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Vendetta by Honoré de Balzac
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Vendetta (original 1830; edition 2006)

by Honoré de Balzac (Author)

Series: The Human Comedy (Études de Moeurs - Scènes de la vie privée I | 4), Studies of Manners (8), Scenes from Private Life (8)

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987279,284 (3.45)8
Classic Literature. Fiction. Romance. HTML:

Fans of Romeo and Juliet will delight in the novella Vendetta, Honore de Balzac's unique take on the timeless theme of star-crossed lovers. Corsican immigrants Ginevra Piombo and Luigi Porta fall hopelessly in love, unaware of the fact that their respective families have long been ensnared in a multi-generational blood feud. Will they be able to live happily ever after in spite of their unhappy heritage?

.… (more)
Member:ldcosta
Title:Vendetta
Authors:Honoré de Balzac (Author)
Info:Hard Press (2006), 66 pages
Collections:Movies, Your library, Currently reading, Recovered books
Rating:****
Tags:essai, roman

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Vendetta by Honoré de Balzac (Author) (1830)

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» See also 8 mentions

Showing 1-5 of 6 (next | show all)
This novella concerns a vendetta between two Corsican families, the daughter of one of whom falls in love with the only surviving son of the other, and is rejected by her own father. They marry against this opposition and have a very tough time and eventually perish - this was quite dramatic and stark and moving. ( )
  john257hopper | Jul 18, 2023 |
As a heads up, unfortunately this was translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley. I and other reviewers agree, her translations actually detract from reading Balzac. I have read a sample of her translation of The Chouans side by side with the Penguins translators, and its like reading two different works. Its a shame, as the entire Human Comedy cries out for decent translations! ( )
  Isgodchekhov | Aug 17, 2021 |
I can sum up this novella for myself (for future reference) as a combination of 'Romeo & Juliet' with O. Henry's 'The Gift of the Magi'.

The novella is melodrama and as such doesn't compare to Balzac's greater novels but I thought it deserved more than 3.5*. Maybe 3.7 but such hair-splitting has little value; I only mention it because I don't want others to take my 4* to mean I felt it was equal to most of my other 4* books. If you don't like melodrama, you won't like this.

Balzac once again demonstrates his belief that marrying against parental and/or societal wishes is doomed to failure. Yet the portrait of Corsican ideas of vengence and the look at how life changed from 1800 under Napoleon to 1815 under the second restoration was fascinating. This background to the story raised it in my estimation. ( )
  leslie.98 | Mar 15, 2020 |
Readable if melodramatic novella, featuring a hot-blooded Corsican family who have settled in Paris after a bloody culmination to a vendetta back home. The old couple worship their lovely artistic daughter, Ginevra. Then one day she encounters a dashing soldier hiding from royalists in the lumber room at her art school...
Not up to the fabulous standard of some of Balzac's novels, but OK. ( )
  starbox | Jun 2, 2019 |
The best opening of any Balzac work I have read. And in some of the ensuing scenes, the most wooden melodrama of any Balzac work I have read, especially the scene where Ginevra confesses her love to her father who says she will die before him if she continues down this path. But there are numerous hints of the Balzac to come, most especially in the description of the relationship and backbiting between girls in Monsieur Servin ( )
  nosajeel | Jun 21, 2014 |
Showing 1-5 of 6 (next | show all)
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The Human Comedy (Études de Moeurs - Scènes de la vie privée I | 4)

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Towards the end of October 1800, a stranger, accompanied by a woman and a little girl, appeared outside the Tuileries in Paris, and stood for a long time beside the remains of a recently demolished house, on the spot where today there rises the unfinished wing intended to join Catherine de Medici's chateau to the Louvre of the Valois.
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Classic Literature. Fiction. Romance. HTML:

Fans of Romeo and Juliet will delight in the novella Vendetta, Honore de Balzac's unique take on the timeless theme of star-crossed lovers. Corsican immigrants Ginevra Piombo and Luigi Porta fall hopelessly in love, unaware of the fact that their respective families have long been ensnared in a multi-generational blood feud. Will they be able to live happily ever after in spite of their unhappy heritage?

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(from Wikipedia- spoiler alert) La Vendetta is a short work relating the tragic fate of Ginevra Piombo, the daughter of proud Corsican immigrants, who has the misfortune of falling in love with another Corsican Luigi Porta. When it becomes known that Luigi is the sole survivor of a massacre in which the rest of his family were the victims of a bloody vendetta with Ginevra's family, Ginevra's father Bartolomeo is determined to complete the act of vengeance by having him killed. But Ginevra refuses to yield to her father's demands and she and Luigi are married. Over the following years the pair eke out a miserable existence, dogged by hunger and poverty, while Ginevra's wealthy father refuses to lift a hand to support her: it is as much as he can do to refrain from murdering Luigi. Ginevra gives birth to a child, but she and the child die on the very day that Monsieur Piombo finally relents and decides to assist the impoverished couple. Before he can act, however, Luigi visits him and gives him the tresses of his deceased daughter. "Dead! Our two families were doomed to exterminate each other. Here is all that remains of her," he says, laying Ginevra's long black hair upon the table. Ginevra's parents are shaken, as though a stroke of lightning has blasted them. Luigi departs. "He has spared me a shot, for he is dead," says Bartolomeo, slowly, gazing on the ground at his feet.
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