Sarrasine by Balzac

"A good man, we had agreed, must at any rate be honest, passionate, and unworldly."

"'If we hadn’t learnt to read,' she said bitterly, 'we might still have been bearing children in ignorance and that I believe was the happiest life after all.'"

"She was the type of that hidden poesy, the link which connects all the arts and which always eludes those who seek it."

"By virtue of one of the strangest of nature's freaks, the thought half draped in black, which was tossing about in my brain, emerged from it and stood before me personified, living; it had come forth like Minerva from Jupiter's brain, tall and strong; it was at once a hundred years old and twenty-two; it was alive and dead."

"He saw before him at that moment the ideal beauty whose perfections he had hitherto sought here and there in nature,"

"He did not applaud, he said nothing; he felt a mad impulse, a sort of frenzy of the sort that seizes us only at the age when there is a something indefinably terrible and infernal in our desires."

"He had had such exquisite pleasure, or perhaps had suffered so, that his life had flowed away like water from an overturned vessel."

Pleasure and suffering go hand in hand.

"He met La Zambinella, spoke to her, entreated her, exhausted a thousand years of life and happiness with her, placing her in all imaginable situations, trying the future with her, so to speak."

"Sarrasine drew his mistress in all poses: he drew her unveiled, seated, standing, reclining, chaste, and amorous--interpreting, thanks to the delirious activity of his pencil, all the fanciful ideas which beset our imagination when our thoughts are completely engrossed by a mistress."

He created his own imagination visually. Oddly combining the real and unreal.

"The golden age of love, during which we enjoy our own sentiments, and in which we are almost as happy by ourselves,"

Interesting. Solitude and the impression is just as important as being with them.

"To talk of danger to a man in love is to sell him pleasure.

"I am an accursed creature, doomed to understand happiness, to feel it, to desire it, and like many, many others, compelled to see it always fly from me."

"I shall never cease to think of that imaginary woman when I see a real woman."

"'I shall always have in my memory a divine harpy who will bury her talons in all my manly sentiments, and who will stamp all other women with a seal of imperfection. Monster! you, who can give life to nothing, have swept all women off the face of the earth.'"

He's stuck with that idea forever.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Woah! That was a very surprising ending! I cannot believe this was a story about a "trap". Even though it was all for a joke. It's so interesting how he imagined that Zambinella was a woman, and insipired all of these passions, and yet he didn't figure out that it was actually a man. I mean, what is Balzac trying to say with all of this? Because in the end, wouldn't it eventually be revealed that Zambinella would actually be a man? I think Balzac is trying to say something about the blindness of passion...maybe that Sarrasine saw what he wished so desperately to see. He developed his strongest passions for Zambinella when he was AWAY from her. Therefore, I think Balzac is trying to say that it didn't really matter who Zambinella really was, but what Sarrasine thought she was. This is stressing the importance of our mind, and what a large role it plays in the process of "falling in love". The imagination satisfies so much that the person that first stimulated them ceases to be important. It was just a stimulus, a trigger, but then gets lost as our fantasies reach new realms with a being that ceases to resemble the original. It makes me think how unfair it is to that being. But when one falls in love, doesn't the imagination eventually cool down, and starts to resemble the real? For instance, Virginia Woolf's Night and Day- the interesting balance between what one imagines in the person, and what it is. In the end, Ralph cooled his delusions and finally enjoyed the real. Well, as best as he could. The ending of this story though- I have no idea what to make of it. Sarrasine swears that he will forever uphold the imagine of woman he had made in his mind, and that the real woman for him is forever destroyed. Tragic, but the tone and the way Zambinella bows his head in despair, strikes me as rather comic? Or maybe that's just my odd way of thinking. I don't know, but personally, I thought the ending was rather humorous.

Anyway, Balzac makes a very interesting point- and of course, so eloquently. That ending- I think it depicts so much of who he was in real life.

--

This is a very nice commentary on the book, mixed with a little bit of French, saying that of course the French original is much better. Which, I can imagine, is certainly true. Too bad my French is horrendous, or I would try it. (link)

This post (readear) says that the audio-which links it to-is extremely funny.
I listened to some parts of it, starting with the line "Suppose I were not a woman" which strikes me as extremely hilarious now that I know the ending! He proceeded to respond, "Would you venture to say now that you are not a woman?" Oh, little did he know! Zambinella's helpless voice at the end, and Sarrasine's question "Have you any sisters that resemble you?" depicts the marvelous genius of Balzac's wit. Shall we say "lol"? One needs to listen to this after one has read the book: makes it much more enjoyable.

other links:

An analysis of Sarrasine by Ronald Barthes (link) from which this Bibliophil references.

This post (making friends and enemies) goes on to further talk about Barthes' argument in which he says to separate the Author from the creation (in his work Death of the Author), as he talks about Sarrasine and "who" is actually speaking in the story. As it says in the post, "When, in the passage, the character dotes over her perceived womanliness, Barthes challenges his own readers to determine who is speaking, and about what. "Is it Balzac the author professing 'literary' ideas on femininity? Is it universal wisdom? Romantic psychology? … We can never know." Writing, "the destruction of every voice," defies adherence to a single interpretation or perspective."

--

Produced by Dagny; and John Bickers

Lost Illusions by Balzac

"Pride, untapered intercourse with the great world, becomes stiff and starched by contact with petty things; in a loftier moral atmosphere it would have grown to noble magnanimity."

What a horrible shame, that potential genius could be crushed down by shallow pride! It seems to be a crime against humanity!


"There are pleasures which can only be felt to the full when two souls meet, poet and poet, heart and heart."


"[...]there is a kind of being who is both prince and actor, and invested besides with a magnificent order of priesthood- that the Poet who seems to do nothing, yet reigns over all humanity when he can paint humanity"

Although I don't think this was his greatest masterpiece, as the Barnes & Noble edition claims, Balzac describes this character from "heaven". How fickle Lucien is! He is such a child- he could be an angel one moment, and a total demon the next, all the time believing he is doing the right thing, when he really is servicing his ego. Balzac seems to have sympathy for him, as most of the characters seem to do- even his enemies- they understand him. Those who loved him the most were the most blinded- and payed for it I did like the contest between the sister and David, and Lucien. To live a fair and honest life, and to be driven by the wold unknowingly worshiping the I Even the most naive can commit horrible follies. The book consisted of too many technicalities and details that which I ended up skipping.


--
Pub by Everyman's Library

I picked the picture below- Naive by ~vivalascorpion because it describes the character of Lucien. He imagine him to be a pretty boy- and yet extremely naive. His beauty and his talent makes him be loved by the rest of the characters- even though he is an egoist. The look in his eyes show such naivety and yet determination.

Droll Stories Vol I by Balzac

The Fair Imperia

"(...) but speaking that sweet language which the ladies so well understand, that has neither stops, commas, accents, letters, figures, characters, notes, nor images."

The King's Sweetheart

"Then she began to weep, like all young maidens will before they become experienced, for afterward they never cry with their eyes."

The change in a woman, as a sort of revenge upon her "fate". As if she became more mature, and only cries through actions.

The High Constable's Wife

"His pale face was softly melancholy. His physiognomy gave proof of a fine heart, one of those which nourish ardent passions and plunge delightedly into the despair of love without hope. Of these people there are few, because ordinarily one likes more a certain thing than the unknown felicities lying and flourishing at the bottomest depths of the soul!"

Yes, most people want a sort of security for their love- that it would be returned. But these marvelous beings, these poets of the heart are so few, so few has passed their lives (miserable and short as they've mostly been)on this earth- gracing us with their divine presence for a fleeting moment- and then they disappear. Like phantoms momentarily wandering the barren earth of the human intellect, to bring us a flower from heaven... How they suffered for love! They, who were her most ardent worshipers- they were cursed by it! Oh, what a horrible irony!

"Who does not love the warm attack of life when it flows thus round the heart and engulfs everything?"

I love how he puts in the word "attack"- as if it were violent...

--

Pub by Gebbie Publishing Company

Jealousies of a Country Town by Balzac

"He was to pass through successive phases of emotion, hidden from ordinary eyes, to one of hose sudden resolves which bring the chapter to a close and set fools declaring that the man is mad."

"We cannot explain it; some strong-minded persons deny that it exists, but many a woman and many a man has felt that shock of sympathy. It is a flash, lightning up the darkness of the future, and at the same time a presentiment of the pure joy of love shared by two souls, and a certainty that the other too understands. It is more like the strong, sure touch of a master hand upon the clavier of the senses than anything else. Eyes are riveted by an irresistible fascination, hearts are troubled, the music of joy rings in the ears and thrills the soul,; a voice cries, 'It is he!'"

"If the daily round, the daily pacing of the same track in the footsteps of many yesterdays, is not exactly happiness, it is so much like it that others, driven by dint of storm- tossed days to reflect on the blessings of calm, will say that it is happiness indeed."

It is easy to please some.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I don't think I finished this one...

--
Pub by Gebbie Publishing Company

Daughter of Eve by Balzac *

"His clothes were a necessary envelope to which he paid no attention, for his gaze soared too high in the clouds to come in contact with material things. And so this great unrecognized artist belonged to that generous race of the absent-minded, who give their time and their hearts to others, just as they drop their gloves on every table, their umbrellas at every door. Finally, his aged frame, badly set upon tottering, knotty limbs, gave ocular proof how far a man's body can become a mere accessory to his mind."

"The man whose action habitually bears the stamp of his mind is a genius, but the greatest genius is not always equal to himself, or he would cease to be human."

He would be equal to his genius- which is something that is not possible for us humans.

"The perfect happiness of Eve in her terrestrial paradise produces in her the nausea which comes from living too much on sweets...This, it appears, has been the meaning in all ages of that symbolical serpent to whom the first woman made advances, some day no doubt when she was feeling bored...She was conscious of a force within, which found no exercise. She was happy, but her happiness caused her pangs; it was placid and uneventful, she was not haunted by the dread of losing it...Not a zephyr's breath wrinkled this calm expanse; she longed for a ripple on the glassy surface."

How complex the female is, and yet, so much confusion within her. It is as if what she desires will never satisfy because she is so capricious..."When she was feeling bored" basically describes it all...

"Kindness is not without its rocks ahead. People are apt to put it down to an easy temper, and seldom recognize it as the secret striving of a generous nature; whilst, on the other hand, the ill-natured get credit for all the evil they refrain from."

"He was bound to be, and he was, for his Eve, listless in her paradise of the Rue du Rocher, the insidious serpent, bright to the eye and flattering to the ear, with magnetic gaze and graceful motion, who ruined the first woman."

First time I've ever come across this marvelous analogy to the Biblical Eve.
The comparison and metaphor is genius! Oh how many women were ruined by such men! It is the female's weakness, and that is what will "ruin" her forever...century after century. Maybe it is because "she was bored" and just an act out of curiosity?

"A woman's thought has marvelous elasticity; it may sink under a blow, to all appearance crushed, but in a given time it is up again, as thought nothing has happened."


"It seemed as though the art of man would also compete with the animal world."

"To the wonderful observer the scene presented more than this gaily decorated surface. It had a soul; it lived, it thought, it felt, it found expression in the hidden passions which now and again forced their way to the surface."

Beautiful, about the essence of Parisian society.

"Imagination has thrown open her fairy realms, and in these our spirits ranged at will, each in turn serving as magic steed to the other, the more alert quickening the drowsy; the world from which our bodies were shut out became the playground of our fancy, which reveled there in frolicsome adventure."

What worlds, what realms imagination provides. The imagination is the "playground" for our spirits, in which are bodies are but a concept- they are the idea, our spirit being the true "body".

"Love, as we imagined it, a world of wonders, of glorious dreams, of charming realities, of sorrows that waken sympathy, and smiles that make sunshine does not exist. The bewitching words, the constant interchange of happiness, the misery of absence, the flood of joy at the presence of the beloved one- where are they? What soil produces these radiant flowers of the soul? Which is wrong? Who has lied to us? Ourselves or the world?'"

The juxtaposition of this is almost ironic...

"Love, dear, is the product of such rare conditions that it is quite possible to live a lifetime without coming across the being on whom the nature has bestowed the power of making one's happiness. The thought is enough to make one shudder; for if this being is found too late, what then?"

Shows how fragile our lives are, how each little detail can contribute so much to our lives- our experiences. One little thing can twist our whole lives into a completely different direction. How helpless and out of control we are! We pathetic human beings! How the creatures above must be entertained by the irony- we could pass our chosen "being" in the street without even knowing it!

"Rich, young, and beautiful, I have only to love, and love would become my soul occupation, my life;"

Oh the optimism of youth!

"Sometimes, at night, I will linger for an hour by my window, gazing into the garden, summoning the future, with all it brings, out of the mystery which shrouds it. There are days too, when, having started for a drive, I get out and walk in the Champs-Elysees, and picture to myself that the man who is to waken my slumbering soul is at hand, that he will follow and look at me."

Delicate themes that Balzac addresses, which makes him such a marvelous man, a genius!

"...treasures whence should issue a unique satisfaction of passion and desire, hours of poetry to outweigh years, joys to make a man serve a lifetime for one gracious gesture- all this to be buried in the tedium of a tame, commonplace marriage, to vanish in the emptiness of an existence which you will come to loathe!"

And that is the unfortunate reality- this is how the naive hope become crushed by the brutality of reality

"Love, as I conceive it, is a purely personal poem. In all that books tell us about it, there is nothing which is not at once false and true."

"Thus it might happen that he would spend his life in ignorance of true love, while all the time possessing those qualities most fitted to inspire it. But if ever he find the ideal woman who has haunted his waking dreams, if he meet with a nature capable of understanding his own, one who could fill his soul and pour sunshine over his life, could shine as a star through the mists of this chill and gloomy world, lend fresh charm to existence, and draw music from the hitherto silent chords of his being- needless to say, he would recognize and welcome his good fortune."

Good fortune indeed! To have something dormant inside of you, to be capable of cultivating it but not knowing about its very existence...that is incredible. Makes me wonder about people who have talents inside of them of which they do not know about.

"Not a moment passes without thoughts of you, for my whole being is bond up in you, and if you ceased to be its animating principle, every part would ache."

"...whilst great souls know how to clothe the merely natural instinct in all the graces of the spirit. The very strength of his spiritual passion imposes severe self- restraint and inspires them with reverence for women. Clearly, feeling is sensitive in proportion to the caliber of the mental powers generally, and that is why the man of genius alone has something of a woman's delicacy. He understands and divines woman, and the wings of passion on which he raises her are restrained by the timidly of the sensitive spirit.But when the mind, the heart, and the senses all have their share in the rapture which transports us- ah! then there is no falling to earth, rather it is to heaven we sour, alas! for only too brief a visit."

It is something divine..when the intellect and spirit meet.

"Dress, that splendid poem of a woman's life, the significance of which she had either exhausted or ignored, now appeared to her full of a magic hitherto unknown. Suddenly it became to her what it is to all women- a continuous expression of the inner thought, a language, a symbol. What wealth of delight in a costume designed for his pleasure, his honor."

"The humblest, as well as the most distinguished, woman must feel her head turned by the first open declaration of her power in such a transformation. Every change is a confession of servitude."

Interesting. The change is the devotion to the other person by action.

"Amidst this gay assembly, the lovers found their joy in a long draught of the delicious sensations arising from the words, the voice, the gestures, and the bearing of the loved one. The soul clings desperately to such trifles. At times the eyes of both will converge upon the same spot, embedding there, as it were, a thought of which they thus risk the interchange. They talk, and longing looks follow the peeping foot, the quivering hand, the fingers which toy with some ornament, flicking it, twisting it about, then dropping it, in significant fashion. It is no longer words or thoughts which make themselves heard, it is things,; and that in so clear a voice, that often the man who loves will leave to others the task of handing a cup of tea, a sugar-basin, or what not, to his lady-love, ind read lest his agitation should be visible to eyes which, apparently seeing nothing, see all. Thronging desires, mad wishes, passionate thoughts, find their into a glance and die out there. The pressure of a hand, eluding a thousand Avgus eyes, is eloquent as written pages, burning as a kiss. Love grows by all that it denies itself' it treads on obstacles to reach the higher. And barriers, more often crushed than cleared, are hacked and cast into the fire to feed its flames. Here it is that women see the measure of their power, when love, that is boundless, coils up and hides itself within a thirsty glance, a nervous thrill, behind the screen of normal civility. How often has not a single word, on the last step of a staircase paid the price of an evening's silent agony and empty talk!"

Goodness, Balzac so easily pinpointed a concept that I was interested in; the act of hiding such an emotion under the cool pretenses of civility. Amazing, once again.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My favorite book by Balzac, so far. So many marvelous descriptions of love, of the emotions of youth...such delicate subjects and he tends to them with such tenderness... He is the french Turgenev. The story was extremely interesting; how the woman wanted her "one" to be her salvation...and how unexpected the ending was. Loved it! Of course.

Most of all, I really enjoyed the concept of "the daughters of Eve", and the "apple" being a seducer. The weakest point of woman is to be flattered and tended to, to be "petted" and given attention- this strokes her femininity- therefore making the seducer the perfect "serpent" for woman.

--
Pub by Gebbie Publishing Company

The Lilly of the Valley by Balzac

"A new soul, a soul with iridescent wings, had burst its chrysalis within me. My favorite star, dropping from the blue waste where I had admired it, and became a woman, while presenting its light, its sparkle, and its brilliancy."

Beautifully describing the embodiment of an idea, a common motif in the classics. The fact that the "woman" comes from the stars, the sky, "where I had admired it", gives the "woman" a sort of divinity- something beyond this world.

"Past sorrows, broodings, despair, and melancholy- past, but not forgotten- are so many bonds by which the soul clings to its sister soul."

It's interesting how the negative parts of life bond human beings together... ironic.

"How enchanting for a young man to see the woman he loves the most beautiful person present and the object of passionate admiration, while he knows the light of those chastely modest eyes is for him alone, and is familiar enough with every tone of her voice to find in her speech, superficially trivial or ironical, proofs of an ever-present thought of him"

"A true passion is like a beautiful flower, which it is all the more delightful to find when the soil that produces it is barren and wild."

A sort of virginity

"When words failed us, silence served us faithfully our souls entered into each other...each enjoying the charm of pensive torpor, they floated together in the river, and came forth like two nymphs as closely one as even jealousy could wish, but free from every earthy tie."

The description is fantastical... i love the way it gives the impression of flowing into each other...

"(...)it struck that there was a harmony in their hues and foliage, a poetry that found its way to the understanding by fascinating the eye, just as musical phrase arouse a thousand associations in loved and loving hearts. If color is anymore light, must it not have its meaning, as vibrations of their air have?"

Color is poetry to the eye!

"Nature has certain effects of boundless meaning, rising to the level of the greatest intellectual ideas...a long forest avenue, like the nave of a cathedral where the pillars are trees, their branches meeting like the groins of a vault, and at the end a distant glade seen through the foliage, dappled with light and shade, or glowing in the ruddy beams of sunset like the painted glass window of a chancel, filled with birds of choristers."

This analogy I've only come across a non-classic incidentally- Freckles by Gene-Stratton Porter... it refers to nature as being the ultimate "church", which is a very interesting concept concerning spirituality in general. Because agreeing to this would affect much of one's outlook on the spiritual...

It is as if nature worships God in its own way, creating cathedrals in the dark, deep forests, honoring its Creator...

"And still, in harmony with my thoughts, the valley under the dying yellow rays of the warm sun presented to me a responsive and living image of my soul."

How well nature knows us... Because the beauty of nature and its mysteries is all perceived through the effect it has upon us, upon our souls.

"The swirl of passion, with its suppressed longings, harmonizes with that of the river; the flowers, unforced by the hand of man, express his most secret dreams; the delicious see-saw of a boat vaguely repeats the thoughts that float in the brain."
Our words, strung to the diapason of nature, were full of mysteries grace, and our eyes shone with brighter beams, as they caught the light so lavishly shed by the sun on the scorching shore."

"I may say that we loved each other in every creature, in every object that we saw about us; we felt outside us the happiness each longed for;"

"(...)the source of the beams that shone from our eyes lay in our souls, for which they were as a pathway, leading from one to the other, so that they might visit, become one, separate, and play:"

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I think Balzac is the best from the french. Such beautiful poetry! And he uses it so artfully, mixing it with society and nature... marvelous. Of course, genius.

--
Pub by Gebbie Publishing Co

Old Goriot by Balzac

"And who shall say which is more awful, the sight of the bleached skulls or of withered human hearts?"

Oh and how withered some hearts are! It is a wonder that their bodies have not slowly decayed...

"Stately Paris ignores the existence of these faces bleached by moral or physical suffering. But Paris is in truth an ocean that no line can plumb. You may survey its surface and describe it, but no matter what pains you take with your investigations and exploration, no matter how numerous and painstaking the toilers in this sea, there will always be lonely and unsuspected regions in its depths, caverns unknown, where flowers and pearls and monsters of the deep still lie safe, overlooked by literary divers."

Beautiful imagery! Oh how beautiful, to imagine a city as an ocean, its depths never to be penetrated. No matter how one looks, in the deep deep corners, there is something to be hidden. I think this is one of Balzac's best metaphors, I was very much struck by this amazing metaphor. An ocean is so dark and deep...so many mysteries...and so is humanity...Especially in a city where everyone is fake and eroded by debauchery.

--

Pub by Classics Club

The Fatal Skin by Balzac

"He had escaped from the realities of life, rising gradually toward an ideal world, finally attaining the enchanted palace of Rapture, where the universe appeared to him in shapes and forms of fire..."

I like how the "ideal world" is on the way up... and how it is a soft "gradual" rising.

"Where can you find, floating in all the ocean of literature, any book capable of matching the artistry this news item" 'Yesterday, at four o'clock, a woman there herself into the sea from the top of the Pont des Arts?'"

Marvelous. This hints to the psychological process of that woman to get to the point of throwing herself. What turmoil there must have been in her soul, in her being. Nothing like that can be written down..

"Between the rich promise that beckons a young man to Paris and his decision to kill himself, only God knows what a turmoil, there must have been of ideas, of poems left unfinished, of moments of despair, of stifled sobs, of futile endeavors, of abortive masterpieces. Every act of suicide is an epic of melancholy."

Such youth to be so horribly destroyed...the life killed inside him.

"The peace and silence that a scholar needs has a special sweetness that is as intoxicating as love. Exercising the mind, pursuing ideas, quietly contemplating the wisdom of science, rewards us with ineffable delights, as indefinable as everything else about the intellect, which functions in mysterious ways invisible to our outer senses. Furthermore, we are always forced to explore physical mysteries by physical parallels. For instance, the pleasure of swimming alone in a lake of crystal-clear water, surrounded by rocky crags, woodland, and flowering meadows and caressed by a soft breeze, may gibe the ignorant a very fervent suggestion of the happiness I felt when my spirit was warmed by the first gleams of some strange new illumination, when I hearkened to the frightening confusion of inspiration, when from some unknown source concepts came flooding through my throbbing brain. To feel that an idea, some generalization of human affairs, is beginning to take shape like the sun rising at dawn, or better yet, growing like a child, reaching puberty, and slowly becoming mature; that is a joy far above other earthly pleasure, or rather, it is a divine delight."

Divine delight is so beautifully said. Nothing can be compared to the beautiful process of the "birth" of an idea, a concept. It involves all part of ourselves in it- the mind, the soul, the heart. Our entire being is constantly striving for an idea that can transport us from one realm to the other. And magical is it when we have found it, the key that unlocks the realms of our imagination. It goes beyond our pathetic existence into things that can only be "invisible to our outer senses". Yes, mysterious is the mind!

"Love stars as a spring of limpid purity from a bed of gravel, water cress, and flowers; it grows into a stream and then a river, changing its nature and its appearance as it flows along; and finally it merges itself into that measureless ocean which to limited minds seems more dull monetary, but in which great souls plunge themselves in inexhaustible contemplation. How can we try to describe all the evanescent nuances of feeling, all those things that mean so much, things said in a tone more expressive than all the words in the language, glances more compelling than the most thrilling of odes? In any one of the magical sequences through which we fall in love with a woman there are profundities deeper than all the poetry ever written. How could we ever reconstruct in commentaries the mysterious stirrings of the heart to passion, since we lack adequate words to depict the visible mysteries of beauty?"

And just the visible mysteries we cannot describe- but what about the ones unseen? The ones that go beyond the physical and reach the soul? Those, we cannot even fathom, let alone describe. I love the way he says "reconstruct in commentaries" as if we sat around discussing "the mysterious stirrings of the heart to passion"- the idea itself is even ridiculous. But that is just it- this certain attempt in itself is ridiculous...

And what love can do to the "great souls"- can exhaust them in contemplation- because one cannot fully understand it, yet it is so beautiful to bask in its mystery.

--

Pub by Signet Classics

Beatrix by Balzac

"He wanted to gaze into her eyes, plunge into their depths, study the smallest detail of her clothing, inhale its fragrance, listen to the music of her voice, follow the graceful flow of her movements...He had become prey to a desire that deafened his hearing, obscured his intelligence, weakened him to the point where he no longer recognized obstacles or distances and was no longer even aware of his own body."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This book greatly made me perceptive to the complexity of the woman. They can suffer so much and yet still do the impossible. The intelligent and wise ones notice everything, take it all in, and can determine the soul of a person. Such an insight is astounding. The woman can use her virtues or body to the extreme, the one to sacrifice herself, the other to make use of her advantages for her own gains. Such opposites, yet in the same sex! and reach can understand the other, and what the other is capable of. They live in another world altogether, while the man tries to reach for it, but can't ever get there...

--

Pub by Prentice-Hall

Cousin Bette by Honore de Balzac

"-for their [artists] idleness is an occupation. It is like the pleasure of a pasha in his harem; they fondle ideas, they become drunk at the springs of intellect. Great artists, totally absorbed in reverie, have rightly been called dreamers. These opium-eaters all sink into poverty, whereas, if they had been sustained by harsh circumstances, they would have been great men."

But it is what makes them artists. If they would have been "great men" then they would not have been dreamers- they would have been doers. The unreal and real cannot coincide, cannot live peacefully in one combined world. One or the other. But maybe it is what makes them so amazing- that they have this "greatness" in them, but choose not to act on it- and devote their entire lives to intellect. As if they forsake greatness for "ideas" and the "springs of intellect." Personally, it is a lot more satisfying. They do not want to give back to humanity, but want to receive the divine mysteries that can only be shown to some.

"He who can describe his plan in words is already deemed to be an extraordinary man. All writers and artists have this ability. But to produce! To bring to birth! To work hard at rearing the child, to put it to bed every night well fed with milk, to kiss it every morning with the inexhaustible love of a mother, to lick it clean, to dress it a hundred times in the prettiest of jackets with tears again and again; but not to be discouraged by the convulsions of this mad life and to turn it into the living masterpiece which speaks to all eyes in sculpture, to all minds in literature, to all memories in painting, to all hearts in music, that is the task of execution! The hand must be ready at every moment to work in obedience to the mind. And the mind is not creative to order, any more than love flows uninterruptedly."

Many have the impression that artists are just dreamers, and don't do much in their life- as real work. But challenging yourself constantly, living with a talent that cannot be accurately described or understood- only that it comes from outside oneself, and not being discouraged when it disappoints. This is the hardest labor of the mind- that tests the strength of character... These artists, they truly love their labor, as Balzac says, as if it were their own child. Reminds me of writers, that live with their characters for years and years until they write it all down. These are the true masters, the true men of humanity. They bring part of the universe into humanity...Now, I cannot think of anything that benefits humanity more...