Why read Balzac Today?

talk about Balzak a tremendous alcoholic

an encyclopedic thinker and a coffee of

Fado in short ambition

personified imagine yourself struggling

to understand a complicated situation in

your life we trying to figure out what

exactly is the problem we trying to

decide where to look so that you could

understand what is going on whether it

be a family problem or perhaps a

political situation in your country

whatever it may be it is a natural human

tendency that we want to unify our

thoughts and find a principle under

which everything becomes clearer

everything becomes comprehensible in

such a scenario we must go nowhere but

to Balzac he will equip you with a sharp

WID that could slice through the

illusory excuses and allow you to look

at the heart of the problem Balzak drank

around 50 cups of coffee a day people

make a lot of set dire and fun of this

fact without probing into the real

reason why he did so he had taken upon

himself to study human nature inside out

in all its aspects under every condition

possible whether it be poverty affluence

political corruption you name it he was

producing a classic novel after almost

every 3 months consecutively for 20

years from around 1828 to 1848 all of

these novels were compiled under one of

the most ambitious literary project ever

taken by a writer L men there are in

total 90 novels in laedi human which

present to us more than 3,000 characters

Balzac’s aim was to twist and turn Human

Nature by putting it under various

conditions and demonstrate to us its

richness and depth in as much variety as

possible in as much detail as possible

taking up such a mammoth of a task

requires constant energy perseverance

and determination which obviously comes

from 50 cups of coffee each

morning it would be interesting to look

at the relationship between literary

output and coffee consumption because it

is not just Balzak who had this weird

habit of drinking insane amount of

coffee there are other thinkers like him

in terms of literary production who had

the same kind of obsession for coffee

for example Kore and Vol that come

straight to mind as one think of the big

names anyways enough of coffee let’s get

to the serious

stuff firstly the name LOM human has an

ironic reference to Dante’s Divine

Comedy in Dante’s times people were

habituated to look at the world as a

stage where God had the final say he was

an active agent who intervened in human

actions and decisions which required a

Divine view of things to comprehend

reality in the 19th century the Divine

model of understanding the world was

overtaken by a social critic or in other

words a writer who is the god of lamid

it is certainly not Dante’s God it is

Balzak himself every character in lomu

man is at the mercy of balak’s pen he is

the one who decides whether Esther will

live or die there is no viril to guide

him like there is in Dante’s Divine

Comedy this literary comparison

highlights first and foremost the waning

a of the role of religion in human

Affairs at least at the level of

intellectual analysis religious

salvation in Dante is the end and our

life is the means to that end in Balzak

religion becomes the means to

materialistic ends in a powerful scene

in a harlot high and low the Harlot

named Esther is psychologically tortured

because she is unsure whether to become

attached to an old smelly Baron as a

harlot wholeheartedly and jeiz her love

for Lucia at that crucial moment she

goes to her knees and prays to God like

a devout nun and stands up after the

prayer and decides ultimately that he

will be the best Harlot of her times

this is just one case of how religion is

subsumed in Balzac’s novel as a means to

worldly ends in 14th century Europe

divinities were the talk of the day by

the time humors were breathing in the

19th century they were preoccupying

themselves with human Affairs and did

not much care about what zus does with

Ana Balzac’s world is fundamentally an

excess of material interests in it every

character is entrapped or to put it in

hiigaran terms is thrown in the world of

material interests where he or she has

to survive but that makes the world as

messy as our world it does not help us

to understand the world any better in

the process of L he says that the idea

of lamid originated in a comparison

between humanity and animality just as

in the animal world Reigns the rule of

the survival of the fittest in the same

way in the human world the same rule

applies but there’s a crucial difference

between the animal and the human world

I.E money animals compete for food and

get food while humans compete for money

and gain social reputation obviously

they feed themselves with food as well

here we get the answer to the question

with which we began the video if you

want to understand the world around you

you need to look nowhere else but at the

circulation of money that is Balzac’s

answer this answer is very brief this

answer is very brief and realistic to an

extent it also satisfies our natural

urge to unify under un principle all the

various patterns of human behavior so

that we can comfortably understand all

that goes on around us for Balzak money

is the motor of social Machinery in each

novel there are painstaking details of

how the wealth is circulated whether it

be in the form of Grande’s Heritage to

his daughter eugeni or Von’s vicious

plans to use a harlot to milk money from

the State

apparatus ultimately everything is about

money Marx’s best friend and

collaborator angles once said that he

had learned more from Balzak than

professional historians economists and

statisticians combined Marx had paid

various tributes to Balzak in the same

way Balzak had described Human Condition

in so much detail that it only needed a

Marx to derive Marxism out of it this is

not to say that Marx borrowed everything

from Balzak it actually throws light on

the power of literature as providing the

analytic lens that can be employed in

understanding not just ourselves

inwardly but also the social political

and economic world order we see around

us polius in the second book of his

history describes the go as attacking

the Romans so that they can plunder Rome

and it is not just the GS the rotness of

Roman Empire also had money at its

Center earlier Sparta had won the pipian

war before the war they had no money

after the war they had so much wealth

that it brought down the best warrior

city states to have ever existed in the

Western World waging Wars result in

catastrophic loss of human lives but it

is the res on of the military industry

when the us or EU promises billions of

dollars of Aid they are not going to

give paychecks to the countries to whom

they are providing Aid they will give

all this money to their own military

industry to produce weapons well

ultimately it is all about money Balzak

puts enough SL on his Theses of money as

the motor of social Machinery through

different perspectives while traversing

his Pages we find that he’s a

contemporary writer not a contemporary

Because He Lives amongst us but because

his characters are with us everywhere we

encounter them in our families in our

politicians in shopping malls in shop

owners every trival family problem

whether it be between wife and husband

or master and Maid and in the same way

other big problems like political envy

and competition for social reputation

all problems have money at their heart

while reading him the reader is often

struck by the nudity of self-interest

and the extent of wise employ to gain it

but it is not all dark in L man there

are characters like Eugen who know how

to manage money well if in your life you

see Elders fighting in the room over

something it most probably is about some

money matter no matter what spin they

put on it it necessarily has something

to do with money that is what Balz would

suggest you now knowing this should not

make us adamant on fueling the problem

and going around telling everyone that

you are doing this for money that would

really upset people around you Balzak

not only helps us critically analyze the

situation he also provides the means to

deal with it and the best advice one can

get from Balzak in this situation is

silent conspiracy obviously when we hear

the word conspiracy lots of weird

schemes pop in our heads no it is not

that at all silent conspiracy is

basically a strategy that allows the

Observer to work behind the scenes and

manage the situation after all just like

managing Enterprises require strategic

Maneuvers dealing with life also

requires strategy in Cuisine Beth a m

does everything in the novel but hardly

anyone gets to know what she is doing

becoming a silent player is an advantage

that can easily be exploited by everyone

the more silent we are the better the

chance of our success even though it

comes at a price no one will know that

we are successful therefore reading

Balzak is not only necessary to figure

out the world around our immediate

relationships it is also important to

read him to learn how to manage money

one of the primary reasons for writing

90 novels in merely 20 years of time was

the heavy debt Balzak owed to his

publisher it is ironic that the writer

who taught angles the wheels of

money circulation was himself a poor

money manager but perhaps that that is

why his novels are so Lively we learn

more from failures than from successes

after success comes happiness after

failure comes lessons and he made very

good use of his wisdom in studying the

role of failure especially in managing

money we find money in the hands of vies

w in the same as we find money in the

hands of wife

jeni there is so much to learn from

Balzak in terms of living life but

certainly understanding the circulation

of money and problems arising from it is

one of the central lessons of La comedy

woman