Talk:Honoré de Balzac

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Someone suggested retitling this to Honoré de Balzac on wikipedia:votes for deletion

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I suspect some characters for accented letters were corrupted with my May 20th edit. Anyone able to help fix them? Andrew Sly 08:19, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

Contents 1 Images 2 The comparision with Dickens 3 Comédie humaine page 4 Sort of looks like.... 5 Balzac/Balssa 6 The comparison with Dickens 7 Original research and lack of references 8 "Popular culture" section...

[edit] Images

The image used in this article [[1]] is a mirrored image of the one used in French version of the article.

[edit] The comparision with Dickens

The comparision with Dickens ( "...making him [Balzac] the Charles Dickens of the french literature" ) is bad ;Balzac is better and more famous than Dickens...it would make sense to say about Dickens that he is "the Balzac of the british literature" , but not the other way around.Please,remove the comparision from the text. Stefan Udrea 13:05, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

While I don't agree that Balzac can be said to be 'more famous' or 'better' than Dickens, I'd be in favour of removing the comparison simply on the grounds that it's fatuous to compare entirely different writers whose work is, moreover, internally pretty riven. The Balzac of Annette et le criminel is most unlike the Balzac of Splendeurs, and what has the crass Nicholas Nickleby to do with the genius of Great Expectations? - so what can we be comparing? Ajcounter 15:41, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

In fact I'm going to get executive and get rid of this, it's not doing any work at all in the article. Ajcounter 15:42, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comédie humaine page

La Comédie humaine is in great need of its own detailed page with discussion of the different versions, repeating characters and so forth (if "Doctor Who can get twenty pages, what are we Balzac lovers waiting for?). I started the page by using your discussion of the work. If the Balzacian wikipedians are happy with the idea, then the C.H. section should be removed from this page. -- NYArtsnWords 00:57, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

I went ahead and made the delete of the CH section from this page with a link to the Comédie Humaine page. Hope people are fine with it. NYArtsnWords 22:55, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

OK thanks it was me who expanded the article recently, though there's more biog still to put in. Uncle Wes 23:00, 31 August 2005

Is "Marcel Proust (that other weaver of a great tapestry)" correct in tone for an encyclopedia? - anon passerby

[edit] Sort of looks like....

Anyone notice Jon Lovitz looks like this guy?

[edit] Balzac/Balssa

Honoré de Balzac was born "Honoré Balzac" (without aristocratic particle) and not "Balssa". Stephan Zweig quotes his birth certificate in his biography : "Aujourd'huy, deux Prairial, an sept de la République française, a été présenté devant moi Pierre Jacques Duvivier, officier public soussigné, un enfant mâle par le citoyen Bernard François Balzac, propriétaire, demeurant en cette commune, rue de l'Armée d'Italie, section du Chardonnet n°25, lequel m'a déclaré que ledit enfant s'appelle Honoré Balzac, né d'hier à onze heures du matin, au domicile du déclarant..." It was Honoré's father (Bernard François) who was born "Balssa". He changed his name in "Balzac" between 1773 and 1783.

[edit] The comparison with Dickens

Indeed the comparison with Dickens is not appropriate, not only because Balzac is a better writer, but also because their works are very different. Balzac shows a complete panorama of the French society during the Restoration on the topic of the "illusions perdues", but strictly speaking it is not a social work. Dickens could rather be compared to another great French novelist, who wrote later a social criticism, Emile Zola.

Personally, I think the best modern-day comparison would be Adam Corolla Zena Dhark…·°º•ø®@» 20:22, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't compare Dickens to Zola : whereas Zola painted a truthful, almost a pitiless picture of the society and nature humaine, Dickens tended to sentimentality and would create black-and-white characters.Constanz - Talk 06:30, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Original research and lack of references

This article needs some serious work. Take a look at Henry James for how it should be done. 128.220.30.139 17:42, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Popular culture" section...

...is getting ridiculous. Not a day goes by without someone adding yet another entry; I can't think of any other major cultural figure whose article has a similar section. In particular, there are numerous entries which aren't really references to Balzac at all, just weak puns on the supposed similarity between his name and the phrase "ball sac": perhaps these could be reduced to one more concise entry, if not excised altogether. Ajcounter 15:47, 21 November 2006 (UTC)