ABSTRACT
Marcel Proust's essay, 'Sainte-Beuve et Balzac', which was published some thirty years after Proust's death as part of the collection of critical writings entitled Contre Sainte-Beuve, may safely be regarded as a landmark in Balzac criticism. For Georges Poulet, it was Proust's ability to 'produce a pastiche of a given author' and to become as one with the rhythm of a particular poem or novel which explained the illumination shed by his criticism. Proust's demonstration of the 'silences' to be detected within the Balzacian text issues a formidable challenge to the widespread assumption that Balzac is a writer whose explicit commentary is exhaustive and whose well-defined categories provide an adequate means to interpretation. Sainte-Beuve blames Balzac for having magnified the Abbe Troubert, who finally becomes a sort of Richelieu, etc. Balzac did the same thing with Vautrin and many others.
