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Epilogue:
Balzac’s Vision of Paris
Balzac’s Paris was
a very different place from Paris today. And yet, as
he animates the monuments and places of his time with
characters like Lucien de Rubempré and Raphael
de Valentin, who aspire not only to move within that
world, but to change it according to their desires,
he offers us a vision of Paris that is fundamentally
dynamic. This vision describes the forces that, under
Napoléon III and Haussmann, were to change the
Parisian landscape radically and give us the dynamic
city we have today.
Balzac’s
Paris reached its culmination in the time
of Louis-Philippe. Perhaps Balzac’s most famous
meditation of the nature of Louis-Philippe’s Paris
is found in the opening pages of his novel La Fille
aux yeux d’or (1835). It presents a tableau of
incessant dynamism, one that is in complete contrast
with the serene, static, eternally classic vision of
Félix Dubin, notably in the Medallion of monuments
we have seen before. Here is Balzac’s summation
of Paris, which ends with a question:
Paris n’est-il pas un vaste champ incessament
remué par une tempête d’intérêts
sous laquelle tourbillone une moisson d’hommes
que la mort fauche plus souvent qu’ailleurs et
qui renaissait toujours aussi serrés, dont les
visages contournés, tordus, rendent par tous
les pores l’esprit, les désirs, les poisons
dont sont engrossés leurs cerveaux ; non pas
les visages, mais bien des masques : masques de faiblesse,
masques de force, masques de misère, masques
de joie, masques d’hypocrisie : tous éxtenués,
tous empreints des signes ineffaçables d’une
haletante avidité ? Que veulent-ils ? De l’or,
ou du plaisir ? (Pléiade, I, 255)
[Paris, is it not a vast field, endlessly buffeted
by a storm of interests, a storm at whose center there
whirls a crop of human beings that death reaps more
often than elsewhere, but which springs up anew, with
ever increasing frequency. Ever packed together, their
faces contorted and twisted, they exude through every
pore their desires, their wit, the poisons that swell
their brains; these are not faces, but masks—masks
of strength, of  weakness, of misery, of joy, of hypocrisy—all
exhausted, all marked with the indelible signs of breathless
avidity. What are they seeking? Is it money, or pleasure?]
A final set of images offers a concluding perspective
on the transformation of Paris during the 19th century,
from a city to the monumental capital of the world.
We need only compare three sequential views of the Arc
de Triomphe, the monument that anchors our visit to
Balzac’s Paris as it does the
itinerary of the modern tourist.
 The two flanking images we have already seen: Dubin’s
1837 monument in its bucolic setting, with Ledoux’s
serene barrière in
full sight; and the view of the Place de l’Arc
de Triomphe, Barrière de l’Etoile c. 1864,
where the barrière
abides in name only and where we see the modern Place
de l’Etoile taking shape, with some of Hittorff’s
symmetrical buildings (1860-1868) already ringing the
Place.
 The middle image, however, is a fitting reminder both
of the energy and passion for change generated during
Balzac’s lifetime and the eventual result of that
energy—the radical transformation under Haussmann
of the Parisian landscape. This image, taken from Edwards,
Old and New Paris, I, 126, shows the demolition
of Ledoux’s tollgates, which took place in 1860.
What emerges from this tearing down, if we move our
eyes from left to right across these images, is modern
Paris, a journey from the strange to the familiar.
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