Z. Marcas
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Honoré de Balzac
Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) was a French novelist, short story writer, and playwright. Regarded as one of the key figures of French and European literature, Balzac’s realist approach to writing would influence Charles Dickens, Émile Zola, Henry James, Gustave Flaubert, and Karl Marx. With a precocious attitude and fierce intellect, Balzac struggled first in school and then in business before dedicating himself to the pursuit of writing as both an art and a profession. His distinctly industrious work routine—he spent hours each day writing furiously by hand and made extensive edits during the publication process—led to a prodigious output of dozens of novels, stories, plays, and novellas. La Comédie humaine, Balzac’s most famous work, is a sequence of 91 finished and 46 unfinished stories, novels, and essays with which he attempted to realistically and exhaustively portray every aspect of French society during the early-nineteenth century.
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Z. Marcas - Honoré de Balzac
Honoré de Balzac
Z. Marcas
EAN 8596547384168
DigiCat, 2022
Contact: DigiCat@okpublishing.info
Table of Contents
Translated by Clara Bell and Others
Z. MARCAS ADDENDUM
Z. MARCAS
ADDENDUM
The following personage appears in other stories of the Human Comedy.
Translated by Clara Bell and Others
Table of Contents
DEDICATION
To His Highness Count William of Wurtemberg, as a token of the
Author’s respectful gratitude.
DE BALZAC.
Table of Contents
Z. MARCAS
ADDENDUM
Table of Contents
Z. MARCAS
Table of Contents
I never saw anybody, not even among the most remarkable men of the day, whose appearance was so striking as this man’s; the study of his countenance at first gave me a feeling of great melancholy, and at last produced an almost painful impression.
There was a certain harmony between the man and his name. The Z. preceding Marcas, which was seen on the addresses of his letters, and which he never omitted from his signature, as the last letter of the alphabet, suggested some mysterious fatality.
MARCAS! say this two-syllabled name again and again; do you not feel as if it had some sinister meaning? Does it not seem to you that its owner must be doomed to martyrdom? Though foreign, savage, the name has a right to be handed down to posterity; it is well constructed, easily pronounced, and has the brevity that beseems a famous name. Is it not pleasant as well as odd? But does it not sound unfinished?
I will not take it upon myself to assert that names have no influence on the destiny of men. There is a certain secret and inexplicable concord or a visible discord between the events of a man’s life and his name which is truly surprising; often some remote but very real correlation is revealed. Our globe is round; everything is linked to everything else. Some day perhaps we shall revert to the occult sciences.
Do you not discern in that letter Z an adverse influence? Does it not prefigure the wayward and fantastic progress of a storm-tossed life? What wind blew on that letter, which, whatever language we find it in, begins scarcely fifty words? Marcas’ name was Zephirin; Saint Zephirin is highly venerated in Brittany, and Marcas was a Breton.
Study the name once more: Z Marcas! The man’s whole life lies in this fantastic juxtaposition of seven letters; seven! the most significant of all the cabalistic numbers. And he died at five-and-thirty, so his life extended over seven lustres.
Marcas! Does it not hint of some precious object that is broken with a fall, with or without a crash?
I had finished studying the law in Paris in 1836. I lived at that time in the Rue Corneille in a house where none but students came to lodge, one of those large houses where there is a winding staircase