Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) wrote about marriage throughout his life, but two of his works deal specifically with this topic. “The Physiology of Marriage” (1829) is a witty treatise on the war of the sexes. Here are all the means a husband can resort to to avoid becoming a cuckold. However, Balzac looks gloomily at the prospects of marriage: sooner or later, the wife will still cheat on her husband, and at best he will get “rewards” in the form of delicious food or a high position. "Small Troubles of Married Life" (1846) depicts marriage from a different perspective. Here Balzac talks about family everyday life: from tender feelings the spouses move on to cooling, and only those couples who have arranged a marriage of four are happy. The author himself called this book “hermaphrodite”, since the story is told first from a male and then from a female point of view. In addition, this book is experimental: Balzac invites the reader to choose the characteristics of the characters themselves and mentally fill in the gaps in the text. Both works are published in translation and with notes by Vera Milchina, leading researcher at STEPS RANEPA and IVGI RSUH. The translation of “The Physiology of Marriage,” first published in 1995, has been significantly revised for this edition; The translation of “Minor Troubles” is published for the first time.
Minor troubles of married life (collection)
© V. Milchina, translation, introductory article, notes, 2017
© OOO “New Literary Review”, 2017
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“The Vicissitudes of Marriages”: Balzac on Marriage, Family and Adultery
Honore de Balzac (1799–1850) wrote all his life about marriage, about happy and unhappy marriages, about how a husband and wife should behave in order to maintain at least the appearance of peace in the house. In almost all the works included in the “Human Comedy” (and their total number, let me remind you, is close to a hundred), one of the heroes woos, marries, or cheats on his wife or husband. In 1978, Swedish researcher Christina Wingard published the book “Problems of Married Couples in Honore de Balzac’s “Human Comedy”,” which was based on statistical research. Wingard chose 96 married couples in The Human Comedy, for which it is known exactly how their union arose - out of love or out of convenience, and calculated how many of them Balzac allowed to live happily, and how many he condemned to suffering. It turned out that for 35 couples united for love, there are 61 marriages of convenience, and in the first category 10 marriages can be considered completely successful, and in the second – 8 (such a small number of successes indicates not only the writer’s pessimistic view of modern marriage, but and that he understood well: happiness cannot be described and is not interesting to describe).
Balzac always wrote about marriage and adultery, but in the two works included in our collection, he wrote especially in detail. These works frame the work of Balzac. “The Physiology of Marriage,” published at the end of December 1829 with the date 1830 on the cover, became the second (after the novel “The Last Chouan, or Brittany in 1800,” published in the same 1829) work that Balzac was ready to recognize as his – in contrast to numerous early novels published under pseudonyms in the 1820s. Moreover, if the first edition of “Chuang” did not live up to the author’s hopes, then “The Physiology of Marriage” was a great and noisy success. The importance that Balzac attached to “Physiology” is evidenced by the fact that when in 1845 he began to summarize his work and compile the final catalog of the “Human Comedy”, he placed it at the very end, in the section “Analytical Etudes”, the crowning the entire huge structure. As for “Minor Troubles of Married Life,” Balzac worked on them, intermittently, for many years, publishing them in parts, but they took their final book form in 1846, four years before the writer’s death.
Each of the two works included in our collection has its own rather intricate creative history. Let's start with the "Physiology of Marriage".
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Balzac himself, two decades later, in the preface to the “Treatise on Modern Aphrodisiacs” (1839), wrote that the idea of creating a book about marriage originated with him back in 1820. In June 1826, he purchased a printing house on the Rue Marais-Saint-Germain (he owned it until 1828), and already in July he submitted a declaration of intention to print there a book entitled “The Physiology of Marriage, or Reflections on Conjugal Happiness”; According to this declaration, the book was to be published in a thousand copies, but a single copy has reached us, apparently printed in August-September 1826, when the printing house had few orders. This early version, which consisted of thirteen Meditations and on which Balzac had been working since 1824, was not completed, but from its text it is clear that by this time Balzac’s mind had already formed a plan for the entire work, quite close to the final version (in the written chapters contain references to those that appeared only in “Physiology” of 1829).
Biographical circumstances pushed Balzac to think about marriage and adultery. On the one hand, his mother was unfaithful to his father, and the fruit of one of her infidelities was Balzac’s younger brother Henri, whom Madame de Balzac spoiled and openly preferred to her other children: Honore and two daughters, Laura and Laurence. On the other hand, the mistress of twenty-three-year-old bachelor Honore de Balzac in 1822 became forty-five-year-old Laura de Bernis, a married woman, mother of nine children, very unhappy in her legal marriage.
Although something (apparently urgent printing orders) distracted Balzac and he did not finish the book, the desire to finish “The Physiology of Marriage” did not leave the writer, and in the spring of 1829, after the release of “The Last Chouan,” he returned to work on it. In August, he already promised the publisher Levavasseur to finish the book by November 15th. In reality, by November 10, he completed work on the first volume, which included 16 Reflections, which were a more or less thorough revision of the “Physiology” of 1826 (the original text was expanded mainly through inserted short stories and anecdotes). Before December 15, that is, in almost one month (!), Balzac composed the entire second part of the book (Reflections from the 17th to the 30th, as well as the Introduction), and already on the 20th of December 1829 the book went on sale .
The title printed on its title page deserves a separate comment. It read: “The Physiology of Marriage, or Eclectic Reflections on the Joys and Sorrows of Married Life, Published by a Young Bachelor.” Let's start from the end - with a reference to the “young bachelor”. As you can see, the publication is anonymous; Balzac’s name is not on the title page. However, this anonymity can be called illusory. Although in the preface to the first edition of “Shagreen Skin” (1831), Balzac himself wrote about “Physiology”:
Some attribute it to an old doctor, others to a dissolute courtier from the time of Madame de Pompadour or a misanthrope who has lost all illusions because in his entire life he has not met a single woman worthy of respect -
For literary circles, Balzac's authorship was no secret. In addition, he lifts the mask in the text of “Physiology” itself: in the first edition, under the “Introduction” there was the signature of O. B...k, and in the text the author mentions his patron, Saint Honore (p. 286). Balzac's initials are also mentioned in several reviews of the book that appeared in early 1830. The words “published by a young bachelor” disappeared from subsequent editions; they were replaced by the traditional reference to Balzac as the author.
Now it is necessary to explain, firstly, why the word “Physiology” appears in the title of the book, which can evoke in readers expectations of some truly physiological revelations (expectations are not entirely justified, since, although Balzac repeatedly and quite clearly hints at the necessity of not only moral, but there is still much more sexual harmony between spouses, psychology and sociology in his book than physiology itself), and, secondly, why the thoughts are called “eclectic”. Balzac owes both to a book published four years earlier under the title “Physiology of Taste.” But about it a little later, first we need to talk about other literary predecessors of “The Physiology of Marriage”.
In the second half of the 1820s, small books became widespread, on the covers of which there was the word “Code” (“Code of Conversation”, “Code of Gallantry”, etc.) or the expression “On ways” to do this or that: “ About ways to tie a tie”, “About ways to receive New Year’s gifts, but not make them yourself”, etc.). Publications of this type have been popular in France since the 18th century, but in the mid-1820s their popularity was promoted by the writer Horace-Napoleon Resson (1798–1854), who wrote them himself or in collaboration; one of his co-authors was Balzac, who wrote (by order and, possibly, with the participation of Resson) “The Code of Decent People, or On Ways to Avoid Being Deceived by Scammers” (1825). Taking as a model the Civil Code adopted in France in 1804 on the initiative of Napoleon, the authors of these books prescribed to readers (half in jest, but half seriously) certain forms of behavior in society, explained how to behave at the ball and at the table, how to communicate in love, how to repay debts or borrow, etc., etc. From the “Code of Courteous Manners” (1828) and the “Code of Conversation” (1829) you can learn a lot of useful and/or witty information: for example, that the width of the space between the address “Sir” and the text of the letter depends on the nobility of the addressee, or that good manners dictate Under no circumstances should you engage in conversation with fellow travelers on public transport, much less scold the city authorities, because you can get yourself into big trouble, or that “a visit should be answered with a visit, like a slap in the face with a blow from a sword.” The ratio of serious and humorous changed from one “Code” to another; for example, the “Code of the Writer and Journalist”, published in 1829 by the same Resson, is formally a set of advice for those who want to make a living through literary work, but in fact many of its pages are nothing more than ridicule of the genres and styles of modern literature . This combination (serious advice in a clownish presentation) was inherited from “Codes” by Balzac’s “Physiology of Marriage.”
Popular topics in the Codes included marital relations. For example, in 1827, Charles Chabot published the book “Marital Grammar, or Fundamental Principles with the help of which you can take your wife, teach her to come running at the first call and make the sheep more submissive, an essay published by Lovelace’s cousin.” And in May 1829, “The Marriage Code containing laws, rules, applications and examples of successful marriages and happy marriages” was published (in which, by the way, almost a third of the text consists of extensive quotes from the Napoleonic Civil Code). Resson's name was on the title page, but numerous similarities with The Physiology of Marriage allowed researchers to assume that part of this book was corrected by Balzac, and part was written by him (one of the most striking parallels is that in the Marriage Code a deceived husband is compared with the potential victim of the Minotaur lying in wait for him in the depths of the labyrinth; meanwhile, in “The Physiology of Marriage” Balzac proposed the “scientific” neologism “minotaurized” to characterize deceived husbands). While working on the original Physiology, Balzac apparently thought about the title “The Code of the Spouse, or On the Ways to Keep Your Wife Faithful”; in any case, such a sketch has been preserved among his papers.
“The Physiology of Marriage” grew out of the “Codes”, but is strikingly different from them. To understand its originality, it is enough to compare it with the “Marriage Code” of 1829: against the background of Balzac’s book, “The Marriage Code” looks like a script (not to say a brief retelling of the content) against the background of a novel. The author of the Code makes jokes that are more or less successful, but not too deep; Balzac also jokes, but his jokes are interspersed with deep and subtle reflections on human psychology. In addition, Balzac’s book has its own “plot”: from the wedding, through various trials and attempts to avoid adultery or at least delay it, to the era of “rewards” (although numerous digressions and inserted anecdotes are strung along this through line, it is nevertheless strictly observed ). Against this background, the “Code” is a clear fruit of what in the twentieth century was called “bricolage”; short chapters are placed one next to the other in complete disorder, and then are generally replaced by a long selection of articles of the Civil Code relating to marriage ties.
Another difference is also important: Balzac’s book is called not “Code”, but “Physiology”, and not because in 1829 one “Marriage Code” had already been published. And also not because the genre of the book was defined in this way: in 1829 the word “physiology” was not yet used as a genre designation for miniature illustrated descriptions of a particular human type, object or institution. Such “Physiologies” began to be published ten years later than Balzac’s book, and some of them (“Physiology of the first wedding night”, “Physiology of the doomed”, “Physiology of the cuckold”, etc.) developed some of its themes. Balzac called his book “The Physiology of Marriage” primarily in order to refer the reader to another book, first published in December 1825 and almost immediately becoming very popular. This is “The Physiology of Taste,” the author of which, Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, in the form of a half-joking, half-serious treatise, tried to explore such an important area of human life as food.
“The Physiology of Marriage” owes a lot to “The Physiology of Taste”, starting with the title and the division not into chapters, but into “reflections” ( meditations), and in Balzac, like in Brillat-Savarin, there are exactly thirty of these “reflections” in the book. The author of “The Physiology of Taste” took the term “reflections”, of course, not from the sensational novelty of 1820 - “Poetic Reflections” ( Meditations poetiques) Lamartine, and from the much older “Metaphysical Meditations” ( Meditations metaphysiques) Descartes, published for the first time in 1641, however, it can be assumed that Balzac, who in his “Physiology” refuses to follow the “romantics wrapped in a shroud” (p. 78), by using this word not only emphasizes continuity in relation to Brillat- Savarin, but also ironizes the fashionable Lamartine, for the subject of Balzac’s “reflections” is not at all the same as that of the melancholy poet.
Brillat-Savarin's Physiology, like Balzac's Physiology, was published anonymously; on the title page of Brillat-Savarin’s book it was displayed: “The work of a professor, a member of many learned societies”; in Balzac, the place of the professor was taken by a bachelor (“published by a young bachelor”). In addition, apparently, it was in memory of Brillat-Savarin, who in his book systematically called himself a professor, and certified his book as the first experiment in gastronomic science, Balzac every now and then calls himself a professor or doctor of marriage sciences, and his text - fruit scientific research. Balzac also borrowed some other techniques from Brillat-Savarin: the use of numbered aphorisms containing the quintessence of the author's wisdom (but in Brillat-Savarin they are collected at the beginning of the book, and in Balzac they are scattered throughout the text), and bequeathing some themes to descendants. There is also a thematic relationship: the author of “The Physiology of Taste” bequeathed to future generations nothing less than the study of carnal love and the desire for procreation, that is, in a certain sense, the topic that the author of “The Physiology of Marriage” took up.
Finally, Brillat-Savarin, to make it more scientific, put the words “Reflections on transcendental gastronomy” in the subtitle of his “Physiology,” and in this Balzac also follows in his footsteps: he calls his reflections “eclectic.” In both cases, the authors ironically play with fashionable philosophical vocabulary: the epithet “transcendental” refers to the German philosophy of Kant or Schelling, which the French learned about from Madame de Stael’s book “On Germany” (1813), and the term “eclectic” - to lectures which the French philosopher Victor Cousin (1792–1867) read with great success at the Sorbonne, in particular in 1828–1829, on the eve of the publication of The Physiology of Marriage. However, in “The Physiology of Taste” there is just as little transcendence as in “The Physiology of Marriage” - eclecticism in Cousin’s sense of the word. One can, of course, consider that Balzac is an “eclectic” in the sense that he constantly oscillates between a decisive condemnation of adultery and not too well hidden sympathy for it, between the perception of a woman as an evil genius, all of whose forces are directed towards only one thing - to deceive her husband , and sympathy for the “weaker sex”, whose position in society is false and unfavorable. But it would be more correct to say that the references to eclecticism in “The Physiology of Marriage” are predominantly of a clownish nature and that Balzac simply does not miss the opportunity to laugh at scientific jargon; by the way, the mentions of this philosopher in the “Marriage Code” perform exactly the same function: “Matrimonial consent can stem exclusively from some kind of leniency, some mutual concessions, to which the title of philosophy applies at least to the same extent as to the lectures of the scientist -on Cousin.”
Although in the preamble to the “Treatise on Modern Aphrodisiacs” Balzac considered it necessary to specifically emphasize that he came up with his “Physiology” independently of Brillat-Savarin, he did not deny the similarity of the two books. In August 1829, he wrote to the publisher Levavasseur, agreeing on the almost immediate publication of “The Physiology of Marriage,” that he required him to do “in three months what Brillat-Savarin spent ten years on.” The connection between the two “Physiologies” was also emphasized in the 1838 edition published by the Parisian publisher Charpentier, who almost simultaneously published Brillat-Savarin’s work in the same format. The countertitle of Balzac's book read:
This edition of “The Physiology of Marriage” is similar to the edition of “The Physiology of Taste” by Brillat-Savarin, which was recently published by the same publisher. These two publications should stand side by side on bookshelves, just as they have long been located side by side in the minds of people with intelligence and taste.
There was another reason for the reorientation from the “code” to “physiology”: the codes, published in a small format (one eighteenth of a sheet), were considered fashionable literature, but frivolous; Balzac, following the example of Brillat-Savarin, published his book in the in-octavo format reserved for serious publications.
If, however, in formal terms both “Physiologies” have a lot in common, then in terms of content Balzac wrote a completely different book, very far from the work of his predecessor. The image of the author in “The Physiology of Taste” is that of a “magical assistant,” referred to in the third person as a professor; he firmly believes that he has recipes and recommendations for all occasions: he knows how to cook very large fish without cutting, and how to put a husband on his feet, exhausted by an overly loving wife. His picture of the world is harmonious and optimistic: life is impossible without food, and the professor will teach you how to eat correctly and with pleasure. The “Doctor of Marriage Sciences” paints a much less radiant picture in “The Physiology of Marriage.” He sets out to tell husbands how to avoid “minotaurization,” that is, how not to be deceived by their own wives, and comes to the disappointing conclusion that betrayal can only be delayed and then softened with “rewards” with which a conscientious lover is obliged to console the husband.
However, the meaning of the word “Physiology” in the title of Balzac’s book is not limited to a reference to the popular book of Brillat-Savarin. It also points to the scientific tradition of which Balzac declares himself an adherent - the materialist tradition of the 18th century, on the one hand, and, on the other, its continuation in the works of such utopian thinkers as Fourier and Saint-Simon, who set themselves the task apply natural scientific methods to the study of society and create “social physiology” (Saint-Simon’s term). In the article “On Artists,” published three months after the release of “The Physiology of Marriage,” Balzac wrote about “physiological analysis, which made it possible to abandon systems for the sake of correlating and comparing facts.” In fact, Balzac uses statistical data, divides the male and female part of society into two categories “according to their mental abilities, moral qualities and property status” (p. 81), in a word, carefully depicts that his text is not only witty chatter, but also a truly scientific work, in which the reference to Buffon’s Natural History is not just a figure of speech. However, the book also contains completely different intonations. In terms of intonation, Balzac is a true eclectic not in the Cousin sense, but in the everyday sense: in all the “reflections” of the book, accurate sociological observations coexist with Rabelaisian mockery, sound psychological recommendations with mocking allusions. The book is full of quotations from the works of predecessors, both openly named (Rabelais, Stern, Diderot, Rousseau) and unnamed, and some sources were only identified during the preparation of this edition; for example, it was still not known that Balzac very widely used in “The Physiology of Marriage” two works by the historian P. - E. Lemonte, bearing expressive titles: “Observers of Women, or An Exact Account of What Happened at a Meeting of the Society of Observers for women on Tuesday, November 2, 1802" and "The moral and physiological parallel of dance, song and drawing, which compares the influence of these three activities on the ability of women to resist the temptations of love." Both of these works, although published in the 19th century (the first in 1803, and the second in 1816), in their spirit entirely belong to the previous century; a story about a meeting of a fictitious learned society, a combination of scientific presentation with small talk - all these features of Lemonte’s old-fashioned manner are well described by Pushkin’s words: “excellently subtle and clever, which is now somewhat funny.” However, Balzac inserts them into his text so organically that the “seams” are practically invisible.
“Eclectic” are also those aphorisms that are scattered throughout the book: Balzac calls them axioms, that is, centers of indisputable wisdom, but many of these axioms are paradoxical, ironic, reduced to the point of absurdity and not intended for literal interpretation. For example: “A man has no right to marry without first studying the anatomy and without performing an autopsy on at least one woman” (p. 133) or: “A decent woman should have such income that will allow her lover to be sure that she will never, in any way, it will not be a burden to him” (p. 96).
Finally, Balzac’s attitude towards the two main “characters” of the book is “eclectic”: husband and wife, male and female.
Balzac himself wrote after the publication of “The Physiology of Marriage” that in this book he set out to “return to the subtle, lively, mocking and cheerful literature of the eighteenth century, when the authors did not try to remain invariably straight and motionless.” It is to this literature that the figure of the triumphant bachelor, a lover of pleasure, goes back, for whom a married woman is nothing more than a tasty prey, and her husband is an annoying hindrance that must be eliminated. If the “eclectic” narrator switches from the bachelor’s point of view to the husband’s point of view, then the wife turns into an eternal adversary, striving at all costs to deceive her legal spouse, fool him, “minotaurize” him, and the husband uses the widest range of means - from a special diet to thoughtful home decoration - in order to “neutralize” it. In any case, it all ends in the “Civil War” (the title of the third part of Balzac’s book).
Thus, Physiology can easily be considered anti-women; many readers, both during Balzac’s time and later, perceived it this way; It’s enough to remember with what hostility Simone de Beauvoir writes about Balzac’s book and Balzac’s attitude towards women in her book “The Second Sex” (1949).
At first glance, in “The Physiology of Marriage” there is indeed much more irony towards women than sympathy for them, and often journalists (or rather, female journalists) interpreted Balzac’s subsequent works, glorifying women, as a way to ask forgiveness for “The Physiology of Marriage”, which outraged all female gender. This book shocked sensitive readers. Balzac himself described their reproaches, not without causticism, in the preface to the novel “Père Goriot” (1835):
Not long ago the author was frightened to meet in the world an incredible, unexpected number of women who were sincerely virtuous, happy in their virtue, virtuous because they were happy, and, no doubt, happy because they were virtuous. During several days of rest, all he heard from all sides was the flapping of unfurled white wings and saw fluttering angels dressed in the robes of innocence, and all of these were married persons, and they all reproached the author for endowing women with an immoderate passion for forbidden joys marriage crisis, which received the scientific name from the author minotaurization. The reproaches were to a certain extent flattering for the author, for these women, prepared for heavenly pleasures, admitted that they knew firsthand the most disgusting little book, the terrifying “Physiology of Marriage,” and used this expression to avoid the word “adultery,” expelled from secular language.
But Balzac’s attitude towards women in “The Physiology of Marriage” is by no means limited to ridicule and reproaches of infidelity. Balzac's “eclecticism” also implies a completely different attitude towards women. It is no coincidence that Balzac almost immediately gained a reputation as an author writing about women and for women. Critics regularly - although sometimes not without irony - reminded us of the enormous place women occupy in Balzac’s work. Here is one of the typical characteristics. The Gallery of Press, Literature and Fine Arts wrote in 1839: “Mr. de Balzac invented women: the woman without a heart, the woman with a great heart, the thirty-year-old woman, the fifteen-year-old woman, the widowed and married woman, the weak and strong woman, the attesting woman.” and misunderstood, a seduced and seductive woman, a touchy woman and a coquette woman.” This idea that Balzac “invented women,” about whom no one had any idea before, was constantly played out in the French press. However, Balzac not only invented them, but also, according to his many female readers, understood them like no one else. Contemporaries also often laughed at this inextricable connection between Balzac and his female audience. For example, in 1839, the newspaper Caricature (the same one where fragments of the future Minor Troubles of Married Life were published in 1839–1840) described receptions for readers that the “great man” allegedly held once a month at his country estate, Giardi :
On this day, endless streams of women are drawn to him. The illustrious author receives them graciously and kindly, makes a speech to them about the shortcomings of married life and sends them back, giving each of them a blessing and a copy of the “Physiology of Marriage.”
This description is parodic, but Balzac's sympathy for women was quite serious.
When one of the first readers of Physiology, Zulma Carreau, experienced “disgust” while reading its first pages, Balzac agreed that such a feeling “cannot help but seize any innocent being at the story of a crime, at the sight of a misfortune, at the reading of Juvenal or Rabelais.” ”, but assured his friend that in the future she would come to terms with the book, for she would find in it several “powerful speeches in defense of virtue and women».
In fact, under the layer of jokes about adultery in “The Physiology of Marriage,” this second line is discernible, filled with deep sympathy for the woman (and even in the stories about female infidelities, admiration for the female mind and female ingenuity shines through). Balzac undeniably stands on the side of women when he criticizes female education, which dumbens girls and does not allow their minds to develop. Or when he calls on men: “Under no circumstances begin your married life with violence,” a thought that he repeats in different ways in the Marriage Catechism:
The fate of a married couple is decided on their wedding night.
By depriving a woman of free will, you deprive her of the opportunity to make sacrifices.
In love, a woman - if we talk not about the soul, but about the body - is like a lyre, revealing its secrets only to those who know how to play it (pp. 133–134).
Balzac explained his position on October 5, 1831 in a letter to the Marquise de Castries, who was shocked by the attitude of the author of “The Physiology of Marriage” towards the female sex, which seemed rude and cynical to her. He explained to his correspondent that he undertook to write this book in order to protect women, and chose the form of a buffoon, putting on the mask of a misogynist only in order to draw attention to his ideas. “The point of my book is that it proves that their husbands are to blame for all the sins of women,” he wrote. In addition to husbands, Balzac also places the blame on the social structure; he convincingly shows its imperfection, which is destructive primarily for women. He writes about female infidelities: “By openly naming that secret disease that undermines the foundations of society, we pointed to its sources, among which are imperfect laws, inconsistency of morals, inflexibility of minds, and contradictory habits” (p. 157).
The fact that, when drawing up the plan for the “Human Comedy”, Balzac included “The Physiology of Marriage” in the “Analytical Studies” may cause confusion. It would seem that there are more witty aphorisms, piquant anecdotes and vaudeville skits in this text than analysis. However, the author of “Physiology” not only tells, but also reflects, explains, looks for the roots of family troubles in the history of morals and the structure of society; in the words of one critic, he presents to the world not only a mirror, but also a key. Therefore, those researchers who find in “The Physiology of Marriage” the history and sociology of marriage and adultery are right. It is no coincidence that Balzac, in one of his articles in 1831, ranked his book, “destroying all illusions regarding marital happiness, the first of public goods,” to the same “school of disappointment” in which he included, for example, “The Red and the Black” by Stendhal. In his understanding, “The Physiology of Marriage” is an extremely serious and important book (although this seriousness is brightened up by the playful and clownish manner inherited from Rabelais and Stern).
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In “The Physiology of Marriage,” the author bequeaths to his descendants to write several works that he himself does not undertake now: 1) about courtesans; 2) about the seven principles on which love is based, and about pleasure; 3) about the education of girls; 4) about ways to conceive beautiful children; 5) about chirology, that is, the science of the relationship between the shape of the hand and the character of a person; 6) about ways to compile “marriage astronomical tables” and determine “marriage time” (that is, the stage in which the relationship of these spouses is located). He did not write such works, but these themes, as well as many others, were developed in his further work, with which “The Physiology of Marriage” is connected in various ways.
First of all, Balzac remained faithful to the general principles set forth in the book of 1829.
If in “The Physiology of Marriage” he exclaims: “Let the virtue of the ten virgins perish, if only the sacred crown of the mother of the family remains unsullied!” (p. 152), then he remained faithful to this conviction (a girl has the right to sin, but a cheating legal wife is a criminal) all his life. In 1838, he wrote to Evelina Ganskaya: “I am entirely for the freedom of a young maiden and for the slavery of a woman, in other words, I want her to know before marriage what she is contracting for, to study everything in advance, to try all the possibilities provided by marriage, but, having signed contract, remained faithful to him.” However, he himself did not follow this principle in his relationship with Ganskaya (a married lady), but in his novels he showed that the fate of not only the unfaithful wife Julie d'Aiglemont ("The Thirty-Year-Old Woman"), but also the wife who remains faithful to her unloved husband is tragic. (Madame de Mortsauf in “Lilies of the Valley”).
If in “The Physiology of Marriage” Balzac insists that education should develop the minds of girls and that they should be given the opportunity to get to know their future spouse quite closely, then in the future he allows only those couples where the wives satisfy these conditions to be happy (for example, the title heroines of the novels Ursula Mirue and Modesta Mignon).
If in “The Physiology of Marriage” Balzac argues that girls should be married off without a dowry, since in this case marriage would not be so much like a sale, then he repeats this same idea in many other works, for example in the already mentioned cycle “ Thirty-year-old woman" or in the story "Onorina".
If in “The Physiology of Marriage” he writes: “Since pleasure stems from the agreement of sensations and feelings, we dare to assert that pleasures are a kind of material ideas,” and insists on the need to explore the ability of the soul “to move separately from the body, to be transported to any point on earth ball and see without the help of the organs of vision” (pp. 134, 422), then this can be considered a brief presentation of the theory of the materiality of ideas and “fluids”, which he preached all his life and which, in particular, determined the presence in his novels and stories of numerous clairvoyants and mediums. Only the intonations and contexts in which such phenomena are described differ: in The Physiology of Marriage, serious statements are hidden among Rabelaisian and Sternian jokes, and, for example, in Shagreen Skin, published two years later, the materiality of the idea becomes the basis of the tragic plot.
If in “The Physiology of Marriage” Balzac notes: “Finally, the matter is completely hopeless if your wife is under seventeen years old or if her face is pale, bloodless: such women are most often cunning and insidious” (p. 156), then this foreshadows countless passages of the “Human Comedy”, where the author, following in the footsteps of the deeply revered creator of physiognomy, Lavater, predicts the character of the character by external signs. All this is already programmed in the reflection “On Customs Examination”, where Balzac cites numerous signs by which an astute husband can determine the attitude of a single guest towards the mistress of the house:
Everything is full of meaning: he smoothes his hair or, running his fingers through his hair, whips up a fashionable courgette ‹…› whether he furtively makes sure whether the wig fits well and what kind of wig it is - light or dark, curled or smooth; whether he glances at his nails to make sure that they are clean and neatly cut ‹…› whether he hesitates before ringing the bell, or whether he pulls the lace immediately, quickly, casually, cheekily, with endless self-confidence; whether it rings timidly, so that the sound of the bell immediately fades away, like the first strike of a bell calling Franciscan monks to prayer on a winter morning, or sharply, several times in a row, angry at the slowness of the footman (pp. 257–258).
If in “The Physiology of Marriage”, in the same chapter “On Customs Inspection”, the rich harvest that the Parisian streets provide for discerning flâneur observers is described, then similar observations can be found in almost all “Scenes of Parisian Life”. Let us add that the very definition of flanning - a pastime that Balzac valued extremely highly - was already given in “The Physiology of Marriage”:
Oh, these wanderings around Paris, how much charm and magic they bring to life! Planning is a whole science; planning delights the eye of an artist, just as a meal delights the taste of a glutton. ‹…› To float means to enjoy, to remember sharp words, to admire majestic pictures of misfortune, love, joy, flattering or caricatured portraits; it means plunging your gaze into the depths of a thousand hearts; for a young man, to plan means to desire everything and to master everything; for an elder - to live the life of young men, to be imbued with their passions (pp. 92–93).
Finally, in subsequent works, not only general principles, but also individual motives find continuation and development. For example, the use of migraine, an ailment that brings innumerable benefits to a woman and which is so easy to simulate, to one’s advantage, is described in detail in the second chapter of the novel “Duchesse de Langeais” (1834). The comparison of carnal love with hunger (pp. 108–109) is repeated in many novels and in a particularly expanded form in Cousin Bette (1846):
A virtuous and worthy woman can be compared to a Homeric meal, cooked without any fuss over hot coals. The courtesan, on the contrary, is like the product of Careme [the famous chef] with all sorts of spices and exquisite seasonings.
And the harmful influence on the lives of spouses of such a character in the family drama as the mother-in-law lies at the heart of the novel “The Marriage Contract” (1835).
In “Minor Troubles of Married Life,” Balzac proposed an expressive formula to describe the literary process: “Some authors color books, while others sometimes borrow this coloring. Some books fade into others” (p. 576). So, using this formula, we can say that “The Physiology of Marriage” “faded” to many of Balzac’s further works.
In the press, the epithet “infernal” was assigned to “The Physiology of Marriage” by Jules Janin, the author of a review in the newspaper “Journal de Debas” on February 7, 1830; however, the author himself suggested in the “Introduction” that he would be suspected “of immorality and malicious intent,” and he himself mentioned Mephistopheles there. The reputation of Balzac’s book is also illustrated by the scene in the social drawing room, captured in Pushkin’s unfinished passage “We spent the evening at the dacha...”; here the prim widow guest asks not to tell the indecent story, and the mistress of the house answers impatiently:
Completeness. Qui est-ce donc que l'on trompe ici? [Who is being fooled here? – fr.] Yesterday we watched Antony [A. Dumas’ drama], and over there on my fireplace is La Physiologie du mariage [The Physiology of Marriage. – fr.]. Indecent! They found something to scare us!
This reputation remained with the book in subsequent years. The Catholic newspaper “Censorship Bulletin,” which offered its readers (priests, teachers, librarians) recommendations for separating well-intentioned literature from obscene literature, in the summer of 1843 called “Physiology” a “dirty pamphlet”, the reading of which “should be strictly prohibited to all classes, first head of young people and women."
However, this “dubious” reputation did not in the least hinder the publishing fate of “The Physiology of Marriage” in France. The book, which made the author famous immediately after the release of the first edition, was reprinted several times both during Balzac’s life and after his death. In the edition of “The Human Comedy” published by Furne, Duboche and Etzel, it, as already mentioned, was included in the section “Analytical Etudes” (volume 16, published in August 1846). Unlike his other works, Balzac made almost no corrections when including “Physiology” in The Human Comedy, so there are not very many differences between the first edition and the text included in Furne’s edition; Balzac also made very few changes to his copy of this edition (the so-called “corrected Furne”).
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If the history of the text of “The Physiology of Marriage” is quite simple, then with the second work included in our collection, the situation is much more complicated.
“Minor Troubles in Married Life” was first published as a separate edition by Adam Hlendowski in 1846.
However, this event was preceded by a long and complex history; of the 38 chapters of the book, only one (the first preface) had never been published before the publication of Hlendowski's edition. All the rest had already been published before in various editions, although when included in the final version, Balzac subjected them to more or less serious revisions (the most significant of these changes are noted in our notes).
The first sketches date back to 1830: on November 4, 1830, in the first issue of the weekly Caricature, the essay “Neighbors” signed by Henri B... was published - the story of a stockbroker’s wife, who, due to the cramped Parisian housing, witnessed what she thought was a marital affair. , the happiness of the neighbors was opposite, and then it turned out that the blond young man with whom the neighbor was so happy was not her husband at all (this story, in a slightly modified form, later turned into the chapter “The French Campaign”). A week later, on November 11, 1830, Balzac published, signed by Alfred Coudreux (one of his then pseudonyms) in the same weekly, the essay “The Doctor’s Visit,” which outlined the main lines of the future chapter “Solo for a Hearse.”
The next stage on the path to a separate publication of “Troubles” was a cycle of 11 essays, published in the weekly “Caricature” from September 29, 1839 to June 28, 1840. The series is entitled “Minor Troubles of Married Life.” The word used in the title misères(trouble, adversity) has a long history. Since the beginning of the 18th century in France, in the popular “blue library” (so called because of the color of the covers), stories in verse and prose about misères various artisans. Each book was dedicated misère of any one craft, but they were perceived as a series, and sometimes united under one cover (for example, in the 1783 book “The Adversities of the Human Race, or Amusing Complaints Regarding the Training of Various Arts and Crafts in the City of Paris and Its Environs”). Titles with the word misères remained in use in the 19th century: for example, in 1821, Scribe and Melville composed the vaudeville comedy “The Minor Troubles of Human Life,” and in 1828, Henri Monier, whom Balzac highly valued, released a series of five lithographs under the general title “Petty Troubles.” human" (“Petites misères humaines”). By the way, Balzac himself used the word misères not only in the title of “Minor Troubles”: let me remind you that the novel, which is known to the Russian reader as “The Splendor and Poverty of Courtesans,” is called in French “Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes.”
The essays included in the first “Troubles” of 1839 did not have titles, but were numbered. When included in the final text, Balzac changed their order and gave each a title; these are the chapters “Cavils”, “Discoveries”, “Resolution”, “Women’s Logic”, “Memories and Regrets”, “An Unexpected Blow”, “The Suffering of a Simple Soul”, “Amadis Omnibus”, “The Care of a Young Wife”, “§ 2. Variation on the same theme" from the chapter "Deceived Ambition" and "Female Jesuitism." In these essays, the main characters are given the names Adolf and Caroline. In April 1841, Balzac entered into an agreement with the publisher Sovereign to publish essays from the second Caricature in a separate edition; to them he was going to add a novella, first published in August 1840 under the title “Claudine's Fantasies,” but in November 1841 the contract was terminated.
In December 1843, Balzac, as usual in dire need of money, entered into an agreement with another publisher, Pierre-Jules Hetzel (with whom he actively collaborated in 1841–1842, when he wrote stories for the collection Scenes of the Private and Public Life of Animals). to a text entitled “What Parisian Women Like,” which Etzel intended to include in the collective collection “The Demon in Paris” that he was preparing at that time. In a letter to Evelina Ganskaya dated December 11, 1843, Balzac explained that this text, consisting of nine “minor troubles of married life,” would be the end of an already begun book, which he intended to publish in a new edition of “The Physiology of Marriage.” The agreement with Etzel allowed Balzac to publish new texts outside of his collection, but under a different title, and this title was supposed to be “Minor Troubles of Married Life.” However, the title “What Parisian Women Like,” indicated in the agreement with Etzel, was subsequently changed, and in six editions of “The Demon in Paris,” published in August 1844, ten more essays on the future “Troubles” appeared under the general title “Philosophy” married life in Paris." In the final edition, these essays turned into the following chapters: "Observation", "Marriage Horsefly", "Hard Labor", "Yellow Smiles", "Nosography of the Villa", "Trouble from Trouble", "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Married Life", "The Art of Being" victim”, “The French Campaign”, “Solo for a Hearse” (two essays which, as already mentioned, were originally published in 1830) and, finally, the last chapter “An Interpretation Explaining What Felicità Means in Opera Finales " Although Balzac worked on these chapters in very difficult conditions, overcoming severe headaches, the text came out light and witty and, as the author himself stated in a letter to Ganskaya dated August 30, 1844, was a great success. Therefore, Etzel decided to publish it separately. This book was first, from July to November 1845, published again in the form of separate issues under the same title, which was used inside “The Demon in Paris” (“Philosophy of Married Life in Paris”), and then came out in the form of a little book with dated 1846 and entitled “Paris in marriage. Philosophy of Married Life”, given by analogy with Eugene Briffaut’s books “Paris on the Water” and “Paris at the Table” published in the same series. The originality of this edition is not the text (Balzac did not correct it), but Gavarni’s illustrations; on the cover of both individual issues and the entire book, these illustrations were called “commentaries”: “with comments by Gavarni.”
Meanwhile, on February 25, 1845, Balzac signed an agreement with Adam Hlendowski and granted him the right to publish, first in separate issues, and then in book form, an essay entitled “Minor Troubles of Married Life,” which will include parts already printed, including the one that appeared in “ Bese in Paris”, as well as new chapters, which Balzac undertook to present in three months, but in reality did it a little later. As we can see, Balzac returned to the title “Minor Troubles of Married Life,” first used in 1839–1840; its “commercial value” was increased by the success of the book “The Minor Troubles of Human Life,” published in 1843 with text by Old Nick (pseudonym of Emil Forgues) and illustrations by Granville. The first issue of Hlendowski's edition was published on July 26, 1845; Hlendowski began printing with ready-made texts, drawn first from the “Caricature” of 1839–1840, and then from “The Demon in Paris.” Meanwhile, Balzac returned to Paris from a trip to Europe and began composing the last movement in September. In the final edition, these essays turned into chapters of the second part: “Second Preface”, “Husbands in Two Months”, “Deceived Ambition”, “Idleness”, “Immodesty”, “Crude Revelations”, “Delayed Bliss”, “Vain Trouble” "", "Smoke without fire", "Domestic tyrant", "Confessions", "Humiliation", "Last quarrel", "Failure", "Chestnuts from the fire", "Ultima ratio". Balzac first published them under the general title “Minor Troubles of Married Life” on December 2–7, 1845 in six issues of the newspaper “Press”, in order to then provide it to Hlendowski. The publication is preceded by a short preface by Théophile Gautier, explaining that the chapters being published serve as a continuation of those that Hlendowski had already published, and also that in this part the roles have changed and the woman has turned from a tormentor into a martyr.
Balzac read the layout of all these elements of a separate publication and made changes there until the beginning of 1846. Hlendowski's issues were out of print until the beginning of July 1846, and soon (the exact date is unknown, since this book was not announced in the weekly Bibliographie de la France) a separate edition was published with 50 engravings and two and a half hundred drawings in the text, initial letters etc., performed by Bertal. Balzac made some corrections to his copy in hopes of reprinting, but it was never published during his lifetime. In the same 1846, but a little earlier (apparently, in May-June), another, this time unillustrated, separate edition of “Troubles” was published, also not announced in the “Bibliographie de la France”, but, unlike publications by Hlendowski, which were not published under the control of Balzac. The fact is that back in September 1845, financial difficulties forced Hlendowski to cede part of the rights to the future edition of “The Troubles” to the publishers Roux and Cassane and their printer Alfred Mussen. Balzac did not like this deal, but he could not resist it, however, he did not take part in the preparation of this edition, and therefore, although it came out of print before Hlendowski’s edition, it is this latter that is considered the original edition of “Troubles”. On the title page of the publication by Roux and Cassane it was stated: “Physiology of Marriage: Minor Troubles of Married Life”, but the text of “Physiology” was not printed in it and its title was used solely to attract reader interest, and also, perhaps, to hint at the connection of the new book with the "physiologies" of the early 1840s.
Judging by the agreement with Hlendowski, Balzac intended to publish “Troubles” “as part of the Physiology of Marriage.” And from the legal document that Balzac received on November 22, 1845 from the printer Mussen (this was the so-called “warning to the debtor” about the need to fulfill debt obligations), it is known that Hlendowski received permission from Balzac to publish “The Troubles” as volumes three and four "Physiology of Marriage".
However, Hlendowski did not carry out this intention; Similarly, in the last, 16th volume of the first edition of The Human Comedy, released in August 1846, the section “Analytical Studies” included only one such “study,” namely, “The Physiology of Marriage.” Perhaps the reason is that this edition was prepared in the spring of 1846, when Balzac was traveling with Hanska in Italy and Switzerland and could not make the adjustments necessary to combine the two texts in one section of The Human Comedy. However, both the letter to Hanska and the agreement with Hlendowski indicate that combining the two texts was part of the writer’s plans. True, in the catalog he compiled in 1845 for the second edition of The Human Comedy, Troubles are not mentioned. However, this may simply be explained by the fact that Balzac planned to publish them not separately, but as part of “The Physiology of Marriage.” And their planned inclusion in the composition of the “Human Comedy” can be judged, in particular, by the text itself: when writing the last portion of essays for the “Press”, Balzac introduced into it the names of some “recurring characters” who appear in many works of the “Human Comedy” ; it is clear that in this way he wanted to “tie” “The Troubles” to its main body. In addition, in the text of “The Troubles” there are direct indications of the relationship between the two texts: in the chapter “Ultima ratio” Balzac notes that this work “is to the Physiology of Marriage, as History is to Philosophy, as Fact is to Theory” (p. 677 ). There are several other references in the text to the “vile principles of the Physiology of Marriage” (they are noted in our notes). Finally, even more convincing is the reference to the edits that Balzac made to “The Physiology of Marriage” in 1846: in several places he introduced into the text the names of Adolphe, Caroline and even Madame de Fischtaminel, which were not in previous editions. The connection with “The Physiology of Marriage” was also indicated by an advertising brochure for Hlendowski’s publication issued in 1846, where two Balzac books on marriage were called “the alpha and omega of marriage.”
Therefore, the decision of the publisher Houssieux was quite logical, who, in his edition of “The Human Comedy” (vol. XVIII, 1855), was the first to include “Troubles” in the “Analytical Studies” section, where they follow “The Physiology of Marriage.”
Ussyo did not have access to the author’s copy of Hlendowski’s edition, to which Balzac, as already mentioned, made some corrections, and considered it more correct to insert into his edition some passages from the version of the text that was published in the collection “The Demon in Paris” (which is why in Ussieux's edition "Troubles" has a different ending). However, since the corrected copy of Hlendowski’s edition should be considered the expression of the last author’s will, the publisher of this text in the authoritative publication “Library of the Pleiades” Jean-Louis Tritter chose it for reproduction, and our translation is based on this edition.
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Researchers of women’s fate in “The Human Comedy” and Balzac’s attitude towards women come to the conclusion that in his mind there was a kind of utopia - the idea of an ideal marriage: he considered this establishment necessary, but wanted it to be based on both reason and love. Balzac was clearly aware of the utopian nature of such an ideal, but he was no less clearly aware of something else: reason without passion can no more bring a woman absolute happiness in marriage than passion without reason. The novel “Memoirs of Two Young Wives” (1842) is devoted to proof of this thesis - correspondence between two friends, one of whom, Louise, marries out of passionate love and both times suffers terrible failure (she tortured the first husband with her exactingness, and the second was mistakenly jealous and out of grief brought herself to death), and the other, Renee, marries for convenience and, not loving her husband, devotes herself entirely to the children, thus trying to fill the passion missing in her marriage. Both happen to experience moments of happiness, but the fate of neither one nor the other cannot be called happy.
In this and other novels specifically devoted to family life, Balzac considers the ultimate “romantic” situations; Here fatal passions boil, intrigues are hatched, grandiose plans are hatched. Great tragedies of married life take place here. But great tragedies do not happen to everyone and generally occur mainly in novels. How does the everyday life of ordinary spouses go, what prevents them from being happy? The book that Balzac entitled “The Minor Troubles of Married Life” is precisely about this, and therefore it is easier for the reader to identify with its characters. It’s easier even today, after two hundred years. Of course, everything takes place in period settings and period costumes, but the ratio of characters in a family drama or comedy remains the same.
This relevance of “Minor Troubles” is greatly facilitated by its original structure.
It was already said above that almost all of Balzac’s novels and short stories are, to one degree or another, devoted to marriage, but in the novels we are talking about the stories of specific married couples, and this gives the reader the opportunity to think that the fate of this unhappy couple is not the rule, but the exception . True, “The Physiology of Marriage” already left few illusions in this regard, since, talking about wives who were bored with marital ties, it implicitly, and sometimes directly, announced to each husband: the same will happen to you. But in “Minor Troubles,” Balzac went even further: the book has two main characters, Adolf and Caroline, but these are not heroes at all in the classical sense of the word, with a certain appearance and a certain character. At the very beginning of the book, the author introduces his character as follows:
Maybe this is a solicitor at the court of first instance, maybe a captain of the second rank, or maybe a third-class engineer or an assistant judge, or, finally, a young viscount. But most likely, this is the groom that all sane parents dream of, the ultimate dream of which is the only son of a rich father!.. ‹…› We will call this phoenix Adolf, no matter what his position in the world, age and hair color.
And in the newspaper “Press” on December 2, 1845, a note was made to the publication of the chapter “Deceived Ambition”:
Caroline in this book embodies the typical wife, and Adolf the typical husband; the author treated husbands and wives the way fashion magazines treat dresses; he created mannequins.
In French, the article is not used before proper names, but Balzac sometimes adds an indefinite article to the names of the main characters of “Minor Troubles” and calls them: un Adolphe, une Caroline, that is, one of the Adolfs, one of the Carolines; in other places demonstrative pronouns are added to the same names: this Adolf, this Caroline. The lover of every Caroline is certainly called Ferdinand (only their serial numbers change: Ferdinand I is followed by Ferdinand II). Commentators note chronological or biographical inconsistencies in the text: at first Caroline is the only daughter, and on the next page she suddenly has a sister, Caroline of the first part was born in Paris, and Caroline of the second is a provincial, Adolf of the first part is most likely a rentier, and in the second part he is minor writer, Caroline is either a coquette and a fashionista, or a praying man and a prude. In the chapter “Deceived Ambition,” Adolf himself bears the surname Chaudorey, and this Adolphe Chaudorey publishes a newspaper; and a little lower, in the chapter “Rough Revelations,” the husband Adolf and the newspaperman Chaudorey turn out to be two different persons. It would be easy to attribute these inconsistencies to the fragmentation of the book, which was created in a hurry and in parts, but I think that is not the case at all. If “The Physiology of Marriage,” for all its novelty, owed much in terms of genre to the previous “Codes” and was generally full of borrowings from the literature of the 18th century and earlier eras, then “Minor Troubles” is an experimental book; It is not without reason that a modern researcher mentions in connection with Pirandello’s play “Six Characters in Search of an Author,” and a modern researcher generally calls this book the harbinger of the French “Workshop of Potential Literature” (OULIPO), founded in 1960.
In fact, one of the most prominent members of this group, the great inventor Raymond Queneau, wrote a small work in 1967 called “A Tale of Your Own,” in which the reader is first allowed to choose who he wants to see as its heroes: three small peas, three long ones. poles or three frail bushes, and then determine their further actions. So, Balzac, one hundred and twenty years before Queneau, provides his reader with similar freedom.
The response of the husband assessing the appearance of his wife before going to the ball is conveyed as follows:
“I have never seen you so beautifully dressed. “Blue, pink, yellow, crimson (choose for yourself) suits you amazingly” (p. 500).
The response of a husband telling his wife about a supposedly profitable commercial enterprise in which he is going to invest money sounds like this:
“You wanted it! You wanted this! You told me that! You told me this!..” In a word, in the blink of an eye you list all the fantasies with which she tore your heart so many times (p. 514) -
but the fantasies themselves are again left to the discretion of the reader. And when it comes to the note found by the wife and allowing her to convict her husband of treason, Balzac gives four versions of this love letter at once:
The first note was written by a grisette, the second by a noble lady, the third by a pretentious bourgeois, the fourth by an actress; from among these women Adolf chooses his beauties(p. 659).
This “variability” of “Minor Troubles” reminds us of what is often forgotten: for all the traditionalism of the literary genres in which he worked (novel, short story), Balzac was a real innovator; the system of recurring characters moving from one work to another, in the form that he invented and developed, was also ahead of its time and predicted some of the discoveries of modernism: after all, Balzac builds the biography of his characters non-linearly, often violating chronology and leaving the reader to restore the missing links.
However, Balzac “predicts” not only modernism and postmodernism of the twentieth century, but also literature closer to his era. When reading some passages of “Minor Troubles,” it is difficult to escape the feeling that the future “Anna Karenina” is contained here in a condensed form: “All women must remember this nasty little trouble - the last quarrel that often breaks out over a mere trifle , and even more often - because of an immutable fact, because of irrefutable evidence. This cruel farewell to faith, to the childishness of love, to virtue itself is perhaps as whimsical as life itself. Like life itself, it proceeds in each family in its own special way."(p. 658; emphasis added - V. M.) - and in another place: “Adolf, like all men, finds solace in social life: he goes out, gets busy, takes care of business. But for Caroline it all comes down to one thing: to love or not to love, to be loved or not to be loved” (p. 620). I don’t presume to say that Tolstoy remembered “Minor Troubles” when he wrote his novel, but in general he was well acquainted with the works of Balzac, although he spoke about him, like many other authors, in contradictory terms, ranging from “nonsense” to “ the talent is enormous."
Of course, variability within the same social or professional type was also developed by the above-mentioned humorous “physiologies” of the early 1840s. For example, in the short chapters of “The Physiology of the Married Man” (1842), composed by the famous author of popular novels Paul de Kock, types of spouses are described: jealous, picky, overly caring, affectionate in public, but unbearable behind closed doors, etc. However, all these husbands are presented to the reader as totally different, Balzac's Adolf, although he contains many different husbands, at the same time, paradoxically, remains the same thing character.
Another original feature of Minor Troubles is that it is a bisexual book.
Although in “The Physiology of Marriage,” as already mentioned, many pages are imbued with sympathy for women, still formally this book is written from beginning to end from the point of view of a man; This is a guide for your husband - how not to become a cuckold. “Minor Troubles,” despite many similarities in individual plots (such as the relationship between an ostensibly ill wife and a doctor or the story about the power of a woman’s “ratchet”), is structured differently. At the beginning of the second part, Balzac openly announces his intention to respect the interests of both sexes in his book and to make it “more or less a hermaphrodite.” Balzac insisted on this “hermaphroditism” of “Minor Troubles” starting from the late 1830s, but he thought differently about the forms of its implementation. On November 3, 1839, in the newspaper “Caricature”, before the next fragment of “Troubles”, the following half-joking, half-serious note was published, explaining the author’s intentions (obviously with his knowledge):
However, in the publication of “Caricatures” this principle is not fully adhered to; of the eleven essays, only three present a woman's point of view. In the final version, Balzac chose a different path: not alternating female and male chapters, but dividing the entire book into two parts, or, to borrow a “bathhouse” metaphor, into two sections – male and female. In the middle of the text, in the “Second Preface,” he admits that his book has two halves, male and female: “after all, in order to be completely like a marriage, this book must become, to a greater or lesser extent, a hermaphrodite.” Diderot, in the article “On Women,” which Balzac repeatedly quotes in “The Physiology of Marriage,” reproaches the author of the book “An Essay on the Character, Morals and Spirit of Women in Different Ages” (1772) A. – L. Thomas for the fact that the book is his “ has no gender: it is a hermaphrodite who has neither male strength nor female softness,” that is, he uses the word “hermaphrodite” with a disapproving assessment in relation to the book; Balzac, on the contrary, sees the “hermaphroditism” of his book as its advantage. The playful “hermaphrodite” is quite consistent in this sense with the serious hermaphrodite - Seraphita, the heroine of the novel of the same name (1834), a fantastic creature in which not only human and angelic properties are mixed, but also the principles of masculine and feminine. Seraphita is the embodiment of a single humanity, cleansed of filth; however, she appears to ordinary people in a form accessible to their senses: for women in the form of the man Seraphitus, and for men in the form of the woman Seraphita. Of course, the distance from these mystical visions to the ironic sketches of “Minor Troubles” is very large. And yet, “bisexuality” is the structure-forming and substantive basis of the book. In fact, if in the first part the wife appears mainly in the role of a stupid, grumpy and quarrelsome fury, then the second part shows how disgustingly husbands sometimes behave and how many small, but extremely sensitive troubles they can cause to their unfortunate wives with rudeness and insensitivity , lack of talent and infidelity.
Balzac scholars, as a rule, speak of “Minor Troubles” as a book that is joyless, disappointing, and cruel to married life. Arlette Michel, author of a dissertation on love and marriage in The Human Comedy, writes that if The Physiology of Marriage is a book by a man who can mock marriage as it is because he believes in its very institution, then Petty Troubles is a book by a man who does not believe in marriage at all, and therefore his ridicule takes on a hopelessly cynical character. Here the modern researcher repeats almost verbatim what well-intentioned contemporary critics wrote about “Minor Troubles”; The Catholic "Censorship Bulletin" in February 1846 condemned Balzac's new work in the following words:
There is nothing sadder and more difficult to read than this story of social ills, examined with the coolness with which a chemist studies poison, and reduced to algebraic formulas and axioms, with the last of which we cannot in any way agree.
The last axiom says: “Only those couples who arrange a marriage of four are happy.”
In my opinion, the situation in "Minor Troubles" is not at all so bleak. Although the prospectus for Hlendowski’s publication emphasizes precisely the “combat” component of the book: “France, whose vocation is war, has turned marriage into a battle,” in fact, “Minor Troubles,” to a much greater extent than “The Physiology of Marriage,” is a book about ways to achieve marital peace, about how spouses can grow old together, if not in love, then at least in harmony. The question from “The Physiology of Marriage” will not occur to the husband: how to please his wife? how to guess “her feelings, whims and desires (three words for the same thing!)” (p. 540). The wife from “The Physiology of Marriage” would also never think of pleasing her husband with his favorite “Italian-style champignons” (p. 637). The feeling of joylessness when reading “Minor Troubles” arises, perhaps, because, as the Balzac scholar Roland Chollet subtly noted, this book differs sharply from all other works of the “Human Comedy” in the mediocrity of its characters. Balzac's favorite heroes are creators, geniuses, giants, people embraced by the strongest, even destructive, passion; But in "Minor Troubles" everything is different: this book is about mediocrity. Even in “The Physiology of Marriage” Balzac mentions “an outstanding man for whom this book was written” and thus raises the bar. In “Minor Troubles” he omits it: both the troubles are minor, and Adolphe is nothing more than a kind of “provincial celebrity in Paris” - a mediocre writer who has neither the poetic gift nor the strong feelings that distinguished Lucien de Rubempre, the hero of the eponymous part of the novel “The Lost.” illusions" (1839).
But in this way both the heroes and their problems become closer to the “average reader”. Marital disputes over raising a child; a husband who pesters his wife every minute with the question: “What are you doing?”; indelicate husbands who publicly call their wife “mommy”, “pussy” or “peach”, and wives who torment their husbands with reproaches and suspicions - all these seem to be trifles (as was said), but they can sometimes ruin life without worse than other tragic incidents. The free construction of Minor Troubles, where the characters are dummies with no particular habits, with whom each reader can especially easily identify, makes this book instructive without being boring. A possible identification is also facilitated by the fact that almost the entire book is written in the present tense: this is not a story about the completed story of a specific character with a specific character, it is an eternally ongoing story of “everyone and everyone,” an empty frame into which everyone can insert their face. To an even greater extent than “The Physiology of Marriage,” “Minor Troubles” is a kind of manual on the practical psychology of family life, only, unlike many manuals written by professional scientists, it is witty and brilliant.
* * *
A few words about the Russian fate of both works included in our collection.
If in France the publishing history of “The Physiology of Marriage” developed, as mentioned above, very happily, then in Russia the situation was different. The first translation into Russian of a fragment from “The Physiology of Marriage” (and from Balzac’s works in general) was published in “Ladies’ Magazine” under the title “Migraine” (the text is taken from the first paragraph of Reflections XXVI “On various types of weapons”). The censor's permission for this issue is dated March 8, 1830. At that moment, “The Physiology of Marriage” was still completely new. Under the text of the Russian publication is displayed: “From the Physiologie du mariage.” The author is not indicated, and this is quite natural. By that time, Balzac had signed his own name to a single novel, “The Last Chouan,” and although, as stated above, for the French public the name of the author of “Physiology” was not a mystery, in Russia he might well not have been known yet. Almost simultaneously, less than a month later, the following note appeared in the “Galatea” magazine (censored on April 2, 1830) in the “Mixture” section:
They say that the following terrible incident recently happened in Paris: one noble lady became desperately ill last month; relatives gathered at her bedside. It's midnight; the general silence was interrupted by the wheezing of the dying woman and the crackling of wood burning in the fireplace. Suddenly, burning coal is thrown out of the fireplace with a crash onto the middle of the parquet floor; the dying woman suddenly screams, opens her eyes, jumps out of bed and, grabbing coal with tongs, throws it into the fireplace; Having made such tension, she falls unconscious on the floor; they lift her up and carry her to her bed, where she soon died. The relatives, looking significantly at each other and then at the black stain left on the parquet from the coal, ordered the floor to be immediately broken open, from under which the box was taken out. But what was their surprise when, having opened it, they found in it the dead head of the deceased’s husband, whom they still thought had remained in Spain!
The note is presented as a real incident, which Russian magazines of that time covered in large numbers in the “Mixture” section; Thus, on the adjacent pages of “Galatea” we find stories about a young man from Seville, who “like owls, bats, etc., sees only at night, and goes out with a guide during the day,” and about the “terrible bandit Gasparoni” sitting in a Roman prison. , who “killed 143 people.” Neither Balzac nor The Physiology of Marriage are mentioned in Galatea; meanwhile, it is obvious that the source for it was the anecdote about the incident in Ghent from the “Introduction” to “Physiology” (see pp. 60–61). The anonymous Russian translator omitted everything that later served as a distinctive feature of Balzac’s manner and aroused admiration among some readers, and sharp rejection among others, namely, a passion for details in descriptions (what Pushkin called “the short-sighted pettiness of French novelists”). In essence, only the plot of Balzac's story is retold in the note from Galatea. Based on this, it can be assumed that the Galatea employee was not even guided directly by Balzac’s book, but by a condensed retelling of this episode in a review of it by Jules Janin, published in the newspaper “Journal de Debas” on February 7, 1830.
Then, for several decades, the history of the Russian “Physiology of Marriage” was completely interrupted. In 1900, a translation by V. L. Rantsov was published in the journal “Bulletin of Foreign Literature”; Rantsov translated the book from beginning to end, but omitted some paragraphs of the original, for example, Rabelaisian passages from Meditation I, and in some places subjected Balzac’s text to moral “censorship”: the aphorism “Every night requires a special menu” turned into a much more vegetarian maxim: “Every day should be unique,” and the aphorism “Marriage depends entirely on the bed” was generally replaced by the question “What is the essence of marriage?” After the release of this translation, there was again a pause of almost a century, and only after 1995, when our translation was first published by the publishing house “New Literary Review”, “The Physiology of Marriage” in its entirety became available to the Russian reader.
The Russian history of "Minor Troubles" is little richer than that of "The Physiology of Marriage." August 26, 1840 in the Northern Bee under the heading “Little Troubles of Married Life. Balzac's article" a chapter was published, which later received the title "Jesuitism of Women" (the translation was carried out after publication in the newspaper "Caricature").
In 1846, in the collection “The Demon in Paris,” a translation of those chapters that were included in the first part of the French collection “Le Diable à Paris” was published under the title “Philosophy of Married Life in Paris.”
In the same 1846, the “Library for Reading” published in volume 74 under the title “Little Misfortunes of Married Life” a translation (in some places shortened to a retelling) of those chapters that Balzac published in the newspaper “Press” (the translation was carried out quickly: publication in the “Press” " ended on December 7, new style, and the volume of the Russian magazine received censorship permission on December 31, 1845, old style).
Finally, in the second half of the 19th century, two separate editions were published: in 1876 in Moscow, translated by N. A. Putyata, and in 1899 in St. Petersburg, translated by A. Blok’s grandmother E. G. Beketova (the translation was included in volume 20 collected works of Balzac in Panteleev's edition). Since 1899, “Minor Troubles of Married Life” has not been published in Russian.
Putyata's translation is known only from bibliographic indexes; in the only library where this book is listed in the catalog (State Library in St. Petersburg), it “has not been in place since 1956.” As for the translations of Rantsov and Beketova, they are interesting as a fact of the history of translation, but not easy to read. Beketova translates the phrase: “My dear, don’t get so excited” as “My dear, why are you raising dust?”, and Rantsov’s character, who is able to “hear how truffles grow,” turns into a person who “hears how they grow.” there is grass in the field!” Using words that now mean something completely different than they did a hundred years ago; some not very successful turns of phrase (such as “love complicated by betrayal of her husband” in Rantsov or “inflatedness driven inside” in Beketova) and, finally, a kind of “censorship”, which was already discussed above - all this often makes Balzac’s the narrator in old translations is funny. Meanwhile, he was ironic and witty, but never funny.
* * *
Translation based on the edition: CH. Vol. 11 (Physiologie du mariage) and 12 (Petites misères de la vie conjugale), where the text printed in Furne's edition is reproduced. The notes use comments by René Guise on The Physiology of Marriage and Jean-Louis Tritter on The Minor Troubles of Married Life. For this edition, my translation of “The Physiology of Marriage,” first published in 1995 and reprinted several times since then, has been revised and revised, and the notes have been significantly expanded, including by pointing to sources unknown to French commentators.
Vera Milchina
The Physiology of Marriage, or Eclectic Reflections on the Joys and Sorrows of Married Life
Dedication
Pay attention to the words about “the outstanding man for whom this book was written” (p. 101). Doesn't this mean: "For you"?
A woman who, tempted by the title of this book, wants to open it, need not work: and without reading, she knows in advance everything that is said here. The most cunning of men will never be able to say as much good or as bad about women as they think about themselves. If, despite my warning, some lady nevertheless begins to read this work, she should, out of delicacy, refrain from ridiculing the author, who, voluntarily depriving himself of the right to the most flattering approval for the artist, placed on the title page of his work that - sort of like that warning sign you see on the doors of other establishments: “Not for ladies.”
Introduction
“Nature does not provide for marriage. – The Eastern family has nothing in common with the Western family. – Man is a servant of nature, and society is its latest fruit. “Laws are written in accordance with morals, but morals change.”
Consequently, marriage, like all earthly things, is subject to gradual improvement.
These words, spoken by Napoleon before the Council of State during the discussion of the Civil Code, deeply struck the author of this book and, perhaps, inadvertently gave him the idea for the essay that he is presenting to the public today. The fact is that in his youth he had the opportunity to study French law, and the word “adultery” had a striking effect on him. So often found in the codex, this word appeared to the author’s imagination in the darkest surroundings. Tears, Shame, Hostility, Horror, Secret Crimes, Bloody Wars, Orphaned Families, Grief - this is the retinue that appeared before the author’s inner gaze as soon as he read the sacramental word ADULTERY! Later, having gained access to the most refined secular drawing rooms, the author noticed that the severity of marriage legislation was very often softened there by Adultery. He found that the number of unhappy families significantly exceeds the number of happy families. Finally, he seems to have been the first to point out that of all the sciences, the science of marriage is the least developed. However, this was an observation of the young man, which, as often happens, was lost in the series of his chaotic thoughts: like a stone thrown into water sinks. However, the author involuntarily continued to observe the light, and gradually a whole swarm of more or less correct ideas about the nature of marriage customs formed in his imagination. The laws of the ripening of books in the souls of their authors are perhaps no less mysterious than the laws of the growth of truffles on the fragrant plains of Périgord. From the initial sacred horror caused in the author’s heart by adultery, from the frivolous observations he made, one fine morning an idea was born - a very insignificant one, but which absorbed some of the author’s ideas. It was a mockery of marriage: two spouses fell in love with each other twenty-seven years after their wedding.
The author derived considerable pleasure from composing a little marriage pamphlet and for a whole week he took pleasure in jotting down on paper countless thoughts connected with this innocent epigram - involuntary and unexpected thoughts. A remark that could not be ignored put an end to this weaving of words. Having listened to the advice, the author returned to his usual carefree and idle existence. However, the first experience of amusing research was not in vain, and the seed planted in the field of the author’s mind sprouted: each phrase of the condemned work took root and became like a tree branch, which, if left on a winter evening on the sand, is covered in the morning with intricate white patterns that it can draw weirdo frost. Thus, the sketch continued to exist and gave life to many moral branches. Like a polyp, it multiplied without outside help. The impressions of youth and intrusive thoughts were confirmed by the smallest events of subsequent years. Moreover, all this multitude of ideas came to order, came to life, almost took on a human form and set off to wander through those fantastic lands where the soul loves to send its reckless offspring. Whatever the author did, a certain voice always sounded in his soul, throwing the most caustic remarks at the most beautiful society ladies who danced, chatted or laughed in front of his eyes. Just as Mephistopheles presented Faust with the eerie figures gathered on the Brocken, so a certain demon seemed to unceremoniously grab the author by the shoulder in the midst of a ball and whisper: “Do you see that seductive smile? This is the smile of hatred." Sometimes the demon showed off like a captain from the old Ardie comedies. He wrapped himself in an embroidered purple cloak and showed off the shabby tinsel and rags of his former glory, trying to convince the author that they sparkled like new. Sometimes he would burst into loud and infectious Rabelaisian laughter and write on the walls of houses a word that was a worthy counterpart to the famous “Trink!” - the only prophecy that was achieved from the Divine Bottle. Sometimes this literary Trilby would sit down on a pile of books and slyly point with his hooked fingers at two yellow volumes, the titles of which dazzled the eyes; when the demon finally managed to attract the attention of the author, he began to repeat clearly and piercingly, as if fingering the frets of a harmonica: “PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE!” But most often he appeared to the author in the evening, before bed. Gentle as a fairy, he tried to lull the soul of the mortal he enslaved with gentle speeches. As mocking as he was captivating, flexible like a woman and bloodthirsty like a tiger, he did not know how to caress without scratching; his friendship was more dangerous than his hatred. One night he used all his charms, and in the end he resorted to the last proof. He appeared and sat down on the edge of the bed, like a maiden in love who at first remains silent and only looks at the adored young man with burning eyes, but in the end cannot stand it and pours out her feelings to him. “Here,” he said, “is a description of a suit that allows you to walk along the surface of the Seine without getting your feet wet. And here is a message from the Institute about clothing that allows you to walk through fire without getting burned. Can't you invent a remedy that protects marriage from cold and heat? Listen! I know such works as “On ways to preserve food,” “On ways to build fireplaces that don’t smoke,” “On ways to cast excellent mortars,” “On ways to tie a tie,” “On ways to cut meat.”)
“These myriads of books have found their readers,” the demon continued, “although not everyone builds houses and sees the purpose of life in food, not everyone has a tie and a fireplace, yet many people get married!.. But what can I say, look !..
He pointed his hand into the distance, and the author’s eyes saw the ocean, where all the books published recently swayed on the waves. Volumes in the eighteenth beat of a sheet bounced up and down, gurgling, and sank to the bottom of the volume in octavo, which floated to the top with great difficulty, because little books in the twelfth and thirty-second beats of the sheet were swarming all around, forming airy foam. Fierce waves tormented journalists, typesetters, apprentices, messengers from printing houses, whose heads stuck out of the water mixed with books. People scurried back and forth in canoes, fishing books out of the water and taking them ashore to a tall, arrogant man in a black dress, lean and unapproachable: he embodied the booksellers and the public. The demon pointed his finger at the boat, decorated with brand new flags, rushing forward with full sails and decorated with a poster instead of a flag; Laughing sardonically, he read in a shrill voice: “PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE.”
Then the author fell in love, and the devil left him alone, because if he penetrated where the woman settled, he would have to deal with an overly strong opponent. Several years passed in torment caused by love alone, and the author felt that he had knocked out a wedge with a wedge. But one evening in one of the Parisian drawing rooms, approaching a handful of people gathered in a circle near the fireplace, he heard the following anecdote told in a sepulchral voice:
“When I was in Ghent, the following incident happened there. A certain lady, who had been widowed for ten years, was lying on her deathbed. Three relatives who laid claim to her inheritance waited for the sick woman’s last breath and did not leave her bed a single step, fearing that she would transfer her entire fortune to the local Beguin monastery. The patient remained silent; She seemed to be sleeping, and death was slowly taking over her pale, numb face. Can you imagine this picture: three relatives on a winter night, awake in silence near the sick bed? The nurse shakes her head, and the doctor, anxiously realizing that there is no salvation, takes his hat with one hand, and with the other makes a sign to the relatives, as if saying: “You will no longer need my services.” In the solemn silence, you can hear the blizzard muffledly howling outside the window and the shutters flapping in the wind. The youngest of the heirs covered the candle standing by the bed so that the light would not hurt the eyes of the dying woman, so that her bed was drowned in twilight, and her face turned yellow on the pillow, like a poorly gilded figure of Christ on a tarnished silver crucifix. So, the dark room where the denouement of the drama was supposed to take place was illuminated only by the unsteady bluish flame of the sparkling hearth. The ending was accelerated by a firebrand that suddenly rolled onto the floor. Hearing her knock, the patient suddenly sits up in bed and opens her eyes, burning like a cat’s; everyone in the room looks at her in amazement. She stares intently at the rolling firebrand, and then, before her family has time to come to her senses, in some kind of nervous attack she jumps out of bed, grabs the tongs and throws the firebrand back into the fireplace. Then the nurse, the doctor, the heirs rush to the patient, grab her by the arms, lower her onto the bed, put a pillow under her head; not even ten minutes pass before she dies, without taking her eyes off the piece of parquet where the firebrand fell. Before Countess Van Ostrum had time to give up the ghost, the three heirs looked at each other incredulously and, completely forgetting about their aunt, fixed their eyes on the mysterious floorboard. The heirs were Belgians, which means they knew how to instantly calculate their benefits. After exchanging a few words in a whisper, they agreed that neither of them would leave their aunt’s bedroom. The footman was sent for the carpenter. How three kindred souls trembled when their owners, bending over the luxurious parquet floor, watched the actions of the apprentice boy, who plunged his chisel into the tree. The floorboard is cracked. “Auntie has moved!” cried the youngest of the heirs. “No, it’s just a trick of the light,” answered the eldest, who was looking after both the treasure and the deceased at the same time. The inconsolable relatives discovered under the parquet floor, exactly in the place where the firebrand had fallen, an object carefully hidden by a layer of plaster. “Act!..” said the eldest heir. The apprentice’s chisel forged the plaster, and a human skull appeared in the light of day, in which - I don’t remember by what signs - the heirs recognized the count, who, as was known to the whole city, died on the island of Java and was warmly mourned by a mournful widow.
The narrator who told us this old story was a tall and lean brunette with reddish eyes, in whom the author seemed to have a vague resemblance to the demon that once tormented him so much, but the stranger did not have cloven hooves. Suddenly the author’s ear was struck by the word Adultery, and before his inner gaze appeared the entire ominous cortege that had accompanied these significant syllables in former times.
Since then, the ghost of an unwritten essay has again begun to relentlessly haunt the author; There was never a time in his life when he was so much annoyed by nonsense thoughts about the fatal subject of this book. However, he courageously resisted the demon, although he linked the most insignificant events of the author’s life with this unknown creation and, as if in mockery, became like a customs official and put his seal everywhere.
A few days later, the author had a chance to talk with two charming females. The first was once one of the most kind-hearted and witty ladies at Napoleon's court. Having reached a very high position under the Empire, with the onset of the Restoration she lost everything she had and began to live as a hermit. The second, young and beautiful, enjoyed enormous success in the Parisian world at the time of our conversation. The ladies were friends, for the first was forty, the second was twenty-two, and they rarely turned out to be rivals. One of them was not at all embarrassed by the author’s presence, the other guessed his intentions, so they continued to discuss their women’s affairs in front of him with complete frankness.
– Have you noticed, my dear, that women, as a rule, love only fools?
- What are you saying, Duchess! Why, then, do they always have an aversion to their husbands?
(“But this is sheer tyranny!” thought the author. “Now, therefore, the devil has put on a cap?”)
“No, my dear, I’m not joking,” the duchess continued, “moreover, looking coolly at those men with whom I myself once knew, I shudder.” The mind always hurts us with its brilliance, a person with a sharp mind frightens us; if this person is proud, he will not be jealous of us, which means he will not be able to please us. Finally, it is perhaps more pleasant for us to elevate a man to ourselves than to rise to him ourselves... A talented man will share his victories with us, but a fool will give us pleasure, so it is more pleasant for us to hear how they say about our chosen one: “How handsome!” - rather than knowing that he was elected to the Academy.
- Enough, Duchess! You are scaring me.
Having gone through all the lovers who drove the ladies she knew crazy, the young coquette did not find a single smart person among them.
“However, I swear by virtue,” she said, “their husbands are much more worthy people...”
- But they are husbands! – the duchess answered importantly.
“Of course,” the Duchess laughed. “And the rage that some ladies feel against their companions, who had the misfortune to bring themselves happiness and take a lover, proves how burdensome their chastity is for the poor thing.” One would have long ago become Laisa if her fear of the devil had not stopped her, the other is virtuous solely due to her insensibility, the third because of the stupidity of her first lover, the fourth...
The author stopped this flow of revelations by telling the ladies about his persistent desire to write a book about marriage; the ladies smiled and promised him not to skimp on advice. The younger one cheerfully contributed her first share, promising to prove mathematically that women of impeccable virtue exist only in the imagination.
In introducing you to the biography of his own work, the author is not guided by petty vanity. He sets forth facts worthy of serving as a contribution to the history of human thought and capable, no doubt, of clarifying the essence of the book itself. It may be useful for some anatomists of thought to learn that the soul is a woman. Therefore, while the author forbade himself to think about the book that he had to write, fragments of it appeared to him everywhere. He found one page at the patient’s bedside, the other on a sofa in the boudoir. The glances of women carried away in a whirlwind of a waltz suggested new ideas to him; a gesture or a word fed his arrogant mind. But that day when he said to himself: “Well! I will write this essay that haunts me!..” - everything disappeared; like the three Belgians, the author discovered a skeleton at the site of the treasure.
The demon-tempter was replaced by a meek and pale person, good-natured and courteous, wary of resorting to painful injections of criticism. She was more generous with words than with thoughts and seemed to be afraid of noise. Perhaps it was a genius who inspired the venerable deputies of the center.
“Isn’t it better,” she said, “to leave things as they are?” Are things really that bad? One should believe in marriage as sacredly as in the immortality of the soul, and your book certainly will not serve to glorify family happiness. In addition, you will soon begin to judge family life on the example of thousands of Parisian married couples, but they are nothing more than exceptions. Perhaps you will meet husbands who agree to betray their wives into your power, but not a single son will agree to betray his mother to you... There will be people who, offended by your views, will suspect you of immorality and malicious intent. In a word, only kings, or at least first consuls, are allowed to touch public sores.
Although Reason appeared to the author in the most pleasant of guises, the author did not heed his advice; for in the distance the extravagance was waving the rattle of Panurge, and the author really wanted to take possession of it; however, when he took hold of it, it turned out that it was heavier than the club of Hercules; Moreover, by the will of the Meudon priest, the young man, who values good gloves much more than a good book, has been denied access to this rattle.
“Alas, madam, will you reward me for all the curses that he will bring on my head?”
She expressed doubt with a gesture, to which the author reacted very nonchalantly.
- Are you really hesitating? – she continued. – Publish what you wrote, don’t be afraid. Nowadays, in books, cut is valued much more than material.
Although the author was no more than the secretary of the two ladies, he still spent a lot of effort in putting their observations in order. To create a book about marriage, there was perhaps only one thing left to do - to put together what everyone is thinking about, but no one is talking about; however, having completed such work, a person who thinks like everyone else runs the risk of not being liked by anyone! However, the eclecticism of this work may save it. While mocking, the author tried to convey some comforting ideas to the readers. He tirelessly strove to find unknown strings in the human soul. Defending the most material interests, evaluating or condemning them, he, perhaps, showed people more than one source of mental pleasures. However, the author is not so stupid and arrogant as to claim that all his jokes are equally exquisite; simply, by relying on the diversity of minds, he expects to earn as much censure as praise. The subject of his reasoning is so serious that he constantly tried anecdotize narration, for today anecdotes are the credentials of any morality and the anti-sleeping component of any book. As for “The Physiology of Marriage,” the essence of which is observation and analysis, it was impossible for its author not to bore the reader with the writer’s teachings. But this, as the author knows very well, is the worst of all the troubles that threaten the writer. That is why, while working on his extensive research, the author took care to give the reader a break from time to time. A similar method of narration was consecrated by a writer who created a work on taste, close to the one that the author wrote on marriage - a work from which the author allowed himself to borrow several lines containing an idea common to both books. He wanted in this way to pay respect to his predecessor, who died barely having time to enjoy the success that befell him.
“When I write and talk about myself in the singular, I seem to start a conversation with the reader, I give him the opportunity to explore, argue, doubt and even laugh, but as soon as I arm myself with the formidable WE, I begin to preach, and the reader can only obey "(Brillat-Savarin. Preface to “The Physiology of Taste”).
December 5, 1829
Part one General provisions
Diderot. Addendum to Bougainville's Journey
Meditation I Subject
Physiology, what do you want from me?
Do you want to prove that marital ties unite a man and a woman who do not know each other for life?
That the purpose of life is passion, and no passion can resist marriage?
That marriage is an institution necessary to maintain order in society, but contrary to the laws of nature?
That, despite all its flaws, marriage is the first source of property?
That it provides governments with countless guarantees of their strength?
That there is something touching in the union of two beings who decide to endure the hardships of life together?
That there is something funny in the spectacle of two wills moved by one thought?
That a woman who enters into marriage is treated like a slave?
That there are no perfectly happy marriages in the world?
That marriage is fraught with terrible crimes, many of which we cannot even imagine?
That loyalty does not exist; in any case, men are not capable of it?
That, after conducting an investigation, it would be possible to find out how much more the transfer of property by inheritance promises troubles than benefits?
That adultery brings more evil than marriage brings good?
That women have been cheating on men since the very beginning of human history, but this chain of deceptions could not destroy the institution of marriage?
That the laws of love bind two people so tightly that no human law can separate them?
That, along with marriages concluded in the city hall, there are marriages based on the call of nature, on the captivating similarity or decisive dissimilarity of thoughts, as well as on bodily attraction, and that, therefore, heaven and earth are constantly contradicting one another?
That there are husbands of tall stature and great intelligence, whose wives cheat on them with lovers who are short, ugly and brainless?
The answer to each of these questions could fill a separate book, but books have already been written, and the questions arise before people again and again.
Will you reveal new principles to me? Will you begin to praise the community of wives? Lycurgus and other Greek tribes, Tatars and savages tried this method.
Or do you think women should be kept locked up? The Turks used to do exactly this, but now they are beginning to give their girlfriends freedom.
Perhaps you will say that daughters should be married off without a dowry and without the right to inherit the fortune of their parents?.. English writers and moralists have proven that this, along with divorce, is the surest basis for happy marriages.
Or maybe you are convinced that every family needs its own Hagar? But there is no need to change laws for this. The article of the Code, which threatens a wife with punishment for cheating on her husband anywhere in the world and condemns the husband only if the concubine lives with him under the same roof, tacitly encourages men to take mistresses outside the home.
Sanchez considered all possible violations of the marriage; Moreover, he discussed the legality and propriety of each pleasure, calculated all the moral, religious, carnal duties of the spouses; in a word, if his tome, entitled “De Matrimonio”, is published in octavo format, you will get a good dozen volumes.
A bunch of jurists in a bunch of treatises have examined all sorts of legal subtleties related to the institution of marriage. There are even essays devoted to assessing the suitability of spouses to perform marital duties.
Legions of doctors have produced legions of books on marriage as it relates to surgery and medicine.
Consequently, in the nineteenth century, the Physiology of Marriage was doomed to be either a mediocre compilation, or the work of a fool, written for other fools: decrepit priests, armed with gilded scales, weighed the slightest sins; decrepit jurists, putting on glasses, divided these sins into types and subtypes; decrepit doctors, taking up a scalpel, used it to open every conceivable wound; decrepit judges, perched on their seats, examined all the incorrigible vices; whole generations let out a cry of joy or grief; every century has given its voice; The Holy Spirit, poets and prose writers have taken note of everything, from Eve to the Trojan War, from Helen to Madame de Maintenon, from the wife of Louis XIV to the Contemporary.
What do you want from me, Physiology?
Would you like, in an hour, to please me with more or less masterful paintings designed to prove that a man is getting married:
from Ambitiousness... however, everyone knows this;
from Thrift - wanting to put an end to litigation;
from the Faith that life has passed and it’s time to call it a day;
from Stupidity, like a youth who has finally escaped from college;
from the Spirit of Contradiction, like Lord Byron;
out of a Natural desire to fulfill the will of the late uncle, who bequeathed to his nephew, in addition to his fortune, a bride;
from Life Wisdom - which still happens to doctrinaires to this day;
out of anger at an unfaithful lover;
out of sincere piety, like the Duke of Saint-Aignan, who did not want to wallow in sin;
from Self-interest - perhaps not a single marriage is free from it;
from Love - in order to be cured of it forever;
from Machiavellianism - in order to immediately take possession of the old woman’s property;
from the need to give a name our son;
from Fear of being left alone due to one’s ugliness;
out of Gratitude - while giving much more than you received;
from Disappointment in the delights of bachelor life;
from feeblemindedness - one cannot do without it;
from Turkish thoroughness;
out of Respect for the customs of ancestors;
from Philanthropic motives, in order to snatch the girl from the hands of her tyrant mother;
from Cunning, so that your fortune does not go to greedy relatives;
from Ambition, like Georges Dandin;
out of Scrupulosity, for the young lady could not resist.
(Those who wish can easily find uses for the remaining letters of the alphabet.)
However, all of the above cases have already been described in thirty thousand comedies and a hundred thousand novels.
Physiology, I ask you for the third and last time, what do you want from me?
It’s a well-worn thing, like a street pavement, as familiar as a crossing of roads. We know much more about marriage than about the Gospel Barabbas; all the ancient ideas associated with it have been discussed in literature from time immemorial, and there is no such useful advice or such a nonsensical project that would not find its author, printer, bookseller and reader.
Let me tell you, following the example of our common teacher Rabelais: “God save you and have mercy on you, good people! Where are you? I do not see you. Let me cover my nose with glasses. Ahh! Now I see you. Is everyone in good health - you, your spouses, your children, your relatives and household members? Okay, great, happy for you."
But I'm not writing for you. As long as you have adult children, everything is clear with you.
“Good people, venerable drunkards and you, venerable gouty people, and you, tireless skimmers, and you, vigorous fellows, who pantagruelize all day long, and keep pretty birds locked up, and do not miss the third, nor the sixth, nor the ninth hour, nor vespers , no Compline, and you won’t let anything slip past your lips in the future.”
Physiology is not addressed to you, you are not married. Amen!
“You damned hoodies, clumsy saints, dissolute hypocrites, air-spoiling cats and other persons who put on a masquerade dress to deceive good people!.. - get out of the way, besiege us back! so that your spirit is not here, brainless creatures!.. Get the hell out! I swear to the devil, are you still here?
Perhaps only kind souls who love to laugh will stay with me. Not those crybabies who almost rush to drown themselves in poetry and prose, who glorify illness in odes, sonnets and reflections, not the countless empty-headed dreamers, but a few ancient pantagruelists who do not hesitate for a long time if the opportunity presents itself to drink and laugh, who the nature of Rabelais's reasoning about peas in lard, cum commento, and about the merits of codpieces, people are wise, swift in the race, fearless in their grip and respecting tasty books.
Since the government has found a way to collect one hundred and fifty million in taxes from us, there is no longer any reason to laugh at the government. Popes and bishops, priests and priestesses have not yet become so rich that we can drink with them; Our only hope is that Saint Michael, who drove the devil out of heaven, will remember us, and then just in case there will be a holiday on our street! In the meantime, the only subject for laughter in France remains marriage. Followers of Panurge, I do not need other readers than you. You know how to pick up a book at the right time and to put it down at the right time, you know how to enjoy life, understand everything perfectly and suck a drop of brain from a bone.
People who examine everything through a microscope, who see no further than their own noses, in a word, censors - have they said everything, have they examined everything? Have they pronounced their verdict on a book about marriage that is as impossible to write as it is impossible to mend a broken pitcher?
- Yes, master madman. Whatever one may say, nothing else will come out of marriage except pleasure for bachelors and trouble for husbands. This rule is forever. Write even a million pages, you won’t come up with anything else.
And yet here is my first statement: marriage is a war for life and death, before the beginning of which the spouses ask for blessings from Heaven, for loving each other forever is the most daring of enterprises; Immediately after the prayers, a battle breaks out, and victory, that is, freedom, goes to the one who is more dexterous.
Let's say. But what's new here?
The point is this: I appeal to husbands past and present, to those who, leaving the church or the town hall, flatter themselves with the hope that their wives will belong to them alone, to those who, obeying indescribable selfishness or inexplicable feeling, say at the sight of other people’s misfortunes: “This won’t happen to me!”
I appeal to the sailors who, having witnessed shipwrecks more than once, set sail again and again, to those bachelors who dare to marry, although they have more than once had the opportunity to destroy the virtue of other people’s wives. For example, history is forever new and forever ancient!
A young man, or perhaps an old man, in love, or perhaps not, who has just signed a marriage contract and straightened out all the papers at the mayor's office, according to all the laws of earth and heaven, receives as his wife a young girl with lush curls, black moist eyes, small legs, lovely thin fingers, scarlet lips and ivory-colored teeth, beautifully formed, trembling, appetizing and seductive, snow-white, like a lily, shining with all imaginable beauties: her lowered eyelashes are like the crown of Lombard kings, her face is fresh, like the corolla of a white camellia , and ruddy like red petals; her virgin cheeks are covered with barely noticeable fluff, like a tender, just ripe peach; under the fair skin hot blood runs through the blue veins; she thirsts for life and gives life; all of her is joy and love, charm and naivety. She loves her husband, or at least believes that she does...
A husband in love swears in his heart: “These eyes will look at me alone, these timid lips will speak of love to me alone, this gentle hand will bestow the cherished treasures of voluptuousness on me alone, this chest will heave only at the sound of my voice, this sleeping the soul will awaken only at my command; Only I will be allowed to run my fingers through these silky strands, only I will be able to stroke this quivering head in unconsciousness. I will make Death watch at my bedside and prevent robber strangers from gaining access to my marriage bed; this throne of passion will drown in blood - either in the blood of reckless insolent people, or in my own. Peace, honor, bliss, fatherly affection, the well-being of my children - everything depends on the inaccessibility of my bedchamber, and I will protect it, as a lioness protects her cubs. Woe to him who invades my lair!”
Well, brave athlete, we applaud your determination. Until now, not a single geometer has dared to plot longitudes and latitudes on the map of the matrimonial sea. Experienced men did not dare to identify the shoals, reefs, underwater rocks, breezes and monsoons, the coastline and underwater currents that destroyed their ships - they were so ashamed of the wreck that befell them. Married travelers lacked a guide, a compass... this book is intended to replace them.
Not to mention grocers and clothiers, there are many people who do not have time to delve into the hidden motives that move their wives; offer them a detailed classification of all the secrets of marriage - a duty of philanthropy; a well-written table of contents will allow them to comprehend the movements of the hearts of their wives, just as a table of logarithms allows them to multiply numbers.
So, what do you say? Can you not admit that preventing wives from deceiving their husbands is an unheard-of enterprise, which no philosopher has yet dared to undertake? Isn't that what all comedies are about? Is this not another speculum vitae humanae? Down with the absurd questions to which we have pronounced a just verdict in this Meditation. Today, in morality, as in the exact sciences, facts and observations are needed. We will introduce them.
First, let's delve into the true state of affairs and weigh the strengths of both sides. Before supplying our imaginary winner with weapons, let’s count the number of his enemies, those Cossacks who dream of conquering his native corner.
Swim with us, whoever wants to, laugh, whoever can. Weigh anchor, raise sails! You know the starting point. This is the great advantage of our book over many others.
As for our whim, which makes us laugh while crying and cry while laughing, just as the divine Rabelais drank when he ate, and ate when he drank; As for our mania to combine Heraclitus and Democritus on one page, to write without caring about syllable or meaning... if one of the crew members doesn’t like it, get off the ship with all this brethren: old men whose brains are swollen with fat , classics who have not emerged from the shrouds, romantics wrapped in a shroud - and full speed ahead!
Those who have been expelled will probably blame us for being like people who joyfully declare: “I’ll tell you a joke that will make you laugh to your heart’s content!..” Nothing of the kind: marriage is a serious matter! Haven't you guessed that we look at marriage as a slight ailment from which no one is protected, and that our book is a scientific work dedicated to this disease?
“However, you and your ship or your book are reminiscent of those coachmen who, when leaving the station, crack their whips with all their might just because they are carrying the English.” You won’t have time to gallop at full speed and half a league before you stop to tighten your lines or give your horses a rest. Why blow the trumpets without having yet won a victory?
- Eh, dear Pantagruelists, nowadays, in order to achieve success, it’s enough to lay claim to it; and since, perhaps, great works are in the last analysis nothing more than insignificant ideas clothed in lengthy phrases, I do not see why I should not acquire laurels, if only to decorate the salted hams under which it is so glorious to pass glass!.. Just a minute, captain! Before we set sail, let's give one small definition.
Readers, since on the pages of this book, as well as in social drawing rooms, you will from time to time come across the words “virtue” and “virtuous woman,” let us agree on their meaning: by virtue we call the complaisance with which a wife reluctantly gives this heart husband; exceptions are rare cases when this word is given a commonly used meaning; Natural intelligence will help readers distinguish one from the other.
Meditation II Marriage statistics
For two decades now, the authorities have been trying to determine how many hectares of French land are occupied by forests, how many are meadows and vineyards, and how many are left fallow. The learned men went further: they wanted to know the number of animals of a particular breed. Moreover, they counted cubic meters of firewood, kilograms of beef, liters of wine, the number of apples and eggs consumed by Parisians. But neither the honor of those men who have already married, nor the interests of those who are just preparing to do so, nor morality and the improvement of human institutions have yet prompted a single statistician to start counting the number of decent women inhabiting France. How! The French Ministry will be able, if necessary, to tell you how many soldiers and spies, officials and schoolchildren it has, but ask it about virtuous women... and what? If the French king gets the crazy idea of looking for an august wife among his subjects, the ministers will not even be able to indicate to him the total number of white sheep from which he could choose her; some kind of virtue competition will have to be established, and this is simply ridiculous.
Should we really learn not only politics, but also morality from the ancients? It is known from history that Artaxerxes, wishing to take a wife from among the daughters of Persia, chose Esther, the most virtuous and most beautiful. Consequently, his ministers knew a way to skim the cream off their subjects. Unfortunately, the Bible, which is so clear on all matters of married life, does not give us any instructions regarding the choice of a wife.
Let's try to fill the gaps left by government officials and conduct a census of the female population of France. We appeal to everyone who cares about public morality and ask them to be our judges. We will try to be fairly generous in our calculations and fairly accurate in our reasoning, so that all readers will agree with the results of our research.
It is believed that France has approximately thirty million inhabitants.
Some natural scientists claim that there are more women in the world than men, however, since many statisticians are of the opposite opinion, let us assume that there are fifteen million women in France.
First of all, let us exclude from the named number approximately nine million creatures who at first glance are very similar to women, but which, after common thinking, would have to be discounted.
Let's explain.
Naturalists believe that man is the only species belonging to the Two-Armed family, as indicated on page 16 of Dumeril’s “Analytical Zoology”; only Bory Saint-Vincent considered it necessary, for the sake of completeness, to add another one to this species - the Orangutan.
If zoologists see us as nothing more than a mammal with thirty-two vertebrae, a hyoid bone, and more convolutions in the hemispheres of the brain than any other creature; if for them all the differences between people are explained by the influence of climate, which gave rise to fifteen varieties of this individual, the scientific names of which I do not consider it necessary to list, then the creator of Physiology has the right to divide people into species and subspecies in accordance with their mental abilities, moral properties and property status.
So, the nine million creatures we are talking about are, at first glance, completely similar to man, as zoologists describe him: they have a hyoid bone, coracoid and humeral processes of the scapula, as well as a zygomatic arch, so gentlemen zoologists have every right to classify them to the category of Two-Handed, but to see women in them - the author of our Physiology would not agree to this for anything in the world.
For us and for those for whom this book is intended, a woman is a rare species of the human race, the physiological properties of which we will now tell you.
A woman, in our understanding, is the fruit of the special efforts of men who spared neither gold nor the moral warmth of civilization to improve her breed. The first distinctive feature of a woman is the whiteness, tenderness and silkiness of her skin. The woman is extremely clean. Her fingers should only touch soft, fluffy, fragrant objects. Like an ermine, she is capable of dying of grief if someone stains her white clothes. She loves to comb her curls and spray them with perfume, the aroma of which is intoxicating and intoxicating, groom her pink nails and give them an almond shape, and perform ablutions as often as possible, immersing her fragile body in water. At night she can rest only on the softest down jackets, during the day - only on sofas stuffed with hair, and her favorite position is horizontal. Her voice is touching and gentle, her movements are full of grace. She speaks with amazing ease. She does not engage in any hard work and yet, despite her external weakness, she surprisingly easily bears other burdens. She is afraid of the sun and protects herself from its rays with the help of the most ingenious devices. Walking is hard work for her; does she eat anything? it's a mystery; does it satisfy any other needs? it's a secret. Infinitely curious, she easily submits to anyone who can hide the smallest trifle from her, because her mind needs to search for the unknown. Her religion is love; she thinks only about how to please her lover. To be loved is the goal of all her actions, to arouse desire is the goal of all her gestures. That's why she's always looking for ways to shine; it can only exist in an atmosphere of grace and elegance; for her, a young Indian spins the weightless fluff of Tibetan goats, for her Tarar weaves airy bedspreads, for her Brussels craftswomen weave the purest and finest lace, Visapur treasure hunters steal sparkling stones from the bowels of the earth, and Sevres craftsmen gild white porcelain. Day and night she dreams of new jewelry, vigilantly making sure that her dresses are starched and her scarves are thrown on gracefully. To strangers whose honors flatter her, whose desires enchant her, even if these strangers are deeply indifferent to her, she appears in all the splendor of her beauty and freshness. The hours not occupied with caring about her own appearance and the pleasures of voluptuousness, she devotes to singing the most melodic arias: for her, composers of France and Italy composed the most captivating of concerts, and Neapolitan musicians captured the harmony of the soul in the music of strings. In short, such a woman is the queen of the world and the slave of desire. She is afraid of marriage, because it can ruin her waist, but she agrees to it, because it promises happiness. She gives birth to children by pure chance, and when they grow up, she hides them from the light.
Are the properties we have listed, chosen at random from thousands of others, inherent in those creatures whose hands are black like those of monkeys, and whose tanned cheeks resemble the parchments of the ancient Parisian parliament; those whose face is scorched by the sun and whose neck is wrinkled like a turkey's; to those who wear rags, whose voice is hoarse, whose intelligence is insignificant, whose smell is unbearable; to those who dream only of a piece of bread, who, without straightening their backs, hoe, harrow, turn hay, pick up ears of corn, remove bread, knead dough, ruffle hemp; those who live in holes barely covered with straw, mixed with livestock, children and men; those, finally, who don’t care who they have children with? The only vocation of these creatures is to give birth to as many sons and daughters as possible, doomed to live a life of poverty; As for love, for them, if it is not labor, like field work, then it is always a subject of bargaining.
Alas! if there are shopkeepers in the world who spend their days between a tallow candle and a loaf of sugar, farmers who milk cows, sufferers who work in factories or, like beasts of burden, wander along the roads with baskets, hoes and trays; if, unfortunately, there is in the world a whole crowd of vulgar creatures for whom the life of the soul, the blessings of education, the delightful storms of the heart are an unattainable paradise, then the writer of Physiology cannot help but classify them all as orangutans, even if nature has given them a hyoid bone, a beak-shaped process of the scapula and thirty-two vertebrae! We are writing this book only for idle people, for those who have the time and desire to love, for the rich who have acquired ardent passions as their property, for minds that have a monopoly on chimeras. Cursed be everything that is not animated by thought! Let's shout "raka!" and even “racalia” to everyone who is not hot, not young, not beautiful and not passionate. In this way we will express aloud the secret feelings of philanthropists who can read and ride in a carriage. Of course, the tax collector, the official, the legislator and the priest see our nine million female outcasts as taxpayers, petitioners, subjects and flocks, but the feeling man, the boudoir philosopher, although not averse to tasting the bun baked by these creatures, will not include them as we have already said, in the category of Women. Such a philosopher honors as women only those persons who can inspire love; worthy of attention - only those persons to whom careful education has imparted the sacred ability to think, and an idle life has sharpened the imagination; finally, truly alive - only those persons whose soul seeks in love not only physical, but also spiritual pleasures.
Let us note, however, that nine million female pariahs continually produce peasant girls who, by a strange accident, grow up as beautiful as angels; These beauties settle in Paris and other big cities, where some of them eventually turn into society ladies; however, for two or three thousand of these chosen ones, there are hundreds of thousands of others, whose destiny is to be handmaids or indulge in vile debauchery. Still, we will include the village Marquis de Pompadour among the female half of society.
Our first calculation comes from statistics, according to which France is inhabited by eighteen million poor people, ten million wealthy people and two million rich people.
So, in France there are only six million women to whom men who know how to feel pay, have paid and will pay attention.
Let us look at this chosen society through the eyes of a philosopher. We have the right to assume with a high degree of probability that spouses who have lived side by side for two decades can sleep peacefully, without fear that their family peace will be disturbed by criminal passion and a shameful accusation of adultery. Therefore, from six million women, we should subtract approximately two million ladies who are extremely amiable, because by the age of forty they had learned what light is, but are not capable of exciting anyone’s heart and, therefore, are not subject to our consideration. If, despite all their politeness, these ladies have the misfortune of not attracting anyone's attention, they are overcome by boredom; they devote themselves to religion, cats and dogs, and do not offend anyone except the Lord with their whims.
According to the calculations of the Bureau of Longitudes, we are obliged to subtract from the total number of women two million damned pretty little girls; comprehending the basics of life, they play with the boys in their innocence, not suspecting that the young “supplements” who make them laugh today will make them shed tears tomorrow.
As a result of all the previous deductions we arrive at a figure of two million; What reasonable reader would not agree that for this number of women there are no less than a hundred thousand poor things, hunchbacked, ugly, consumptive, rickety, sick, blind, crippled, poor, although excellently brought up and for all these reasons remaining maidens, and as a result of this in no way offending the sacred laws of marriage?
But will anyone argue with us if we say that another four hundred thousand girls are entering the community of St. Camilla, becoming nuns, sisters of mercy, governesses, companions, etc.? To this sacred army we will add those young ladies who are already too old to play with the boys, but still too young to acquire orange blossom wreaths; It is impossible to accurately determine the number of these young ladies.
Finally, now that there are one and a half million women left in our crucible, we will subtract another five hundred thousand from this number; So many, in our opinion, live in France of the daughters of Baal, delighting the leisure of people who are not too picky. Moreover, without fear that kept women, milliners, saleswomen, haberdashers, actresses, singers, dancers, dancers, maids, maids, etc. become corrupted by such proximity, we will classify them all in the same category. Most of these persons excite very ardent passions, but find it indecent to notify the notary, the mayor, the priest and secular scoffers about the day and hour when they give themselves to their lover. The way of life of these creatures, rightly condemned by an inquisitive society, has the advantage that it frees them from any obligations to men, Mr. Mayor and justice. These women do not break any public vows, and therefore are not subject to consideration in our work, which is devoted exclusively to legal marriage.
Our latest category may seem too skimpy to some, unlike the previous ones, which some fans may consider too bloated. If someone loves a rich widow so passionately that he absolutely wants to include her in the remaining million, let him cross her off the list of nurses, dancers or hunchbacks. In addition, when determining the number of women belonging to the last category, we took into account that, as already mentioned, many peasant women join its ranks. It is exactly the same with working women and petty traders: the women born into these two classes are the fruit of the efforts made by nine million Two-armed female creatures in order to rise to the highest levels of civilization. We were obliged to act with the utmost integrity, otherwise many would have considered our Reflection on Marriage Statistics to be simply a joke.
We thought about setting up a small storehouse for thousands of a hundred individuals and putting in there women who found themselves in an intermediate position, such as widows, but in the end we decided that this would be too petty.
It is not difficult to prove the correctness of our calculations; One single reasoning is enough.
A woman’s life is divided into three completely different periods: the first begins from the cradle and ends when the girl reaches marriageable age, the second is given over to marriage, the third comes when a woman reaches a critical age and Nature rather rudely reminds her that the time of passions has passed. These three spheres of existence are approximately equal in duration, and this gives us the right to divide the original number of women into three equal parts. Scientists can calculate as they please, but we believe that out of six million women, a third will be girls from one year to eighteen years old, a third will be women not younger than eighteen years old and not older than forty, and a third will be old women. The vagaries of the social condition have divided two million women of marriageable age into three categories, namely, those who, for the reasons mentioned above, remain maidens, those whose virtue little worries their husbands, and, finally, those spouses. , of which there are approximately a million and which we just have to deal with.
End of introductory fragment.
Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) wrote about marriage throughout his life, but two of his works deal specifically with this topic. “The Physiology of Marriage” (1829) is a witty treatise on the war of the sexes. Here are all the means a husband can resort to to avoid becoming a cuckold. However, Balzac looks gloomily at the prospects of marriage: sooner or later, the wife will still cheat on her husband, and at best he will get “rewards” in the form of delicious food or a high position. "Small Troubles of Married Life" (1846) depicts marriage from a different perspective. Here Balzac talks about family everyday life: from tender feelings the spouses move on to cooling, and only those couples who have arranged a marriage of four are happy. The author himself called this book “hermaphrodite”, since the story is told first from a male and then from a female point of view. In addition, this book is experimental: Balzac invites the reader to choose the characteristics of the characters themselves and mentally fill in the gaps in the text. Both works are published in translation and with notes by Vera Milchina, leading researcher at STEPS RANEPA and IVGI RSUH. The translation of “The Physiology of Marriage,” first published in 1995, has been significantly revised for this edition; The translation of “Minor Troubles” is published for the first time.
A series: Everyday culture
* * *
by liters company.
© V. Milchina, translation, introductory article, notes, 2017
© OOO “New Literary Review”, 2017
“The Vicissitudes of Marriages”: Balzac on Marriage, Family and Adultery
Honore de Balzac (1799–1850) wrote all his life about marriage, about happy and unhappy marriages, about how a husband and wife should behave in order to maintain at least the appearance of peace in the house. In almost all the works included in the “Human Comedy” (and their total number, let me remind you, is close to a hundred), one of the heroes woos, marries, or cheats on his wife or husband. In 1978, Swedish researcher Christina Wingard published the book “Problems of Married Couples in Honore de Balzac’s “Human Comedy”,” which was based on statistical research. Wingard chose 96 married couples in The Human Comedy, for which it is known exactly how their union arose - out of love or out of convenience, and calculated how many of them Balzac allowed to live happily, and how many he condemned to suffering. It turned out that for 35 couples united for love, there are 61 marriages of convenience, and in the first category 10 marriages can be considered completely successful, and in the second – 8 (such a small number of successes indicates not only the writer’s pessimistic view of modern marriage, but and that he understood well: happiness cannot be described and is not interesting to describe).
Balzac always wrote about marriage and adultery, but in the two works included in our collection, he wrote especially in detail. These works frame the work of Balzac. “The Physiology of Marriage,” published at the end of December 1829 with the date 1830 on the cover, became the second (after the novel “The Last Chouan, or Brittany in 1800,” published in the same 1829) work that Balzac was ready to recognize as his – in contrast to numerous early novels published under pseudonyms in the 1820s. Moreover, if the first edition of “Chuang” did not live up to the author’s hopes, then “The Physiology of Marriage” was a great and noisy success. The importance that Balzac attached to “Physiology” is evidenced by the fact that when in 1845 he began to summarize his work and compile the final catalog of the “Human Comedy”, he placed it at the very end, in the section “Analytical Etudes”, the crowning the entire huge structure. As for “Minor Troubles of Married Life,” Balzac worked on them, intermittently, for many years, publishing them in parts, but they took their final book form in 1846, four years before the writer’s death.
Each of the two works included in our collection has its own rather intricate creative history. Let's start with the "Physiology of Marriage".
Balzac himself, two decades later, in the preface to the “Treatise on Modern Aphrodisiacs” (1839), wrote that the idea of creating a book about marriage originated with him back in 1820. In June 1826, he purchased a printing house on the Rue Marais-Saint-Germain (he owned it until 1828), and already in July he submitted a declaration of intention to print there a book entitled “The Physiology of Marriage, or Reflections on Conjugal Happiness”; According to this declaration, the book was to be published in a thousand copies, but a single copy has reached us, apparently printed in August-September 1826, when the printing house had few orders. This early version, which consisted of thirteen Meditations and on which Balzac had been working since 1824, was not completed, but from its text it is clear that by this time Balzac’s mind had already formed a plan for the entire work, quite close to the final version (in the written chapters contain references to those that appeared only in “Physiology” of 1829).
Biographical circumstances pushed Balzac to think about marriage and adultery. On the one hand, his mother was unfaithful to his father, and the fruit of one of her infidelities was Balzac’s younger brother Henri, whom Madame de Balzac spoiled and openly preferred to her other children: Honore and two daughters, Laura and Laurence. On the other hand, the mistress of twenty-three-year-old bachelor Honore de Balzac in 1822 became forty-five-year-old Laura de Bernis, a married woman, mother of nine children, very unhappy in her legal marriage.
Although something (apparently urgent printing orders) distracted Balzac and he did not finish the book, the desire to finish “The Physiology of Marriage” did not leave the writer, and in the spring of 1829, after the release of “The Last Chouan,” he returned to work on it. In August, he already promised the publisher Levavasseur to finish the book by November 15th. In reality, by November 10, he completed work on the first volume, which included 16 Reflections, which were a more or less thorough revision of the “Physiology” of 1826 (the original text was expanded mainly through inserted short stories and anecdotes). Before December 15, that is, in almost one month (!), Balzac composed the entire second part of the book (Reflections from the 17th to the 30th, as well as the Introduction), and already on the 20th of December 1829 the book went on sale .
The title printed on its title page deserves a separate comment. It read: “The Physiology of Marriage, or Eclectic Reflections on the Joys and Sorrows of Married Life, Published by a Young Bachelor.” Let's start from the end - with a reference to the “young bachelor”. As you can see, the publication is anonymous; Balzac’s name is not on the title page. However, this anonymity can be called illusory. Although in the preface to the first edition of “Shagreen Skin” (1831), Balzac himself wrote about “Physiology”:
Some attribute it to an old doctor, others to a dissolute courtier from the time of Madame de Pompadour or a misanthrope who has lost all illusions because in his entire life he has not met a single woman worthy of respect -
For literary circles, Balzac's authorship was no secret. In addition, he lifts the mask in the text of “Physiology” itself: in the first edition, under the “Introduction” there was the signature of O. B...k, and in the text the author mentions his patron, Saint Honore (p. 286). Balzac's initials are also mentioned in several reviews of the book that appeared in early 1830. The words “published by a young bachelor” disappeared from subsequent editions; they were replaced by the traditional reference to Balzac as the author.
Now it is necessary to explain, firstly, why the word “Physiology” appears in the title of the book, which can evoke in readers expectations of some truly physiological revelations (expectations are not entirely justified, since, although Balzac repeatedly and quite clearly hints at the necessity of not only moral, but there is still much more sexual harmony between spouses, psychology and sociology in his book than physiology itself), and, secondly, why the thoughts are called “eclectic”. Balzac owes both to a book published four years earlier under the title “Physiology of Taste.” But about it a little later, first we need to talk about other literary predecessors of “The Physiology of Marriage”.
In the second half of the 1820s, small books became widespread, on the covers of which there was the word “Code” (“Code of Conversation”, “Code of Gallantry”, etc.) or the expression “On ways” to do this or that: “ About ways to tie a tie”, “About ways to receive New Year’s gifts, but not make them yourself”, etc.). Publications of this type have been popular in France since the 18th century, but in the mid-1820s their popularity was promoted by the writer Horace-Napoleon Resson (1798–1854), who wrote them himself or in collaboration; one of his co-authors was Balzac, who wrote (by order and, possibly, with the participation of Resson) “The Code of Decent People, or On Ways to Avoid Being Deceived by Scammers” (1825). Taking as a model the Civil Code adopted in France in 1804 on the initiative of Napoleon, the authors of these books prescribed to readers (half in jest, but half seriously) certain forms of behavior in society, explained how to behave at the ball and at the table, how to communicate in love, how to repay debts or borrow, etc., etc. From the “Code of Courteous Manners” (1828) and the “Code of Conversation” (1829) you can learn a lot of useful and/or witty information: for example, that the width of the space between the address “Sir” and the text of the letter depends on the nobility of the addressee, or that good manners dictate Under no circumstances should you engage in conversation with fellow travelers on public transport, much less scold the city authorities, because you can get yourself into big trouble, or that “a visit should be answered with a visit, like a slap in the face with a blow from a sword.” The ratio of serious and humorous changed from one “Code” to another; for example, the “Code of the Writer and Journalist”, published in 1829 by the same Resson, is formally a set of advice for those who want to make a living through literary work, but in fact many of its pages are nothing more than ridicule of the genres and styles of modern literature . This combination (serious advice in a clownish presentation) was inherited from “Codes” by Balzac’s “Physiology of Marriage.”
Popular topics in the Codes included marital relations. For example, in 1827, Charles Chabot published the book “Marital Grammar, or Fundamental Principles with the help of which you can take your wife, teach her to come running at the first call and make the sheep more submissive, an essay published by Lovelace’s cousin.” And in May 1829, “The Marriage Code containing laws, rules, applications and examples of successful marriages and happy marriages” was published (in which, by the way, almost a third of the text consists of extensive quotes from the Napoleonic Civil Code). Resson's name was on the title page, but numerous similarities with The Physiology of Marriage allowed researchers to assume that part of this book was corrected by Balzac, and part was written by him (one of the most striking parallels is that in the Marriage Code a deceived husband is compared with the potential victim of the Minotaur lying in wait for him in the depths of the labyrinth; meanwhile, in “The Physiology of Marriage” Balzac proposed the “scientific” neologism “minotaurized” to characterize deceived husbands). While working on the original Physiology, Balzac apparently thought about the title “The Code of the Spouse, or On the Ways to Keep Your Wife Faithful”; in any case, such a sketch has been preserved among his papers.
“The Physiology of Marriage” grew out of the “Codes”, but is strikingly different from them. To understand its originality, it is enough to compare it with the “Marriage Code” of 1829: against the background of Balzac’s book, “The Marriage Code” looks like a script (not to say a brief retelling of the content) against the background of a novel. The author of the Code makes jokes that are more or less successful, but not too deep; Balzac also jokes, but his jokes are interspersed with deep and subtle reflections on human psychology. In addition, Balzac’s book has its own “plot”: from the wedding, through various trials and attempts to avoid adultery or at least delay it, to the era of “rewards” (although numerous digressions and inserted anecdotes are strung along this through line, it is nevertheless strictly observed ). Against this background, the “Code” is a clear fruit of what in the twentieth century was called “bricolage”; short chapters are placed one next to the other in complete disorder, and then are generally replaced by a long selection of articles of the Civil Code relating to marriage ties.
Another difference is also important: Balzac’s book is called not “Code”, but “Physiology”, and not because in 1829 one “Marriage Code” had already been published. And also not because the genre of the book was defined in this way: in 1829 the word “physiology” was not yet used as a genre designation for miniature illustrated descriptions of a particular human type, object or institution. Such “Physiologies” began to be published ten years later than Balzac’s book, and some of them (“Physiology of the first wedding night”, “Physiology of the doomed”, “Physiology of the cuckold”, etc.) developed some of its themes. Balzac called his book “The Physiology of Marriage” primarily in order to refer the reader to another book, first published in December 1825 and almost immediately becoming very popular. This is “The Physiology of Taste,” the author of which, Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, in the form of a half-joking, half-serious treatise, tried to explore such an important area of human life as food.
“The Physiology of Marriage” owes a lot to “The Physiology of Taste”, starting with the title and the division not into chapters, but into “reflections” ( meditations), and in Balzac, like in Brillat-Savarin, there are exactly thirty of these “reflections” in the book. The author of “The Physiology of Taste” took the term “reflections”, of course, not from the sensational novelty of 1820 - “Poetic Reflections” ( Meditations poetiques) Lamartine, and from the much older “Metaphysical Meditations” ( Meditations metaphysiques) Descartes, published for the first time in 1641, however, it can be assumed that Balzac, who in his “Physiology” refuses to follow the “romantics wrapped in a shroud” (p. 78), by using this word not only emphasizes continuity in relation to Brillat- Savarin, but also ironizes the fashionable Lamartine, for the subject of Balzac’s “reflections” is not at all the same as that of the melancholy poet.
Brillat-Savarin's Physiology, like Balzac's Physiology, was published anonymously; on the title page of Brillat-Savarin’s book it was displayed: “The work of a professor, a member of many learned societies”; in Balzac, the place of the professor was taken by a bachelor (“published by a young bachelor”). In addition, apparently, it was in memory of Brillat-Savarin, who in his book systematically called himself a professor, and certified his book as the first experiment in gastronomic science, Balzac every now and then calls himself a professor or doctor of marriage sciences, and his text - fruit scientific research. Balzac also borrowed some other techniques from Brillat-Savarin: the use of numbered aphorisms containing the quintessence of the author's wisdom (but in Brillat-Savarin they are collected at the beginning of the book, and in Balzac they are scattered throughout the text), and bequeathing some themes to descendants. There is also a thematic relationship: the author of “The Physiology of Taste” bequeathed to future generations nothing less than the study of carnal love and the desire for procreation, that is, in a certain sense, the topic that the author of “The Physiology of Marriage” took up.
Finally, Brillat-Savarin, to make it more scientific, put the words “Reflections on transcendental gastronomy” in the subtitle of his “Physiology,” and in this Balzac also follows in his footsteps: he calls his reflections “eclectic.” In both cases, the authors ironically play with fashionable philosophical vocabulary: the epithet “transcendental” refers to the German philosophy of Kant or Schelling, which the French learned about from Madame de Stael’s book “On Germany” (1813), and the term “eclectic” - to lectures which the French philosopher Victor Cousin (1792–1867) read with great success at the Sorbonne, in particular in 1828–1829, on the eve of the publication of The Physiology of Marriage. However, in “The Physiology of Taste” there is just as little transcendence as in “The Physiology of Marriage” - eclecticism in Cousin’s sense of the word. One can, of course, consider that Balzac is an “eclectic” in the sense that he constantly oscillates between a decisive condemnation of adultery and not too well hidden sympathy for it, between the perception of a woman as an evil genius, all of whose forces are directed towards only one thing - to deceive her husband , and sympathy for the “weaker sex”, whose position in society is false and unfavorable. But it would be more correct to say that the references to eclecticism in “The Physiology of Marriage” are predominantly of a clownish nature and that Balzac simply does not miss the opportunity to laugh at scientific jargon; by the way, the mentions of this philosopher in the “Marriage Code” perform exactly the same function: “Matrimonial consent can stem exclusively from some kind of leniency, some mutual concessions, to which the title of philosophy applies at least to the same extent as to the lectures of the scientist -on Cousin.”
Although in the preamble to the “Treatise on Modern Aphrodisiacs” Balzac considered it necessary to specifically emphasize that he came up with his “Physiology” independently of Brillat-Savarin, he did not deny the similarity of the two books. In August 1829, he wrote to the publisher Levavasseur, agreeing on the almost immediate publication of “The Physiology of Marriage,” that he required him to do “in three months what Brillat-Savarin spent ten years on.” The connection between the two “Physiologies” was also emphasized in the 1838 edition published by the Parisian publisher Charpentier, who almost simultaneously published Brillat-Savarin’s work in the same format. The countertitle of Balzac's book read:
This edition of “The Physiology of Marriage” is similar to the edition of “The Physiology of Taste” by Brillat-Savarin, which was recently published by the same publisher. These two publications should stand side by side on bookshelves, just as they have long been located side by side in the minds of people with intelligence and taste.
There was another reason for the reorientation from the “code” to “physiology”: the codes, published in a small format (one eighteenth of a sheet), were considered fashionable literature, but frivolous; Balzac, following the example of Brillat-Savarin, published his book in the in-octavo format reserved for serious publications.
If, however, in formal terms both “Physiologies” have a lot in common, then in terms of content Balzac wrote a completely different book, very far from the work of his predecessor. The image of the author in “The Physiology of Taste” is that of a “magical assistant,” referred to in the third person as a professor; he firmly believes that he has recipes and recommendations for all occasions: he knows how to cook very large fish without cutting, and how to put a husband on his feet, exhausted by an overly loving wife. His picture of the world is harmonious and optimistic: life is impossible without food, and the professor will teach you how to eat correctly and with pleasure. The “Doctor of Marriage Sciences” paints a much less radiant picture in “The Physiology of Marriage.” He sets out to tell husbands how to avoid “minotaurization,” that is, how not to be deceived by their own wives, and comes to the disappointing conclusion that betrayal can only be delayed and then softened with “rewards” with which a conscientious lover is obliged to console the husband.
However, the meaning of the word “Physiology” in the title of Balzac’s book is not limited to a reference to the popular book of Brillat-Savarin. It also points to the scientific tradition of which Balzac declares himself an adherent - the materialist tradition of the 18th century, on the one hand, and, on the other, its continuation in the works of such utopian thinkers as Fourier and Saint-Simon, who set themselves the task apply natural scientific methods to the study of society and create “social physiology” (Saint-Simon’s term). In the article “On Artists,” published three months after the release of “The Physiology of Marriage,” Balzac wrote about “physiological analysis, which made it possible to abandon systems for the sake of correlating and comparing facts.” In fact, Balzac uses statistical data, divides the male and female part of society into two categories “according to their mental abilities, moral qualities and property status” (p. 81), in a word, carefully depicts that his text is not only witty chatter, but also a truly scientific work, in which the reference to Buffon’s Natural History is not just a figure of speech. However, the book also contains completely different intonations. In terms of intonation, Balzac is a true eclectic not in the Cousin sense, but in the everyday sense: in all the “reflections” of the book, accurate sociological observations coexist with Rabelaisian mockery, sound psychological recommendations with mocking allusions. The book is full of quotations from the works of predecessors, both openly named (Rabelais, Stern, Diderot, Rousseau) and unnamed, and some sources were only identified during the preparation of this edition; for example, it was still not known that Balzac very widely used in “The Physiology of Marriage” two works by the historian P. - E. Lemonte, bearing expressive titles: “Observers of Women, or An Exact Account of What Happened at a Meeting of the Society of Observers for women on Tuesday, November 2, 1802" and "The moral and physiological parallel of dance, song and drawing, which compares the influence of these three activities on the ability of women to resist the temptations of love." Both of these works, although published in the 19th century (the first in 1803, and the second in 1816), in their spirit entirely belong to the previous century; a story about a meeting of a fictitious learned society, a combination of scientific presentation with small talk - all these features of Lemonte’s old-fashioned manner are well described by Pushkin’s words: “excellently subtle and clever, which is now somewhat funny.” However, Balzac inserts them into his text so organically that the “seams” are practically invisible.
“Eclectic” are also those aphorisms that are scattered throughout the book: Balzac calls them axioms, that is, centers of indisputable wisdom, but many of these axioms are paradoxical, ironic, reduced to the point of absurdity and not intended for literal interpretation. For example: “A man has no right to marry without first studying the anatomy and without performing an autopsy on at least one woman” (p. 133) or: “A decent woman should have such income that will allow her lover to be sure that she will never, in any way, it will not be a burden to him” (p. 96).
Finally, Balzac’s attitude towards the two main “characters” of the book is “eclectic”: husband and wife, male and female.
Balzac himself wrote after the publication of “The Physiology of Marriage” that in this book he set out to “return to the subtle, lively, mocking and cheerful literature of the eighteenth century, when the authors did not try to remain invariably straight and motionless.” It is to this literature that the figure of the triumphant bachelor, a lover of pleasure, goes back, for whom a married woman is nothing more than a tasty prey, and her husband is an annoying hindrance that must be eliminated. If the “eclectic” narrator switches from the bachelor’s point of view to the husband’s point of view, then the wife turns into an eternal adversary, striving at all costs to deceive her legal spouse, fool him, “minotaurize” him, and the husband uses the widest range of means - from a special diet to thoughtful home decoration - in order to “neutralize” it. In any case, it all ends in the “Civil War” (the title of the third part of Balzac’s book).
Thus, Physiology can easily be considered anti-women; many readers, both during Balzac’s time and later, perceived it this way; It’s enough to remember with what hostility Simone de Beauvoir writes about Balzac’s book and Balzac’s attitude towards women in her book “The Second Sex” (1949).
At first glance, in “The Physiology of Marriage” there is indeed much more irony towards women than sympathy for them, and often journalists (or rather, female journalists) interpreted Balzac’s subsequent works, glorifying women, as a way to ask forgiveness for “The Physiology of Marriage”, which outraged all female gender. This book shocked sensitive readers. Balzac himself described their reproaches, not without causticism, in the preface to the novel “Père Goriot” (1835):
Not long ago the author was frightened to meet in the world an incredible, unexpected number of women who were sincerely virtuous, happy in their virtue, virtuous because they were happy, and, no doubt, happy because they were virtuous. During several days of rest, all he heard from all sides was the flapping of unfurled white wings and saw fluttering angels dressed in the robes of innocence, and all of these were married persons, and they all reproached the author for endowing women with an immoderate passion for forbidden joys marriage crisis, which received the scientific name from the author minotaurization. The reproaches were to a certain extent flattering for the author, for these women, prepared for heavenly pleasures, admitted that they knew firsthand the most disgusting little book, the terrifying “Physiology of Marriage,” and used this expression to avoid the word “adultery,” expelled from secular language.
But Balzac’s attitude towards women in “The Physiology of Marriage” is by no means limited to ridicule and reproaches of infidelity. Balzac's “eclecticism” also implies a completely different attitude towards women. It is no coincidence that Balzac almost immediately gained a reputation as an author writing about women and for women. Critics regularly - although sometimes not without irony - reminded us of the enormous place women occupy in Balzac’s work. Here is one of the typical characteristics. The Gallery of Press, Literature and Fine Arts wrote in 1839: “Mr. de Balzac invented women: the woman without a heart, the woman with a great heart, the thirty-year-old woman, the fifteen-year-old woman, the widowed and married woman, the weak and strong woman, the attesting woman.” and misunderstood, a seduced and seductive woman, a touchy woman and a coquette woman.” This idea that Balzac “invented women,” about whom no one had any idea before, was constantly played out in the French press. However, Balzac not only invented them, but also, according to his many female readers, understood them like no one else. Contemporaries also often laughed at this inextricable connection between Balzac and his female audience. For example, in 1839, the newspaper Caricature (the same one where fragments of the future Minor Troubles of Married Life were published in 1839–1840) described receptions for readers that the “great man” allegedly held once a month at his country estate, Giardi :
On this day, endless streams of women are drawn to him. The illustrious author receives them graciously and kindly, makes a speech to them about the shortcomings of married life and sends them back, giving each of them a blessing and a copy of the “Physiology of Marriage.”
This description is parodic, but Balzac's sympathy for women was quite serious.
When one of the first readers of Physiology, Zulma Carreau, experienced “disgust” while reading its first pages, Balzac agreed that such a feeling “cannot help but seize any innocent being at the story of a crime, at the sight of a misfortune, at the reading of Juvenal or Rabelais.” ”, but assured his friend that in the future she would come to terms with the book, for she would find in it several “powerful speeches in defense of virtue and women».
In fact, under the layer of jokes about adultery in “The Physiology of Marriage,” this second line is discernible, filled with deep sympathy for the woman (and even in the stories about female infidelities, admiration for the female mind and female ingenuity shines through). Balzac undeniably stands on the side of women when he criticizes female education, which dumbens girls and does not allow their minds to develop. Or when he calls on men: “Under no circumstances begin your married life with violence,” a thought that he repeats in different ways in the Marriage Catechism:
The fate of a married couple is decided on their wedding night.
By depriving a woman of free will, you deprive her of the opportunity to make sacrifices.
In love, a woman - if we talk not about the soul, but about the body - is like a lyre, revealing its secrets only to those who know how to play it (pp. 133–134).
Balzac explained his position on October 5, 1831 in a letter to the Marquise de Castries, who was shocked by the attitude of the author of “The Physiology of Marriage” towards the female sex, which seemed rude and cynical to her. He explained to his correspondent that he undertook to write this book in order to protect women, and chose the form of a buffoon, putting on the mask of a misogynist only in order to draw attention to his ideas. “The point of my book is that it proves that their husbands are to blame for all the sins of women,” he wrote. In addition to husbands, Balzac also places the blame on the social structure; he convincingly shows its imperfection, which is destructive primarily for women. He writes about female infidelities: “By openly naming that secret disease that undermines the foundations of society, we pointed to its sources, among which are imperfect laws, inconsistency of morals, inflexibility of minds, and contradictory habits” (p. 157).
The fact that, when drawing up the plan for the “Human Comedy”, Balzac included “The Physiology of Marriage” in the “Analytical Studies” may cause confusion. It would seem that there are more witty aphorisms, piquant anecdotes and vaudeville skits in this text than analysis. However, the author of “Physiology” not only tells, but also reflects, explains, looks for the roots of family troubles in the history of morals and the structure of society; in the words of one critic, he presents to the world not only a mirror, but also a key. Therefore, those researchers who find in “The Physiology of Marriage” the history and sociology of marriage and adultery are right. It is no coincidence that Balzac, in one of his articles in 1831, ranked his book, “destroying all illusions regarding marital happiness, the first of public goods,” to the same “school of disappointment” in which he included, for example, “The Red and the Black” by Stendhal. In his understanding, “The Physiology of Marriage” is an extremely serious and important book (although this seriousness is brightened up by the playful and clownish manner inherited from Rabelais and Stern).
In “The Physiology of Marriage,” the author bequeaths to his descendants to write several works that he himself does not undertake now: 1) about courtesans; 2) about the seven principles on which love is based, and about pleasure; 3) about the education of girls; 4) about ways to conceive beautiful children; 5) about chirology, that is, the science of the relationship between the shape of the hand and the character of a person; 6) about ways to compile “marriage astronomical tables” and determine “marriage time” (that is, the stage in which the relationship of these spouses is located). He did not write such works, but these themes, as well as many others, were developed in his further work, with which “The Physiology of Marriage” is connected in various ways.
First of all, Balzac remained faithful to the general principles set forth in the book of 1829.
If in “The Physiology of Marriage” he exclaims: “Let the virtue of the ten virgins perish, if only the sacred crown of the mother of the family remains unsullied!” (p. 152), then he remained faithful to this conviction (a girl has the right to sin, but a cheating legal wife is a criminal) all his life. In 1838, he wrote to Evelina Ganskaya: “I am entirely for the freedom of a young maiden and for the slavery of a woman, in other words, I want her to know before marriage what she is contracting for, to study everything in advance, to try all the possibilities provided by marriage, but, having signed contract, remained faithful to him.” However, he himself did not follow this principle in his relationship with Ganskaya (a married lady), but in his novels he showed that the fate of not only the unfaithful wife Julie d'Aiglemont ("The Thirty-Year-Old Woman"), but also the wife who remains faithful to her unloved husband is tragic. (Madame de Mortsauf in “Lilies of the Valley”).
If in “The Physiology of Marriage” Balzac insists that education should develop the minds of girls and that they should be given the opportunity to get to know their future spouse quite closely, then in the future he allows only those couples where the wives satisfy these conditions to be happy (for example, the title heroines of the novels Ursula Mirue and Modesta Mignon).
If in “The Physiology of Marriage” Balzac argues that girls should be married off without a dowry, since in this case marriage would not be so much like a sale, then he repeats this same idea in many other works, for example in the already mentioned cycle “ Thirty-year-old woman" or in the story "Onorina".
If in “The Physiology of Marriage” he writes: “Since pleasure stems from the agreement of sensations and feelings, we dare to assert that pleasures are a kind of material ideas,” and insists on the need to explore the ability of the soul “to move separately from the body, to be transported to any point on earth ball and see without the help of the organs of vision” (pp. 134, 422), then this can be considered a brief presentation of the theory of the materiality of ideas and “fluids”, which he preached all his life and which, in particular, determined the presence in his novels and stories of numerous clairvoyants and mediums. Only the intonations and contexts in which such phenomena are described differ: in The Physiology of Marriage, serious statements are hidden among Rabelaisian and Sternian jokes, and, for example, in Shagreen Skin, published two years later, the materiality of the idea becomes the basis of the tragic plot.
If in “The Physiology of Marriage” Balzac notes: “Finally, the matter is completely hopeless if your wife is under seventeen years old or if her face is pale, bloodless: such women are most often cunning and insidious” (p. 156), then this foreshadows countless passages of the “Human Comedy”, where the author, following in the footsteps of the deeply revered creator of physiognomy, Lavater, predicts the character of the character by external signs. All this is already programmed in the reflection “On Customs Examination”, where Balzac cites numerous signs by which an astute husband can determine the attitude of a single guest towards the mistress of the house:
Everything is full of meaning: he smoothes his hair or, running his fingers through his hair, whips up a fashionable courgette ‹…› whether he furtively makes sure whether the wig fits well and what kind of wig it is - light or dark, curled or smooth; whether he glances at his nails to make sure that they are clean and neatly cut ‹…› whether he hesitates before ringing the bell, or whether he pulls the lace immediately, quickly, casually, cheekily, with endless self-confidence; whether it rings timidly, so that the sound of the bell immediately fades away, like the first strike of a bell calling Franciscan monks to prayer on a winter morning, or sharply, several times in a row, angry at the slowness of the footman (pp. 257–258).
If in “The Physiology of Marriage”, in the same chapter “On Customs Inspection”, the rich harvest that the Parisian streets provide for discerning flâneur observers is described, then similar observations can be found in almost all “Scenes of Parisian Life”. Let us add that the very definition of flanning - a pastime that Balzac valued extremely highly - was already given in “The Physiology of Marriage”:
Oh, these wanderings around Paris, how much charm and magic they bring to life! Planning is a whole science; planning delights the eye of an artist, just as a meal delights the taste of a glutton. ‹…› To float means to enjoy, to remember sharp words, to admire majestic pictures of misfortune, love, joy, flattering or caricatured portraits; it means plunging your gaze into the depths of a thousand hearts; for a young man, to plan means to desire everything and to master everything; for an elder - to live the life of young men, to be imbued with their passions (pp. 92–93).
Finally, in subsequent works, not only general principles, but also individual motives find continuation and development. For example, the use of migraine, an ailment that brings innumerable benefits to a woman and which is so easy to simulate, to one’s advantage, is described in detail in the second chapter of the novel “Duchesse de Langeais” (1834). The comparison of carnal love with hunger (pp. 108–109) is repeated in many novels and in a particularly expanded form in Cousin Bette (1846):
A virtuous and worthy woman can be compared to a Homeric meal, cooked without any fuss over hot coals. The courtesan, on the contrary, is like the product of Careme [the famous chef] with all sorts of spices and exquisite seasonings.
And the harmful influence on the lives of spouses of such a character in the family drama as the mother-in-law lies at the heart of the novel “The Marriage Contract” (1835).
In “Minor Troubles of Married Life,” Balzac proposed an expressive formula to describe the literary process: “Some authors color books, while others sometimes borrow this coloring. Some books fade into others” (p. 576). So, using this formula, we can say that “The Physiology of Marriage” “faded” to many of Balzac’s further works.
In the press, the epithet “infernal” was assigned to “The Physiology of Marriage” by Jules Janin, the author of a review in the newspaper “Journal de Debas” on February 7, 1830; however, the author himself suggested in the “Introduction” that he would be suspected “of immorality and malicious intent,” and he himself mentioned Mephistopheles there. The reputation of Balzac’s book is also illustrated by the scene in the social drawing room, captured in Pushkin’s unfinished passage “We spent the evening at the dacha...”; here the prim widow guest asks not to tell the indecent story, and the mistress of the house answers impatiently:
Completeness. Qui est-ce donc que l'on trompe ici? [Who is being fooled here? – fr.] Yesterday we watched Antony [A. Dumas’ drama], and over there on my fireplace is La Physiologie du mariage [The Physiology of Marriage. – fr.]. Indecent! They found something to scare us!
This reputation remained with the book in subsequent years. The Catholic newspaper “Censorship Bulletin,” which offered its readers (priests, teachers, librarians) recommendations for separating well-intentioned literature from obscene literature, in the summer of 1843 called “Physiology” a “dirty pamphlet”, the reading of which “should be strictly prohibited to all classes, first head of young people and women."
However, this “dubious” reputation did not in the least hinder the publishing fate of “The Physiology of Marriage” in France. The book, which made the author famous immediately after the release of the first edition, was reprinted several times both during Balzac’s life and after his death. In the edition of “The Human Comedy” published by Furne, Duboche and Etzel, it, as already mentioned, was included in the section “Analytical Etudes” (volume 16, published in August 1846). Unlike his other works, Balzac made almost no corrections when including “Physiology” in The Human Comedy, so there are not very many differences between the first edition and the text included in Furne’s edition; Balzac also made very few changes to his copy of this edition (the so-called “corrected Furne”).
If the history of the text of “The Physiology of Marriage” is quite simple, then with the second work included in our collection, the situation is much more complicated.
“Minor Troubles in Married Life” was first published as a separate edition by Adam Hlendowski in 1846.
However, this event was preceded by a long and complex history; of the 38 chapters of the book, only one (the first preface) had never been published before the publication of Hlendowski's edition. All the rest had already been published before in various editions, although when included in the final version, Balzac subjected them to more or less serious revisions (the most significant of these changes are noted in our notes).
The first sketches date back to 1830: on November 4, 1830, in the first issue of the weekly Caricature, the essay “Neighbors” signed by Henri B... was published - the story of a stockbroker’s wife, who, due to the cramped Parisian housing, witnessed what she thought was a marital affair. , the happiness of the neighbors was opposite, and then it turned out that the blond young man with whom the neighbor was so happy was not her husband at all (this story, in a slightly modified form, later turned into the chapter “The French Campaign”). A week later, on November 11, 1830, Balzac published, signed by Alfred Coudreux (one of his then pseudonyms) in the same weekly, the essay “The Doctor’s Visit,” which outlined the main lines of the future chapter “Solo for a Hearse.”
The next stage on the path to a separate publication of “Troubles” was a cycle of 11 essays, published in the weekly “Caricature” from September 29, 1839 to June 28, 1840. The series is entitled “Minor Troubles of Married Life.” The word used in the title misères(trouble, adversity) has a long history. Since the beginning of the 18th century in France, in the popular “blue library” (so called because of the color of the covers), stories in verse and prose about misères various artisans. Each book was dedicated misère of any one craft, but they were perceived as a series, and sometimes united under one cover (for example, in the 1783 book “The Adversities of the Human Race, or Amusing Complaints Regarding the Training of Various Arts and Crafts in the City of Paris and Its Environs”). Titles with the word misères remained in use in the 19th century: for example, in 1821, Scribe and Melville composed the vaudeville comedy “The Minor Troubles of Human Life,” and in 1828, Henri Monier, whom Balzac highly valued, released a series of five lithographs under the general title “Petty Troubles.” human" (“Petites misères humaines”). By the way, Balzac himself used the word misères not only in the title of “Minor Troubles”: let me remind you that the novel, which is known to the Russian reader as “The Splendor and Poverty of Courtesans,” is called in French “Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes.”
The essays included in the first “Troubles” of 1839 did not have titles, but were numbered. When included in the final text, Balzac changed their order and gave each a title; these are the chapters “Cavils”, “Discoveries”, “Resolution”, “Women’s Logic”, “Memories and Regrets”, “An Unexpected Blow”, “The Suffering of a Simple Soul”, “Amadis Omnibus”, “The Care of a Young Wife”, “§ 2. Variation on the same theme" from the chapter "Deceived Ambition" and "Female Jesuitism." In these essays, the main characters are given the names Adolf and Caroline. In April 1841, Balzac entered into an agreement with the publisher Sovereign to publish essays from the second Caricature in a separate edition; to them he was going to add a novella, first published in August 1840 under the title “Claudine's Fantasies,” but in November 1841 the contract was terminated.
In December 1843, Balzac, as usual in dire need of money, entered into an agreement with another publisher, Pierre-Jules Hetzel (with whom he actively collaborated in 1841–1842, when he wrote stories for the collection Scenes of the Private and Public Life of Animals). to a text entitled “What Parisian Women Like,” which Etzel intended to include in the collective collection “The Demon in Paris” that he was preparing at that time. In a letter to Evelina Ganskaya dated December 11, 1843, Balzac explained that this text, consisting of nine “minor troubles of married life,” would be the end of an already begun book, which he intended to publish in a new edition of “The Physiology of Marriage.” The agreement with Etzel allowed Balzac to publish new texts outside of his collection, but under a different title, and this title was supposed to be “Minor Troubles of Married Life.” However, the title “What Parisian Women Like,” indicated in the agreement with Etzel, was subsequently changed, and in six editions of “The Demon in Paris,” published in August 1844, ten more essays on the future “Troubles” appeared under the general title “Philosophy” married life in Paris." In the final edition, these essays turned into the following chapters: "Observation", "Marriage Horsefly", "Hard Labor", "Yellow Smiles", "Nosography of the Villa", "Trouble from Trouble", "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Married Life", "The Art of Being" victim”, “The French Campaign”, “Solo for a Hearse” (two essays which, as already mentioned, were originally published in 1830) and, finally, the last chapter “An Interpretation Explaining What Felicità Means in Opera Finales " Although Balzac worked on these chapters in very difficult conditions, overcoming severe headaches, the text came out light and witty and, as the author himself stated in a letter to Ganskaya dated August 30, 1844, was a great success. Therefore, Etzel decided to publish it separately. This book was first, from July to November 1845, published again in the form of separate issues under the same title, which was used inside “The Demon in Paris” (“Philosophy of Married Life in Paris”), and then came out in the form of a little book with dated 1846 and entitled “Paris in marriage. Philosophy of Married Life”, given by analogy with Eugene Briffaut’s books “Paris on the Water” and “Paris at the Table” published in the same series. The originality of this edition is not the text (Balzac did not correct it), but Gavarni’s illustrations; on the cover of both individual issues and the entire book, these illustrations were called “commentaries”: “with comments by Gavarni.”
Meanwhile, on February 25, 1845, Balzac signed an agreement with Adam Hlendowski and granted him the right to publish, first in separate issues, and then in book form, an essay entitled “Minor Troubles of Married Life,” which will include parts already printed, including the one that appeared in “ Bese in Paris”, as well as new chapters, which Balzac undertook to present in three months, but in reality did it a little later. As we can see, Balzac returned to the title “Minor Troubles of Married Life,” first used in 1839–1840; its “commercial value” was increased by the success of the book “The Minor Troubles of Human Life,” published in 1843 with text by Old Nick (pseudonym of Emil Forgues) and illustrations by Granville. The first issue of Hlendowski's edition was published on July 26, 1845; Hlendowski began printing with ready-made texts, drawn first from the “Caricature” of 1839–1840, and then from “The Demon in Paris.” Meanwhile, Balzac returned to Paris from a trip to Europe and began composing the last movement in September. In the final edition, these essays turned into chapters of the second part: “Second Preface”, “Husbands in Two Months”, “Deceived Ambition”, “Idleness”, “Immodesty”, “Crude Revelations”, “Delayed Bliss”, “Vain Trouble” "", "Smoke without fire", "Domestic tyrant", "Confessions", "Humiliation", "Last quarrel", "Failure", "Chestnuts from the fire", "Ultima ratio". Balzac first published them under the general title “Minor Troubles of Married Life” on December 2–7, 1845 in six issues of the newspaper “Press”, in order to then provide it to Hlendowski. The publication is preceded by a short preface by Théophile Gautier, explaining that the chapters being published serve as a continuation of those that Hlendowski had already published, and also that in this part the roles have changed and the woman has turned from a tormentor into a martyr.
Balzac read the layout of all these elements of a separate publication and made changes there until the beginning of 1846. Hlendowski's issues were out of print until the beginning of July 1846, and soon (the exact date is unknown, since this book was not announced in the weekly Bibliographie de la France) a separate edition was published with 50 engravings and two and a half hundred drawings in the text, initial letters etc., performed by Bertal. Balzac made some corrections to his copy in hopes of reprinting, but it was never published during his lifetime. In the same 1846, but a little earlier (apparently, in May-June), another, this time unillustrated, separate edition of “Troubles” was published, also not announced in the “Bibliographie de la France”, but, unlike publications by Hlendowski, which were not published under the control of Balzac. The fact is that back in September 1845, financial difficulties forced Hlendowski to cede part of the rights to the future edition of “The Troubles” to the publishers Roux and Cassane and their printer Alfred Mussen. Balzac did not like this deal, but he could not resist it, however, he did not take part in the preparation of this edition, and therefore, although it came out of print before Hlendowski’s edition, it is this latter that is considered the original edition of “Troubles”. On the title page of the publication by Roux and Cassane it was stated: “Physiology of Marriage: Minor Troubles of Married Life”, but the text of “Physiology” was not printed in it and its title was used solely to attract reader interest, and also, perhaps, to hint at the connection of the new book with the "physiologies" of the early 1840s.
Judging by the agreement with Hlendowski, Balzac intended to publish “Troubles” “as part of the Physiology of Marriage.” And from the legal document that Balzac received on November 22, 1845 from the printer Mussen (this was the so-called “warning to the debtor” about the need to fulfill debt obligations), it is known that Hlendowski received permission from Balzac to publish “The Troubles” as volumes three and four "Physiology of Marriage".
However, Hlendowski did not carry out this intention; Similarly, in the last, 16th volume of the first edition of The Human Comedy, released in August 1846, the section “Analytical Studies” included only one such “study,” namely, “The Physiology of Marriage.” Perhaps the reason is that this edition was prepared in the spring of 1846, when Balzac was traveling with Hanska in Italy and Switzerland and could not make the adjustments necessary to combine the two texts in one section of The Human Comedy. However, both the letter to Hanska and the agreement with Hlendowski indicate that combining the two texts was part of the writer’s plans. True, in the catalog he compiled in 1845 for the second edition of The Human Comedy, Troubles are not mentioned. However, this may simply be explained by the fact that Balzac planned to publish them not separately, but as part of “The Physiology of Marriage.” And their planned inclusion in the composition of the “Human Comedy” can be judged, in particular, by the text itself: when writing the last portion of essays for the “Press”, Balzac introduced into it the names of some “recurring characters” who appear in many works of the “Human Comedy” ; it is clear that in this way he wanted to “tie” “The Troubles” to its main body. In addition, in the text of “The Troubles” there are direct indications of the relationship between the two texts: in the chapter “Ultima ratio” Balzac notes that this work “is to the Physiology of Marriage, as History is to Philosophy, as Fact is to Theory” (p. 677 ). There are several other references in the text to the “vile principles of the Physiology of Marriage” (they are noted in our notes). Finally, even more convincing is the reference to the edits that Balzac made to “The Physiology of Marriage” in 1846: in several places he introduced into the text the names of Adolphe, Caroline and even Madame de Fischtaminel, which were not in previous editions. The connection with “The Physiology of Marriage” was also indicated by an advertising brochure for Hlendowski’s publication issued in 1846, where two Balzac books on marriage were called “the alpha and omega of marriage.”
Therefore, the decision of the publisher Houssieux was quite logical, who, in his edition of “The Human Comedy” (vol. XVIII, 1855), was the first to include “Troubles” in the “Analytical Studies” section, where they follow “The Physiology of Marriage.”
Ussyo did not have access to the author’s copy of Hlendowski’s edition, to which Balzac, as already mentioned, made some corrections, and considered it more correct to insert into his edition some passages from the version of the text that was published in the collection “The Demon in Paris” (which is why in Ussieux's edition "Troubles" has a different ending). However, since the corrected copy of Hlendowski’s edition should be considered the expression of the last author’s will, the publisher of this text in the authoritative publication “Library of the Pleiades” Jean-Louis Tritter chose it for reproduction, and our translation is based on this edition.
Researchers of women’s fate in “The Human Comedy” and Balzac’s attitude towards women come to the conclusion that in his mind there was a kind of utopia - the idea of an ideal marriage: he considered this establishment necessary, but wanted it to be based on both reason and love. Balzac was clearly aware of the utopian nature of such an ideal, but he was no less clearly aware of something else: reason without passion can no more bring a woman absolute happiness in marriage than passion without reason. The novel “Memoirs of Two Young Wives” (1842) is devoted to proof of this thesis - correspondence between two friends, one of whom, Louise, marries out of passionate love and both times suffers terrible failure (she tortured the first husband with her exactingness, and the second was mistakenly jealous and out of grief brought herself to death), and the other, Renee, marries for convenience and, not loving her husband, devotes herself entirely to the children, thus trying to fill the passion missing in her marriage. Both happen to experience moments of happiness, but the fate of neither one nor the other cannot be called happy.
In this and other novels specifically devoted to family life, Balzac considers the ultimate “romantic” situations; Here fatal passions boil, intrigues are hatched, grandiose plans are hatched. Great tragedies of married life take place here. But great tragedies do not happen to everyone and generally occur mainly in novels. How does the everyday life of ordinary spouses go, what prevents them from being happy? The book that Balzac entitled “The Minor Troubles of Married Life” is precisely about this, and therefore it is easier for the reader to identify with its characters. It’s easier even today, after two hundred years. Of course, everything takes place in period settings and period costumes, but the ratio of characters in a family drama or comedy remains the same.
This relevance of “Minor Troubles” is greatly facilitated by its original structure.
It was already said above that almost all of Balzac’s novels and short stories are, to one degree or another, devoted to marriage, but in the novels we are talking about the stories of specific married couples, and this gives the reader the opportunity to think that the fate of this unhappy couple is not the rule, but the exception . True, “The Physiology of Marriage” already left few illusions in this regard, since, talking about wives who were bored with marital ties, it implicitly, and sometimes directly, announced to each husband: the same will happen to you. But in “Minor Troubles,” Balzac went even further: the book has two main characters, Adolf and Caroline, but these are not heroes at all in the classical sense of the word, with a certain appearance and a certain character. At the very beginning of the book, the author introduces his character as follows:
Maybe this is a solicitor at the court of first instance, maybe a captain of the second rank, or maybe a third-class engineer or an assistant judge, or, finally, a young viscount. But most likely, this is the groom that all sane parents dream of, the ultimate dream of which is the only son of a rich father!.. ‹…› We will call this phoenix Adolf, no matter what his position in the world, age and hair color.
And in the newspaper “Press” on December 2, 1845, a note was made to the publication of the chapter “Deceived Ambition”:
Caroline in this book embodies the typical wife, and Adolf the typical husband; the author treated husbands and wives the way fashion magazines treat dresses; he created mannequins.
In French, the article is not used before proper names, but Balzac sometimes adds an indefinite article to the names of the main characters of “Minor Troubles” and calls them: un Adolphe, une Caroline, that is, one of the Adolfs, one of the Carolines; in other places demonstrative pronouns are added to the same names: this Adolf, this Caroline. The lover of every Caroline is certainly called Ferdinand (only their serial numbers change: Ferdinand I is followed by Ferdinand II). Commentators note chronological or biographical inconsistencies in the text: at first Caroline is the only daughter, and on the next page she suddenly has a sister, Caroline of the first part was born in Paris, and Caroline of the second is a provincial, Adolf of the first part is most likely a rentier, and in the second part he is minor writer, Caroline is either a coquette and a fashionista, or a praying man and a prude. In the chapter “Deceived Ambition,” Adolf himself bears the surname Chaudorey, and this Adolphe Chaudorey publishes a newspaper; and a little lower, in the chapter “Rough Revelations,” the husband Adolf and the newspaperman Chaudorey turn out to be two different persons. It would be easy to attribute these inconsistencies to the fragmentation of the book, which was created in a hurry and in parts, but I think that is not the case at all. If “The Physiology of Marriage,” for all its novelty, owed much in terms of genre to the previous “Codes” and was generally full of borrowings from the literature of the 18th century and earlier eras, then “Minor Troubles” is an experimental book; It is not without reason that a modern researcher mentions in connection with Pirandello’s play “Six Characters in Search of an Author,” and a modern researcher generally calls this book the harbinger of the French “Workshop of Potential Literature” (OULIPO), founded in 1960.
In fact, one of the most prominent members of this group, the great inventor Raymond Queneau, wrote a small work in 1967 called “A Tale of Your Own,” in which the reader is first allowed to choose who he wants to see as its heroes: three small peas, three long ones. poles or three frail bushes, and then determine their further actions. So, Balzac, one hundred and twenty years before Queneau, provides his reader with similar freedom.
The response of the husband assessing the appearance of his wife before going to the ball is conveyed as follows:
“I have never seen you so beautifully dressed. “Blue, pink, yellow, crimson (choose for yourself) suits you amazingly” (p. 500).
The response of a husband telling his wife about a supposedly profitable commercial enterprise in which he is going to invest money sounds like this:
“You wanted it! You wanted this! You told me that! You told me this!..” In a word, in the blink of an eye you list all the fantasies with which she tore your heart so many times (p. 514) -
but the fantasies themselves are again left to the discretion of the reader. And when it comes to the note found by the wife and allowing her to convict her husband of treason, Balzac gives four versions of this love letter at once:
The first note was written by a grisette, the second by a noble lady, the third by a pretentious bourgeois, the fourth by an actress; from among these women Adolf chooses his beauties(p. 659).
This “variability” of “Minor Troubles” reminds us of what is often forgotten: for all the traditionalism of the literary genres in which he worked (novel, short story), Balzac was a real innovator; the system of recurring characters moving from one work to another, in the form that he invented and developed, was also ahead of its time and predicted some of the discoveries of modernism: after all, Balzac builds the biography of his characters non-linearly, often violating chronology and leaving the reader to restore the missing links.
However, Balzac “predicts” not only modernism and postmodernism of the twentieth century, but also literature closer to his era. When reading some passages of “Minor Troubles,” it is difficult to escape the feeling that the future “Anna Karenina” is contained here in a condensed form: “All women must remember this nasty little trouble - the last quarrel that often breaks out over a mere trifle , and even more often - because of an immutable fact, because of irrefutable evidence. This cruel farewell to faith, to the childishness of love, to virtue itself is perhaps as whimsical as life itself. Like life itself, it proceeds in each family in its own special way."(p. 658; emphasis added - V. M.) - and in another place: “Adolf, like all men, finds solace in social life: he goes out, gets busy, takes care of business. But for Caroline it all comes down to one thing: to love or not to love, to be loved or not to be loved” (p. 620). I don’t presume to say that Tolstoy remembered “Minor Troubles” when he wrote his novel, but in general he was well acquainted with the works of Balzac, although he spoke about him, like many other authors, in contradictory terms, ranging from “nonsense” to “ the talent is enormous."
Of course, variability within the same social or professional type was also developed by the above-mentioned humorous “physiologies” of the early 1840s. For example, in the short chapters of “The Physiology of the Married Man” (1842), composed by the famous author of popular novels Paul de Kock, types of spouses are described: jealous, picky, overly caring, affectionate in public, but unbearable behind closed doors, etc. However, all these husbands are presented to the reader as totally different, Balzac's Adolf, although he contains many different husbands, at the same time, paradoxically, remains the same thing character.
Another original feature of Minor Troubles is that it is a bisexual book.
Although in “The Physiology of Marriage,” as already mentioned, many pages are imbued with sympathy for women, still formally this book is written from beginning to end from the point of view of a man; This is a guide for your husband - how not to become a cuckold. “Minor Troubles,” despite many similarities in individual plots (such as the relationship between an ostensibly ill wife and a doctor or the story about the power of a woman’s “ratchet”), is structured differently. At the beginning of the second part, Balzac openly announces his intention to respect the interests of both sexes in his book and to make it “more or less a hermaphrodite.” Balzac insisted on this “hermaphroditism” of “Minor Troubles” starting from the late 1830s, but he thought differently about the forms of its implementation. On November 3, 1839, in the newspaper “Caricature”, before the next fragment of “Troubles”, the following half-joking, half-serious note was published, explaining the author’s intentions (obviously with his knowledge):
However, in the publication of “Caricatures” this principle is not fully adhered to; of the eleven essays, only three present a woman's point of view. In the final version, Balzac chose a different path: not alternating female and male chapters, but dividing the entire book into two parts, or, to borrow a “bathhouse” metaphor, into two sections – male and female. In the middle of the text, in the “Second Preface,” he admits that his book has two halves, male and female: “after all, in order to be completely like a marriage, this book must become, to a greater or lesser extent, a hermaphrodite.” Diderot, in the article “On Women,” which Balzac repeatedly quotes in “The Physiology of Marriage,” reproaches the author of the book “An Essay on the Character, Morals and Spirit of Women in Different Ages” (1772) A. – L. Thomas for the fact that the book is his “ has no gender: it is a hermaphrodite who has neither male strength nor female softness,” that is, he uses the word “hermaphrodite” with a disapproving assessment in relation to the book; Balzac, on the contrary, sees the “hermaphroditism” of his book as its advantage. The playful “hermaphrodite” is quite consistent in this sense with the serious hermaphrodite - Seraphita, the heroine of the novel of the same name (1834), a fantastic creature in which not only human and angelic properties are mixed, but also the principles of masculine and feminine. Seraphita is the embodiment of a single humanity, cleansed of filth; however, she appears to ordinary people in a form accessible to their senses: for women in the form of the man Seraphitus, and for men in the form of the woman Seraphita. Of course, the distance from these mystical visions to the ironic sketches of “Minor Troubles” is very large. And yet, “bisexuality” is the structure-forming and substantive basis of the book. In fact, if in the first part the wife appears mainly in the role of a stupid, grumpy and quarrelsome fury, then the second part shows how disgustingly husbands sometimes behave and how many small, but extremely sensitive troubles they can cause to their unfortunate wives with rudeness and insensitivity , lack of talent and infidelity.
Balzac scholars, as a rule, speak of “Minor Troubles” as a book that is joyless, disappointing, and cruel to married life. Arlette Michel, author of a dissertation on love and marriage in The Human Comedy, writes that if The Physiology of Marriage is a book by a man who can mock marriage as it is because he believes in its very institution, then Petty Troubles is a book by a man who does not believe in marriage at all, and therefore his ridicule takes on a hopelessly cynical character. Here the modern researcher repeats almost verbatim what well-intentioned contemporary critics wrote about “Minor Troubles”; The Catholic "Censorship Bulletin" in February 1846 condemned Balzac's new work in the following words:
There is nothing sadder and more difficult to read than this story of social ills, examined with the coolness with which a chemist studies poison, and reduced to algebraic formulas and axioms, with the last of which we cannot in any way agree.
The last axiom says: “Only those couples who arrange a marriage of four are happy.”
In my opinion, the situation in "Minor Troubles" is not at all so bleak. Although the prospectus for Hlendowski’s publication emphasizes precisely the “combat” component of the book: “France, whose vocation is war, has turned marriage into a battle,” in fact, “Minor Troubles,” to a much greater extent than “The Physiology of Marriage,” is a book about ways to achieve marital peace, about how spouses can grow old together, if not in love, then at least in harmony. The question from “The Physiology of Marriage” will not occur to the husband: how to please his wife? how to guess “her feelings, whims and desires (three words for the same thing!)” (p. 540). The wife from “The Physiology of Marriage” would also never think of pleasing her husband with his favorite “Italian-style champignons” (p. 637). The feeling of joylessness when reading “Minor Troubles” arises, perhaps, because, as the Balzac scholar Roland Chollet subtly noted, this book differs sharply from all other works of the “Human Comedy” in the mediocrity of its characters. Balzac's favorite heroes are creators, geniuses, giants, people embraced by the strongest, even destructive, passion; But in "Minor Troubles" everything is different: this book is about mediocrity. Even in “The Physiology of Marriage” Balzac mentions “an outstanding man for whom this book was written” and thus raises the bar. In “Minor Troubles” he omits it: both the troubles are minor, and Adolphe is nothing more than a kind of “provincial celebrity in Paris” - a mediocre writer who has neither the poetic gift nor the strong feelings that distinguished Lucien de Rubempre, the hero of the eponymous part of the novel “The Lost.” illusions" (1839).
But in this way both the heroes and their problems become closer to the “average reader”. Marital disputes over raising a child; a husband who pesters his wife every minute with the question: “What are you doing?”; indelicate husbands who publicly call their wife “mommy”, “pussy” or “peach”, and wives who torment their husbands with reproaches and suspicions - all these seem to be trifles (as was said), but they can sometimes ruin life without worse than other tragic incidents. The free construction of Minor Troubles, where the characters are dummies with no particular habits, with whom each reader can especially easily identify, makes this book instructive without being boring. A possible identification is also facilitated by the fact that almost the entire book is written in the present tense: this is not a story about the completed story of a specific character with a specific character, it is an eternally ongoing story of “everyone and everyone,” an empty frame into which everyone can insert their face. To an even greater extent than “The Physiology of Marriage,” “Minor Troubles” is a kind of manual on the practical psychology of family life, only, unlike many manuals written by professional scientists, it is witty and brilliant.
A few words about the Russian fate of both works included in our collection.
If in France the publishing history of “The Physiology of Marriage” developed, as mentioned above, very happily, then in Russia the situation was different. The first translation into Russian of a fragment from “The Physiology of Marriage” (and from Balzac’s works in general) was published in “Ladies’ Magazine” under the title “Migraine” (the text is taken from the first paragraph of Reflections XXVI “On various types of weapons”). The censor's permission for this issue is dated March 8, 1830. At that moment, “The Physiology of Marriage” was still completely new. Under the text of the Russian publication is displayed: “From the Physiologie du mariage.” The author is not indicated, and this is quite natural. By that time, Balzac had signed his own name to a single novel, “The Last Chouan,” and although, as stated above, for the French public the name of the author of “Physiology” was not a mystery, in Russia he might well not have been known yet. Almost simultaneously, less than a month later, the following note appeared in the “Galatea” magazine (censored on April 2, 1830) in the “Mixture” section:
They say that the following terrible incident recently happened in Paris: one noble lady became desperately ill last month; relatives gathered at her bedside. It's midnight; the general silence was interrupted by the wheezing of the dying woman and the crackling of wood burning in the fireplace. Suddenly, burning coal is thrown out of the fireplace with a crash onto the middle of the parquet floor; the dying woman suddenly screams, opens her eyes, jumps out of bed and, grabbing coal with tongs, throws it into the fireplace; Having made such tension, she falls unconscious on the floor; they lift her up and carry her to her bed, where she soon died. The relatives, looking significantly at each other and then at the black stain left on the parquet from the coal, ordered the floor to be immediately broken open, from under which the box was taken out. But what was their surprise when, having opened it, they found in it the dead head of the deceased’s husband, whom they still thought had remained in Spain!
The note is presented as a real incident, which Russian magazines of that time covered in large numbers in the “Mixture” section; Thus, on the adjacent pages of “Galatea” we find stories about a young man from Seville, who “like owls, bats, etc., sees only at night, and goes out with a guide during the day,” and about the “terrible bandit Gasparoni” sitting in a Roman prison. , who “killed 143 people.” Neither Balzac nor The Physiology of Marriage are mentioned in Galatea; meanwhile, it is obvious that the source for it was the anecdote about the incident in Ghent from the “Introduction” to “Physiology” (see pp. 60–61). The anonymous Russian translator omitted everything that later served as a distinctive feature of Balzac’s manner and aroused admiration among some readers, and sharp rejection among others, namely, a passion for details in descriptions (what Pushkin called “the short-sighted pettiness of French novelists”). In essence, only the plot of Balzac's story is retold in the note from Galatea. Based on this, it can be assumed that the Galatea employee was not even guided directly by Balzac’s book, but by a condensed retelling of this episode in a review of it by Jules Janin, published in the newspaper “Journal de Debas” on February 7, 1830.
Then, for several decades, the history of the Russian “Physiology of Marriage” was completely interrupted. In 1900, a translation by V. L. Rantsov was published in the journal “Bulletin of Foreign Literature”; Rantsov translated the book from beginning to end, but omitted some paragraphs of the original, for example, Rabelaisian passages from Meditation I, and in some places subjected Balzac’s text to moral “censorship”: the aphorism “Every night requires a special menu” turned into a much more vegetarian maxim: “Every day should be unique,” and the aphorism “Marriage depends entirely on the bed” was generally replaced by the question “What is the essence of marriage?” After the release of this translation, there was again a pause of almost a century, and only after 1995, when our translation was first published by the publishing house “New Literary Review”, “The Physiology of Marriage” in its entirety became available to the Russian reader.
The Russian history of "Minor Troubles" is little richer than that of "The Physiology of Marriage." August 26, 1840 in the Northern Bee under the heading “Little Troubles of Married Life. Balzac's article" a chapter was published, which later received the title "Jesuitism of Women" (the translation was carried out after publication in the newspaper "Caricature").
In 1846, in the collection “The Demon in Paris,” a translation of those chapters that were included in the first part of the French collection “Le Diable à Paris” was published under the title “Philosophy of Married Life in Paris.”
In the same 1846, the “Library for Reading” published in volume 74 under the title “Little Misfortunes of Married Life” a translation (in some places shortened to a retelling) of those chapters that Balzac published in the newspaper “Press” (the translation was carried out quickly: publication in the “Press” " ended on December 7, new style, and the volume of the Russian magazine received censorship permission on December 31, 1845, old style).
Finally, in the second half of the 19th century, two separate editions were published: in 1876 in Moscow, translated by N. A. Putyata, and in 1899 in St. Petersburg, translated by A. Blok’s grandmother E. G. Beketova (the translation was included in volume 20 collected works of Balzac in Panteleev's edition). Since 1899, “Minor Troubles of Married Life” has not been published in Russian.
Putyata's translation is known only from bibliographic indexes; in the only library where this book is listed in the catalog (State Library in St. Petersburg), it “has not been in place since 1956.” As for the translations of Rantsov and Beketova, they are interesting as a fact of the history of translation, but not easy to read. Beketova translates the phrase: “My dear, don’t get so excited” as “My dear, why are you raising dust?”, and Rantsov’s character, who is able to “hear how truffles grow,” turns into a person who “hears how they grow.” there is grass in the field!” Using words that now mean something completely different than they did a hundred years ago; some not very successful turns of phrase (such as “love complicated by betrayal of her husband” in Rantsov or “inflatedness driven inside” in Beketova) and, finally, a kind of “censorship”, which was already discussed above - all this often makes Balzac’s the narrator in old translations is funny. Meanwhile, he was ironic and witty, but never funny.
Translation based on the edition: CH. Vol. 11 (Physiologie du mariage) and 12 (Petites misères de la vie conjugale), where the text printed in Furne's edition is reproduced. The notes use comments by René Guise on The Physiology of Marriage and Jean-Louis Tritter on The Minor Troubles of Married Life. For this edition, my translation of “The Physiology of Marriage,” first published in 1995 and reprinted several times since then, has been revised and revised, and the notes have been significantly expanded, including by pointing to sources unknown to French commentators.
Vera Milchina
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The given introductory fragment of the book Minor Troubles of Married Life (collection) (Honoré de Balzac, 1846) provided by our book partner -
Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) wrote about marriage throughout his life, but two of his works deal specifically with this topic. “The Physiology of Marriage” (1829) is a witty treatise on the war of the sexes. Here are all the means a husband can resort to to avoid becoming a cuckold. However, Balzac looks gloomily at the prospects of marriage: sooner or later, the wife will still cheat on her husband, and at best he will get “rewards” in the form of delicious food or a high position. "Small Troubles of Married Life" (1846) depicts marriage from a different perspective. Here Balzac talks about family everyday life: from tender feelings the spouses move on to cooling, and only those couples who have arranged a marriage of four are happy. The author himself called this book “hermaphrodite”, since the story is told first from a male and then from a female point of view. In addition, this book is experimental: Balzac invites the reader to choose the characteristics of the characters themselves and mentally fill in the gaps in the text. Both works are published in translation and with notes by Vera Milchina, leading researcher at STEPS RANEPA and IVGI RSUH. The translation of “The Physiology of Marriage,” first published in 1995, has been significantly revised for this edition; The translation of “Minor Troubles” is published for the first time.
A series: Everyday culture
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by liters company.
The Physiology of Marriage, or Eclectic Reflections on the Joys and Sorrows of Married Life
Dedication
Pay attention to the words about “the outstanding man for whom this book was written” (p. 101). Doesn't this mean: "For you"?
AuthorA woman who, tempted by the title of this book, wants to open it, need not work: and without reading, she knows in advance everything that is said here. The most cunning of men will never be able to say as much good or as bad about women as they think about themselves. If, despite my warning, some lady nevertheless begins to read this work, she should, out of delicacy, refrain from ridiculing the author, who, voluntarily depriving himself of the right to the most flattering approval for the artist, placed on the title page of his work that - sort of like that warning sign you see on the doors of other establishments: “Not for ladies.”
Introduction
“Nature does not provide for marriage. – The Eastern family has nothing in common with the Western family. – Man is a servant of nature, and society is its latest fruit. “Laws are written in accordance with morals, but morals change.”
Consequently, marriage, like all earthly things, is subject to gradual improvement.
These words, spoken by Napoleon before the Council of State during the discussion of the Civil Code, deeply struck the author of this book and, perhaps, inadvertently gave him the idea for the essay that he is presenting to the public today. The fact is that in his youth he had the opportunity to study French law, and the word “adultery” had a striking effect on him. So often found in the codex, this word appeared to the author’s imagination in the darkest surroundings. Tears, Shame, Hostility, Horror, Secret Crimes, Bloody Wars, Orphaned Families, Grief - this is the retinue that appeared before the author’s inner gaze as soon as he read the sacramental word ADULTERY! Later, having gained access to the most refined secular drawing rooms, the author noticed that the severity of marriage legislation was very often softened there by Adultery. He found that the number of unhappy families significantly exceeds the number of happy families. Finally, he seems to have been the first to point out that of all the sciences, the science of marriage is the least developed. However, this was an observation of the young man, which, as often happens, was lost in the series of his chaotic thoughts: like a stone thrown into water sinks. However, the author involuntarily continued to observe the light, and gradually a whole swarm of more or less correct ideas about the nature of marriage customs formed in his imagination. The laws of the ripening of books in the souls of their authors are perhaps no less mysterious than the laws of the growth of truffles on the fragrant plains of Périgord. From the initial sacred horror caused in the author’s heart by adultery, from the frivolous observations he made, one fine morning an idea was born - a very insignificant one, but which absorbed some of the author’s ideas. It was a mockery of marriage: two spouses fell in love with each other twenty-seven years after their wedding.
The author derived considerable pleasure from composing a little marriage pamphlet and for a whole week he took pleasure in jotting down on paper countless thoughts connected with this innocent epigram - involuntary and unexpected thoughts. A remark that could not be ignored put an end to this weaving of words. Having listened to the advice, the author returned to his usual carefree and idle existence. However, the first experience of amusing research was not in vain, and the seed planted in the field of the author’s mind sprouted: each phrase of the condemned work took root and became like a tree branch, which, if left on a winter evening on the sand, is covered in the morning with intricate white patterns that it can draw weirdo frost. Thus, the sketch continued to exist and gave life to many moral branches. Like a polyp, it multiplied without outside help. The impressions of youth and intrusive thoughts were confirmed by the smallest events of subsequent years. Moreover, all this multitude of ideas came to order, came to life, almost took on a human form and set off to wander through those fantastic lands where the soul loves to send its reckless offspring. Whatever the author did, a certain voice always sounded in his soul, throwing the most caustic remarks at the most beautiful society ladies who danced, chatted or laughed in front of his eyes. Just as Mephistopheles presented Faust with the eerie figures gathered on the Brocken, so a certain demon seemed to unceremoniously grab the author by the shoulder in the midst of a ball and whisper: “Do you see that seductive smile? This is the smile of hatred." Sometimes the demon showed off like a captain from the old Ardie comedies. He wrapped himself in an embroidered purple cloak and showed off the shabby tinsel and rags of his former glory, trying to convince the author that they sparkled like new. Sometimes he would burst into loud and infectious Rabelaisian laughter and write on the walls of houses a word that was a worthy counterpart to the famous “Trink!” - the only prophecy that was achieved from the Divine Bottle. Sometimes this literary Trilby would sit down on a pile of books and slyly point with his hooked fingers at two yellow volumes, the titles of which dazzled the eyes; when the demon finally managed to attract the attention of the author, he began to repeat clearly and piercingly, as if fingering the frets of a harmonica: “PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE!” But most often he appeared to the author in the evening, before bed. Gentle as a fairy, he tried to lull the soul of the mortal he enslaved with gentle speeches. As mocking as he was captivating, flexible like a woman and bloodthirsty like a tiger, he did not know how to caress without scratching; his friendship was more dangerous than his hatred. One night he used all his charms, and in the end he resorted to the last proof. He appeared and sat down on the edge of the bed, like a maiden in love who at first remains silent and only looks at the adored young man with burning eyes, but in the end cannot stand it and pours out her feelings to him. “Here,” he said, “is a description of a suit that allows you to walk along the surface of the Seine without getting your feet wet. And here is a message from the Institute about clothing that allows you to walk through fire without getting burned. Can't you invent a remedy that protects marriage from cold and heat? Listen! I know such works as “On ways to preserve food,” “On ways to build fireplaces that don’t smoke,” “On ways to cast excellent mortars,” “On ways to tie a tie,” “On ways to cut meat.”)
“These myriads of books have found their readers,” the demon continued, “although not everyone builds houses and sees the purpose of life in food, not everyone has a tie and a fireplace, yet many people get married!.. But what can I say, look !..
He pointed his hand into the distance, and the author’s eyes saw the ocean, where all the books published recently swayed on the waves. Volumes in the eighteenth beat of a sheet bounced up and down, gurgling, and sank to the bottom of the volume in octavo, which floated to the top with great difficulty, because little books in the twelfth and thirty-second beats of the sheet were swarming all around, forming airy foam. Fierce waves tormented journalists, typesetters, apprentices, messengers from printing houses, whose heads stuck out of the water mixed with books. People scurried back and forth in canoes, fishing books out of the water and taking them ashore to a tall, arrogant man in a black dress, lean and unapproachable: he embodied the booksellers and the public. The demon pointed his finger at the boat, decorated with brand new flags, rushing forward with full sails and decorated with a poster instead of a flag; Laughing sardonically, he read in a shrill voice: “PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE.”
Then the author fell in love, and the devil left him alone, because if he penetrated where the woman settled, he would have to deal with an overly strong opponent. Several years passed in torment caused by love alone, and the author felt that he had knocked out a wedge with a wedge. But one evening in one of the Parisian drawing rooms, approaching a handful of people gathered in a circle near the fireplace, he heard the following anecdote told in a sepulchral voice:
“When I was in Ghent, the following incident happened there. A certain lady, who had been widowed for ten years, was lying on her deathbed. Three relatives who laid claim to her inheritance waited for the sick woman’s last breath and did not leave her bed a single step, fearing that she would transfer her entire fortune to the local Beguin monastery. The patient remained silent; She seemed to be sleeping, and death was slowly taking over her pale, numb face. Can you imagine this picture: three relatives on a winter night, awake in silence near the sick bed? The nurse shakes her head, and the doctor, anxiously realizing that there is no salvation, takes his hat with one hand, and with the other makes a sign to the relatives, as if saying: “You will no longer need my services.” In the solemn silence, you can hear the blizzard muffledly howling outside the window and the shutters flapping in the wind. The youngest of the heirs covered the candle standing by the bed so that the light would not hurt the eyes of the dying woman, so that her bed was drowned in twilight, and her face turned yellow on the pillow, like a poorly gilded figure of Christ on a tarnished silver crucifix. So, the dark room where the denouement of the drama was supposed to take place was illuminated only by the unsteady bluish flame of the sparkling hearth. The ending was accelerated by a firebrand that suddenly rolled onto the floor. Hearing her knock, the patient suddenly sits up in bed and opens her eyes, burning like a cat’s; everyone in the room looks at her in amazement. She stares intently at the rolling firebrand, and then, before her family has time to come to her senses, in some kind of nervous attack she jumps out of bed, grabs the tongs and throws the firebrand back into the fireplace. Then the nurse, the doctor, the heirs rush to the patient, grab her by the arms, lower her onto the bed, put a pillow under her head; not even ten minutes pass before she dies, without taking her eyes off the piece of parquet where the firebrand fell. Before Countess Van Ostrum had time to give up the ghost, the three heirs looked at each other incredulously and, completely forgetting about their aunt, fixed their eyes on the mysterious floorboard. The heirs were Belgians, which means they knew how to instantly calculate their benefits. After exchanging a few words in a whisper, they agreed that neither of them would leave their aunt’s bedroom. The footman was sent for the carpenter. How three kindred souls trembled when their owners, bending over the luxurious parquet floor, watched the actions of the apprentice boy, who plunged his chisel into the tree. The floorboard is cracked. “Auntie has moved!” cried the youngest of the heirs. “No, it’s just a trick of the light,” answered the eldest, who was looking after both the treasure and the deceased at the same time. The inconsolable relatives discovered under the parquet floor, exactly in the place where the firebrand had fallen, an object carefully hidden by a layer of plaster. “Act!..” said the eldest heir. The apprentice’s chisel forged the plaster, and a human skull appeared in the light of day, in which - I don’t remember by what signs - the heirs recognized the count, who, as was known to the whole city, died on the island of Java and was warmly mourned by a mournful widow.
The narrator who told us this old story was a tall and lean brunette with reddish eyes, in whom the author seemed to have a vague resemblance to the demon that once tormented him so much, but the stranger did not have cloven hooves. Suddenly the author’s ear was struck by the word Adultery, and before his inner gaze appeared the entire ominous cortege that had accompanied these significant syllables in former times.
Since then, the ghost of an unwritten essay has again begun to relentlessly haunt the author; There was never a time in his life when he was so much annoyed by nonsense thoughts about the fatal subject of this book. However, he courageously resisted the demon, although he linked the most insignificant events of the author’s life with this unknown creation and, as if in mockery, became like a customs official and put his seal everywhere.
A few days later, the author had a chance to talk with two charming females. The first was once one of the most kind-hearted and witty ladies at Napoleon's court. Having reached a very high position under the Empire, with the onset of the Restoration she lost everything she had and began to live as a hermit. The second, young and beautiful, enjoyed enormous success in the Parisian world at the time of our conversation. The ladies were friends, for the first was forty, the second was twenty-two, and they rarely turned out to be rivals. One of them was not at all embarrassed by the author’s presence, the other guessed his intentions, so they continued to discuss their women’s affairs in front of him with complete frankness.
– Have you noticed, my dear, that women, as a rule, love only fools?
- What are you saying, Duchess! Why, then, do they always have an aversion to their husbands?
(“But this is sheer tyranny!” thought the author. “Now, therefore, the devil has put on a cap?”)
“No, my dear, I’m not joking,” the duchess continued, “moreover, looking coolly at those men with whom I myself once knew, I shudder.” The mind always hurts us with its brilliance, a person with a sharp mind frightens us; if this person is proud, he will not be jealous of us, which means he will not be able to please us. Finally, it is perhaps more pleasant for us to elevate a man to ourselves than to rise to him ourselves... A talented man will share his victories with us, but a fool will give us pleasure, so it is more pleasant for us to hear how they say about our chosen one: “How handsome!” - rather than knowing that he was elected to the Academy.
- Enough, Duchess! You are scaring me.
Having gone through all the lovers who drove the ladies she knew crazy, the young coquette did not find a single smart person among them.
“However, I swear by virtue,” she said, “their husbands are much more worthy people...”
- But they are husbands! – the duchess answered importantly.
“Of course,” the Duchess laughed. “And the rage that some ladies feel against their companions, who had the misfortune to bring themselves happiness and take a lover, proves how burdensome their chastity is for the poor thing.” One would have long ago become Laisa if her fear of the devil had not stopped her, the other is virtuous solely due to her insensibility, the third because of the stupidity of her first lover, the fourth...
The author stopped this flow of revelations by telling the ladies about his persistent desire to write a book about marriage; the ladies smiled and promised him not to skimp on advice. The younger one cheerfully contributed her first share, promising to prove mathematically that women of impeccable virtue exist only in the imagination.
In introducing you to the biography of his own work, the author is not guided by petty vanity. He sets forth facts worthy of serving as a contribution to the history of human thought and capable, no doubt, of clarifying the essence of the book itself. It may be useful for some anatomists of thought to learn that the soul is a woman. Therefore, while the author forbade himself to think about the book that he had to write, fragments of it appeared to him everywhere. He found one page at the patient’s bedside, the other on a sofa in the boudoir. The glances of women carried away in a whirlwind of a waltz suggested new ideas to him; a gesture or a word fed his arrogant mind. But that day when he said to himself: “Well! I will write this essay that haunts me!..” - everything disappeared; like the three Belgians, the author discovered a skeleton at the site of the treasure.
The demon-tempter was replaced by a meek and pale person, good-natured and courteous, wary of resorting to painful injections of criticism. She was more generous with words than with thoughts and seemed to be afraid of noise. Perhaps it was a genius who inspired the venerable deputies of the center.
“Isn’t it better,” she said, “to leave things as they are?” Are things really that bad? One should believe in marriage as sacredly as in the immortality of the soul, and your book certainly will not serve to glorify family happiness. In addition, you will soon begin to judge family life on the example of thousands of Parisian married couples, but they are nothing more than exceptions. Perhaps you will meet husbands who agree to betray their wives into your power, but not a single son will agree to betray his mother to you... There will be people who, offended by your views, will suspect you of immorality and malicious intent. In a word, only kings, or at least first consuls, are allowed to touch public sores.
Although Reason appeared to the author in the most pleasant of guises, the author did not heed his advice; for in the distance the extravagance was waving the rattle of Panurge, and the author really wanted to take possession of it; however, when he took hold of it, it turned out that it was heavier than the club of Hercules; Moreover, by the will of the Meudon priest, the young man, who values good gloves much more than a good book, has been denied access to this rattle.
“Alas, madam, will you reward me for all the curses that he will bring on my head?”
She expressed doubt with a gesture, to which the author reacted very nonchalantly.
- Are you really hesitating? – she continued. – Publish what you wrote, don’t be afraid. Nowadays, in books, cut is valued much more than material.
Although the author was no more than the secretary of the two ladies, he still spent a lot of effort in putting their observations in order. To create a book about marriage, there was perhaps only one thing left to do - to put together what everyone is thinking about, but no one is talking about; however, having completed such work, a person who thinks like everyone else runs the risk of not being liked by anyone! However, the eclecticism of this work may save it. While mocking, the author tried to convey some comforting ideas to the readers. He tirelessly strove to find unknown strings in the human soul. Defending the most material interests, evaluating or condemning them, he, perhaps, showed people more than one source of mental pleasures. However, the author is not so stupid and arrogant as to claim that all his jokes are equally exquisite; simply, by relying on the diversity of minds, he expects to earn as much censure as praise. The subject of his reasoning is so serious that he constantly tried anecdotize narration, for today anecdotes are the credentials of any morality and the anti-sleeping component of any book. As for “The Physiology of Marriage,” the essence of which is observation and analysis, it was impossible for its author not to bore the reader with the writer’s teachings. But this, as the author knows very well, is the worst of all the troubles that threaten the writer. That is why, while working on his extensive research, the author took care to give the reader a break from time to time. A similar method of narration was consecrated by a writer who created a work on taste, close to the one that the author wrote on marriage - a work from which the author allowed himself to borrow several lines containing an idea common to both books. He wanted in this way to pay respect to his predecessor, who died barely having time to enjoy the success that befell him.
“When I write and talk about myself in the singular, I seem to start a conversation with the reader, I give him the opportunity to explore, argue, doubt and even laugh, but as soon as I arm myself with the formidable WE, I begin to preach, and the reader can only obey "(Brillat-Savarin. Preface to “The Physiology of Taste”).
December 5, 1829
Part one
General provisions
Diderot. Addendum to Bougainville's JourneyMeditation I
Subject
Physiology, what do you want from me?
Do you want to prove that marital ties unite a man and a woman who do not know each other for life?
That the purpose of life is passion, and no passion can resist marriage?
That marriage is an institution necessary to maintain order in society, but contrary to the laws of nature?
That, despite all its flaws, marriage is the first source of property?
That it provides governments with countless guarantees of their strength?
That there is something touching in the union of two beings who decide to endure the hardships of life together?
That there is something funny in the spectacle of two wills moved by one thought?
That a woman who enters into marriage is treated like a slave?
That there are no perfectly happy marriages in the world?
That marriage is fraught with terrible crimes, many of which we cannot even imagine?
That loyalty does not exist; in any case, men are not capable of it?
That, after conducting an investigation, it would be possible to find out how much more the transfer of property by inheritance promises troubles than benefits?
That adultery brings more evil than marriage brings good?
That women have been cheating on men since the very beginning of human history, but this chain of deceptions could not destroy the institution of marriage?
That the laws of love bind two people so tightly that no human law can separate them?
That, along with marriages concluded in the city hall, there are marriages based on the call of nature, on the captivating similarity or decisive dissimilarity of thoughts, as well as on bodily attraction, and that, therefore, heaven and earth are constantly contradicting one another?
That there are husbands of tall stature and great intelligence, whose wives cheat on them with lovers who are short, ugly and brainless?
The answer to each of these questions could fill a separate book, but books have already been written, and the questions arise before people again and again.
Will you reveal new principles to me? Will you begin to praise the community of wives? Lycurgus and other Greek tribes, Tatars and savages tried this method.
Or do you think women should be kept locked up? The Turks used to do exactly this, but now they are beginning to give their girlfriends freedom.
Perhaps you will say that daughters should be married off without a dowry and without the right to inherit the fortune of their parents?.. English writers and moralists have proven that this, along with divorce, is the surest basis for happy marriages.
Or maybe you are convinced that every family needs its own Hagar? But there is no need to change laws for this. The article of the Code, which threatens a wife with punishment for cheating on her husband anywhere in the world and condemns the husband only if the concubine lives with him under the same roof, tacitly encourages men to take mistresses outside the home.
Sanchez considered all possible violations of the marriage; Moreover, he discussed the legality and propriety of each pleasure, calculated all the moral, religious, carnal duties of the spouses; in a word, if his tome, entitled “De Matrimonio”, is published in octavo format, you will get a good dozen volumes.
A bunch of jurists in a bunch of treatises have examined all sorts of legal subtleties related to the institution of marriage. There are even essays devoted to assessing the suitability of spouses to perform marital duties.
Legions of doctors have produced legions of books on marriage as it relates to surgery and medicine.
Consequently, in the nineteenth century, the Physiology of Marriage was doomed to be either a mediocre compilation, or the work of a fool, written for other fools: decrepit priests, armed with gilded scales, weighed the slightest sins; decrepit jurists, putting on glasses, divided these sins into types and subtypes; decrepit doctors, taking up a scalpel, used it to open every conceivable wound; decrepit judges, perched on their seats, examined all the incorrigible vices; whole generations let out a cry of joy or grief; every century has given its voice; The Holy Spirit, poets and prose writers have taken note of everything, from Eve to the Trojan War, from Helen to Madame de Maintenon, from the wife of Louis XIV to the Contemporary.
What do you want from me, Physiology?
Would you like, in an hour, to please me with more or less masterful paintings designed to prove that a man is getting married:
from Ambitiousness... however, everyone knows this;
from Thrift - wanting to put an end to litigation;
from the Faith that life has passed and it’s time to call it a day;
from Stupidity, like a youth who has finally escaped from college;
from the Spirit of Contradiction, like Lord Byron;
out of a Natural desire to fulfill the will of the late uncle, who bequeathed to his nephew, in addition to his fortune, a bride;
from Life Wisdom - which still happens to doctrinaires to this day;
out of anger at an unfaithful lover;
out of sincere piety, like the Duke of Saint-Aignan, who did not want to wallow in sin;
from Self-interest - perhaps not a single marriage is free from it;
from Love - in order to be cured of it forever;
from Machiavellianism - in order to immediately take possession of the old woman’s property;
from the need to give a name our son;
from Fear of being left alone due to one’s ugliness;
out of Gratitude - while giving much more than you received;
from Disappointment in the delights of bachelor life;
from feeblemindedness - one cannot do without it;
from Turkish thoroughness;
out of Respect for the customs of ancestors;
from Philanthropic motives, in order to snatch the girl from the hands of her tyrant mother;
from Cunning, so that your fortune does not go to greedy relatives;
from Ambition, like Georges Dandin;
out of Scrupulosity, for the young lady could not resist.
(Those who wish can easily find uses for the remaining letters of the alphabet.)
However, all of the above cases have already been described in thirty thousand comedies and a hundred thousand novels.
Physiology, I ask you for the third and last time, what do you want from me?
It’s a well-worn thing, like a street pavement, as familiar as a crossing of roads. We know much more about marriage than about the Gospel Barabbas; all the ancient ideas associated with it have been discussed in literature from time immemorial, and there is no such useful advice or such a nonsensical project that would not find its author, printer, bookseller and reader.
Let me tell you, following the example of our common teacher Rabelais: “God save you and have mercy on you, good people! Where are you? I do not see you. Let me cover my nose with glasses. Ahh! Now I see you. Is everyone in good health - you, your spouses, your children, your relatives and household members? Okay, great, happy for you."
But I'm not writing for you. As long as you have adult children, everything is clear with you.
“Good people, venerable drunkards and you, venerable gouty people, and you, tireless skimmers, and you, vigorous fellows, who pantagruelize all day long, and keep pretty birds locked up, and do not miss the third, nor the sixth, nor the ninth hour, nor vespers , no Compline, and you won’t let anything slip past your lips in the future.”
Physiology is not addressed to you, you are not married. Amen!
“You damned hoodies, clumsy saints, dissolute hypocrites, air-spoiling cats and other persons who put on a masquerade dress to deceive good people!.. - get out of the way, besiege us back! so that your spirit is not here, brainless creatures!.. Get the hell out! I swear to the devil, are you still here?
Perhaps only kind souls who love to laugh will stay with me. Not those crybabies who almost rush to drown themselves in poetry and prose, who glorify illness in odes, sonnets and reflections, not the countless empty-headed dreamers, but a few ancient pantagruelists who do not hesitate for a long time if the opportunity presents itself to drink and laugh, who the nature of Rabelais's reasoning about peas in lard, cum commento, and about the merits of codpieces, people are wise, swift in the race, fearless in their grip and respecting tasty books.
Since the government has found a way to collect one hundred and fifty million in taxes from us, there is no longer any reason to laugh at the government. Popes and bishops, priests and priestesses have not yet become so rich that we can drink with them; Our only hope is that Saint Michael, who drove the devil out of heaven, will remember us, and then just in case there will be a holiday on our street! In the meantime, the only subject for laughter in France remains marriage. Followers of Panurge, I do not need other readers than you. You know how to pick up a book at the right time and to put it down at the right time, you know how to enjoy life, understand everything perfectly and suck a drop of brain from a bone.
People who examine everything through a microscope, who see no further than their own noses, in a word, censors - have they said everything, have they examined everything? Have they pronounced their verdict on a book about marriage that is as impossible to write as it is impossible to mend a broken pitcher?
- Yes, master madman. Whatever one may say, nothing else will come out of marriage except pleasure for bachelors and trouble for husbands. This rule is forever. Write even a million pages, you won’t come up with anything else.
And yet here is my first statement: marriage is a war for life and death, before the beginning of which the spouses ask for blessings from Heaven, for loving each other forever is the most daring of enterprises; Immediately after the prayers, a battle breaks out, and victory, that is, freedom, goes to the one who is more dexterous.
Let's say. But what's new here?
The point is this: I appeal to husbands past and present, to those who, leaving the church or the town hall, flatter themselves with the hope that their wives will belong to them alone, to those who, obeying indescribable selfishness or inexplicable feeling, say at the sight of other people’s misfortunes: “This won’t happen to me!”
I appeal to the sailors who, having witnessed shipwrecks more than once, set sail again and again, to those bachelors who dare to marry, although they have more than once had the opportunity to destroy the virtue of other people’s wives. For example, history is forever new and forever ancient!
A young man, or perhaps an old man, in love, or perhaps not, who has just signed a marriage contract and straightened out all the papers at the mayor's office, according to all the laws of earth and heaven, receives as his wife a young girl with lush curls, black moist eyes, small legs, lovely thin fingers, scarlet lips and ivory-colored teeth, beautifully formed, trembling, appetizing and seductive, snow-white, like a lily, shining with all imaginable beauties: her lowered eyelashes are like the crown of Lombard kings, her face is fresh, like the corolla of a white camellia , and ruddy like red petals; her virgin cheeks are covered with barely noticeable fluff, like a tender, just ripe peach; under the fair skin hot blood runs through the blue veins; she thirsts for life and gives life; all of her is joy and love, charm and naivety. She loves her husband, or at least believes that she does...
A husband in love swears in his heart: “These eyes will look at me alone, these timid lips will speak of love to me alone, this gentle hand will bestow the cherished treasures of voluptuousness on me alone, this chest will heave only at the sound of my voice, this sleeping the soul will awaken only at my command; Only I will be allowed to run my fingers through these silky strands, only I will be able to stroke this quivering head in unconsciousness. I will make Death watch at my bedside and prevent robber strangers from gaining access to my marriage bed; this throne of passion will drown in blood - either in the blood of reckless insolent people, or in my own. Peace, honor, bliss, fatherly affection, the well-being of my children - everything depends on the inaccessibility of my bedchamber, and I will protect it, as a lioness protects her cubs. Woe to him who invades my lair!”
Well, brave athlete, we applaud your determination. Until now, not a single geometer has dared to plot longitudes and latitudes on the map of the matrimonial sea. Experienced men did not dare to identify the shoals, reefs, underwater rocks, breezes and monsoons, the coastline and underwater currents that destroyed their ships - they were so ashamed of the wreck that befell them. Married travelers lacked a guide, a compass... this book is intended to replace them.
Not to mention grocers and clothiers, there are many people who do not have time to delve into the hidden motives that move their wives; offer them a detailed classification of all the secrets of marriage - a duty of philanthropy; a well-written table of contents will allow them to comprehend the movements of the hearts of their wives, just as a table of logarithms allows them to multiply numbers.
So, what do you say? Can you not admit that preventing wives from deceiving their husbands is an unheard-of enterprise, which no philosopher has yet dared to undertake? Isn't that what all comedies are about? Is this not another speculum vitae humanae? Down with the absurd questions to which we have pronounced a just verdict in this Meditation. Today, in morality, as in the exact sciences, facts and observations are needed. We will introduce them.
First, let's delve into the true state of affairs and weigh the strengths of both sides. Before supplying our imaginary winner with weapons, let’s count the number of his enemies, those Cossacks who dream of conquering his native corner.
Swim with us, whoever wants to, laugh, whoever can. Weigh anchor, raise sails! You know the starting point. This is the great advantage of our book over many others.
As for our whim, which makes us laugh while crying and cry while laughing, just as the divine Rabelais drank when he ate, and ate when he drank; As for our mania to combine Heraclitus and Democritus on one page, to write without caring about syllable or meaning... if one of the crew members doesn’t like it, get off the ship with all this brethren: old men whose brains are swollen with fat , classics who have not emerged from the shrouds, romantics wrapped in a shroud - and full speed ahead!
Those who have been expelled will probably blame us for being like people who joyfully declare: “I’ll tell you a joke that will make you laugh to your heart’s content!..” Nothing of the kind: marriage is a serious matter! Haven't you guessed that we look at marriage as a slight ailment from which no one is protected, and that our book is a scientific work dedicated to this disease?
“However, you and your ship or your book are reminiscent of those coachmen who, when leaving the station, crack their whips with all their might just because they are carrying the English.” You won’t have time to gallop at full speed and half a league before you stop to tighten your lines or give your horses a rest. Why blow the trumpets without having yet won a victory?
- Eh, dear Pantagruelists, nowadays, in order to achieve success, it’s enough to lay claim to it; and since, perhaps, great works are in the last analysis nothing more than insignificant ideas clothed in lengthy phrases, I do not see why I should not acquire laurels, if only to decorate the salted hams under which it is so glorious to pass glass!.. Just a minute, captain! Before we set sail, let's give one small definition.
Readers, since on the pages of this book, as well as in social drawing rooms, you will from time to time come across the words “virtue” and “virtuous woman,” let us agree on their meaning: by virtue we call the complaisance with which a wife reluctantly gives this heart husband; exceptions are rare cases when this word is given a commonly used meaning; Natural intelligence will help readers distinguish one from the other.
Meditation II
Marriage statistics
For two decades now, the authorities have been trying to determine how many hectares of French land are occupied by forests, how many are meadows and vineyards, and how many are left fallow. The learned men went further: they wanted to know the number of animals of a particular breed. Moreover, they counted cubic meters of firewood, kilograms of beef, liters of wine, the number of apples and eggs consumed by Parisians. But neither the honor of those men who have already married, nor the interests of those who are just preparing to do so, nor morality and the improvement of human institutions have yet prompted a single statistician to start counting the number of decent women inhabiting France. How! The French Ministry will be able, if necessary, to tell you how many soldiers and spies, officials and schoolchildren it has, but ask it about virtuous women... and what? If the French king gets the crazy idea of looking for an august wife among his subjects, the ministers will not even be able to indicate to him the total number of white sheep from which he could choose her; some kind of virtue competition will have to be established, and this is simply ridiculous.
Should we really learn not only politics, but also morality from the ancients? It is known from history that Artaxerxes, wishing to take a wife from among the daughters of Persia, chose Esther, the most virtuous and most beautiful. Consequently, his ministers knew a way to skim the cream off their subjects. Unfortunately, the Bible, which is so clear on all matters of married life, does not give us any instructions regarding the choice of a wife.
Let's try to fill the gaps left by government officials and conduct a census of the female population of France. We appeal to everyone who cares about public morality and ask them to be our judges. We will try to be fairly generous in our calculations and fairly accurate in our reasoning, so that all readers will agree with the results of our research.
It is believed that France has approximately thirty million inhabitants.
Some natural scientists claim that there are more women in the world than men, however, since many statisticians are of the opposite opinion, let us assume that there are fifteen million women in France.
First of all, let us exclude from the named number approximately nine million creatures who at first glance are very similar to women, but which, after common thinking, would have to be discounted.
Let's explain.
Naturalists believe that man is the only species belonging to the Two-Armed family, as indicated on page 16 of Dumeril’s “Analytical Zoology”; only Bory Saint-Vincent considered it necessary, for the sake of completeness, to add another one to this species - the Orangutan.
If zoologists see us as nothing more than a mammal with thirty-two vertebrae, a hyoid bone, and more convolutions in the hemispheres of the brain than any other creature; if for them all the differences between people are explained by the influence of climate, which gave rise to fifteen varieties of this individual, the scientific names of which I do not consider it necessary to list, then the creator of Physiology has the right to divide people into species and subspecies in accordance with their mental abilities, moral properties and property status.
So, the nine million creatures we are talking about are, at first glance, completely similar to man, as zoologists describe him: they have a hyoid bone, coracoid and humeral processes of the scapula, as well as a zygomatic arch, so gentlemen zoologists have every right to classify them to the category of Two-Handed, but to see women in them - the author of our Physiology would not agree to this for anything in the world.
For us and for those for whom this book is intended, a woman is a rare species of the human race, the physiological properties of which we will now tell you.
A woman, in our understanding, is the fruit of the special efforts of men who spared neither gold nor the moral warmth of civilization to improve her breed. The first distinctive feature of a woman is the whiteness, tenderness and silkiness of her skin. The woman is extremely clean. Her fingers should only touch soft, fluffy, fragrant objects. Like an ermine, she is capable of dying of grief if someone stains her white clothes. She loves to comb her curls and spray them with perfume, the aroma of which is intoxicating and intoxicating, groom her pink nails and give them an almond shape, and perform ablutions as often as possible, immersing her fragile body in water. At night she can rest only on the softest down jackets, during the day - only on sofas stuffed with hair, and her favorite position is horizontal. Her voice is touching and gentle, her movements are full of grace. She speaks with amazing ease. She does not engage in any hard work and yet, despite her external weakness, she surprisingly easily bears other burdens. She is afraid of the sun and protects herself from its rays with the help of the most ingenious devices. Walking is hard work for her; does she eat anything? it's a mystery; does it satisfy any other needs? it's a secret. Infinitely curious, she easily submits to anyone who can hide the smallest trifle from her, because her mind needs to search for the unknown. Her religion is love; she thinks only about how to please her lover. To be loved is the goal of all her actions, to arouse desire is the goal of all her gestures. That's why she's always looking for ways to shine; it can only exist in an atmosphere of grace and elegance; for her, a young Indian spins the weightless fluff of Tibetan goats, for her Tarar weaves airy bedspreads, for her Brussels craftswomen weave the purest and finest lace, Visapur treasure hunters steal sparkling stones from the bowels of the earth, and Sevres craftsmen gild white porcelain. Day and night she dreams of new jewelry, vigilantly making sure that her dresses are starched and her scarves are thrown on gracefully. To strangers whose honors flatter her, whose desires enchant her, even if these strangers are deeply indifferent to her, she appears in all the splendor of her beauty and freshness. The hours not occupied with caring about her own appearance and the pleasures of voluptuousness, she devotes to singing the most melodic arias: for her, composers of France and Italy composed the most captivating of concerts, and Neapolitan musicians captured the harmony of the soul in the music of strings. In short, such a woman is the queen of the world and the slave of desire. She is afraid of marriage, because it can ruin her waist, but she agrees to it, because it promises happiness. She gives birth to children by pure chance, and when they grow up, she hides them from the light.
Are the properties we have listed, chosen at random from thousands of others, inherent in those creatures whose hands are black like those of monkeys, and whose tanned cheeks resemble the parchments of the ancient Parisian parliament; those whose face is scorched by the sun and whose neck is wrinkled like a turkey's; to those who wear rags, whose voice is hoarse, whose intelligence is insignificant, whose smell is unbearable; to those who dream only of a piece of bread, who, without straightening their backs, hoe, harrow, turn hay, pick up ears of corn, remove bread, knead dough, ruffle hemp; those who live in holes barely covered with straw, mixed with livestock, children and men; those, finally, who don’t care who they have children with? The only vocation of these creatures is to give birth to as many sons and daughters as possible, doomed to live a life of poverty; As for love, for them, if it is not labor, like field work, then it is always a subject of bargaining.
Alas! if there are shopkeepers in the world who spend their days between a tallow candle and a loaf of sugar, farmers who milk cows, sufferers who work in factories or, like beasts of burden, wander along the roads with baskets, hoes and trays; if, unfortunately, there is in the world a whole crowd of vulgar creatures for whom the life of the soul, the blessings of education, the delightful storms of the heart are an unattainable paradise, then the writer of Physiology cannot help but classify them all as orangutans, even if nature has given them a hyoid bone, a beak-shaped process of the scapula and thirty-two vertebrae! We are writing this book only for idle people, for those who have the time and desire to love, for the rich who have acquired ardent passions as their property, for minds that have a monopoly on chimeras. Cursed be everything that is not animated by thought! Let's shout "raka!" and even “racalia” to everyone who is not hot, not young, not beautiful and not passionate. In this way we will express aloud the secret feelings of philanthropists who can read and ride in a carriage. Of course, the tax collector, the official, the legislator and the priest see our nine million female outcasts as taxpayers, petitioners, subjects and flocks, but the feeling man, the boudoir philosopher, although not averse to tasting the bun baked by these creatures, will not include them as we have already said, in the category of Women. Such a philosopher honors as women only those persons who can inspire love; worthy of attention - only those persons to whom careful education has imparted the sacred ability to think, and an idle life has sharpened the imagination; finally, truly alive - only those persons whose soul seeks in love not only physical, but also spiritual pleasures.
Let us note, however, that nine million female pariahs continually produce peasant girls who, by a strange accident, grow up as beautiful as angels; These beauties settle in Paris and other big cities, where some of them eventually turn into society ladies; however, for two or three thousand of these chosen ones, there are hundreds of thousands of others, whose destiny is to be handmaids or indulge in vile debauchery. Still, we will include the village Marquis de Pompadour among the female half of society.
Our first calculation comes from statistics, according to which France is inhabited by eighteen million poor people, ten million wealthy people and two million rich people.
So, in France there are only six million women to whom men who know how to feel pay, have paid and will pay attention.
Let us look at this chosen society through the eyes of a philosopher. We have the right to assume with a high degree of probability that spouses who have lived side by side for two decades can sleep peacefully, without fear that their family peace will be disturbed by criminal passion and a shameful accusation of adultery. Therefore, from six million women, we should subtract approximately two million ladies who are extremely amiable, because by the age of forty they had learned what light is, but are not capable of exciting anyone’s heart and, therefore, are not subject to our consideration. If, despite all their politeness, these ladies have the misfortune of not attracting anyone's attention, they are overcome by boredom; they devote themselves to religion, cats and dogs, and do not offend anyone except the Lord with their whims.
According to the calculations of the Bureau of Longitudes, we are obliged to subtract from the total number of women two million damned pretty little girls; comprehending the basics of life, they play with the boys in their innocence, not suspecting that the young “supplements” who make them laugh today will make them shed tears tomorrow.
As a result of all the previous deductions we arrive at a figure of two million; What reasonable reader would not agree that for this number of women there are no less than a hundred thousand poor things, hunchbacked, ugly, consumptive, rickety, sick, blind, crippled, poor, although excellently brought up and for all these reasons remaining maidens, and as a result of this in no way offending the sacred laws of marriage?
But will anyone argue with us if we say that another four hundred thousand girls are entering the community of St. Camilla, becoming nuns, sisters of mercy, governesses, companions, etc.? To this sacred army we will add those young ladies who are already too old to play with the boys, but still too young to acquire orange blossom wreaths; It is impossible to accurately determine the number of these young ladies.
Finally, now that there are one and a half million women left in our crucible, we will subtract another five hundred thousand from this number; So many, in our opinion, live in France of the daughters of Baal, delighting the leisure of people who are not too picky. Moreover, without fear that kept women, milliners, saleswomen, haberdashers, actresses, singers, dancers, dancers, maids, maids, etc. become corrupted by such proximity, we will classify them all in the same category. Most of these persons excite very ardent passions, but find it indecent to notify the notary, the mayor, the priest and secular scoffers about the day and hour when they give themselves to their lover. The way of life of these creatures, rightly condemned by an inquisitive society, has the advantage that it frees them from any obligations to men, Mr. Mayor and justice. These women do not break any public vows, and therefore are not subject to consideration in our work, which is devoted exclusively to legal marriage.
Our latest category may seem too skimpy to some, unlike the previous ones, which some fans may consider too bloated. If someone loves a rich widow so passionately that he absolutely wants to include her in the remaining million, let him cross her off the list of nurses, dancers or hunchbacks. In addition, when determining the number of women belonging to the last category, we took into account that, as already mentioned, many peasant women join its ranks. It is exactly the same with working women and petty traders: the women born into these two classes are the fruit of the efforts made by nine million Two-armed female creatures in order to rise to the highest levels of civilization. We were obliged to act with the utmost integrity, otherwise many would have considered our Reflection on Marriage Statistics to be simply a joke.
We thought about setting up a small storehouse for thousands of a hundred individuals and putting in there women who found themselves in an intermediate position, such as widows, but in the end we decided that this would be too petty.
It is not difficult to prove the correctness of our calculations; One single reasoning is enough.
A woman’s life is divided into three completely different periods: the first begins from the cradle and ends when the girl reaches marriageable age, the second is given over to marriage, the third comes when a woman reaches a critical age and Nature rather rudely reminds her that the time of passions has passed. These three spheres of existence are approximately equal in duration, and this gives us the right to divide the original number of women into three equal parts. Scientists can calculate as they please, but we believe that out of six million women, a third will be girls from one year to eighteen years old, a third will be women not younger than eighteen years old and not older than forty, and a third will be old women. The vagaries of the social condition have divided two million women of marriageable age into three categories, namely, those who, for the reasons mentioned above, remain maidens, those whose virtue little worries their husbands, and, finally, those spouses. , of which there are approximately a million and which we just have to deal with.
End of introductory fragment.
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The given introductory fragment of the book Minor Troubles of Married Life (collection) (Honoré de Balzac, 1846) provided by our book partner -
Balzac always wrote about marriage and adultery, but in the two works included in our collection, he wrote especially in detail. These works frame the work of Balzac. “The Physiology of Marriage,” published at the end of December 1829 with the date 1830 on the cover, became the second (after the novel “The Last Chouan, or Brittany in 1800,” published in the same 1829) work that Balzac was ready to recognize as his – in contrast to numerous early novels published under pseudonyms in the 1820s. Moreover, if the first edition of “Chuang” did not live up to the author’s hopes, then “The Physiology of Marriage” was a great and noisy success. The importance Balzac attached to “Physiology” is evidenced by the fact that when in 1845 he began to summarize his work and compile the final catalog of “The Human Comedy”, he placed it at the very end, in the section “Analytical Etudes”, crowning the entire huge structure. As for “Minor Troubles of Married Life,” Balzac worked on them, intermittently, for many years, publishing them in parts, but they took their final book form in 1846, four years before the writer’s death.
Each of the two works included in our collection has its own rather intricate creative history. Let's start with the "Physiology of Marriage".
Balzac himself, two decades later, in the preface to the “Treatise on Modern Aphrodisiacs” (1839), wrote that the idea of creating a book about marriage originated with him back in 1820. In June 1826, he purchased a printing house on the Rue Marais-Saint-Germain (he owned it until 1828), and already in July he submitted a declaration of intention to print there a book entitled “The Physiology of Marriage, or Reflections on Conjugal Happiness”; According to this declaration, the book was to be published in a thousand copies, but a single copy has reached us, apparently printed in August-September 1826, when the printing house had few orders. This early version, which consisted of thirteen Reflections and on which Balzac had been working since 1824, was not completed, but from its text it is clear that by this time Balzac’s mind had already formed a plan for the entire work, quite close to the final version (in the written chapters contain references to those that appeared only in “Physiology” of 1829).
Biographical circumstances pushed Balzac to think about marriage and adultery. On the one hand, his mother was unfaithful to his father, and the fruit of one of her infidelities was Balzac’s younger brother Henri, whom Madame de Balzac spoiled and openly preferred to her other children: Honore and two daughters, Laura and Laurence. On the other hand, the mistress of twenty-three-year-old bachelor Honore de Balzac in 1822 became forty-five-year-old Laura de Bernis, a married woman, mother of nine children, very unhappy in her legal marriage.
Although something (apparently urgent printing orders) distracted Balzac and he did not finish the book, the desire to finish “The Physiology of Marriage” did not leave the writer, and in the spring of 1829, after the release of “The Last Chouan,” he returned to work on it. In August, he already promised the publisher Levavasseur to finish the book by November 15th. In reality, by November 10, he completed work on the first volume, which included 16 Reflections, which were a more or less thorough revision of the “Physiology” of 1826 (the original text was expanded mainly through inserted short stories and anecdotes). Before December 15, that is, in almost one month (!), Balzac composed the entire second part of the book (Reflections from the 17th to the 30th, as well as the Introduction), and already on the 20th of December 1829 the book went on sale .
The title printed on its title page deserves a separate comment. It read: “The Physiology of Marriage, or Eclectic Reflections on the Joys and Sorrows of Married Life, Published by a Young Bachelor.” Let's start from the end - with a reference to the “young bachelor”. As you can see, the publication is anonymous; Balzac’s name is not on the title page. However, this anonymity can be called illusory. Although in the preface to the first edition of “Shagreen Skin” (1831), Balzac himself wrote about “Physiology”:
Some attribute it to an old doctor, others to a dissolute courtier from the time of Madame de Pompadour or a misanthrope who has lost all illusions because in his entire life he has not met a single woman worthy of respect -
For literary circles, Balzac's authorship was no secret. In addition, he lifts the mask in the text of “Physiology” itself: in the first edition, under the “Introduction” there was the signature of O. B...k, and in the text the author mentions his patron, Saint Honore (p. 286). Balzac's initials are also mentioned in several reviews of the book that appeared in early 1830. The words “published by a young bachelor” disappeared from subsequent editions; they were replaced by the traditional reference to Balzac as the author.
Now it is necessary to explain, firstly, why the word “Physiology” appears in the title of the book, which can evoke in readers expectations of some truly physiological revelations (expectations are not entirely justified, since, although Balzac repeatedly and quite clearly hints at the necessity of not only moral, but there is still much more sexual harmony between spouses, psychology and sociology in his book than physiology itself), and, secondly, why the thoughts are called “eclectic”. Balzac owes both to a book published four years earlier under the title “Physiology of Taste.” But about it a little later, first we need to talk about other literary predecessors of “The Physiology of Marriage”.
In the second half of the 1820s, small books became widespread, on the covers of which there was the word “Code” (“Code of Conversation”, “Code of Gallantry”, etc.) or the expression “On ways” to do this or that: “ About ways to tie a tie”, “About ways to receive New Year’s gifts, but not make them yourself”, etc.). Publications of this type have been popular in France since the 18th century, but in the mid-1820s their popularity was promoted by the writer Horace-Napoleon Resson (1798–1854), who wrote them himself or in collaboration; one of his co-authors was Balzac, who wrote (by order and, possibly, with the participation of Resson) “The Code of Decent People, or On Ways to Avoid Being Deceived by Scammers” (1825). Taking as a model the Civil Code adopted in France in 1804 on the initiative of Napoleon, the authors of these books prescribed to readers (half in jest, but half seriously) certain forms of behavior in society, explained how to behave at the ball and at the table, how to communicate in love, how to repay debts or borrow, etc., etc. From the “Code of Courteous Manners” (1828) and the “Code of Conversation” (1829) you can learn a lot of useful and/or witty information: for example, that the width of the space between the address “Sir” and the text of the letter depends on the nobility of the addressee, or what good manners dictate Under no circumstances should you engage in conversation with fellow travelers on public transport, much less scold the city authorities, because you can get yourself into big trouble, or that “a visit should be responded to with a visit, like a slap in the face - with a blow from a sword.” The ratio of serious and humorous changed from one “Code” to another; for example, the “Code of the Writer and Journalist”, published in 1829 by the same Resson, is formally a set of advice for those who want to make a living through literary work, but in fact many of its pages are nothing more than ridicule of the genres and styles of modern literature . This combination (serious advice in a clownish presentation) was inherited from “Codes” by Balzac’s “Physiology of Marriage.”
Minor troubles of married life (collection) - description and summary, author de Balzac Honore, read for free online on the website of the electronic library website
Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) wrote about marriage throughout his life, but two of his works deal specifically with this topic. “The Physiology of Marriage” (1829) is a witty treatise on the war of the sexes. Here are all the means a husband can resort to to avoid becoming a cuckold. However, Balzac looks gloomily at the prospects of marriage: sooner or later, the wife will still cheat on her husband, and at best he will get “rewards” in the form of delicious food or a high position. "Small Troubles of Married Life" (1846) depicts marriage from a different perspective. Here Balzac talks about family everyday life: from tender feelings the spouses move on to cooling, and only those couples who have arranged a marriage of four are happy. The author himself called this book “hermaphrodite”, since the story is told first from a male and then from a female point of view. In addition, this book is experimental: Balzac invites the reader to choose the characteristics of the characters themselves and mentally fill in the gaps in the text. Both works are published in translation and with notes by Vera Milchina, leading researcher at STEPS RANEPA and IVGI RSUH. The translation of “The Physiology of Marriage,” first published in 1995, has been significantly revised for this edition; The translation of “Minor Troubles” is published for the first time.