Balzac’s Allegories of Energy in La Comédie Humaine

Abstract

“We cannot speak,” CS. Lewis observes, “perhaps we can hardly think, of an ‘inner conflict’ without a metaphor; and every metaphor is an allegory in little. And as the conflict becomes more and more important, it is inevitable that these metaphors should expand and coalesce, and finally turn into the fully-fledged allegorical poem.”¹ Indeed, allegory may seem as universal as conflict itself, and allegorical poems flourish well beyond the Middle Ages, although often in surprisingly altered forms. If allegory can be defined in a general way as the personification of abstract concepts, we might add that it does not disappear; even as late as the nineteenth century it can be seen to find a new and vital expression in the vast poem, which Honoré de Balzac - with Dante obviously in mind — named La Comédie humaine. Like Dante, many medieval poets are predisposed toward experience “ . . . of personified beings of a supersensual nature . . . “² and Balzac as well, through his interest in esoteric lore, often inclines naturally toward allegorical modes of expression. Moreover, in late antiquity and in the Middle Ages, allegory served to bring “ . . . poetry close to philosophy . . . ” — a rapprochement which Balzac also achieves in his philosophical novels.³

Le vieillard se tenait debout, immobile, inébranlable comme une étoile au milieu d’un nuage de lumière. Ses yeux verts, pleins de je ne sais quelle malice calme, semblaient éclairer le monde moral comme sa lampe illuminait ce cabinet mystérieux. Balzac, La Peau de chagrin