https://quillette.com/2022/04/22/like-spiders-in-a-pot-the-contemporary-significance-of-balzac/
I'd never seen a photograph of Balzac before though I suppose this is not technically a photo. No matter it's interesting to see the person whose books took up so much of my time a lot of years ago. I set out to read La Comedie Humaine in its entirety, a futile effort because of the fruitless search for the various volumes in 2nd hand bookshops and
the fact that only the better known were in current print. However those I did find gave me immense pleasure.
This all followed my schoolboy fascination with the Revolution and Napoleon, which I picked up again in later life, reading histories and biographies of figures like Mirabeau and Danton and of course Napoleone Buonaparte himself. This led me on by natural succession to figures and histories of the post Revolution/Napoleonic periods.
I've read the above article but my view on Balzac is less academic than the authors.
He was above all a gifted story-teller and he wove his web of stories through the life and times of those years in his magical way that brought them to life for the reader and I'm sure will continue to do so for many generations to come. What an accomplishment that is, with few to rival it, Dickens certainly, perhaps Victor Hugo. Jane Austen in a different way.
We are unfortunately not given the time to absorb more than a sample of the riches of human creativity in literature, music and other arts.
