|
|
4.0 out of 5 stars
Sacred and Profane Love, Feb 9 2003
There is a Jean-Luc Godard segment in one of those compilation films so popular in Europe during the 1960s. Imagine a high class brothel of the future -- located, as I recall, at an airport. The client requests an assignation and draws a prostitute who all but rapes him. He tries to open a conversation with her, but she is all action and no talk. The client protests to the management and draws another one who dresses in frills like a character from Jane Austen and recites romantic poetry. You've probably already guessed what happens: This one is all talk and no action.I yield to no one in my admiration of Balzac, whom I consider one of the greatest story-tellers of all time. It is very obvious that the character of Madame Blanche-Henriette de Mortsauf meant something special to the author in his life: Her piety and fine-tuned sensibility, however, don't come across well in our time. Women who suffer endlessly and fritter their lives away in sighs tend to give rise to a frustrated "Oh, come off it already!" The opposite of Mme de Mortsauf is the fascinating Arabelle, Marchionesse of Dudley, who conquers the narrator, Felix de Vandenesse, and keeps him in thrall with "caresses never before enjoyed by any man." Alas, Balzac uses the multi-talented Arabelle primarily as a warning to all Frenchmen how cold-hearted the British are. We are tantalized but far from fulfilled. Call me a dirty old man, if you will, but I would rather that Balzac and Felix spent more time with Dudley and a whole lot less with Mme de Mortsauf. As it is, the latter dies horribly of her excessive sensibility, and Felix walks away from her grave resolved to live a life of which the angelic Mme de Mortsauf would have approved. We all know that Balzac made no such resolution in his own life. Despite his monkish pretensions, the author spent all his life pursuing women. When, after a multi-year courtship, he finally snared his Countess, he died within a year. It sounds as if I did not like LILY OF THE VALLEY. Far from it, I liked it a great deal; but do not see it as one of the author's more successful works. And yet, even at his worst, Balzac is better than most writers at their best, as when Felix muses "I loved an angel and a demon, equally beautiful, one of them adorned with all the virtues which hatred of our imperfections induces us to hurt; the other with all the vices which our selfishness prompts us to deify." Read it and judge for yourself.
|
