Talk:Honoré de Balzac
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Someone suggested retitling this to Honoré de Balzac on wikipedia:votes for deletion
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)
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[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?
Ron Jeremy too.
- Heh, the hedgehog. That's classic. —ExplorerCDT 01:05, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
[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.
- The article also fails to mention when Balzac started to use the "de" as a part of the name and why. Pavel Vozenilek 17:30, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Balzac's own family only started using the nobiliary particle ("de") in the 1820's; according to a brief footnote I happened upon, this was ostensibly "to improve their social position". --Todeswalzer|Talk 03:27, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
[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)
- Sir, if I may chip in a few thoughts, I believe it is most preposterous to say that the name "Balzac" and the vulgar slang "ball sac" do not sound amazingly similar. It baffles me to think that anyone could hear this name and respond to it in a serious manner. The comparison is most certainly not "supposed" at all. As for the popular culture section, it is quite large, like Balzac himself, and should be trimmed a bit, also like Balzac. Aaрон Кинни (t) 03:51, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
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- I've re-orged the pop culture section to be roughly chronological, and segregated the ball sack entries to their own subsection. I'm remarkably pleased to have been able to legitimately title an encyclopedia section "Scrotum puns". Don't any of you bowdlerize it! I don't believe in trimming data; if the section gets too big, split it to an article on Balzac's influence on pop culture, or at least move it to a list. If other cultural figures don't have pop culture sections on their ongoing influence over time, they should. -- Akb4 05:57, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
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- I've offloaded the whole section to leaf article Honoré de Balzac in popular culture. This is the only practical way to keep the main body of the text on topic. Pavel Vozenilek 17:27, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
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[edit] French Titles
I've noticed that the all the titles of Balzac's works are listed in their original French, and those that link to independent articles also lead to articles under the original French titles as well.
As per Wikipedia's Naming Conventions, it was my understanding that these should be translated to English. Is there a reason that the native French has taken precendence over English? --Todeswalzer|Talk 23:07, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
![[1]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:HBalzac.jpg){kind=link}