ABSTRACT

The influential philosophy teacher and newspaper columnist, Alain was one of the present century's most passionate admirers of Balzac. His discussion of Balzac's style reproduced here comes from his highly personal appreciation of the novelist published under the sympathetic title, Avec Balzac. Thoughtful comments, both on Balzac's mode of writing as a whole and on specific novels within La Comedie humaine are, however, to be found throughout his work. Alain made no pretence to be a systematic philosopher and indeed displayed a paradoxical distrust of abstract ideas. It is in the matter of style, as Balzac's critique of Stendhal's style in La Chartreuse de Parme is there to suggest, that the two great realists are seen by Alain to diverge: Stendhal is the writer of 'prose' and Balzac the writer of 'poetry'. The question of style is central to Alain's appreciation of all writers but, as Judith Robinson has pointed out, style for Alain is not a narrowly literary phenomenon.