Using the excerpt below from the work. "Eugenia Grande", an artistic analysis of Balzac's novel. Character and environment in Balzac's novel "Eugenie Grande"

EUGENIA GRANDE Tale (1833) Eugenia Grande is the daughter of Felix Grande. G. is a large and dense girl, with a round face and gray radiant eyes, beautiful with majestic beauty and innate nobility.

Before the arrival of his Parisian cousin Charles Grandet, a metropolitan dandy, in Saumur, E. does not think about either his position or the character of his father. The appearance of Charles, with whom E. immediately falls in love, awakens in her many new thoughts and sensations: she realizes the poverty of her father's house, realizes that she should hide her love from her father. She begins to judge her father for his stinginess and feels constrained in his presence. For the first time, good and evil collide in her heart, for the first time she commits an act of which she is ashamed: while cousin Charles is sleeping, she reads his letters to his mistress and friend.

Love forces her to dare to rebel, to direct disobedience to her father: she lends her old gold coins to her cousin, impoverished due to his father’s bankruptcy, and when old Grandet wants to look at them, she refuses to explain the reason for their disappearance. E. is her father's daughter, and her passion - love for Charles - is as powerful as Father Grandet's passion - love for gold. Having hung a map of the hemispheres in her room, E. mentally follows her cousin, who left for the East Indies to make a fortune, she draws happiness from the memories of the only kiss that she exchanged with Charles, and these memories help her calmly endure the wrath of her father, who imprisoned her bread and water. E.'s tragedy lies in the futility of her life. Having become the owner of untold wealth after the death of her mother and father, E. continues to live in the same uncomfortable, cold house; she manages her possessions as her father bequeathed to her, and even adopts some of his words, for example, the manner of saying: “We’ll see,” when she doesn’t want to give a direct answer. Many suitors dream of marrying a millionaire bride, but she is waiting for Charles. Charles, who has become rich through the slave trade and has hardened his soul, marries an ugly aristocrat, because, unlike the Saumur people, he has no idea how rich his cousin is. E. marries the chairman of the Saumur court of first instance, Cruchot de Bonfon, having previously made him promise that the marriage will remain fictitious. Having been widowed, she remains the same old maid, in whom the holiness and nobility of suffering are combined with petty provincial habits.

Felix Grande is the father of Eugenia Grande. G. is a Saumur cooper who became rich during the revolution of 1789-1794, when he managed to buy up the best farms and vineyards in the area for next to nothing. Wealth helped him transform from “Papa Grandet,” as the residents of Saumur called him, into “Mr. Grandet” and even become the mayor of his hometown. G. is a stocky, stocky man with a round, clumsy, pockmarked face, with a calm, predatory expression in his eyes, “which people attribute to the basilisk”; his face betrays “dangerous cunning, cold honesty and selfishness.” The passion that completely rules G. is stinginess; G. is ready to do anything for the sake of money; in commerce, he “was like a tiger”: he lay in wait for prey, then “opened the mouth of his wallet, swallowed the next share of the crown and calmly laid down, like a snake digesting food; He did all this dispassionately, coldly, methodically.”

G. keeps his relatives - his wife and only daughter - in a black body, despotically dictating to them the rules of life in his house; the older he gets, the stronger his stinginess becomes; all his feelings are concentrated on gold; For him, happiness is to own gold, to count gold coins at night.

Therefore, having learned that Evgenia gave her gold to her cousin Charles, G. puts her daughter on bread and water. Out of grief, Evgenia’s mother, G.’s wife, falls ill and dies.

G. is saddened by the loss of his wife, but what really shocks him is something else: after the death of Madame Grande, Eugenia, her heir, may demand a division of property, and then he, G., will lose part of his fortune. At eighty-two, G. suffers from paralysis, but he continues to watch his daughter receive payments from tenants, and spends all his time in a chair near the door to the small office where his gold is kept; While he has the strength to open his eyes, he worries about his louis d'or and demands that his daughter lay them out on the table in front of him. His last words addressed to his daughter are also dedicated to money: “Take care of the gold, take care! You will give me an account in the next world!” Nanette the Huge is a servant in the house of Father Grande. N. - “a female creature, built like Hercules, standing firmly on her feet, like a sixty-year-old oak on its roots, a creature with wide hips and a square back, with the hands of a dray driver and unshakable honesty, like her untouched chastity.” N. cooks, washes, cleans Grande’s house and blindly obeys her master, whom she has served since the age of twenty-two; she is loyalty incarnate, not only a servant, but also a member of the family. After the death of her old master, she receives a lifelong pension from Eugenia Grande and, having become a rich bride, at fifty-nine years old marries the chief caretaker of the Grande lands.

prices Despite the difficult international situation, our country is growing, building and strengthening. Vadyukhin P.V., economist at Glavobuvsbyt: Undoubtedly, with a decrease in prices, measures can be taken to reduce wages due to the existing allowance for bread or by increasing subscriptions to a government loan.
Savitskaya M.A., artist: Following a reduction, there is always an immediate reduction in prices and wages for all workers and employees. Therefore, the decrease does not play any role. Salnikov P.I., student: Although a new decrease has occurred, the population still eats surrogates and concentrates, since there is no meat, eggs in stores, and if anything appears anywhere, then in There are huge queues in stores.

Using the following responses to the decline in retail prices in 1952, give your assessment of this event.

Private, collective, state, object, property, municipality, transfer, hands, or.

owner, property.

Population, hereditary, group, rights, established, duties, state.

17th century, the beginning, the struggle for, armed, economic, power, problems, political, aggravated when, Russia, long, and flared up.

can be used twice. It is allowed to add prepositions and change words by case.
1) Population, system, contained, management, governor, who, account.
2) Years, historical, event source, written, which, events, are recorded.

it is allowed to add prepositions and

change words by case.

A) Rent, or, peasant, lordly, economic, feudal, obliged, tools

labor, field, economic, type, which, was, others, process, perform, work.

B) St. George’s Day, which, the owner, paid, the peasant, after, his, payment,

care, week, autumn, and, week.

B) The Grand Duke, his, official, award, which, type,

administration, maintained, current, local population, princely, account, period of service.

D) Nobility, merit, but not, order, highest, position, service, ancestors,

purpose, state, personal, compliance.

Name the encrypted historical terms.

Honoré de Balzac's novel Eugenie Grandet was first published in 1833. It was included in “Scenes from Provincial Life” in the cycle of essays “The Human Comedy”. Artistic problems The work consists in developing two mutually antagonistic themes - love for money (the materialistic component of existence) and love for man (the spiritual paradigm of our existence).

Speaking about contemporary society, Balzac emphasizes its mercantile essence. The life of most people, according to the writer, "limited by purely material interests". One of the main characters of the novel, Mr. Grande is "the personification of the power of money". Using the example of his character and life story, Balzac shows where the love of money can lead a person. On the one hand, we see a careful and economical attitude towards things, on the other – an unreasonable limitation of ourselves and our family in the most necessary things.

Mr Grande spends money only on what he cannot get for free: consecrated bread, clothes for his wife and daughter, payment for their chairs in the church, lighting, salaries for his only maid Nanente, tinning pots, taxes, repairs of buildings and expenses for his enterprises. Sharecropping farmers supply Grande with capons, chickens, eggs, butter and wheat, while tenant gardeners supply vegetables. The family has its own fruits, but the best of them go not to the home table, but to the market. Game does not appear on Grande's menu until he buys forest land.

What Papa Grande values ​​about money is not power, not the opportunities it gives, but money itself. He likes everything connected with them - earnings, increase, investment of capital in one or another enterprise, accumulation, movement, admiration (as in the case of gold coins, which he gives to his daughter Evgenia for every birthday) and even the very awareness of the existence of money.

Mr. Grande sees money in people, and people in money: “Chervontsy live and move about like people: they leave, come, sweat, multiply”. In a conversation with Charles, the hero feels compassion not for the fact that his nephew lost his father (Grande does not see anything terrible in this, since “According to the law of nature, fathers die before their children”), but to the fact that he lost his fortune. For Father Grande, ruin is the most severe misfortune that can befall a person on earth.

The hero does not think about the future life, just as most of the merchants and aristocrats around him do not think. Balzac explains the spiritual callousness of the 19th century by a change in social mores, which exchanged the future life for the present life, full of earthly joys and pleasures. On the threshold of death, Father Grandet reaches out not to Christ crucified on the cross, but to his gilding. Instead of a blessing, the hero urges his only daughter to take care of the gold, because she will have to give him later “report in the next world!”.

Evgeniy Grande could be called the complete opposite of her father, if not for one “but”: the girl inherited from him the main character trait - inner stubbornness. The French writer periodically emphasizes the commonality in the behavior of father and daughter: the first invests gold in profit, the second in feelings; the cunning of the characters is determined by their main, inner passion - Grande’s stinginess and Eugenie’s love; an old miser is ready to sacrifice his daughter’s love for the sake of extra gold plates, Evgenia is ready to give her life for a travel bag given to her for safekeeping by her loved one.

Father Grande intuitively feels his similarity with his daughter, but his advanced age and the passion for gold rooted in his heart do not allow him to see Eugenia’s true nature, while the latter is well aware of what her father is.

A girl doesn't think about money until she needs it. As soon as love bursts into Evgenia’s life, her consciousness also awakens: in the quarter of an hour that has passed since her cousin’s arrival, “she had more thoughts than since the day she was born”.

The girl is attracted to everything about Charles: his sophisticated beauty, his fashionable clothes, and his manners, which are unusual for the province. The misfortune that happened to him kindles in Evgenia her natural feeling of compassion for her neighbor.

The formation of love in the heart of the main character is depicted by Balzac psychologically subtly and carefully: at the beginning, Evgenia unconsciously strives to please her cousin (cleans his room) and wants to please him externally (gets up early in the morning to dress beautifully and comb her hair), then she rebels against the household rules established by her father way of life (“steals” pears from the kitchen and prepares Charles the simplest breakfast – by ordinary standards, but ruinous, according to his father’s ideas) and at the same time carefully hides his thoughts and feelings from those around him.

The noble, Christian character inherited from her mother gives Evgenia’s simple and ordinary features an amazing charm. Illuminating her face "the inner charm of a calm conscience" makes the girl look like Madonna. The main character of the novel happily helps her lover with money and waits for seven long years for his return from the East Indies. Having learned about Charles's betrayal, Evgenia reveals herself, like all noble natures - she pays her cousin's debts, lets him go to another, and she turns her gaze to the sky and continues to live, loving and suffering, waiting for the natural outcome - death.

Against the backdrop of the confrontation between the materialistic and the spiritual, the secondary characters of the novel look somewhat formulaic: the Cruchot and de Grassins families – the crushing “Papa Grandet”, Madame Grandet – the classic image of a God-fearing woman, unquestioningly submissive to her husband. Charles Grandet, a young man with a noble heart, quickly learns unprincipled public morality, which not only changes, but corrupts his character. And only Evgenia remains herself - pure, kind, all-forgiving and endlessly loving.

• "Eugenie Grande", a summary of Balzac's novel

14. The theme of money and the image of a miser in the works of Balzac: “Gobsek”, “Eugenia Grande”, etc.

The theme of the power of money is one of the main ones in Balzac’s work and runs like a red thread in The Human Comedy.

"Gobsek" written in 1830 and included in Scenes of Private Life. This is a mini-novel. It begins with a frame - the ruined Viscountess de Granlier was once helped by the solicitor Derville, and now wants to help her daughter marry Ernest de Resto (son of the Countess de Resto, ruined by his mother, but just the other day, according to Derville, entering into inheritance rights Already here is the theme of the power of money: a girl cannot marry the young man she likes, because he does not have 2 million, and if he did, she would have many contenders). Derville tells the Viscountess and her daughter the story of Gobsek, a moneylender. The main character is one of the rulers of the new France. A strong, exceptional personality, Gobsek is internally contradictory. “Two creatures live in him: a miser and a philosopher, a vile creature and a sublime one,” says lawyer Derville about him.

Gobsek's image– almost romantic. Telling surname: Gobsek is translated from French as “guzzler”. It is no coincidence that clients turn to him only last, because he takes into account even the most unreliable bills, but takes hellish interest from them (50, 100, 500. Out of friendship, he can give 12%, this, in his opinion, is only for great merits and high moral). Appearance: " moon face, Facial features, motionless, impassive, like Talleyrand, they seemed cast from bronze. The eyes, small and yellow, like those of a ferret, and almost without eyelashes, could not stand the bright light" His age was a mystery, his past is little known (they say that in his youth he sailed on a ship and visited most countries of the world), he has one great passion - for the power that money gives. These features allow us to consider Gobsek as a romantic hero. Balzac uses more than 20 similes for this image: a man-bill, an automaton, a golden statue. The main metaphor, Gobsek’s leitmotif, is “silence, like in the kitchen when a duck is killed.” Like Mr. Grandet (see below), Gobsek lives in poverty, although he is terribly rich. Gobsek has his own poetry and philosophy of wealth: gold rules the world.

He cannot be called evil, because he helps honest people who came to him without trying to deceive him. There were only two of them: Derville and Count de Resto. But he also takes an extortionate percentage from them, explaining this very simply. He doesn’t want their relationship to be bound by a feeling of gratitude, which can make even friends enemies.

Gobsek's image is idealized, he is expressive, and tends toward the grotesque. He is practically asexual (although he appreciates female beauty) and has gone beyond passions. He enjoys only power over the passions of other people: “I am rich enough to buy other people’s consciences. Life is a machine driven by money.”

He dies like a true miser - alone, his stinginess reaches fantastic limits. He accepts gifts from his debtors, including food, tries to resell them, but is too intractable, and in the end it all rots in his house. Everywhere there are traces of crazy hoarding. Money falls out of books. The quintessence of this stinginess is the pile of gold that the old man, for lack of a better place, buried in the fireplace ashes.

Balzac initially existed within the framework of the romantic movement, but the image of Gobsek is given with the help of the narrator - Mr. Derville, and romantic exaggeration is objectified, the author is eliminated from it.

"Evgenia Grande" belongs to the novels of the “second style” (repetitions, comparisons and coincidences), is included in “Scenes of Provincial Life”, and it develops the theme of the power of money and has its own image of the miser - Felix Grande, the father of the main character. The path to describing Eugenie's character begins with her surroundings: the house, the history of her father Grande and his wealth. His stinginess, monomania - all this influenced the character and fate of the main character. Little things in which his stinginess is manifested: he saves on sugar, firewood, uses the food reserves of his tenants, consumes only the worst of the products grown on his lands, considers 2 eggs for breakfast a luxury, gives Evgenia old expensive coins for her birthdays, but constantly monitors so that she doesn’t spend it, she lives in a poor dilapidated house, although she is fabulously rich. Unlike Gobsek, Father Grande is completely unprincipled in accumulating wealth: he violates the agreement with neighboring winemakers, selling wine at exorbitant prices before others, and even knows how to benefit from the ruin of his brother, taking advantage of the fall in the price of bills.

The novel, seemingly devoid of deep passions, in fact simply transfers these passions from the love sphere to the market. The main action of the novel is the transactions of Father Grande, his accumulation of money. Passions are realized in money and are also bought for money.

U Father Grande- his values, views on the world, characterizing him as a miser. For him, the worst thing is not the loss of his father, but the loss of his fortune. He cannot understand why Charles Grandet is so upset over his father’s suicide, and not over the fact that he is ruined. For him, bankruptcy, intentional or unintentional, is the most terrible sin on earth: “To be bankrupt means to commit the most shameful of all acts that can disgrace a person. A highway robber is even better than an insolvent debtor: the robber attacks you, you can defend yourself, at least he risks his neck, but this one...”

Papa Grande is a classic image of a miser, miser, monomaniac and ambitious. Its main idea is to possess gold, to physically feel it. It is no coincidence that when his wife dies and he tries to show her all his tenderness, he throws gold coins on the blanket. Before his death, a symbolic gesture - he does not kiss the golden crucifix, but tries to grab it. From the love of gold grows the spirit of despotism. In addition to his love of money, similar to the “Stingy Knight,” another of his features is cunning, which manifests itself even in his appearance: a bump on his nose with veins that moved slightly when Father Grande was planning some trick.

Like Gobsek, at the end of his life his stinginess takes on painful features. Unlike Gobsek, even at the moment of death maintaining a sound mind, this man loses his mind. He constantly rushes to his office, makes his daughter move bags of money, and asks all the time: “Are they there?”

The theme of the power of money is the main one in the novel. Money rules everything: it plays a major role in the fate of a young girl. They trample all human moral values. Felix Grande counts the profits at his brother's obituary. Evgenia is interesting to men only as a rich heiress. Because she gave the coins to Charles, her father almost cursed her, and her mother died from nervous shock because of this. Even the actual engagement of Eugenia and Charles is an exchange of material values ​​(gold coins for a gold box). Charles marries for convenience, and when he meets Evgenia, he perceives her more as a rich bride, although, judging by her lifestyle, he comes to the conclusion that she is poor. Evgenia’s marriage is also a trade deal; for money she buys complete independence from her husband.

15. Character and environment in Balzac’s novel “Eugenie Grande”.

“Eugenie Grande” (1833) is a truly realistic stage in Balzac’s work. This is a drama contained in the simplest circumstances. Two of his important qualities appeared: observation and clairvoyance, talent - depicting the causes of events and actions, accessible to the artist’s vision. At the center of the novel is the fate of a woman who is doomed to loneliness, despite all her 19 million francs, and her “mold-colored life.” This work “is not like anything I have created so far,” the writer himself notes: “Here the conquest of absolute truth in art has been completed: here the drama is contained in the simplest circumstances of private life.” The subject of the new novel is bourgeois everyday life in its seemingly unremarkable course. The scene is the typical French provincial city of Saumur. The characters are Saumur townsfolk, whose interests are limited to a narrow circle of everyday concerns, petty squabbles, gossip and the pursuit of gold. The cult of cleanliness is dominant here. It contains an explanation of the rivalry between two eminent families of the city - the Cruchots and the Grassins, who are fighting for the hand of the heroine of the novel, Eugenie, the heir to the multimillion-dollar fortune of “Papa Grande”. Life, gray in its wretched monotony, becomes the background of Eugenia’s tragedy, a tragedy of a new type - “bourgeois... without poison, without a dagger, without blood, but for the characters more cruel than all the dramas that took place in the famous family of Atrides.”

IN character Eugenia Grande Balzac showed a woman’s ability to love and remain faithful to her beloved. This is an almost perfect character. But the novel is realistic, with a system of techniques for analyzing modern life. Her happiness never materialized, and the reason for this was not the omnipotence of Felix Grande, but Charles himself, who betrayed his youthful love in the name of money and position in the world. Thus, forces hostile to Eugenia ultimately prevailed over Balzac’s heroine, depriving her of what she was intended for by nature itself. The theme of a lonely, disappointed woman, her loss of romantic illusions.

The structure of the novel is of the “second manner”. One theme, one conflict, few characters. This is a novel that begins with everyday life, an epic of private life. Balzac knew provincial life. He showed boredom, everyday events. But something more is put into the environment, things - this Wednesday, which determines the character of the heroes. Small details help to reveal the character of the heroes: the father, saving on sugar, the knock on the door of Charles Grandet, unlike the knock of provincial visitors, Chairman Cruchot, trying to erase his surname, who signs “K. de Bonfon”, since he recently bought the de Bonfon estate, etc. The path to Eugenia’s character consists of a description of everything that surrounds her: the old house, Father Grande and the history of his wealth, accurate information about the family, the struggle for her hand between two clans - the Cruchots and the de Grassins. The father is an important factor in the formation of the novel: the stinginess and monomania of Felix Grande, his power, to which Eugenia submits, largely determines her character; later, the stinginess and mask of the father’s indifference is passed on to her, although not in such a strong form. It turns out that the Saumur millionaire (formerly a simple cooper) laid the foundations of his well-being during the Great French Revolution, which gave him access to the ownership of the richest lands expropriated by the republic from the clergy and nobility. During the Napoleonic period, Grande became mayor of the city and used this post to build a “superior railway” to his possessions, thereby increasing their value. The former cooper is already called Mr. Grande and receives the Order of the Legion of Honor. The conditions of the Restoration era did not hinder the growth of his well-being - it was at this time that he doubled his wealth. The Saumur bourgeoisie is typical of France at that time. Grande, a former simple cooper, laid the foundations of his wealth during the years of the revolution, which gave him access to the ownership of the richest land. During the Napoleonic period, Grande became mayor of the city and used this post to build a “superior road” to his possessions, thereby increasing their value. The former cooper is already called Mr. Grande and receives the Order of the Legion of Honor. The conditions of the Restoration era do not hinder the growth of his well-being - he doubles his wealth. The Saumur bourgeoisie is typical of France at that time. In discovering the “roots” of the Grande phenomenon, the historicism of Balzac’s artistic thinking, which underlies the ever-increasing deepening of his realism, is manifested in all its maturity.

The adventure and love that readers expect is missing. Instead of adventures, there are stories of people: the story of the enrichment of Grande and Charles, instead of a love line, deals with Father Grande.

Evgeniya's image. She has a monastic quality and the ability to suffer. Another characteristic feature of her is ignorance of life, especially at the beginning of the novel. She doesn’t know how much money is a lot and how much is little. Her father doesn't tell her how rich she is. Eugenia, with her indifference to gold, high spirituality and natural desire for happiness, dares to come into conflict with Father Grande. The origins of the dramatic collision lie in the heroine’s emerging love for Charles. In the fight for Charlyaon, he shows rare audacity, again manifested in “little truthful facts” (secretly from his father, he feeds Charles a second breakfast, brings him extra pieces of sugar, lights the fireplace, although it’s not supposed to, and, most importantly, gives him a collection of coins, although he has no right to dispose of them). For Grande, Eugenie’s marriage to the “beggar” Charles is impossible, and he floats his nephew to India, paying for his way to Nantes. However, even in separation, Evgenia remains faithful to her chosen one. And if her happiness never materialized, then the reason for this is not the omnipotence of Felix Grande, but Charles himself, who betrayed his youthful love in the name of money and position in the world. Thus, forces hostile to Eugenia ultimately prevailed over Balzac’s heroine, depriving her of what she was intended for by nature itself.

The final touch: betrayed by Charles, having lost the meaning of life along with love, the internally devastated Eugenie at the end of the novel by inertia continues to exist, as if fulfilling her father’s behest: “Despite eight hundred thousand livres of income, she still lives the same way as poor Eugenie Grande lived before , lights the stove in her room only on those days when her father allowed her... Always dressed like her mother dressed. The Saumur house, without sun, without heat, constantly shrouded in shadow and filled with melancholy - a reflection of her life. She carefully collects her income and, perhaps, could seem like a hoarder if she did not refute the slander with the noble use of her wealth... The greatness of her soul conceals the pettiness instilled in her by her upbringing and the skills of the first period of her life. This is the story of this woman - a woman not of the world in the midst of the world, created for the greatness of a wife and mother and who received neither a husband, nor children, nor a family.”

16. The plot and composition of the novels “Père Goriot” and “Lost Illusions”: similarities and differences.

both novels

Composition.

In Lost Illusions, the plot develops linearly, what happens in Lucien. Start with the printing house - and then all the twists and turns

1. "Père Goriot"

Composition: Its composition seems to be linear, chronic. In fact there are a lot of backstories, and they are very natural, as if one of the characters learns something about the other. This interaction is a mechanism of secrets and intrigue - Vautrin, Rastignac, betrayal - it seems to be a chronicle day after day. However, this is a novel that provides a broad picture of social life.

Balzac faced the need transformation of the poetics of the traditional novel, which is usually based on the principles of chronicle linear composition. The novel proposes a new type of novel action with pronounced dramatic beginning.

Plot:

Balzac uses a fairly well-known plot (almost the Shakespearean story of King Lear), but interprets it in a unique way.

Among Balzac's creative recordings, entitled "Thoughts, plots, fragments", there is a short sketch: “The old man - a family boarding house - 600 francs of rent - deprives himself of everything for the sake of his daughters, both of whom have an income of 50,000 francs; dies like a dog." In this sketch you can easily recognize the story of Goriot’s boundless fatherly love, desecrated by his daughters.

The novel shows the boundless, sacrificial love of a father for his children, which turned out to be not mutual. And which ultimately killed Goriot.

The story begins with the boarding house Vauquet, where Goriot lives. Everyone in the boarding house knows him, treats him extremely unkindly and calls him nothing more than “Père Goriot.” Together with him, young Rastignac also lives in the boarding house, who, by the will of fate, learns the tragic fate of Goriot. It turns out that he was a small merchant who amassed a huge fortune, but squandered it on his adored daughters (Rastignac becomes the lover of one of them), and they, in turn, squeezed everything they could out of their father and abandoned him. And it was not a matter of noble and rich sons-in-law, but of the daughters themselves, who, having entered high society, began to be embarrassed by their father. Even when Goriot was dying, the daughters did not deign to come and help their father. They didn't show up at the funeral either. This story became the impetus for the young Rastignac, who decided to conquer Paris and its inhabitants at all costs.

SIMILARITIES: both of these works are parts of Balzac’s “human comedy”. One environment, approximately one society, AND!!! a person encounters this society and, in fact, loses some of his illusions, naivety, faith in goodness (we continue in the same spirit).

19. The image of Rastignac and his place in Balzac’s “Human Comedy”.

The image of Rastignac in "C.K." - the image of a young man who wins personal well-being. His path is the path of the most consistent and steady ascent. The loss of illusions, if it occurs, is accomplished relatively painlessly.

IN "Pere Goriot" Rastignac still believes in goodness and is proud of his purity. My life is “pure as a lily.” He is of noble aristocratic origin, comes to Paris to make a career and enroll in law school. He lives in Madame Vake's boarding house with his last money. He has access to the Viscountess de Beauseant's salon. In terms of social status, he is poor. Rastignac's life experience consists of a collision of two worlds (the convict Vautrin and the Viscountess). Rastignac considers Vautrin and his views above aristocratic society, where crimes are petty. “Nobody needs honesty,” says Vautrin. “The colder you expect, the further you will go.” Its intermediate position is typical for that time. With his last money he arranges a funeral for the poor Goriot.

He soon realizes that his situation is bad and will lead nowhere, that he must sacrifice honesty, spit on his pride and resort to meanness.

In the novel "Banker's House" tells about Rastignac's first business successes. Using the help of the husband of his mistress Delphine, Goriot's daughter, Baron de Nucingen, he makes his fortune through clever play on stocks. He is a classic opportunist.

IN "Shagreen skin"- a new stage in the evolution of Rastignac. Here he is already an experienced strategist who has long said goodbye to all illusions. This is an outright cynic who has learned to lie and be a hypocrite. He is a classic opportunist. In order to prosper, he teaches Raphael, you need to climb forward and sacrifice all moral principles.

Rastignac is a representative of that army of young people who followed not the path of open crime, but the path of adaptation carried out by means of legal crime. Financial policy is robbery. He is trying to adapt to the bourgeois throne.

20. The main conflict and arrangement of images in the novel “Père Goriot”.

The novel is an important part of the artistic history of society of the last century conceived by the writer. Among Balzac’s creative notes, entitled “Thoughts, plots, fragments”, there is a short sketch: “The old man - a family boarding house - 600 francs of rent - deprives himself of everything for the sake of his daughters, both of whom have 50,000 francs of income; dies like a dog." In this sketch you can easily recognize the story of Goriot’s boundless fatherly love, desecrated by his daughters.

The image of Father Goriot, of course, is, if not the main one in the novel, then at least one of the main ones, since the entire plot consists of the story of his love for his daughters.

Balzac describes him as the last of all the “freeloaders” in Madame Vauquer’s house. Balzac writes “...As in schools, as in corrupt circles, and here, among eighteen parasites, there turned out to be a wretched, outcast creature, a scapegoat, on whom ridicule rained down (...) Next, Balzac describes the story of Goriot in the boarding house - how he appeared there, how he filmed a more expensive room and was “Mr. Goriot,” as he began to rent rooms cheaper and cheaper until he became what he was at the time of the story. Balzac further writes: “However, no matter how vile his vices or behavior were, hostility towards him did not go so far as to expel him: he paid for the boarding house. Moreover, there was also benefit from him: everyone, ridiculing or bullying him, poured out their good or bad mood.” Thus, we see how all the boarding house residents treated Father Goriot and what their communication with him was like. As Balzac further writes about the attitude of the residents towards Father Goriot, “He inspired disgust in some, pity in others.”

Further, the image of Father Goriot is revealed through his attitude towards his daughters, Anastasi and Eugene. Already through the description of his actions, it is clear how much he loves his daughters, how much he is ready to sacrifice everything for them, while they seem to love him, but do not appreciate him. At the same time, at first it seems to the reader that Goriot, behind his boundless love for his daughters, does not see this certain indifference to himself, does not feel that they do not value him - he constantly finds some kind of explanation for their behavior, is content with what he can only out of the corner of his eye he sees his daughter passing him in a carriage; he can only come to them through the back door. He doesn’t seem to notice that they are ashamed of him, doesn’t pay attention to it. However, Balzac gives his point of view on what is happening - that is, outwardly Goriot seems not to pay attention to how his daughters behave, but inside “... the poor man’s heart was bleeding. He saw that his daughters were ashamed of him, and since they love their husbands, then he is a hindrance for their sons-in-law (...) the old man sacrificed himself, that’s why he is a father; he expelled himself from their houses, and the daughters were pleased; noticing this, he realized that he had done the right thing (...) This father gave away everything.. He gave his soul, his love for twenty years, and he gave away his fortune in one day. The daughters squeezed the lemon and threw it into the street.”

Of course, the reader feels sorry for Goriot; the reader immediately feels compassion for him. Father Goriot loved his daughters so much that even the state in which he was - for the most part, precisely because of them - he endured, dreaming only that his daughters would be happy. “By equating his daughters to angels, the poor fellow thereby elevated them above himself; he even loved the evil that he suffered from them,” writes Balzac about how Goriot raised his daughters.

At the same time, Goriot himself, realizing that his daughters are treating him unfairly and incorrectly, says the following: “Both daughters love me very much. As a father I am happy. But two sons-in-law behaved badly with me.” That is, we see that he in no way blames his daughters for anything, shifting all the blame onto his sons-in-law, who, in fact, are much less to blame for him than his daughters. »

And only dying, when none of his daughters came to him, although both knew that he was dying, Goriot says out loud everything that the reader was thinking about while watching the development of the plot. “They both have hearts of stone. I loved them too much for them to love me,” Goriot says of his daughters. This is what he did not want to admit to himself: “I have completely atoned for my sin - my excessive love. They cruelly repaid me for my feeling - like executioners, they tore my body with pincers (...) They don’t love me and never have loved me! (...) I'm too stupid. They imagine that everyone's father is just like their father. You must always keep yourself in value.”

“If fathers are trampled under foot, the fatherland will perish. It is clear. Society, the whole world is held together by fatherhood, everything will collapse if children stop loving their fathers,” says Goriot, thereby, in my opinion, voicing one of the main ideas of the work.

13. Concept and structure of Balzac's "Human Comedy".

1. Concept. In 1834, Balzac conceived the idea of ​​creating a multi-volume work, which was to become an artistic history and artistic philosophy of France. Initially, he wanted to call it “Studies of Morals”; later, in the 40s, he decided to call this huge work “ A human comedy”, by analogy with Dante’s “Divine Comedy”. The task is to emphasize the comedy inherent in this era, but at the same time not to deny humanity to its heroes. The Cheka was supposed to include 150 works, of which 92 were written, works of the first, second and third manners of Balzac. It was necessary not only to write new works, but also to significantly rework the old ones so that they corresponded to the plan. The works included in the “Chka” had the following features:

ü A combination of several storylines and dramatic construction;

ü Contrast and juxtaposition;

ü Leitmotifs;

ü The theme of the power of money (in almost all sections of The Human Comedy);

ü The main conflict of the era is the struggle between man and society;

ü Shows his characters objectively, through material manifestations;

ü Pays attention to little things - the path of a truly realistic writer;

ü The typical and individual in the characters are dialectically interconnected. The category of typical applies to both circumstances and events that determine the movement of the plot in novels.

ü Cyclization (the hero of "Chka" is considered as a living person about whom more can be told. For example, Rastignac appears, in addition to "Père Goriot", in "Shagreen Skin", "The Banker's House of Nucingen" and barely flashes in "Lost Illusions").

The intention of this work is most fully reflected in “ Preface to The Human Comedy”, written 13 years after the start of the implementation of the plan. The idea of ​​this work, according to Balzac, “was born from comparisons of humanity with the animal world", namely, from the immutable law: " Everyone for themselves, - on which the unity of the organism is based.” Human society, in this sense, is similar to nature: “After all, Society creates from man, according to the environment in which he operates, as many diverse species as there are in the animal world.” If Buffon tried to represent the entire animal world in his book, why not try to do the same with society, although, of course, the description here will be more extensive, and women and men are completely different from male and female animals, since often a woman does not depend on men and plays an independent role in life. In addition, if the descriptions of the habits of animals are unchanged, then the habits of people and their environment change at every stage of civilization. Thus, Balzac was going to " to embrace three forms of existence: men, women and things, that is, people and the material embodiment of their thinking - in a word, to depict a person and life».

In addition to the animal world, the idea of ​​the “Human Comedy” was influenced by the fact that there were many historical documents, and history of human morals was not written. It is this story that Balzac has in mind when he says: “Chance is the greatest novelist of the world; to be prolific, you need to study it. The historian itself was supposed to be the French Society; I could only be its secretary».

But it was not only his task to describe the history of morals. To earn the praise of readers (and Balzac considered this the goal of any artist), “ it was necessary to reflect on the principles of nature and discover in what ways human Societies move away from or approach the eternal law, truth, and beauty" A writer must have strong opinions on matters of morality and politics; he must consider himself a teacher of people.

Truthfulness of details. The novel "would not have any meaning if it were not truthful in detail" Balzac attaches the same importance to constant, everyday, secret or obvious facts, as well as to events in personal life, their causes and motivations, as historians have hitherto attached to events in the social life of peoples.

The implementation of the plan required a huge number of characters. There are more than two thousand of them in The Human Comedy. And we know everything necessary about each of them: their origin, parents (sometimes even distant ancestors), relatives, friends and enemies, previous and current income and occupations, exact addresses, apartment furnishings, the contents of wardrobes and even the names of the tailors who sewed them. costumes. The story of Balzac's heroes, as a rule, does not end in the finale of a particular work. Moving on to other novels, stories, short stories, they continue to live, experiencing ups and downs, hopes or disappointments, joys or torments, since the society of which they are organic particles is alive. The interconnection of these “returning” heroes holds together the fragments of the grandiose fresco, giving rise to the polysyllabic unity of the “Human Comedy”.

2. Structure.

Balzac's task was to write a history of the morals of France in the 19th century - to depict two or three thousand typical people of this era. Such a multitude of lives required certain frames, or “galleries.” This is where the entire structure of The Human Comedy comes from. It is divided into 6 parts:

· Scenes of private life(this includes "Père Goriot" - the first work written in accordance with the general plan of the Cheka , "Gobsek"). « These scenes depict childhood, youth, their delusions»;

· Scenes of provincial life (« Evgenia Grande" and part " Lost illusions" - "Two poets"). " Mature age, passions, calculations, interests and ambition»;

· Scenes of Parisian life (« Banking house of Nucingen»). « A picture of tastes, vices and all the unbridled manifestations of life caused by the morals characteristic of the capital, where extreme good and extreme evil meet simultaneously»;

· Scenes of political life. « A very special life, in which the interests of many are reflected, is a life that takes place outside the general framework.” One principle: for monarchs and statesmen there are two moralities: great and small;

· Scenes of military life. « Societies in a state of highest tension, emerging from their usual state. Least complete piece of work»;

· Scenes of rural life. « Drama of social life. In this section are found the purest characters and the realization of the great principles of order, politics and morality».

Paris and the provinces are socially opposite. Not only people, but also the most important events differ in typical images. Balzac tried to give an idea of ​​the different areas of France. "Comedy" has its own geography, as well as its own genealogy, its own families, setting, characters and facts, it also has its own armorial, its own nobility and bourgeoisie, its own artisans and peasants, politicians and dandies, its own army - in a word, the whole world.

These six sections are the basis of The Human Comedy. Above it rises the second part, consisting of philosophical studies, where the social engine of all events finds expression. Balzac discovers this main “social engine” in the struggle of egoistic passions and material interests that characterize the public and private life of France in the first half of the 19th century. (" Shagreen leather" - connects scenes of morals with philosophical studies. Life is depicted in a fight with Desire, the beginning of every Passion. The fantastic image of shagreen skin does not conflict with the realistic method of depicting reality. All events are strictly motivated in the novel by a natural coincidence of circumstances (Raphael, who had just wished for an orgy, came out from an antique shop, he unexpectedly encounters friends who take him to a “luxurious feast” in Taillefer’s house; at the feast, the hero accidentally meets a notary who has been looking for the heir of a deceased millionaire for two weeks, who turns out to be Raphael, etc.). – analytical studies(for example, “Physiology of Marriage”).