Honoré de Balzac, The Centenarian, or, The Two Beringhelds (Wesleyan University Press, 2005)
This book is another offering in Wesleyan's Early Classics of Science Fiction Series. I volunteered to review it because I am a Balzac fan (not that you would know it from my earlier review of The Wrong Side of Paris and because I reviewed one of the other books in this series, Albert Robida's The Twentieth Century.
Just to give you some background, Honoré de Balzac was a very prolific and highly-regarded French novelist who lived from 1799-1850. Many of his novels are parts of his vast Comédie Humaine, a series of loosely-connected stories about a group of very interesting characters. When I say I am a fan, I mean it. I have somewhere in excess of fifteen different Balzac novels in English translation in the home library -- and some of them were pretty hard to find!
Originally published in serial form in 1822 under the pseudonym Horace de Saint-Aubin, The Centenarian is one of Balzac's earliest novels. Although he later denied its authorship, both his personal records and those of the publisher make it quite clear that he wrote the book. Professors Danièle Chatelain and George Slusser, who translated the text into English (and wrote the introduction, as well as translators' notes, an extensive essay on French science fiction, endnotes, and an afterword), provide sufficient evidence to support this assertion, and I recognize enough of Balzac's style in it so that I couldn't disagree. To be honest, The Centenarian reminded me quite a lot of The Wrong Side of Paris. Alas, I wish that were a compliment.
I'm not quite so convinced that this is an early work of French science fiction. Professors Chatelain and Slusser base this argument in large part on Isaac Asimov's definition of science fiction, that it is "literature that registers the impact of scientific and technological advancement on human beings" (xxi in this book, from Asimov on Science Fiction, published by Doubleday in 1985). Well, okay, that's not a bad definition, but I have a hard time fitting The Centenarian into that box. But let me tell you enough of the story so that you can judge for yourself.
An officer in Napoleon's army, General Tullius Beringheld, is returning from Spain with his division. Outside a small manufacturing town near Tours (Balzac's birthplace), he and his devoted servant Lagloire witness the tragic disappearance and apparent demise of a young girl, the only child of the local factory owner. The perpetrator of this act is a tall, spectral being known by the locals as the Old Man, to whom General Beringheld bears a disquieting resemblance. In a very long flashback (comprising nearly half of the entire novel), we learn that the resemblance is familial. The Old Man, otherwise known as the Centenarian, is General Beringheld's ancestor, born three hundred years earlier.
Balzac's explanation for the Old Man's longevity sounds more like alchemy or plain old magic than science; it involves the élan vital, or water of life. So does his tale about the miraculous birth of Tullius and the suggestion of the Old Man's role in bringing about this event. It appears that the Centenarian has the ability to heal people who are gravely ill; however, in doing so, he saps his own energy and so must take a life in exchange. Thus the death of the factory owner's daughter was the consummation of an agreement between that young woman and the Centenarian, who provided her with some potions that restored her dying father to life.
The long flashback relates the personal history of Tullius, including his brief affair with an attractive Parisian, Madame de Revendsi, and his deeper friendship with the pure-hearted Marianine, whose father is the administrator of the Beringheld estate. The present-time plot, when at last Balzac returns to it, concerns Tullius's efforts to come to terms with his heritage and to wed Marianine. Balzac brings these two plotlines together by having Marianine encounter the Old Man at a time in her life when she needs help with her father. He provides two endings to the tale, suggesting his own uncertainty about which might be more appealing to his readers.
Two characteristics distinguish the Balzac novels I've read and liked. One is his use of detail in describing Paris and other places. His depictions of the Paris markets and theatres in Lost Illusions are quite memorable. The most detailed description of place I found in The Centenarian was of the Old Man's workshop in Paris (clearly a product of Balzac's imagination). The other is his skilful representation of his characters, especially of those who experience changing fortunes -- A Harlot High and Low and The Bachelor's Establishment (also known as The Black Sheep) are full of such characters. Balzac's depictions of these characters as they celebrate their successes and struggle against their losses are most insightful. I had a hard time developing any feelings about the characters in The Centenarian. The Old Man is too strange to appeal to the emotions. Marianine is too sweet, and because of the narrative approach, the reader never gets close enough to General Tullius to gain any understanding of him, apart from his obvious regard for his commander in chief, Bonaparte.
Yes, Bonaparte appears as a character in this novel. He is the only historical figure in the novel, and the military campaigns in which Tullius participates are the only events that place this tale in any historical context. In that regard, The Centenarian reminds me of the two George Sand novels I reviewed some time ago, The Bagpipers and The Black City. These works have a timeless quality about them. In the case of The Centenarian, I think this reflects Balzac's youth and inexperience, his lack of scenes and characters from his own life upon which to draw for his writing.
Notorious for living well and always teetering at the edge of insolvency, Balzac contracted to write The Centenarian and a second novel in mid-August of 1822 with a deadline of October 1 of the same year. Like many writers in this period (whose experiences Balzac portrays so well in Lost Illusions!), he received compensation based on the length of the completed work, so he was, as always, motivated to ‘pad' his writing rather than aim for conciseness. Even our respectful translators comment on Balzac's use of punctuation, repetition and line spacing to accomplish this end!
