Adumbrative Allusion in Balzac's Illusions Perdues‪.‬

Balzac was a master of allusion. He usually embedded his allusive patterns so seamlessly that, although they may work on the reader's subconscious, they only call attention to themselves with great subtlety. While in most cases, as for example when he alludes to the female novelists Mme Girardin, Mme Guizot, and others in La muse du departement, he forms simple parallels that make his adventures seem more forceful and pertinent for contemporary readers, in some cases the allusions establish antitheses. In Splendeurs et miseres des courtisanes, for example, the clear references to the biblical story of Esther and Mordecai create an obvious opposition to Balzac's Esther, for the latter serves not the sovereign God of the Hebrews but the maleficent Jacques Collin or Vautrin. Occasionally, the allusions create surprising complexity, encompassing entire works. I think of Eugenie Grandet, an instance where the author's references to the Bible and church history establish dueling religions that oppose Mammon to love. In all cases, Balzac's allusions add complexity and richness to the tapestry he weaves. (1) The allusions in Illusions perdues (1837-43) serve to adumbrate Lucien's fate. In 1819, shortly before the period when Illusions perdues was set, the writer and critic Henri de Latouche had revealed Andre Chenier to the French public. Balzac refers to the revolutionary poet a number of times and, as the Pleiade editor, Roland Chollet, notes, associated him with "toute une atmosphere morale de jeunesse, d'exaltation, d'idealisme forcene" (5.147n2). Certainly, for Balzac, Chenier was unquestionably one of the great poets of France. He tried early on to pastiche him, he cited his poems in his letters, he took various passages to serve as epigraphs in his pre-Comedie humaine novels by Lord R'hoone, and what Chollet terms his delicate appreciation of Latouche's preface to the 1820 edition of Chenier leaves no doubt of the novelist's appreciation: "Un poete retrouve par un poete,"Lucien says (5.147 and n2). As Balzac put it in one of his letters to Madame Hanska, Chenier was for him "le poete de l'amour, le plus grand des poetes francais" (Lettres a Madame Hanska 1.71).