# Primary Sources on Copyright - Record Viewer
Balzac's letter to authors, Paris (1834)

Source: Association pour la conservation et la reproduction photographique de la presse (ACRPP) : Revue de Paris, Nouvelle Série - Année 1834, tome XI

Citation:
Balzac's letter to authors, Paris (1834), Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900), eds L. Bently & M. Kretschmer, www.copyrighthistory.org

Back | Record | Images | No Commentaries
Translation only | Transcription only | Show all | Bundled images as pdf
21 translated pages
Chapter 1 Page 1


PRO ARIS ET FOCIS.*
________

LETTER ADDRESSED

to

THE FRENCH WRITERS OF THE 19TH CENTURY.

________


                                                            Paris, 1 November, 1834.

                              Gentlemen,

      Some great questions concerning both general and individual interests have arisen in the
Republic of letters. Each one of you is aware of them, you talk about them amongst yourselves, yet no
one dares to complain in public or to suggest a remedy for our ills. However, the more we allow time
to pass, the greater this grievance becomes and the more our private interests have to suffer. Now,
when we suffer, it is our misfortune that it is not just we who suffer on our own, for the mind of a
country is the whole country. This is something that our country should take into account. A writer
nowadays, not wishing to be in debt to anyone other than to himself, is forced to take care of his own
interests, and his |

_______

*) Lat. ‘For Altar and Hearth’, an expression indicating that the subject to be
discussed is one which is very close to the author’s own interests.


Chapter 1 Page 2


[REVUE DE PARIS                  63]

interests are tied to those of the French book trade, which is in its death throes. Thus, it has never been
more necessary than now that a voice should raise itself, that someone should speak up for our citta
dolente [it. ‘city of woe’ – from Dante’s evocation of hell in The Divine Comedy], as Beaumarchais
did in his time on behalf of dramatic authors, whose rights were finally secured thanks to him. We
have no other qualification to take the floor in this matter than the very state of necessity in which we
find ourselves. Each one of you will therefore hopefully forgive all the faults committed here out of
haste and look indulgently on the style of this manifesto, which was drawn up hurriedly by a man who
is short of time in which to accomplish all his tasks.

      At no other point in history has the artist been protected so little as now. In no other century
have the masses been as intelligent as in ours, at no other time has thought been as powerful as it is
now; and yet never before has the artist counted for so little as is the case now. The French
Revolution, which sprung up so that countless previously ignored rights would be recognized, has
plunged you into a state of subjection to a barbarous law. It declared your works to be public
properties, almost as if it had been foreseeing that literature and the fine arts would emigrate from
France. Of course, there is a great idea at the heart of this law. For it must undoubtedly have been very
charming to see society say to genius: “You will enrich us, and you will remain poor.” That is namely
how things had been for a long time, but, likewise, kings and nations had for many centuries also
allowed themselves ovations and belated honours which the Revolution refused to recognize
altogether for men of superior rank. The triumphs which it assigned as a reward for genius consisted
of the guillotine: as you know, it granted such an accolade to one of France’s greatest poets – to
André Chénier, just as it did to Lavoisier and to Malesherbes. The press, despite enjoying such
freedom at the time, remained silent. A terrible lesson which shows us that peoples are in need not
just of good institutions, but also of morals. “We must have morals!” is Rousseau’s great battle-cry.

      Thus, Sirs, you the poets, the musicians, the dramatists, the writers of prose, all those who
live by thought, who work for the glory of the country, who are destined to shape the age we live in;
both those who soar upwards from the lap of misery in order to bask in the sun of glory, and those
who, diffident in their flight, are beset by doubts and perish – poor children encumbered with
illusions! – and those who, full of determination, do triumph – all of you are declared incapable of
leaving behind |

Chapter 1 Page 3


[REVUE DE PARIS                  64]

legitimate heirs [se succéder a eux-mêmes]. THE LAW, full of respect for the merchant’s cargo, for
the écus acquired through work that is physical in some way or other, and often by dint of vile actions,
the law protects landed property, it protects the house of the proletarian who has toiled and sweated –
but it confiscates the work [ouvrage] of the poet who has been thinking. If in this world there is one
property that is sacred, if there is one thing that can belong to man, then is it not that which man
creates between heaven and earth, that which has no other roots than in his intelligence and which
flourishes in all hearts? Divine and human laws, the modest laws of commonsense, all the laws speak
in our favour – only by suspending them all has it been possible to rob us in this way. We bring
treasures to a country which it would otherwise not have – treasures that are independent of the soil
and of social transactions – and as a reward for this, the most demanding of all types of work, the
country confiscates its produce. It looks on without shame as the descendants of Corneille, all of them
poor, gather round the statue of Corneille, which has created wealth in all the barns of this country,
which brings forth harvests that no patch of bad weather can threaten, which over the centuries will
continue to make rich actors, booksellers, paper manufacturers, bookbinders, and scholarly
commentators. Repeat to yourselves this sight and apply it to all your geniuses, o you cities full of
compassion for those who suffer no more! Repeat it every day, and you will cease to hesitate as to
whether you should save those who are suffering!

      This disinheritance has an odious side to it which no one has emphasized as yet. Eloquent
pens will take up this matter; all we will do is to give an indication of it. Gentlemen, here it is you that
I am addressing – you, an intelligent breed of people for whom certain ideas have but one side to
them, and who therefore accept them unquestioningly, is that not so? Many great geniuses have been
ahead of their time by centuries, some talents are ahead merely by a few years. Yesterday the sun rose
for Vico, tomorrow it will rise for Balanche. Very few men can, like Voltaire and Chateaubriand, see
their glory bask [soleiller], as our ancestors would have put it, whilst they are still alive. The age of
Louis XIV, whose public was an exclusive and choice set, was nevertheless supremely unjust towards
its great men. For sixteen years Racine had to exhaust his feather. Nobody, in that great age,
harboured any doubts about Perrault’s glory, of whom today we admire [only] |

Chapter 1 Page 4


[REVUE DE PARIS                  65]

his naivety as a storyteller. Nobody then was able to recognize the tremendously sublime and bold
epigram which La Fontaine penned against Louis XIV in his fable about The Wedding of the Sun.* This
fellow, having become ever bolder, was able to cry without being thrown into the Bastille: “Our enemy
is our master!”** In the century preceding ours, in which the number of intelligent readers increased
considerably, it is worth noting that if Montesquieu hadn’t been wealthy, his De l’esprit des lois
would have left him impoverished – he would have been forced to produced more Lettres persanes in
order to survive. I won’t tell you about the misfortunes of Paul et Virginie, which was rejected by one
publisher after the other, nor about the first edition of [Chateaubriand’s] Génie du Christianisme,
which the Ballanche brothers dared to publish: there at least it was a case of genius believing in
genius. An author’s début in print is a first misfortune which all of you have experienced more or less,
a wound which will no doubt heal eventually. Men of a truly superior frame of mind should not be
resentful or envious. And yet, gentlemen!, the law under whose rule we all have to die seizes from the
family of the thinker, or poet, or playwright, who has perished in abject poverty, his treatise, his
poetry, his book, his comedy, his drama, at the very moment that the day of his success is due to shine
forth. The law takes these away from them with one hand to give them away with the other… And to
whom, do you think? Oh, savages would laugh about this! Dare we to publish it? Well, why not, this
is not a lasting work anyway… So here’s the answer: the law gives them to the booksellers! A man of
talent cannot console himself with the following thought in his death throes: “If I die, at least my
children, my family and relatives will live happily thanks to my glory!” Mankind has perpetuated
fortunes for the eldest sons of great families, for the youngest children of bankers; it has stipulated the
hereditariness of [property earned by] sweat; but it has disinherited the brains and vigils of writers.
Since long ago nothing has been guaranteed [to writers] on the basis of these immortal rights of
succession, but the monarchs of the past had a palace within their palace, a treasury within their
treasury, that they would make available to the princes of the word, whom they sometimes dressed up
in their Imperial purple, whom they liked to blindfold.*** Nowadays, in contrast, Rudolph of Habsburg
has a harsh prison waiting for Pellico. Nowadays the King of Prussia, the Tsars of Russia abjure the
traditions of Catherine and Frederick.**** Nowadays France pays men dressed in black to spy on and stamp
[permissions] onto works of the mind. Finally, the heir of the eighteenth century and the Revolution,
the heir presumptive of the press continues this occupation after July,^ amidst the still smoking ruins
of the monarchy, which |

_______

*) Balzac is referring to Le Soleil et les Grenouilles – The Sun and the Frogs.

**) From another of La Fontaine’s Fables: Le Vieillard et l’Âne – The Old Man and the
Donkey.

***) An allusion to Goethe’s Torquato Tasso, in which the great poet is shown these tokens of favour by his
patron, the Duke of Ferrara.

****) Both monarchs were notable literary patrons.

^) The July Revolution of 1830.

Chapter 1 Page 5


[REVUE DE PARIS                  66]

came tumbling down as a result of its attempt to reshape the intellectual, moral, religious, and political
worlds by a deliberate oppression of free thought, since it was unable to govern in step with the latter.
Gentlemen of yesteryear, who has made you kings? Intelligence is a lady of far higher rank than the
Counts of Tours with all their territorial power, would you imagine! Thinking comes from God, and it
is to Him that it eventually returns; it is situated on a higher plane than the kings and rulers of this
world, for it can make and unmake them. Napoleon, who in everything he did showed a certain
greatness, instituted the Prix Decennaux.* Where are these Prix Decennaux now? The Revolution has robbed
us for the future; and the true kings, the kings who had been on the throne sufficiently long to be able
to think about us in the present – those kings have vanished. Raphael today wouldn’t find a Julius II.
What we have instead are the Chambers [of Deputies and the Senate]. Oh! Sirs, the Chambers which,
instead of a ceiling decorated by Ingres, would rather have clouds on top of their heads – these Chambers,
haven’t they said “Raca” to you a hundred times?** The Académie, the only established literary corporation,
is incapable of taking up our defence; it is not allowed to consider [such matters], words are the only
things it can act upon. All this induces us to point out to you that we can never count on the Chambers
or on the Académie. The law is not only atheist, it is also heartless. The great ill of our times is the
absence of heart in politics. We have a lot of fiscal laws, a lot of penal laws, but no institutions
whatsoever; and then there is no intelligence either to grasp the difference which exists between
institutions and laws. No, do not count on them: no voice will ever be able to dominate this concert of
mediocrities pampered by power and thrown onto the threshing-floor [which is the Chamber of
Deputies] by electoral districts that are keen to be represented.

      Let us therefore talk about capital, let us talk money! Let us materialize, let us quantify
thought in an age which prides itself on being the age of positive ideas! A writer cannot attain
anything without tremendous studies, which constitute a stock of time or money, for time is worth
money: it generates it. His knowledge is thus a thing before it is an expression, his drama is a costly
experience before it is a public emotion. His creations are a treasure, the greatest of them all. He
produces incessantly, he brings in material assets and puts to use sums of capital, he causes factories
and machines to turn. This, however, is something that is generally ignored. Our |

______

*) A special competition in history painting founded in 1810.

**) Raca, meaning ‘worthless’, is a term of contempt used by the Jews in the time
of Christ – Matthew 5: 22.

Chapter 1 Page 6


[REVUE DE PARIS                  67]

country, which attends with scrupulous care to machines, to wheat harvests, to the silk and cotton
industry, has no ears, has no eyes, has no hands when it comes to dealing with its intellectual
treasures. Gentlemen, our disinheritance is an infamous thing, but don’t imagine, however, that our
disinheritance is the greatest of the wounds afflicting thought here. There is one that is even more
hideous still, yet which is not seen as a cause for embarrassment neither by Europe nor by France, a
nation that, intellectually, is greater than all of Europe and which will defend the continent against
barbarism not just with her arms but also with her writings. From now on France will fight with one
hand and write with the other. Listen, then. If, say, a merchant sends a bale of cotton from Le Havre to
St Petersburg and some beggar sneaks up to it on a small boat and lays hands on it, that beggar will be
hanged. In order to secure the free passage in every country of each such bale of cotton, of sugar, of
white paper, of wine, the whole of Europe has created a common law right. Her ships, her cannons,
her sailors, all her forces are at the orders of this bale of cargo. If a merchant ship is boarded by
pirates, a general alarm is raised: all these forces are mobilized, and the pirates are soon caught and
executed. Up until now it has only been poetry which has shed tears for the fate of a man for whom, if
his play falls through at the theatre, the booing of the audience is like a rope hanging from a beam.
But what about a book, then? Oh! a book is treated just like a pirate would be treated. Everyone
rushes to get at a book: it is avidly sought after, it is carried off in its swaddling-clothes, when it is still
in proof-sheets; it is already counterfeited even before it has been made. The pirate can use his genius
to try to escape execution, but the genius with which a book is marked only serves to make it easily
discovered by its executioners. Germany, Italy, England, France extend their greedy hands towards
the book, for, since this malversation is universal, France has been forced to imitate the other
countries as well. Thus, common law is suspended throughout Europe for the difficult product of
intelligence, just as in France the Code [Civil] is suspended for authors.

      If our voice could cover a wider range, if the intelligent masses of the future could hear us,
there would be but a single cry in response to our lament. People from all parts would cry out to us:
“But you’re at least being protected by your country, aren’t you?” – “No! Our country is moved by
the plight of its blacksmiths, it trembles for its wine-growers, it cries, just as a mother |

Chapter 1 Page 7


[REVUE DE PARIS                  68]

would cry over her sick children, over its spun cotton; and for the purpose of pampering its
blacksmiths and industrialists it has its customs system – an encouragement that is given to the status
quo, to routine in industry. Thus, in the care it takes our country is intelligent with regard to material
things, but it is quite insensitive towards anything that is itself intelligent: such is our country, France.
Yes, Sirs, take good note of this: that a third of France supplies itself with reprints made abroad. The
foreign nation which is a thief in the most odious, in the basest sense, happens to be our neighbour,
our so-called friend, a nation for which we recently sacrificed some of our blood and riches,* to which
we surrender our men of talent and courage, and which, in exchange for all this, has a credit on the
account of our country’s suicides, since its acts of robbery, carried out far away from us, turn here
into acts of murder. Where the poor French bookseller just about manages to sell one of your books to
a thousand stingy reading clubs [cabinets littéraires], which are the ruin of our literature, his
Belgian counterpart is able to sell two thousand copies of it at a discount price to the wealthy European
aristocracy. And there are some elegant young men, friends of literature, who after returning from their
travels show triumphantly the Complete Works of Victor Hugo, bought for six francs. The periodical which is
publishing this letter has more subscribers to its reprint copies than to its legitimate issues. Our
country has custom-houses! What’s the point of these customs? Aren’t they just a joke?! For if there is one
thing whose importation it would be easy to forbid, then surely it must be packages with printed matter?
Well, then! make your way to any one of our borders, and ask where you can buy copies of your own works.
You will find them in the public domain, just as if you were already dead. But that’s nothing compared
to what I have to tell you now. It is something that happened quite recently: a great writer publishes
a book (here I am taking the facts pure and simple), M. de Lamennais releases the Paroles d’un croyant
into the world. Ten thousand copies are sold in the South, where his publisher hadn’t even sent as much
as five hundred. The work is reprinted in Toulouse. The publisher finds out about it and rushes there.
But having arrived at that country (which, by the way, is located within France) he is unable to obtain
any indemnification, either because the apparent culprit of the theft was what one calls a man of straw
or dummy, or because the evidence had been destroyed in time. Ah! if the work in question had been some
sort of pamphlet, with what zeal society, which effectively comes to resemble |

______

*) During the Belgian Revolution of August 1830 in which France provided financial and military aid
to the Belgian patriots.

Chapter 1 Page 8


[REVUE DE PARIS                  69]

a public prosecutor, would have flown, in the person of this public prosecutor, to the scene of the
crime, summoned its warrant officers, compared the print-type of the counterfeited book with that of
the book belonging to M. de Lamennais, looked for the type-founder: “Whom did you sell this type
to?” And then, after going round all the printing-offices, the courts would have found someone whom
they could allow to rot in a dungeon, on the evidence of a poorly cast lower-case character or italic N.
And ye t in this theft we find all the circumstances which would send a man to the galleys if he had
stolen a sack of gold. Well, then! two thousand copies of the Paroles d’un croyant are two thousand
francs. A pamphlet would have worked up frightfully the public prosecutor’s department, whereas a
new Esprit des Lois wouldn’t have been able to get a single splash of ink out of them. The law
describes as an offence this theft, the most horrible of all thefts, and in order to prosecute offences a
lawsuit is required. Which one of us is going to sue? Why we shall do so ourselves, we shall sue! In
order to raise our voice in this way, is it not necessary that we should have arrogated to ourselves the
right to speak in the name of everyone else? Here, Sirs, the government, whose entrails consist of a
system of strong-boxes called the tax authorities, doesn’t even have the intelligence to look after its
interests properly. It demands stamp duties from our literary magazines. The Revue des Deux-Mondes,
and this Revue, too, which is publishing our sad lament, have to hand over some 800 francs every
month to the tax authorities before they can print a single one of your lines. 800 francs!... a third of
the price which your pages are valued at! The tax authorities want to levy these duties, yet the
government fails to protect the magazine which has to pay duties to its revenue officers. Isn’t this as
silly as when a savage chops down a tree, so as to get at the fruit, or when Harlequin decides not to
feed his horse?

      Thus, for us the future consists of an illegal disinheritance which will affect our families; and
the present of being placed outside the common law with regard to literary piracy. No protection for
the interior, that is the effect of the government which was established not so much to attend to our
happiness, as to uphold the rights of everyone.

      Here, Sirs, some superficial people will perhaps say that in no other age has literature, or, to
use an expression |

Chapter 1 Page 9


[REVUE DE PARIS                  70]

that is more general, has the mind [la pensée] produced such great political or pecuniary fortunes as in
ours, and they will point to the examples of Messrs Etienne, Scribe, Chateaubriand, Thiers, Mignet,
Guizot, Lamartine, etc. However, we must not, Sirs, let it be thrown in reproach at us – who are on the
whole a weak and long-suffering lot, who have no will-power other than for intellectual work, who
know little about business, who are not ambitious except when the fancy takes us, who come into few
inheritances – that amongst us there are sometimes men who are solid in all respects and are able to
do justice both to politics and to poetry; men who can sleep at rest, assured that the Code [Civil] has
not disinherited them from the property of their uncles; men who have used literature as a Purgatory
from which one then reaches the Paradise of a high position [in government or the administration];
men who at the same time know how to make masterpieces and do business. Let us not allow
ourselves to be reproached for the very result which is the cause of our excessive ills. Even if some
great poet may distinguish himself both by his works and by his successes as a public orator, as well
as by a great fortune (which his works could also have given to him, if he had exploited them
commercially), let us not forget to remind our age that many poets as great as our very greatest have
to go on foot, whilst certain speculators speed by in carriages; that reprinting [contrefaçon] ruins
Alfred de Musset just as much as it does Victor Hugo, Victor Hugo just as it ruins de Vigny, de Vigny
just as it ruins J. Janin, J. Janin just as it ruins Nodier, Nodier just as it ruins G. Sand, G. Sand just as
it ruins Mérimée, Mérimée just as it ruins Courier, Courier just as it ruins Barthélemy, Barthélemy
just as it ruins Béranger, and Béranger just as it ruins all of you. Try to imagine the new generation
that is coming forth and to whom the future belongs, and think how noble and great it would be if we
could hand over the future to them in a more beautiful condition than we received it ourselves.

      After having pointed out to you the two principal sores which afflict us, there is also a third
which we would have preferred to hide; but the fact is that it cuts intellectual activity [la pensée] to
the quick, it is a cancer which devours us, a sickness of the body of literature, rather than a wound
inflicted on it by the law, the government, or the age we live in.

      No sooner has one of you, after having studied for fifteen years, after having groaned, turned
pale, suffered, and endured for fifteen years, after a great deal of troubles and money spent, after
having frequently shed tears, after having |

Chapter 1 Page 10


[REVUE DE PARIS                  71]

learnt about the world and mankind, learnt how things are, travelled through all kinds of misfortune;
no sooner has a man who has sweated over his sentences paid for his corrections as Buffon did; no
sooner has a writer published a book, created various characters, come up with motives for their
actions, sketched out a plot, than this plot, these motives, these characters, the whole book, as it were,
are all taken and turned into a theatre play. A man of honour, who would be incapable of taking from
you the tongs with which you stoke your fire, takes away from you without any scruples your dearest
possession, whereby his conscience will scarcely be more troubled than if he had taken your wife. But
the point is that a lover takes a consenting wife, whereas the Cicisbeo of the theatre rapes your idea.
Besides, this adultery cannot be excused in any way: it is horrible and all the more harmful given that
so far there has never been the reverse case of a play being turned into a book. I hope you will excuse
us, Sirs, for broaching this question with the weapon of jest. Here we are on such a ground where we
ourselves haven’t been treated with any consideration at all,* and, anyway, this discussion will take us to
elevated spheres where new causes for our suffering are to be found.

      We publish a book so that it is read, and not to see it lithographed into a drama or filtered into
a vaudeville. There is a question here which ought to be examined. Taking an idea, a book, a plot,
without the author’s consent would have provoked general indignation in the eighteenth century,
which, to our profound shame, refined the sense for literary proprieties [des convenances littéraires]
to the most exquisite politeness. The dramatic author is not ignorant of the fact that a book, after
having cost you great effort, after having demanded the patient fashioning of your style (and style is
after all what a person is, it is made up of his impressions and the essence of his character), will
scarcely yield 1,500 francs in profit; whereas a play made out of that book will bring in a sum that is
three times the cost of the book if the play falls through, and it is worth the real estate tax revenues for
an entire village if it is successful. In short, La Fontaine already described our situation in Bertrand et
Raton.** I hasten to pose the question of money, so as to be done with this subject as soon as possible.
Money does not mean much for certain generous spirits. The proof of our generosity lies in our silence.
If we are now breaking it, Sirs, ascribe this not to some personal interest on our part, but rather to
our desire to explore thoroughly |

__________

*) Many of Balzac’s novels and stories were ‘adapted’ for the stage – without his consent!

**) A fable which illustrates how people often try to use someone else to literally pull the chestnuts out
of the fire.

Chapter 1 Page 11


[REVUE DE PARIS                  72]

the questions raised by the crisis of our literature, whose chief causes we will shortly see here.

      So, as we were saying, we publish our thoughts so that they become known. However naïve
this statement might seem, it means that we do not publish them so that they are carved up, drawn out,
undressed, quartered, forced onto the gridiron of some footlights, and served to the habitués of a
theatre just like a savoury dish for dandies of the kind they prepare at the Rocher de Cancale.* Let
us look for some analogies. The State builds the Madeleine church and opens this monument to the
public: in France the State is always afraid of the public, and so it places railings around it to
prevent jokers with charcoal sticks from drawing grotesque figures on its walls, to prevent Crédeville
from putting his enigmatic name on it.** Why can’t we have a literally municipal law which says the
following with regard to fine books: “It is forbidden to deposit theatre plays here.” None of us
would dispute such an analogy: we all believe that we are entitled to put the phrase “Exegi monumentum”***
at the end of our books. Regardless of whether it is a palace or a shack, a cathedral or a thatched
cottage, the work belongs to us. If our book were a barrel of wine, it would be respected. A neighbour
who found the means to extract and sell it after mixing it with a wine of higher quality would be committing a
tolerably reprehensible offence; but what do we actually say in such cases? Sirs, the commercial
courts impose huge penalties on eau-de-Cologne without neroli which is passed off as true Farina.
Each time a bale of goods is concerned, you see, the law is very precise! But if instead we are dealing
with a written page, with an idea, then justice no longer seems to know what legal action means. It is
only against us that it has a law ready and made up! Here we are all the more at ease given that we are
not encroaching on anyone’s glory: it is merely commercial interests that are at stake – at least as long
as no voice makes itself heard and shouts to us the name of a work written twenty years ago which, by
its literary merit alone, would be capable of drawing a thousand people to one venue, excepting the
Comédie-Française. The money won by three or four persons who apply themselves to a literary work
just like butchers to a horse’s carcass – for quite often it is Roland’s brave horse which they set upon
– is not the most painful sore. If we had any say in the matter, we would gladly say, like the rest of
you: “To me the glory, to them the money!”

__________

*) A famous Paris restaurant.

**) ‘Crédeville’ or ‘Crédeville voleur’ was an inscription which, probably with humorous intent, was
scribbled on the walls of public places and monuments around France in the first half of the nineteenth century.

***) Lat. ‘I have raised a monument’ from Horace’s famous ode.

Chapter 1 Page 12


[REVUE DE PARIS                  73]

But unfortunately, dear Sirs, a play performed at a theatre entails a number of other ills. When we
have finished giving birth, we have, in addition to that labour, the unfortunate consequences of a
second childbirth on the stages of our theatres. Our work may come in for some booing there at the
same time that a few readers in the deep provinces are admiring it. You are despised at the rue de
Chartres,* whilst you are considered a magnificent writer in Blois.

      Here we come to one of our greatest misfortunes, to the most real one, to a callus which is
harder to bear than physical or spiritual counterfeit. Sirs, the number of those who come to see a
vaudeville is greater than that of those who read a book.

      In order to appreciate fine literary works (and our century is producing as many of them as the
most literary of past centuries ever produced, pace what the critics are saying), one needs to have a
broad education, a nourished intelligence, silence and calm around oneself, as well as a certain
spiritual tenseness; whereas for a dramatic work all one needs to do is lend one’s eyes and ears during
the drowsy hours of after-dinner digestion. Paris has twelve theatres: none of them could survive
without achieving total takings that, when divided by the number of stages, give an average of 2,000
francs a day. In this way Paris provides dramatic literature with a budget of around 10 million francs,
to which one should also add the tributes from the départements, which it is useless to try to evaluate.
Now, then, Sirs, to what sum do you think the budget of truly great literature extends, that is, the share
accruing to those works which were composed over a long time – the share of Volupté,** of Notre-Dame
de Paris, of the admirable poems of Alfred de Musset, of the Consultations du docteur Noir,*** of Indiana,
of L’Ane mort,**** and of that splendid book entitled Histoire du roi de Bohême et ses sept Châteaux?^
What share is allotted for Frédéric Soulié, for Eugène Sue, for the proverbs of Henri Monnier, for the
brothers Thierry, for M. de Barante, for M. Villemain, for the persevering Monteil? May shame creep into
the depths of your hearts and make you blush! We can confidently assert that the ten publishing houses
of Paris, who are quite brave to undertake such a hazardous business, do not make more than a million
[francs] in sales ACROSS THE WHOLE OF FRANCE. Do you know why we cast this anathema at our country? We
will tell you why without having to fear accusations that we are talking about money. The question we are
dealing with here is |

_________

*) The site of the Vaudeville theatre in Paris.

**) An 1835 novel by Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve.

***) An 1832 novel by Alfred de Vigny.

****) An 1829 novel by Jules Janin.

^) An 1830 fantastic tale by Charles Nodier.

Chapter 1 Page 13


[REVUE DE PARIS                  74]

too significant, too trifling, too peculiar, too anti-patriotic, too bizarre, too intrinsic to the human
heart: it is very much ours, for it illustrates our times, it serves as an indictment of the meanness
which is reaching extraordinary proportions everywhere, from top to bottom, at all levels of society.
In France, my gentlemen, in this beautiful country where the women are elegant and graceful as they
are nowhere else, the prettiest lady waits patiently, to read Eugène Sue, Nodier, Gozlan, Janin, V.
Hugo, G. Sand, Mérimee, till her milliner has finished reading the volume together with friends, or at
night before falling asleep; till the wife of a butcher has finished the novel’s dénouement and left
grease marks on its pages; till the student has left them marked by the scent of his pipe or scrawled
over with his lascivious or farcical observations. In France a book – the book in which an author has
deposited a written offering, as it were – is handed round between the various persons who make up
the surroundings of a family. Yes, there are quite a few people who contrive to evade even the 2
francs membership fees of their local reading club [cabinet littéraire] – Such phrases as “Lend me
Notre-Dame, would you send me Jacques?”* are said by rich people whose carriage would, if need be,
calmly drive over the body of a beggar who asks for two sous per roquille** for the literature that is
his. No one hesitates to pay 40 francs, in order to go and hear Odry, Arnal, or Bouffé,*** to give three
louis-d’or in order to go to the Opéra; but it still hasn’t become the established norm that one should
send 12 francs to a bookseller, in order to be able to read in comfort, from a book that is clean and
untouched, the most interesting recent work which gives one several days of reading or several hours
of meditation, which allows one to travel back into the past of our country or into the memories of
life!!! No, the ten thousand wealthy families, the twenty thousand well-off persons currently living
in France don’t have 100 francs to spare for the twenty remarkable volumes that our suffering nation
produces every year, and they give them instead to the literary magazines! Hail to thee, o fair France,
generous France, intelligent France! AUX GRANDS HOMMES LA PATRIE RECONNAISSANTE!**** Thanks for this
sublime epigraph! Aristocracy, you are dead – equality has triumphed, and nowadays the duchess will wait
for her dressmaker to finish reading La Salamandre^ before reading it herself; she is prepared to wait,
even to make enquiries, so as to avoid having to give even as much as a brass farthing to the talented
author, the only pittance that the latter might hope to receive. This social crime is after all just
a little secret vile action which there is no need to blush at. There are cities in which the January
issue of the Revue de Paris is read in |

_________

*) Balzac is probably referring to Diderot’s novel Jacques le fataliste et son maître, published in 1796.

**) An old measure of capacity, usually referring to wine.

***) Famous French actors.

****) ‘To great men, the grateful fatherland’- the inscription on the pediment of the Panthéon, France’s most
illustrious burial place.

^) Eugène Sue’s 1832 novel.

Chapter 1 Page 14


[REVUE DE PARIS                  75]

December. Elegant ladies sneeze whilst absorbed in the beautiful realm of the Feuilles d’automne* as
a consequence of a good bourgeois having let some tobacco fall into it when turning a page. Which
one of us hasn’t heard millionaires exclaim: “I can’t get hold of so-and-so a book; it’s always out
on loan!” Ten millions for the most ingenious of mediocrities, seasoned by the antics of actors,
500,000 francs for the efforts of talent – here we have the question summarized as best as it can
for our times. Now that you are aware of this problem, what will you do about it? Write for the
theatre! Ad circenses!** is in literature a call like “To arms!” in Wilhelm Tell. What else can one
do? On the one hand, systematically exploited stupidity; on the other, a brutal indifference towards
the finest productions. A book requires a whole life; a theatre play merely a month. Whom does it take
to hesitate when faced with such a choice? – “A fool,” says the Chaussée-d’Antin.*** – “A man of talent,”
say those who belong to the élite. To great men, the grateful fatherland! And so for the theatre a
thousand or so authors, of which none has ever put on the stage a true creation. For, in this century,
who can assume the right to say to his idea: unto all times you will be Harpagon, Clarissa,**** or Figaro!
Who among you has had the divine power to give names [that will last the test of time]? After that
author who said: “You will be Jocrisse!”^ no one else in the small theatres has since then had a viable
accouchement. Besides, theatre plays don’t even last six weeks. As many plays were therefore required
as there are days in the year; and, in order to cater for the needs of a public which was never quite
satisfied, authors have made use of everything: they have now even set about the books by living
writers, just like rats on a ship which, on finding no more biscuits in the hold, start eating the
crew’s provisions. So the theatre has reacted against the book by virtue of Molière’s phrase: “I take
my goods where I find them”^^ It is to Molière that we are indebted for this disastrous article of the
law, but this article of the law hasn’t given us a second Molière. To all our woes, let us add this
verdict, too: the customs of the age [les mœurs] push down [the price] of books. Some booksellers are of
the opinion that the price of our books is excessively high. They are mistaken! Our books do not fetch
as much as books tended to fetch before the Revolution; and, besides, before the Revolution seven out
of twelve writers would be receiving significant pensions paid for either by foreign princes, or by the
court, or by the government. We are therefore perishing

________

*) The title of Victor Hugo’s 1831 collection of poetry.

**) Lat. ‘To the circuses’.

***) One of the most fashionable streets in Paris at the time.

****) Balzac is perhaps referring to the many French plays in the second half of the eighteenth
century which were based on Samuel Richardson’s famous novel of 1748.

^) The name of a stupid servant in old French farces.

^^) Thus Molière once famously replied to those who accused him of plagiarism.

Chapter 1 Page 15


[REVUE DE PARIS                  76]

under the weight of an unheard-of avarice, since the elegant lady, the Maecenas who isn’t prepared to
fork out 7 francs for a book (of which before anything else 2 francs should be going to the author) –
they wouldn’t give 4 francs either. We may perhaps be going too far here, but we do feel the need to
defend before the tribunal of consciences, which like God may descend deep into people’s hearts,
various truly great artists, whom certain people rebuke lightly. We will not talk about the noble
thoughts, the fine works which are smothered by the dejection that has come over some men who are
powerless in everything except in their despair. For mark my words: the artist, when he is not allowed
to be one [i.e. exercise his profession], is more heart than head. Some outwardly reprehensible actions
on their part have led to reproaches being made against these overgrown children, who only become
giants at the moment when they take up their creative pen. Well, do not accuse them any more after
having read these pages: their faults have always been the fruit of your stinginess. To them the
misfortunes, to you the crime. Assess the leniency which they deserve according to the energy of their
talents, and not according to your cold impotence. In writing these lines, we have been moved by the
woes that are still to come. Ah! if our voice could be heard, we would even fall to our knees to pray in
front of the whole country, in order to rekindle its patriotism and prevent the suicide of a number of
noble hearts. Sirs, we have tackled an issue in which personal interests are certainly at stake, in which
the self-respect of many people is being threatened: if we could say that it is their fame, too, which is
in danger, then the question would have been settled long ago. When one of our great painters chose
the subject of Ossian in order to compete with the celestial palaces of Girodet,* each one of them was
satisfied. Non ut pictura poesis;** but we are all incapable of bearing a grudge against successful
businessmen. Surely it would be sufficient if this were to become an important issue, so that each man
of letters could then rest assured with regard to the past of his plays. We are of the view that each
dramatic author who sits down to think about himself and his situation will surely come to the conclusion
that it would be more writer-like [plus littéraire] to invent one’s own subjects rather than to borrow
them. We are noting a fact, we are posing a purely judicial question. Does one or does one not have the
right to convert a book into cash under the balance of the vaudeville, under the hammer of drama? Does
one possess this right fully and

________

*) Anne-Louis Girodet composed a series of drawings based on the Ossianic myths.

**) Lat. ‘Painting is not like poetry’ Balzac refutes Horace’s famous adage.

Chapter 1 Page 16


[REVUE DE PARIS                  77]

wholly? Is it, or should it be, subject to the consent of the author of the given book? What! Dramatic
authors have [available to them as subject-matter] the events of history, anecdotes that have stood the
test of time for a number of millennia, the events of our present age, and yet they still want to extend
the jurisdiction of their little bells and their loud popular music, of their goblets and daggers, to the
living or dead works of those who didn’t imagine that, in order to be able to digest their glory in
peace, they had to take out an insurance policy against plays. This is a phenomenon which started no
more than ten years ago, yet things have already gone so far that it is high time that the literary world
should take up this matter. Let us also acknowledge the fact that dramatic authors frequently show us
great politeness: they do not indicate the book or the author whom they have pilfered. They might
protest that for several authors a translation of this sort can only be in their interests. What shall we
say to that? Every day we see new cases of suicide. Will they notice and talk about our silence? But a
single individual is in no position to call these misfortunes to account: a lawsuit would be tedious,
and, besides, the latter would have to be waged between the two parties as a whole, that is, between
the corporation of makers of dramas and the corporation of makers of books. We would no doubt be
offending dramatic authors if we said that they all had the same talent, each one of them as much as
the other; they would be even more annoyed if we said that talent is unevenly distributed among them;
but we are certain to make them come to an agreement [with us] if we recognize their scrupulous
integrity. Now, since many of them are authors in utroque [in both genres], the legal question raised
as to their right [faculté] – something that many of us dispute – to turn a book into a play, will be
discussed behind closed doors and properly debated, so that the conclusion reached can be turned into
an article of law, provided that this delicate matter does allow for something more than just a kind of
settlement between the two communities or associations.

      This word ‘association’ serves as a natural transition for us to move on to the means of
defence which we believe to have found, and which it is high time to make use of against the
oppression from the law, the oppression from abroad, and all these informal oppressions we have
pointed out. These misfortunes, which we are only too painfully aware of, directly concern several
branches of commerce, and they are also linked to the important political problem of the balance |

Chapter 1 Page 17


[REVUE DE PARIS                  78]

of trade which each country seeks to establish with its neighbours but to its own profit.

      Here, even though the question of literary interests clearly becomes a question of public
interest, don’t expect the government to arrange for an enquiry into the state of literature or to regard
the latter as a material interest, as a tremendous domestic product, as a means of taxing Europe, of
ruling Europe by the force of intellect instead of by the force of arms. No, the government will do
nothing. The present government, a child of the press, is content with this state of affairs and will seek
to prolong it if it can: its inertia provides ample proof of this. It is to ourselves that we must look for
our salvation. This lies in coming to an understanding about our rights, in a mutual acknowledgement
of our strength. It is therefore most definitely in the interests of us all that we should come together
and form an association, just as the playwrights have formed theirs.

      The author of this letter knows the world well enough to be free of the pretension of imposing
his ideas on you; rather, he would like to present them to you, so that they might engender better ones
if those he has come up with should not be adopted. However, being desirous of rest, devoted to
silence, and a public tribune only by chance, we wouldn’t have stood up if it weren’t so that we have
discovered the means of preventing, for all future times, all kinds of counterfeit and reprinting abroad.
Far from making the book trade collapse, as certain speculators have been trying to do for some time
now, our means would leave you all in the positions in which each one of you happens to be with
regard to the book trade. Though it is true that amongst the booksellers there are some who do not
bother to read the books which they buy, or those which they sell; that others have enough ingenuity
to try to gloss over their lack of education with impertinence; you will also find amongst them, as in
any other profession, people who are agreeable, generous, educated, and with whom you have
probably drawn up contracts. Our association could also have the effect of regenerating the book
trade, but it is impossible to achieve such good things if we do not all join forces in the pursuit of a
common aim which will increase the prosperity of us all, and which will be the salvation of a faltering
branch of commerce. Once our society has been constituted, it would know how to demand new laws
regarding literary property, it would know how to get |

Chapter 1 Page 18


[REVUE DE PARIS                  79]

these pending questions resolved, and it would stop all foreign counterfeit. The means which we have
been thinking about, and which we consider to be effective, require such an association, for only the
latter can take the steps that are essential for success – these steps, by the way, are not too costly. Of
course, it would be nice to see the republic of letters having its own ambassadors, sending to our
neighbouring countries eminent men, surrounded by far more brilliance than all our political
plenipotentiaries, and discussing its members’ interests between the various languages of Europe, to
return to that word the meaning ascribed to it by the Order of Malta;* but nowadays much scorn would
be heaped on a spectacle which was devoid of Faith, of the sentiments which once rendered it so
splendid.

      I hope, Sirs, that the men who are called upon to enlighten, to steer their age and lead it into a
channel of progress, will not lack that commonsense which none of the lesser groups of French
society has ever been without. Each profession has its philanthropic association, yet it is only for our
printers and our bookbinders that there is no charitable hospital. You will not find a single worker
who doesn’t have a maternal association of his own which gives him aid and assistance in his
moments of distress. It is only we artists and writers who are without a common bond. It is true that
we alone should not have to need to protect ourselves: we ought to be under the protection of
everyone, we should have all France as our guardian. It is also a shame on our times that we are
forced to come together like those merchants of the Middle Ages who, after being robbed by
everyone, after being cast out from the security of the feudal system, decided to set up Hanseatic
societies in order to defend themselves, and who eventually succeeded in imposing the majesty of
their commerce on the whole of Europe, for it is around commerce that everything revolves today –
everything: ships, the tax authorities, and the parliamentary chambers. United, we stand above the
laws, for the laws are dominated by morals, and is it not we who constitute morality? Civilization is
nothing without expression. We scholars, we writers, we artists, we poets are called upon to express
this civilization. We are the new pontiffs of an unknown future, for which we are doing all its work.
This is a claim that was vindicated by the eighteenth century. United, we are equal to the power which
kills us individually. |

___________

*) When the Order of Malta was reorganized in the early fourteenth century, its member knights were
grouped according to their native languages, so there were several groups of langues (lit. ‘tongues’).

Chapter 1 Page 19


[REVUE DE PARIS                  80]

Let us therefore unite ourselves in order to force it to recognize the rights and majesty of the mind. In
this way we will be able to extend a helping hand to the undervalued genius – all this we can do once
we have conquered a treasure that belongs to all of us by reconquering our rights. Let us say it well
and loud! Talent needs to be helped and rescued. One of the greatest errors to have gained widespread
acceptance is this notion that a satisfied genius becomes idle. No, the finest works have often been the
children of opulence. Rabelais was always at leisure when he worked. Raphael could draw whatever
sums he liked from the coffers of the Roman court; Montesquieu, Buffon, Voltaire were all rich.
Bacon was Chancellor. Guillaume Tell, Rossini’s greatest opera, is the fruit of those years in which
that fine genius no longer suffered any want, whereas Mozart, like Weber, died in poverty and took
with him many unwritten masterpieces. Seneca, Virgil, Horace, Cicero, Cuvier, Sterne, Pope, Lord
Byron, Walter Scott, composed their finest works when they had honours and wealth. Beethoven,
Rousseau, Cervantes, and Camoëns are arguable exceptions. Who will hazard to say whether or not
the self-willed misfortune of Jean-Jacques was perhaps an act of speculation on the part of his morbid
pride? Then surely we must also give extravagant artists their due, that is, to those generous hearts
who so readily part with their riches? Lastly, there are also geniuses who are as proud as they are
poor, and yet they are still comparatively well-off. So stop presenting poverty to us as the cradle of
genius; don’t try to defend this notion by pointing to those who have triumphed, because it is those
who go under whom we see more often than not and whom we bewail without being able to offer
them anything else other than our feverish commiserations. Who among us has managed to read
without sensing his eyelids moisten with tears that spirited phrase in which Messrs Roux and Buchez,
in the foreword to a very fine work,* said: “Illness or hunger might take us by surprise,
so let us hasten to publish these thoughts, which we consider to be useful for the advancement of
human knowledge”? Who has not saluted these noble minds from afar? Who has not cried to them:
“You shall live!” Would this, though, not have the effect of indulging the pride of men who are young
and sufficiently grown-up if we had the whole republic rushing to their side to save them, to watch
over their literary début, to console their old age if misfortune should decree it that they were to taste
poverty in the decline of life? However, our assembly |

___________

*) The Histoire parlementaire de la Révolution française, which came out in 40 volumes between 1834 and 1838.

Chapter 1 Page 20


[REVUE DE PARIS                  81]

would surely dissolve itself after having caused the ills of counterfeit and stamp duties to cease and
obtained new laws on literary property. Then it would have achieved enough both for the present and
for the future.

      We are waiting for some colleagues to join us, so that we can take up this just enterprise
which we shall never abandon. A preparatory meeting will be necessary in order to take some
precautions as to how we should organize ourselves. In these circumstances one glorious name* will be
floating in everyone’s mind – a name which for us will be like a lodestar, a name which will cause our
rivalries to fall silent, a name which I will not say, and which without doubt will be an aegis under
which we will all eagerly gather. Like the merchants of the Middle Ages, who left their differences
behind at the door of their guild’s assembly hall, we, too, will leave behind our opinions, our dislikes,
our vanities outdoors, in order to devote ourselves exclusively to our public cause, and it is possible
that we will not always pick all that up again when leaving these assemblies.

      Before concluding, we must observe that this is not a cry of insurrection, nor an appeal to the
passions of people – rather, it is a cry of poverty, a cry coming from a nation which has been placed
outside of the law, which is the victim of a denial of justice. May this cry find echoes, awaken
sympathies, cause these injustices to be avenged, and reinvigorate the sentiments of a patriotism
which is in agony for the time being! We raise our voice on behalf of those who stay up at night, of
those who suffer, of those whose ambition it is to contribute a mite to the treasury of the French
language. We demand that by one word of authority the horrible, abysmal paths are closed where the
finest spirits fall to their death, where great thoughts and sciences are irretrievably lost. We do not ask
for assistance or protection, we are not stretching out our hand for alms: the aim of our entreaties is to
have the same rights secured for the mind as for the bale of goods. We are not threatening anyone, we
are humbly asking not to be stripped of our property any more. As things are at present, France,
together with all of Europe, is losing 15 million francs. If you let us do what we have said, we will
ensure that she recovers them again. We are asking the deputies of our country to spare just a few
hours in order to perpetuate the talents which emerge on French soil. Italy, my good gentlemen
legislators, Italy is indebted to her splendid geniuses for two thirds of the guineas which she receives
from England.** Protect, therefore, our arts and language, for when your |

_______

*) Probably Lamartine.

**) i.e. from English tourists.

Chapter 1 Page 21


[REVUE DE PARIS                  82]

material interests have long ceased to exist, you will continue to live through our thoughts, which will
always be left standing, and which, if our country should disappear, would nevertheless be there to
testify: “Such was France!”


                                                                                          De Balzac.


Translation by: Luis Sundkvist

    

Our Partners

Copyright statement

You may copy and distribute the translations and commentaries in this resource, or parts of such translations and commentaries, in any medium, for non-commercial purposes as long as the authorship of the commentaries and translations is acknowledged, and you indicate the source as Bently & Kretschmer (eds), Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900) (www.copyrighthistory.org).

You may not publish these documents for any commercial purposes, including charging a fee for providing access to these documents via a network. This licence does not affect your statutory rights of fair dealing.

Although the original documents in this database are in the public domain, we are unable to grant you the right to reproduce or duplicate some of these documents in so far as the images or scans are protected by copyright or we have only been able to reproduce them here by giving contractual undertakings. For the status of any particular images, please consult the information relating to copyright in the bibliographic records.

Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900) is co-published by Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge, 10 West Road, Cambridge CB3 9DZ, UK and CREATe, School of Law, University of Glasgow, 10 The Square, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK