Honoré de Balzac

Honoré de Balzac

Honoré de Balzac

Mikito Muroya
Report on Le Colonel Chabert by Honoré de Balzac
Le Colonel Chabert by Honoré de Balzac (published in 1832) begins in a law office run by the attorney Derville. It is quickly revealed that it is in France, during the early period of the Restoration. A strange figure enters the story to tell his tale to Derville. The man claims to be Colonel Hyacinthe Chabert, someone known to have been killed during the course of the Battle of Eylau, which had occurred several years before. Despite the strange claim, Derville continues to listen to the supposed Colonel’s story; Chabert explains that, after taking a blow to the head which had rendered him unconscious, he was thought to be dead and was buried in a grave with other casualties of the great clash (an experience described in a classic case of 19th century taphophobic literature). However, Chabert managed to escape his would-be tomb and was rescued by a couple who took him into their house, and ultimately to a hospital. After a lengthy sickness of half a year, during which he had no memory of his past life, Chabert finally remembered his former self and position. Initially met with disbelief, a surgeon finally believed that he was telling the truth and provided a document stating such. Unfortunately, during his many travails to try and reach home, he was rarely taken to truly be Colonel Chabert; usually people would consider him mad, which led to his being locked into a mental institution. He was released two years later only when he renounced his claim to his former life. Chabert returned to Paris a destitute man and found everything changed. Napoleon was gone, replaced with the newly returned Bourbons of l’Ancien Régime. Besides the change in the city and its society, Chabert had lost his estate: due to reports of his death, Chabert’s wife had married the Comte Ferraud. Chabert attempted to contact the Comtesse, but she refused to acknowledge his presence. Infuriated, he attempted to take legal action against her, but no lawyer would take the case, because they thought he was either mad or lying.
Despite being the Comtesse’s lawyer, Derville agrees to take the case. In fact, he is so moved that he gives Chabert money to survive on, feeling that even if he has been swindled, it was by an excellent artist, whose performance was worth the money. Derville then sends letters of inquiry to Germany to acquire the necessary paperwork to prove Chabert’s identity. The papers arrive three months later, at which time Derville proceeds to inform the Comtesse of the survival of her first husband. She agrees to hold a meeting to secure a legal agreement. At the meeting, she disagrees over how much Chabert asks for in the settlement and leaves. As he later leaves, she pulls him aside and asks him to come with her. He agrees, and they go the Comtesse’s country residence. There, she asks him to go underground and never reveal his true identity, as that is what would most please her and protect her children. He refuses, then later overhears the Comtesse saying that he should be committed to an institution to keep him silent. Disgusted, Chabert leaves.
Derville later sees Chabert at court, as Chabert is sentenced to go jail for being a vagabond. The conclusion comes decades later, when Derville sees Chabert (now insisting he merely be called Hyacinthe), now rather senile and in an infirmary. The injustice of Chabert’s life causes Derville to reflect on his own; he decides that he has seen too much cruelty perpetrated by people against one another as a lawyer, and decides to renounce his profession once and for all.

               The book also examines the contrast between the rich and poor. Prior to his wounding, Chabert is a wealthy man. As a result of it, he experiences extreme poverty. The couple who rescue him from an early grave take him to their “poor hovel” (page 12). While trying to get home, he “wandered about like a vagabond, begging my bread” (page 12), “dressed like a sans-culotte. I was more like an Esquimaux than a Frenchman!” (page 15) Even after Derville gives Chabert money, Chabert continues to live in poor conditions with the milkman, Vergniaud. The house in which they live, “if indeed the name of house may be applied to one of the hovels built in the neighborhood of Paris,” (page 19) is in dreadful condition, with a dirty interior, earthen floors, and walls which appear ready to fall down. Yet, despite the conditions all the poor must deal with, they seem more than willing to help Chabert. Despite not knowing who he is, the man and woman who find him take him into their house and try to nurse him back to help, eventually gaining him admittance to a nearby hospital. When he was crossing through Germany, he would often stop “in some little town, where every care was taken of the invalid Frenchman,” (page 13) even though he had no money. When Chabert finally reached Paris, Vergniaud took Chabert into his home. This contrasts greatly with the wealthy. Despite her not inconsiderate amounts of money, the Comtesse does not want to pay Chabert; she merely wishes for him to disappear (and she convinces him to do this at her second luxurious home). The hostility of the wealthy is also evident elsewhere in the story, such as when Chabert “stood in front of a fine house in Strassburg where once I had given an entertainment, and where nothing was given me, not even a piece of bread.” (page 16)
Le Colonel Chabert is a fine piece of fiction. Balzac tells a compelling story which draws the reader in and makes them care about the titular character. At the same time, it gives the reader an excellent feeling of the atmosphere of the Restoration Period of French History. The novel also provides a heavy-handed critique of what France had become during that time. In doing so, it displays an image of the disparate lives of the rich and poor, as well as exposing the wealthy as being robbed of the simple human compassion which is shown by the poor, who have so little to give.

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What’s in a Name?: Vautrin in Balzac’s Père Goriot

Vautrin is easily the most fascinating and complex character of Honoré de Balzac’s Père Goriot.  His complexity stems from the many sides of his personality to which Balzac introduces the reader.  He also possesses multiple names, and Balzac uses each of them various times within the novel, each representing a different side of Vautrin.  Although these names have a certain amount of flexibility throughout the novel, he uses them in this passage to represent a very specific part of Vautrin’s personality.  Balzac uses multiple names for this mysterious character throughout the novel, referring to him by the name that corresponds to the part of him that is acting in that particular moment; each name represents a different characteristic, which come together to form a coherent, though constantly shifting, whole.  Without knowing each one of his names, those who interact with Vautrin are only able to understand the small part of him represented by the name they call him.
The three names Balzac uses most often for Vautrin each carry a special significance, and Balzac provides a key into understanding each of them in the second part of the final sentence of this passage.  Jacques Collin, Vautrin’s given name, is his past, the basis for all his other names.  It is Jacques Collin’s “ruthless doctrines” that create the other facets of his personality.  Balzac uses the word “doctrines” here, of which two meanings seem to apply.  The first is the generally accepted connotation of doctrine as being a system of beliefs or practices.  Collin’s doctrine consists of both the code of honor among thieves to which he dedicates himself and his own particular moral code.  Doctrine, however, can also mean discipline (OED).  Collin posses a ruthless discipline in manner that allows him to slide seamlessly from personality to personality.
The names “Jacques” and “Collin” themselves also carry significant meanings that tie in very closely with Vautrin’s personality and actions.  Jacques is the French version of Jacob, which means “the supplanter” (“Baby Names”); a supplanter is “one who dispossesses or displaces another in his position, especially by unworthy practices” (OED).  Vautrin supplants others, using different people’s names as his own, taking their place by “unworthy practices,” as the police agent explains when he says “…[Vautrin] slipped into the skin of an honest man” (154).  Jacob is also a Biblical name.  The Biblical Jacob tricked his brother Esau out of his inheritance and birthright, yet at the same time was the more worthy and beloved brother in the eyes of God.  Vautrin is Balzac’s Jacob: though he is a thief and tricks people into giving him what he wants, he is also the most dependable and trustworthy character in the book and one of Balzac’s most beloved characters, further alluding to the complexity of his personality.  Collin is a version of the English “Colin,” which means, among other things, “victor” (“Baby Names”).  Vautrin is victorious in almost everything, committing his crimes while consistently escaping imprisonment and death (thus the alias Death-Dodger).  When the names are put together, the combined meaning is “one who supplants for victory,” true to how Vautrin takes on various identities to achieve his goals.
Vautrin is his current, temporary name, representing his present.  Vautrin is well-liked by most of the other characters, and he places himself in an almost fatherly role among them.  He calls Victorine and Eugene his children and refers to Madame Vacquer as “Ma.”  Balzac alludes to this role when he mentions Vautrin’s “regal authority” (183).  He places himself in the position of traditional head of the household, implying authority.  The reader can interpret “regal” in two different ways: either as the common understanding of royal or dignified or as its less-known meaning of “a groove, a slot” (OED).  The second sense of the word reinforces the idea of Vautrin the father figure, with his niche as an authority within the household.
Death-Dodger, though one of Vautrin’s current aliases, represents his future in this passage.  In later novels, Vautrin continues to evade death and get what he wants.  Balzac confirms this idea when he mentions the character’s “religion of indulging in his own good pleasure” (183).  Death-Dodger is almost religious in his dedication to going after what he wants.  He is willing to manipulate, coerce, and even kill to indulge “his own good pleasure.”
Balzac uses each of these names in the passage, because all of the major aspects of the character’s personality are described in it.  Balzac first refers to him as “Death-Dodger,” when he is denied “all hope of flight.”  The character’s realization that he has (temporarily) run out of options for escape connects with the side of him that constantly dodges danger and punishment: Death-Dodger.  Balzac next calls him “Collin”, when “the chief…began by hitting him on the head so violently that the wig came off and revealed [his] head in all its true horror” (182-183).  Here, the reader is seeing the “true”, and therefore original, head of the character, and, thus, Jacques Collin.  Finally, “everyone now fully understood Vautrin, his past, present and future” (183).  Balzac uses the name “Vautrin” in that sentence because the other characters are finally able to understand the whole of the person that they formerly only knew a part of (the present part), through the revelation of his other names.
Though Balzac uses Vautrin’s names to represent past, present, and future in this small passage, the names are far more fluid than that in the rest of the novel.  He is able to use them more definitively here through the creation of a moment of calm in the midst of one of the most pivotal moments of the book: Vautrin’s arrest.  His arrest marks the climax of the book; all the prior events have been building up to this moment, and the conclusion of the book, marked by Père Goriot’s death, begins at this point.  These few sentences have an almost cinematic style, wherein time seems to stop for a moment and the speaker steps back and describes the situation.  This sense of timelessness is most easily visible in Balzac’s diction.  Vautrin is the center of attention, the person “on whom all eyes were irresistibly fastened” (182).  Everyone’s eyes are “fastened” on him, unmoving, and they are unable to turn away for a moment, because their gaze is drawn “irresistibly” to him.  This passage also consists solely of long sentences of detailed description and no action (with the sole exception of the removal of Vautrin’s wig), which gives the reader the feeling that time is frozen, as there is no action pushing it forward.
Balzac uses this timeless moment to give the reader more insight into Vautrin’s character by using his names to represent past, present, and future.  In reality, however, each of his names has more fluidity than that, given his complex nature.  Death-Dodger, while Vautrin’s future, is also his past and present.  He has gotten out of many difficult situations in the past and does his best to avoid as much danger as possible by not resisting arrest when he realizes that will aid him in his future exploits.  Jacques Collin was his past, but is also his present and future because it is the building block for all the other pieces of his character.  Thus, though Balzac uses these names to represent certain aspects of his character in the passage, his identity is constantly shifting, with each aspect of his personality very fluid.
In the final sentence of the passage, Balzac tells the reader that the other characters are finally able to understand Vautrin.  “Everyone now fully understood Vautrin, his past [Collin], present [Vautrin] and future [Death-Dodger]…” (183).  The pieces are finally put together, allowing the other characters to view the coherent whole, tied together with “a power of organization applied to everything” (183).  According to the Oxford English Dictionary, organization can also mean compartmentalization (OED).  Thus, Balzac is telling his reader that these pieces are connected through the compartmentalization that Vautrin applies to everything, including his personality.  Through this last sentence, Balzac is also telling the reader that the other characters did not understand all of Vautrin before this point; they only knew his present (Vautrin), and Balzac implies through his use of the word “fully” that they noticed something missing in their prior understanding, further alluding to the importance of all of Vautrin’s names.
In Vautrin, Balzac has created a mysterious figure, difficult to comprehend because his personality is so multi-faceted.  Balzac uses this passage to convey to the reader the significance of each of Vautrin’s aliases and the necessity of each to the character.  Without any one of his names, Vautrin would be incomplete and harder to fully understand, both for the reader and the other characters in the novel.

Works Cited
“Baby Names World”.  <<www.babynamesworld.com>>.
Balzac, Honoré de. Père Goriot.  New York: Oxford, 1990.
Oxford English Dictionary.  <<www.oed.com>>.

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Honoré de Balzac

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Honoré de Balzac