Honore de Balzac (in Pere Lachaise Cemetery) - Grave of a Famous Person on Waymarking.com

Critically writing of the Napoleonic empire and French Revolution, the new bourgeois monarch Louis Philippe frames the context for his major works. He explores themes of man and his place in society and the influences of his environment, politics, love, and wealth. He also discusses art, literature, and metaphysics. Though not for a lack of imagination, a number of characters recur in his novels including Eugène Rastigniac and Henri de Marsay.

While Balzac also had ambitions for life in the theatre and politics, he is best known for ranking highly with fellow French realist Gustave Flaubert as a major contributor to the movement. He was a friend of Alexandre Dumas and influenced Emile Zola, Marcel Proust, and Guy de Maupassant. He was inspired by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy, and studied the works of and was friends with Sir Walter Scott, who said that Balzac’s writing was “observation and imagination”, a difficult balance he seemed to have mastered. Some of his historical novels are similar to the Gothic romances of Ann Radcliffe’s. His works have inspired numerous adaptations to the stage and film and are still widely read and studied.

Born in 1799 on Saint Honoré’s day, 20 May, in Tours, France, Balzac would only later add the French particle de to his name though it is not clear why. He was the son of Anne Charlotte Laure Sallambier and Bernard François Balssa (d.1829) who among many other positions worked as secretary to the King’s Council.

Balzac’s early years were spent away from home before he entered grammar school in Tours. He then attended the Collège de Vendôme before moving to Paris in 1816 to study law at the Sorbonne. Upon matriculation he worked as a notary’s clerk, but, against his father’s wishes he turned to a career in writing.

As a journalist, Balzac wrote essays on various topics including politics which garnered much of his attention, while working on his short stories and novels. Extremely poor and living in a garret in Paris, he published under pseudonyms including `Lord R'hoone’, an anagram of Honoré. A nocturnal writer drinking copious amounts of coffee, he also tried his hand at dramas including Paméla Giraud. While relations were somewhat strained with the rest of his family he maintained a correspondence with his sister Laure, later known as Madame Surville. He also dabbled in numerous business ventures as publisher and printer, though they failed and saddled him with debts for years to come.

Balzac lived and wrote mostly at his villa in Sèvres in his later years, though he traveled often.

Honoré de Balzac died on 18 August, 1850, and lies buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, France. Long time friend Victor Hugo delivered the eulogy; “Henceforth men's eyes will be turned towards the faces not of those who are the rulers but of those who are the thinkers.” His grave is adorned with a bronze sculpture by Pierre Jean David Angers, and Auguste Rodin also memorialised his likeness in a bronze bust now housed at the Victoria and Albert museum in London, England.

Description: Along with Flaubert, he is generally regarded as a founding father of realism in European literature. Date of birth: 05/20/1799 Date of death: 08/18/1850 Area of notoriety: Literature Marker Type: Statue Setting: Outdoor Visiting Hours/Restrictions: 09:00 - 17:30 Fee required?: No Web site: Not listed

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