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2 unusual facts about Balzac


Balzac, Alberta

Balzac Billy, a Groundhog Day prognosticator, resides in the town, and is considered one of Canada's most prominent forecasting groundhogs (Shubenacadie Sam and Wiarton Willie being among the others).

Bert Brown

Bert Brown (born March 22, 1938) is a former Canadian senator and retired farmer and development consultant currently residing in Balzac, Alberta.


Albert Dubout

Dubout continued on to illustrate numerous editions of books by Boileau, Beaumarchais, Mérimée, Rabelais, Villon, Cervantes, Balzac, Racine, Voltaire, Rostand, Poe, and Courteline.

Alfredo Pareja Diezcanseco

Other major literary influences included the Greek Classics, Balzac, Dostoievski, Thomas Mann, Will Durant and Arnold Toynbee.

Aram Haigaz

He worked as an apprentice photo-engraver at the New York newspaper, The Daily Mirror, and studied English at night, reading extensively the great world and American classics – from Kipling and Balzac to Poe.

Balzac v. Porto Rico

Balzac wrote an article referring indirectly to the colonial governor at the time, Arthur Yager; the article was considered libelous by the authorities.

Country Doctor

Le Médecin de campagne (English: The Country Doctor), an 1833 novel by Honoré de Balzac

Ellen Marriage

A. R. Waller, a critic who was a neighbour of the Marriage family, suggested she do translations when he proposed to the London publisher J. M. Dent that his firm embark on the first complete edition of Balzac's immense novel cycle La Comédie humaine.

Ferragus: Chief of the Devorants

Die Dreizen (The Thirteen), a film version (1918) of Balzac's novel by Alfred Halm

Illusions perdues

Lucien is about to commit suicide when he is approached by a sham Jesuit priest, the Abbé Carlos Herrera: this, in another guise, is the escaped convict Vautrin whom Balzac had already presented in Le Père Goriot.

Isabelle Aboulker

To celebrate the second centenary of Honoré de Balzac’s birth that same year she was commissioned by the Grand Theatre in Tours to write the comic opera Monsieur de Balzac fait son theatre.

Jean-Pierre Dantan

His subjects include many famous figures from the realms of politics (for example, Talleyrand, William Douglas), music and the arts (Beethoven, Paganini, Verdi, Liszt, Berlioz), and literature (Victor Hugo, Balzac).

La Bourse

Music: Gambara, in which is described a quasi-mathematical creation of a musical work of art, and in which Balzac also gives us a meticulous analysis of one of Giacomo Meyerbeer's operas.

Balzac also portrays in this short novel a social category to which he often returns in La Comédie humaine: the forgotten victims of Napoleon.

La Duchesse de Langeais

Dedicated to Franz Liszt, this portrait of a vain representative of the noble families of Faubourg Saint-Germain, was inspired by the Duchess of Castries with whom Balzac had a failed romance.

La Mort de Balzac

The second chapter traces the history of Balzac’s long liaison with Éveline Hanska, highlighting the redhibitory misunderstanding that jeopardized this relationship from the start.

La Mort de Balzac (The Death of Balzac) by Octave Mirbeau is a collection of three sub-chapters that were initially intended to appear in Mirbeau’s La 628-E8, in November 1907, but were then withdrawn at the last moment at the request of the 80-year daughter of Madame Hanska, the Countess of Mniszech.

Le Bal de Sceaux

In writing this novella Balzac seems to have been inspired by the fables of La Fontaine, especially La fille ("The Girl") and Héron ("The Heron").

Le Chef-d'œuvre inconnu

It appeared again later in the same year under the title "Catherine Lescault, conte fantastique." It was published in Balzac's Études philosophiques in 1837 and was integrated into the La Comédie humaine in 1846.

Les Proscrits

Wayne Conner, « En marge des Proscrits : Vigny lecteur de Balzac », L'Année balzacienne, 1974, p.

Lost Illusions

Illusions perdues, serial novel published by Honoré de Balzac between 1837 and 1843

Musée Picasso

The occupants have included the Embassy of the Republic of Venice (1671), then François de Neufville, duc de Villeroi; it was expropriated by the State during the French Revolution; in 1815 it became a school, in which Balzac studied; it also housed the municipal École des Métiers d'Art.

Pecunia non olet

"Vespasian's axiom" is referred to in passing in the Balzac short story Sarrasine in connection with the mysterious origins of the wealth of a Parisian family.

Pont-de-Ruan

It is known for picturesque water mills and goat cheese, and Balzac champions its beauty in The Lily of the Valley.

Psycho in the Wax Museum

The single was only available via an offer from Misfits Records where proofs of purchase had to be sent in from Osaka Popstar's Osaka Popstar and the American Legends of Punk, Balzac's Beyond the Darkness and The Misfits' Project 1950.

Roland Barthes

In his S/Z (1970), Barthes applies this notion in an analysis of a short story by Balzac called Sarrasine.

Romantic realism

Fyodor Dostoyevsky is described as a romantic realist in Donald Fanger's book, Dostoevsky and Romantic Realism: A Study of Dostoevsky in Relation to Balzac, Dickens, and Gogol.

Sword of the Berserk: Guts' Rage

Earl Boen as Balzac (Note: Tony Jay is often mistaken to have voiced Balzac due to both actors sharing the same baritone voice.)

Un début dans la vie

Balzac wrote Un début dans la vie during one of his many visits to the commune of L'Isle-Adam in Val-d'Oise, a few kilometres north of Paris.

Yves Beauchemin

The panoramic canvases of his novels capture the teeming life of the streets, reflecting their author's appreciation of such great nineteenth-century writers as Balzac, Dickens, Dostoevsky and Gogol.

Z. Marcas

In the summer of 1840, Balzac had a discussion with his friend Léon Gozlan about the power of a person's name.


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