ABSTRACT
Victor Hugo conjured up the figure of Prometheus several times in his poetry, at various periods of his life. Hugo's personality was larger than life, but could not rival that of the emperor and his extraordinary destiny. Although Honoré de Balzac, like Hugo, did not often mention Prometheus in his work, each time he did was in a context we cannot ignore, that of an ars poetica, in two of the most famous pages of the Comédie humaine. If Honoré de Balzac is often identified with Prometheus, it is mostly because of the biography by André Maurois, entitled Prometheus, or the Life of Balzac. Balzac understands the Prometheus myth as a parable of artistic creation, a conception which derives from one of Prometheus's original features as plasticator. Franz Liszt also saw in Prometheus the mask of the artist. When Franz Liszt started composing his Prometheus, he had chosen a new path, as Kappelmeister in Weimar.
