Balzac Between Work and Play: Les Comédiens sans le savoir

Abstract

Work is a recurrent, even obsessive, theme in Balzac's fiction and correspondence. In the fiction one needs to go no further than recall Balzac's stigmatization of the indolent sculptor, Wenceslas Steinbock, incapable of sustained, motivated effort when '[l]e travail constant est la loi de l'art comme celle de la vie'. 2 In the correspondence with Mme Hanska, Balzac's references to his toil are constant, from '[i]l ne va y avoir que toi, le travail, le travail et toi' in October 1833 to his insistence in August 1848: 'Je ne peux plus vous dire autre chose que je vous aime et que je travaille, que je travaille et que je vous aime.' 3 Although these latter statements seem to simply juxtapose, even contrast, work and love, the letters to Mme Hanska are ample evidence that love, too, is a labour, which needs sustaining through a constant flow of effusive, cajoling or propitiatory letters and that work is not only motivated by love ('je travaille surtout pour pouvoir vous aimer, vous adorer, en paix' 4 ) but is itself highly sexualized: 'Allons, idole de mon âme, il faut te quitter pour essayer de ce que j'appelle la masturbation du cerveau! C'est effrayant, mais il faut le réveiller à tout prix.' 5 This cross-fertilization of sex, work and writing is, moreover, shot through with a sense of play -not only the play of their mutual 'coquetterie épistolaire', 6 nor simply the plays that are sometimes used as envelopes for their