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The Muse of the Department

Honoré de Balzac

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3.53
116 ratings

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Book Excerpt: 
. . .Paquita, on reaching the limits set to real love, did not, like Julie and Heloise, throw herself into the ideal; no, she rushed into the paths of vice, which is, no doubt, shockingly natural; but she did it without any touch of magnificence, for lack of means, as it would be difficult to find in Rouen men impassioned enough to place Paquita in a suitable setting of luxury and splendor. This horrible realism, emphasized by gloomy poetic feeling, had inspired some passages such as modern poetry is too free with, rather too like the flayed anatomical figures known to artists as ecorches. Then, by a highly philosophical revulsion, after describing the house of ill-fame where the Andalusian ended her days, the writer came back to the ballad at the opening:

Paquita now is faded, shrunk, and old, But she it was who sang: "If you but knew the fragrant plain, The air, the sky, of golden Spain," etc.

The gloomy vigor of this poem, running to about six hu. . . Read More

Community Reviews

4.00
- Felipe - Feb 11, 2023

Romance com bom andamento, apesar das intervenções do romancista e da tentativa de inserir discussões contemporâneas na obra. Fazia tempo que não me divertia tanto com uma obra de Balzac!

5.00
- Sladjana - Jul 29, 2021

Balzac-La muse de département
✍"— Lorsque les femmes nous aiment, elles nous pardonnent tout, même nos crimes ; lorsqu'elles ne nous aiment pas, elles ne nous pardonnent rien, pas même nos vertus!"
✍"Lousteau se promena, fumant des cigares et cherchant des idées ; car les idées, à Paris, sont dans l'a

5.00
- Aurora - Apr 28, 2020

Un libro poco conosciuto, di Honoré de Balzac, che rispetto a classici come "Anna Karenina", "Madame Bovary" e "l'amante di lady Chatterley"  tratta il tema dell'adulterio in un modo unico e differente, da questi acclamati capolavori poc'anzi citati.  Honoré de Balzac è distaccato e retorico, potrem

3.00
- Marco - Mar 21, 2020

A Sancerre, piccolo paesino sulle rive della Loira va in scena un adulterio, protagonisti della vicenda saranno Polydore de La Baudraye, un possidente terriero intento a scalare meritatamente la società, sua moglie Dina Piédefer, giovane donna estremamente istruita, curiosa e grande oratrice tanto d

3.00
- James - Nov 08, 2018

Published together with L'illustre Gaudissart under the collective title Les Parisiens en province, this novel is not one of Balzac's better books in my opinion. It is the story of a George-Sands-wannabee, Dinah de La Baudraye, who lives in the provincial town of Sancerre, and her affair with an uns

3.00
- Gláucia - Dec 20, 2016

Publicado em 1844 faz parte de uma série chamada Os Parisienses na Provìncia, junto com O Ilustre Gaudissart.
Dinah Piédefer se casa com o avarento e ambicioso La Baudraye, ambos movidos por conveniência e se instalam em Sancerre, lugarzinho que fiquei com vontade de conhecer pelas belas descrições (

3.00
- Fazackerly - Feb 10, 2015

and now I have to read Benjamin Constant's Adolphe

4.00
- Elizabeth (Alaska) - Jun 07, 2017

The Muse of the Department involves a young woman who is married to a man 30 years her senior, a rather smallish and once-sickly man, miserly and wanting of an heir. After five years of marriage, there is no heir in sight, and, though in the early days of the marriage he was generous, Monsieur de la

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