Balzac eBook Stefan Zweig William Rose Dorothy Rose
Download As PDF : Balzac eBook Stefan Zweig William Rose Dorothy Rose 
Zweig devoted ten years of research and writing to Balzac, which he regarded as his crowning achievement. This late work reads like a picaresque novel, with Balzac’s quest for “a woman with a fortune” and recurrent episodes of the author chasing an elusive pot of gold driving the story.
This biography of one classic author by another is filled with Zweig’s characteristic psychological insights. He portrays the energy and “exuberance of imagination” that produced some two thousand characters in La comédie humaine, as well as the daily details of the coffee-chugging writer’s life, his manic writing schedule, method of correcting proofs, dealing with publishers and reviewers, signing contracts, doing marketing and publicity.
Balzac blends biography and literary history in a highly readable volume that will teach you French cultural history as you laugh out loud.
“[Balzac] is sure to entertain, instruct and charm ... It is a work of art, ... alive with the teeming life of its model ... It is true both to facts and to the more elusive psychological and spiritual truth of a man who ... has remained one of the most mysterious of great creators.” – Henri Peyre, Sterling professor of French Literature, Yale University, The New York Times
Balzac eBook Stefan Zweig William Rose Dorothy Rose
At the height of his fame in the nineteen-twenties and thirties Zweig was one of the most popular writers in the world. That he should have fallen from such a lofty status is an enduring puzzle. Zweig writes with perception, wit and elegance and a writer of such ability and wide knowledge is the perfect person to write a life of Honoré de Balzac.One reason this biography is so successful as an exploration of the inner life of Balzac is that Zweig seems to have an innate sympathy of and understanding for the trials and stresses felt by Balzac as he labored away under the crushing need to make a living from his writing.
A principal theme of Zweig's analysis is that Balzac spent much of his life caught in a trap of financial necessity that forced him to over-produce and over-strain his creative faculties. Sometimes this pressure was to the benefit of his creativity, but more often than not the perpetual grind meant he wrote too much that was not worthy of his talent.
The search for financial security also led to many of his romantic misadventures and misjudgments including his relationship and ultimate marriage to the Polish noblewoman Ewelina Hańska. Zweig provides a thorough examination of this literary affair from its outset to its tragic conclusion.
The biography is idiosyncratic and sympathetic rather than scholarly and comprehensive, but is a marvelous exposition of the short-comings and successes of Balzac and is a worthy tribute from one literary giant to another.
“One only makes books in order to keep in touch with one's fellows after one has ceased to breath, and thus to defend oneself against the inexorable fate of all that lives - transitoriness and oblivion.” Stefan Zweig
Product details
|
Tags : Amazon.com: Balzac eBook: Stefan Zweig, William Rose, Dorothy Rose: Kindle Store,ebook,Stefan Zweig, William Rose, Dorothy Rose,Balzac,Plunkett Lake Press,BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY Literary,LITERARY CRITICISM European French
People also read other books :
- Natural Hazards and Disasters Donald Hyndman David Hyndman 9780538737524 Books
- The Club of Queer Trades G K Chesterton 9781407617800 Books
- Pie In the Sky Gerald Brown
- PROMISES Kate Morgan 9781450029759 Books
- For Better or For Curse Is Better really better edition by Stacy Murray Health Fitness Dieting eBooks
Balzac eBook Stefan Zweig William Rose Dorothy Rose Reviews
All biographers have to figure out a workable balance between exploring their subject's personal life, works, and societal context. With a man like Balzac this can be exceedingly difficult, because everything about the man - his personality, his writings, and his milieu - are so much larger than life that it seems almost impossible to do them justice.
In this life of Balzac, Graham Robb concentrates on Balzac's psychology. We are confronted with the great writer's enormous ego (he considered himself to be "the Napoleon of literature"), his astonishing output, his many love relationships with older women, and his grandiose failures in business. We see a man so driven that at one point he moved his cot into the printer's shop, keeping the presses going 24 hours a day as he corrected proofs while simultaneously writing new chapters!
Robb traces all this activity back to the roots Balzac's innate, and nearly infinite, self-regard pouring endlessly into the emotional void induced by a disturbingly unaffectionate mother. Balzac becomes, therefore, a man who had to write, so much so that even his business failures and debts were self-inflicted, a subconscious way of spurring himself on to ever greater literary effort just to keep one step ahead of the creditors.
Throughout this biography, Robb uses extensive quotation to allow Balzac's novels to illuminate his life, and vice-versa. The resulting dialogue between the life and the works is both exciting and nuanced - indeed, so nuanced that Robb's book needs to be read carefully in places. It will also be helpful if the reader is on familiar terms with as many of Balzac's novels as possible - there are over 90 of them! Even readers who have read several of the novels in the past, would do well to refresh themselves before tackling this biography. Three good places to start would be "Le Pere Goriot," "Eugenie Grandet," and "La Cousine Bette," as they are representative of his best and Robb refers to them frequently. It's not always easy going, but readers who can meet the prerequisites will surely enjoy this fine and insightful biography.
Just his description of Balzac's writing process alone is a must for those either fascinated by Balzac himself or by the creative process and the lengths to which artists will go to reach artistic nirvana.
BALZAC, by Stefan Zweig,
This biography is written in an excellent style, witty, thorough, perceptive.
Zweig seems to understand his subject perfectly.
The young Balzac had no head for business but he entered into scheme after scheme with enormous enthusiasm. He invested in a printing firm which quickly went under, but that was just one of his failures. Finally, at thirty, he devoted himself to writing.
Fame came quickly, but his quest for a rich wife took almost his entire life. Mme. de Hanska, who was immensely wealthy and whom he followed repeatedly into the distant Ukraine, finally, in his last years, agreed to marry him, confident that now she would not have to tolerate him much longer. She was a horrible human being and it is impossible not to loathe her.
At Balzac's funeral, Victor Hugo paid a moving tribute to an artist who was all too human.
This biography reveals the constant turmoil that was his life.
At the height of his fame in the nineteen-twenties and thirties Zweig was one of the most popular writers in the world. That he should have fallen from such a lofty status is an enduring puzzle. Zweig writes with perception, wit and elegance and a writer of such ability and wide knowledge is the perfect person to write a life of Honoré de Balzac.
One reason this biography is so successful as an exploration of the inner life of Balzac is that Zweig seems to have an innate sympathy of and understanding for the trials and stresses felt by Balzac as he labored away under the crushing need to make a living from his writing.
A principal theme of Zweig's analysis is that Balzac spent much of his life caught in a trap of financial necessity that forced him to over-produce and over-strain his creative faculties. Sometimes this pressure was to the benefit of his creativity, but more often than not the perpetual grind meant he wrote too much that was not worthy of his talent.
The search for financial security also led to many of his romantic misadventures and misjudgments including his relationship and ultimate marriage to the Polish noblewoman Ewelina Hańska. Zweig provides a thorough examination of this literary affair from its outset to its tragic conclusion.
The biography is idiosyncratic and sympathetic rather than scholarly and comprehensive, but is a marvelous exposition of the short-comings and successes of Balzac and is a worthy tribute from one literary giant to another.
“One only makes books in order to keep in touch with one's fellows after one has ceased to breath, and thus to defend oneself against the inexorable fate of all that lives - transitoriness and oblivion.” Stefan Zweig
0 Response to "⋙ Download Balzac eBook Stefan Zweig William Rose Dorothy Rose"
Post a Comment