comédie, the 600 page Contes drolatiques and finally this play, Le Faiseur, to represent his dramatic works. I hope to finish two biographies of Balzac this month as well, and then I will be leaving him until my next chronological literature project, beginning with Blake and Burns, reaches him again in another three or four years when I may (or may not) fill in one or two other works.
To paraphrase someone or other, as a dramatist Balzac was a good novelist. His descriptive and psychological style was utterly unsuited for drama, and dialogue was not his strongest point even in the novels. Not surprisingly, none of his plays were successful, and if occasionally (very rarely) performed today as novelties, they have never been part of the standard repertoire. This play in particular, which was titled Le faiseur in the edition I read, although the original title and the most often used was Mercadet, ou le faiseur (one recent English translation calls it Waiting for Godeau!!), was found to be very difficult to follow, and it was confusing enough for me even reading it.
"Le faiseur" is literally "the maker", but it also has the slang sense of someone who presents a false image of himself, an "imposter". Mercadet, the protagonist of the play, is a speculator who has been largely unsuccessful in life, which he blames on his former partner Godeau, who left for overseas with their joint treasury a decade earlier. At the point at which the play begins, he is very much in debt and on the verge of bankruptcy. He tries various schemes to get a reprieve in the hopes of making a killing on the stock market in the meantime. These schemes constitute the plot and are very obscure; they were even to play-goers in 1848, and are more so today when laws and financial practices are very different. I figured out most of what was going on eventually (think Trading Places)but I would never have understood it on stage even in English. There is also a sub-plot concerning his daughter and her suitors, which is more obvious.
To paraphrase someone or other, as a dramatist Balzac was a good novelist. His descriptive and psychological style was utterly unsuited for drama, and dialogue was not his strongest point even in the novels. Not surprisingly, none of his plays were successful, and if occasionally (very rarely) performed today as novelties, they have never been part of the standard repertoire. This play in particular, which was titled Le faiseur in the edition I read, although the original title and the most often used was Mercadet, ou le faiseur (one recent English translation calls it Waiting for Godeau!!), was found to be very difficult to follow, and it was confusing enough for me even reading it.
"Le faiseur" is literally "the maker", but it also has the slang sense of someone who presents a false image of himself, an "imposter". Mercadet, the protagonist of the play, is a speculator who has been largely unsuccessful in life, which he blames on his former partner Godeau, who left for overseas with their joint treasury a decade earlier. At the point at which the play begins, he is very much in debt and on the verge of bankruptcy. He tries various schemes to get a reprieve in the hopes of making a killing on the stock market in the meantime. These schemes constitute the plot and are very obscure; they were even to play-goers in 1848, and are more so today when laws and financial practices are very different. I figured out most of what was going on eventually (think Trading Places)but I would never have understood it on stage even in English. There is also a sub-plot concerning his daughter and her suitors, which is more obvious.
November 12, 2025
Une pièce de théâtre de Balzac meilleure que les précédentes
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews