Honoré De Balzac and His Figures of Speech (Classic Reprint) - Livres de poche

Excerpt from Honoré De Balzac and His Figures of Speech

The aim of this monograph is the study of a group of Honoré de Balzac's figures of speech, in order to fix as definitely as possible their relation to the man, to show how they derive from him and how they throw light on his complex nature, and to estimate their literary value. An investigation of the possible sources of Balzac's figures is not included; such an investigation, while it would have been desirable, is not indispensible to the purpose in view, for which interest is centered, not on the artistic manipulation of the individual figurative conceptions, but on the general lines of the author's choice of the comparisons and on the purposes for which he most frequently uses them.

The figures of speech form an interesting element of any style in which they are employed. Thus there have been numerous studies of their use by ancient and modern authors, but the treatises are frequently little more than catalogues of the figures, arranged according to the fields from which the comparisons are drawn. Such presentations aid us to judge the range of the author's knowledge and interest, the exactness of his observation, the power of his imagination, and his esthetic sense. But, apart from this, the figures of speech, presenting infinite possibilities of arbitrary variation, can be made to throw numerous side-lights on the most intimate phases of an author's personality, and from them we should be able to derive some generalized principles of figurative creation.

If it be true in a certain sense that the style is the man.

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