Thursday, July 24, 2014

Balzac and the observed life

I have been reading a good deal of Balzac recently, and for the first time in my life.  A historian friend of mine who has been directing my reading on various projects for reducing my ignorance, suggested the novels of Balzac when I had finished my readings in the French Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte and his successors.  Balzac was to be the substitute for a historical overview of the Restoration.   No doubt about it, his precision in matters of social, economic, and political detail, the intense realism of this narrative, makes it a very good substitute for historical research.  But what I am enjoying most of all is the normalcy of the events and people of the narrative.  My husband and I have just recently finished watching the English version of "House of Cards," after having watched as much as is available of the American remake.  I have to say that I think I have had it with involving myself hour upon hour with such monstrous people.  My husband completely disagrees, but then he loves science fiction, blood and guts shoot 'em ups, all that stuff.  I watched "The Sopranos" because it was so brilliantly done on every level, but here again I must say after awhile my psyche began to rebel against the constant barrage of ugly motives and actions.  I never could get into "The Wire" because of the violence and ugliness.  Well, the two versions of "House of Cards" has the same effect.  Yes, I have known so many cruel, ambitious, soulless persons.  You can't spend your life in academia without pulling a few knives out of your back as you go along, often planted there by someone you thought your friend and protector on the faculty.  But, hey, life is not just made up of evil persons.  I have never known anyone to murder another person, I have known a few out to destroy the career of other people--after all I taught at Boston University for twenty years!--, but by and large (could this just be because I am a warm hearted simpleton?) I think people are out to do something positive for themselves, their mates and spawn, the community at large, honest I really do.  The odd thing that I have yet to square away as I think this through is my aesthetic and moral love for so many of the pieces of ancient Athenian tragedy, I think of Medea, for instance, or Agamemnon, or Clytemnestra, or the brutes who populate the Iliad.  And Richard III.  Maybe in both instances, royalty and the temporal past provide the requisite distance so that I do not have to have the same engagement that I must with Tony and Carmela Soprano or Francis Urqhuart and the others.  Interesting problem.

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