Balzac may not be a familiar literary name to most people nowadays; but after reading this story of his life, you might be motivated to explore some of his major works. While Stefan Zweig's biography is sympathetic to Balzac, it reveals his titanic flaws as well as his greatness. I thought the outstanding virtue of this book is how Zweig brilliantly reveals these huge flaws of Balzac as being virtually inseparable from his genius as a writer. For Balzac was possessed of an energy and force of will of startling magnitudes. When he applied these phenomenal powers to the creation of literature he was able to produce masterpiece after masterpiece at a rate of output many times faster than that of other great writers. Unfortunately, when he tried to use his immense energies to achieve success in other realms, he was unable to throttle his power down to a practical and useful level. His unbridled enthusiasm and impatience to accomplish led him into many schemes where the only harvest he reaped was humiliation and disgrace. Nor was he any more successful in his attempts to secure for himself a respected place in the upper society of his day. Ruled by his obsessions, he was destined to always defeat himself somehow in the goals he desired most. However, his debacles in business and society were refined and distilled into artistic expression in his novels; his insights becoming more acute with the accumulation of disasters. Sadly for his personal life, Balzac was incapable of overcoming his obsessional nature and suffered from it until the end of his life, even though it fueled his artistic achievement. I found this to be a fascinating psychological study of a man both gifted and cursed with such prodigious capabilities that they could only be partially controlled, and only in the direction of his art.

The fanatical obsessive drive of Balzac to master all human learning, and create or recreate the whole society and world he knew is at the heart of his life and work. Zweig tells the story of Balzac the writer with sympathy and understanding and great narrative strength. The personal life of Balzac is also driven by the passion for possession and Zweig also tells this part of the story in a fascinating way. This is a very good book about a great writer and his world. And like all of Zweig's work once you begin to read it you do not wish to stop until you finish it all.

According to Stefan Zweig's friend and editor, Richard Friedenthal, his biography of Balzac was intended to be a much more monumental work than this, the culminating achievement of all his biographies. However, the not-altogether-finished manuscript was left behind in Bath when Zweig went to South America in 1940. Zweig continued to work on it briefly, but he quickly lost interest, and eventually he committed suicide in 1941. On at least one occasion the manuscript was narrowly saved from destruction during German air raids before it saw its way to publication in 1946.

Balzac was a prolific writer with a marvellous constitution which he proceeded to abuse mercilessly for most of his adult life. At the age of 33 he dedicated himself to writing a comprehensive collection of novels that would attempt to realistically describe every aspect of mid-19th century French society for posterity. This major work he called "La comedie humaine" (The Human Comedy). This monumental opus was projected to consist of 150 novels comprising some 2000 characters. In fact, Balzac achieved about two-thirds of this remarkably ambitious undertaking, which includes such well-known titles as "Le pere Goriot," "La cousine Bette," and "La recherce de l'absolu."

Balzac wrote thousands of words virtually every day of his adult life. Or, to be more exact, every night: he slept by day until late afternoon at which time he allowed himself to socialize and, more importantly, to absorb every detail of that which he saw and heard; then at midnight, he would sit down at his desk -- for years in unheated garrets in the poorer neighborhoods of Paris -- and write prodigiously until dawn.

During this time Balzac seemed to almost revel in living a life on the edge of financial disaster and emotional collapse; for most of his life he was constantly evading his creditors: "...he adopted a hundred devious ways of holding his creditors at bay, aided by his intimate knowledge of the laws, his inventive skill, and his unscrupulous effrontery."

Yet this remarkably intelligent man always remained optimistic that some day he would finish his great undertaking and eventually would be able to live a life of luxury. To assist him to attain that end, Balzac went through a succession of relationships with women (usually older, usually wealthy, usually married) with whom he had affairs and upon whom he relied for financial assistance and emotional support. He used these women to obtain his objectives. Eventually the tables turned, and it appears as if one of these women ended up using him.

In 1833 a bored baroness in the Ukrainian hinterlands, one Eva de Hanska, for a lark sent a panegyrical letter of admiration to Balzac. They entered into a lengthy correspondence, arranged to meet in Switzerland where they had an affair virtually under the very nose of her unsuspecting husband, who they both expected would die soon. Unfortunately, it took 10 years for the Baron to die, during which time Balzac, while swearing eternal devotion to Eva, was philandering all over Paris. The very wealthy Baroness Hanska was astute enough and cynical enough to keep Balzac waiting another seven years after her husband's death before finally consenting to marry him.

In the meantime, while Balzac waited and daydreamed that his life of financial security would finally be realized, he stopped writing and instead became preoccupied in preparing an elegant house in Paris (Pavillon Beaujon on rue Fortunee) for his future bride to be, which he filled with all kinds of over-priced objets d'art. Baroness Hanska finally consented to leave Russia and marry Balzac in March 1850 only when it was apparent to her that he too would not live long. Although ailing rapidly, Balzac returned in triumph to Paris with his wife, but they hardly took up occupation of Pavillon Beaujon when he became confined to his deathbed; he died on August 18. The Baroness lived another 32 years, shrewdly holding on to his correspondence and unfinished manuscripts, fully aware that these products of Europe's (then) most famous writer, would most certainly some day fetch a fair price.

This is a well-written book and it reads like a novel. (One would hardly guess this was translated, by William and Dorothy Rose, from German into English.) It was difficult for me to sympathize with Balzac when reading this account: he is a snob, he shows callous disregard about incurring indebtedness, he uses women, and he never succeeds in looking reality in the face in his own personal life, even though he has done a remarkable job of doing so in the lives of his fictitious characters. Balzac was a remarkably flawed genius.