ABSTRACT
Balzac seeks to simplify the world in order to subdue it to his dominion, and to confine it within the walls of his magnificent prison-house, La Comedie Humaine. Straightforward passion is the motive force, the unmixed type is the actor, an unpretentious environment is the setting, for La comedie humaine. He concentrates, inasmuch as he adapts the centralized administrative system to literary ends. The conquest of the world effected in La comedie humaine is just as unique in the history of literature as Napoleon's conquests in the history of modern times; Balzac seems to grasp the whole of life in his two hands. As a boy he dreamed of conquering the world, and nothing is more potent than an early resolve which realizes itself in action. Like Napoleon, he begins by conquering Paris. Then he sets about conquering France, province by province. Every department sends its representative, as it were, to Balzac's parliament.
