Seraphita

I know that Honore de Balzac is one of the giants of French literature (and so of European literature) but 'Seraphita' is truly dreadful. I only reached the end by speed-reading (frankly, not reading for large tracts) what seemed like acres of 'spiritual' garbage to get to its thanked-for end.

I can only surmise that Balzac was going through some sort of mental or 'spiritual' crisis. The literary world has been unkind perhaps in not drawing a thicker veil over the book. Yes, there are a few moments of skilled scenic observation but the bulk is hysterical romantic dross.

You should be grateful perhaps that I (half-)read it so that you do not have to unless, that is, you are a dedicated mid-nineteenth century Swedenborgian with time on your show more hands in which case you may love it.

The book has not been uninfluential. I initially struggled to see the attraction but it probably lies to some in the repressed erotic sub-text of androgyny, with the limp-wristed 'spiritual' and narcissistic heroine being a beautiful woman to men and a beautiful man to women.

It reminds me of Thomas Mann's story of Siegmund and Sieglinde which is a similar nineteenth century treatment of a sexual taboo and desire (in that case, incest) cloaked in 'high art' and romanticism ... just as ephebophiliac obsession would be in 'Death in Venice'.

Desire for the exceptional and the abnormal is a real problem in stratified societies which provide your market as an artist. Say what you are really feeling or thinking and a 'scandal' might ensue that costs you your place - so you use 'art' to give yourself cover.

Perhaps, with his first best-seller out of the way (Eugenie Grandet), where the writing was simple and the story complex, Balzac was getting something out of his system with a story that was simple but the telling of it verbose, complex and over-the-top. Who knows? Who cares by the end?

The Wikipedia has an entry on Seraphita but it seems inclined to ignore it in its biography of Balzac so one assumes that I am not alone in seeing this book as an unfortunate blip that, unfortunately, I have invested time in 'reading'.

However, for someone interested in the mental map of French middle class spirituality as the romantic era was coming to an end - since clearly people were reading and paying for this guff in the 'Revue de paris' in 1834 - it may yet have value.

My own guess is that Swedenborgian fantasy from the previous century was a most useful way of bridging the tension between an imperfect post-revolutionary Christianity, a continued yearning for the spiritual (whatever that may be) and the dictates of reason.

Balzac was also a romantic in his view of French society (legitimist, religious, right-wing) which, by the early 1830s, was falling into place as a very bourgeois and more obviously materialist society under the July Monarchy. The yearning for the 'spiritual' is a political position.

Filled with paradox, he was also a consistently useless businessman in his own right. Some of his worst business disasters had taken place only five years before the book's publication. People can often get 'spiritual' as a fall-back position after material failure.

1833 also saw him involved in an illicit affair that resulted in a child so, without being at all biographically determinist, this period look stressful to say the least. Seraphita has the feel of a work of self-psychotherapy in which Balzac is trying to integrate his world though myth.

Swedenborg is positioned (as he should be) as a highly intelligent man who led in the material sciences before having a revelation that took him into new realms of thought. It does not quite work today but then, with no sense that God was dead, it permitted a rational and angelic afterlife.

Jamming Swedenborg's spirituality with a sort of Nordic Gothicism and a spiritual eroticism based on gender confusion with a hint of anti-materialist politics (including a nice little rant against the nation of shopkeepers in India) might have seemed a good idea at this point in Balzac's life.

Instead of writing complex stories for the bourgeoisie, Balzac may have thought that he was going up-market into becoming a visionary literary lion but the damn thing crashes to earth (rather than ascending heavenwards like Seraphita) in verbosity and, frankly, cant.

Balzac once wrote: "Christianity, above all, Catholicism, being ... a complete system for the repression of the depraved tendencies of man, is the most powerful element of social order". There we have it in a nutshell. Repressed desire transmuted into religion through verbal legerdemain. show less

This short novel is a 19th-century classic of supernatural literature with a significant influence on francophone occultism. It is well worth a read, although the opening passages--consisting of a long-drawn meditation on Norwegian geography--are slow and off-putting. The third chapter includes a fairly detailed introduction to Swedenborg's life and work that could be interesting to those unfamiliar with the topic, and can be skimmed without loss by those who know it. The book ends with a spectacular mystical vision that is unusual in its shared nature and the nature of its sharedness. (Let's say it leaves Augustine and Monica in the dust!)

"God welcomes boldness. He loves to be taken by violence; He will never reject those who force show more their way to Him. Know this! desire, the torrent of your will, is so all-powerful that a single emission of it, made with force, can obtain all; a single cry, uttered under the pressure of Faith, suffices. Be one of such beings, full of force, of will, of love! Be conquerors on the earth!" show less

Σ' αυτό το φιλοσοφικό μυθιστόρημα, ο Μπαλζάκ, μέσα από τις μυστικιστικές θεωρίες του Σβέντενμποργκ, δίνει ζωή σ' ένα μυστηριώδες πλάσμα, τη Σεραφίτα-Σεραφίτους, που συνενώνει τη φύση του αρσενικού και του θηλυκού. Πρόκειται ωστόσο για ένα ον χωρίς φύλο, ένα πλάσμα στο οποίο η απουσία σεξουαλικότητας είναι απόλυτη στην ουσία πρόκειται για ένα κενό που γεμίζει με το βλέμμα των άλλων: ένας άντρας και μια show more γυναίκα το αγαπούν ταυτόχρονα και αυτοί είναι που του προσδίδουν ένα φύλο προβάλλοντας πάνω του την επιθυμία τους για το φύλο που το ίδιο δεν έχει... (Από την παρουσίαση στο οπισθόφυλλο του βιβλίου)

"Η Σεραφίτα είναι το τελευταίο μεγάλο δημιούργημα της ευρωπαϊκής λογοτεχνίας που έχει ως κεντρικό θέμα το μύθο του ανδρόγυνου. [...] Είναι αναμφίβολα το πιο μαγευτικό από τα φανταστικά μυθιστορήματα του Μπαλζάκ". (Μιρσέα Ελιάντ)
Περιεχόμενα
ΣΕΡΑΦΙΤΑ
1. Σεραφίτους
2. Σεραφίτα
3. Σεραφίτα-Σεραφίτους
4. Τα νέφη του ιερού
5. Ο αποχαιρετισμός
6. Ο δρόμος για τα ουράνια
7. Η ανάληψη
ΕΠΙΜΕΤΡΟ
1. Το ταξίδι του Μπαλζάκ και η εξύψωση της Σεραφίτας: από το ανδρόγυνο ον στον άγγελο (Μαρία Σπυριδοπούλου)
Βιβλιογραφία
2. Το ανδρόγυνο τον 19ο αιώνα (Mircea Eliade)
3. ΗΣεραφίτα και η σχέση της με το δίπολο animus-anima (Gaston Bachelard) show less

Les premières pages sur les côtes de Norvège sont magnifiques.