As the man of Desire incarnate, Balzac seems to have divined, in this supreme effort, that even the passion of creation must be transmuted. He recognized unerringly that the man of genius is only at the first stage of the great trine of Love, that his very desire for immortality, through immolation in the art form, is the expression of a selfish love, or love of self.
It was through the world of desire, however, that Balzac, perfectly aware of his limitations as a man and reconciled to the role of artist, succeeded in giving us a vehicle which would lead us to the mysteries.
Other more perfectly developed beings speak a language requiring an initiation which the great world of men and women will never experience. As the universal artist, Balzac makes clear even to the dullest mind the unlimited possibilities which are open to everyone. “The Brazen Rod belongs to all,” says Seraphita. . . . “Neither the most obscure evangelists, nor the most amazing of God’s prophets, have been superior to what you might become.”
That he himself did not pursue the high course which he realized we must all eventually take, is not a condemnation of his wisdom or sincerity: the mystery that envelops man’s behavior is hidden in the laws of karma and dharma. “The supreme virtue,” he says towards the close of the book, “is resignation.”
In addition to Seraphita there are four other characters portrayed: David, her aged servitor, a sort of Biblical figure, a rock of faith, who seems to obey the law of inertia; Pastor Becker, an elderly man, who is the symbol of futile learning and against whom are directed the bitterest shafts; Minna, his daughter, a young girl whose love for Seraphita is really worship; and Wilfrid, a man in the prime of life, betrothed to Minna, but also devotedly in love with Seraphita.
The seven divisions of the book might be dramatically summed up as follows: The High Place, or the Annunciation, the Mystic Union of Two in One as revealed through Love, the Temptation and Triumph over Desire, the Ordeal of Doubt, Renunciation, the Path of Light, the Assumption.
The scene is laid in Norway, in a village called Jarvis. The story opens with the ascent by Minna and Seraphitus of the inaccessible peaks of the Falberg. The atmosphere is magical: “they could see the stars, though it was daytime.”
Minna, aware of the supernatural quality of the adventure, exclaims: “We have not come here by unaided human strength.” At the summit, whence they command an awesome view of the two worlds, Seraphitus plucks a saxifrage (whose etymological meaning is “stone-breaking flower”) on which no human eye has yet rested and offers this unique blossom to her companion in memory of a day unique in her life, saying: “you will never again find a guide to lead you to this soeter.”
Seraphitus speaks as only one can speak “who has attained to the highest places on the mountains of the earth.” She recounts to Minna how our knowledge of the laws of the visible world are merely a means of enabling us to conceive of the immensity of higher spheres, declaring that Man is not the final creation. . . . “Below,” she says, “you have hope, the beautiful rudiment of faith; but here faith reigns, the realization of hope.”
And then, almost as if in Balzac’s own voice, she continues: “I have no taste for the fruits of the earth. . . . I am disgusted with all things, for I have the gift of vision.” By way of answering Minna’s declarations of love, she exclaims, with a cry of despair: “I wanted a companion to go with me to the realm of light. . . . I am an exile far from heaven; like a monster, far from earth. . . . I am alone. I am resigned, I can wait.”
Later, with Wilfrid, who sees her as a woman, Seraphita discourses on the true nature of love. “You desire me, but you do not love me,” she explains. Her own love, she points out, is devoid of self-interest.
“Rise to the heights,” she entreats, “where men see each other truly, though tiny and crowded as the sands of the seashore.” Wilfrid is baffled; he feels that whoever approaches her is engulfed in a vortex of light. He leaves her to consult Minna’s father. He finds Pastor Becker in the midst of a book called Incantations, by Jean Weir.
Throughout the narrative Pastor Becker is constantly returning to this book, as if in the hope of finding there an explanation of the mysteries which envelop him. Balzac describes him as having “the solid tenacity of happy ignorance.”
He is always enveloped in clouds of tobacco smoke—the fumes of learning, doubtless. In attempting to unravel the mysterious nature of Seraphita Wilfrid tells the Pastor that she is “one of those awe-inspiring spirits to whom it is given to constrain men, to coerce nature, and share the occult powers of God. She alternately kills and vivifies me!” he exclaims. In the thick clouds of smoke which enshroud the trio the saxifrage, still fresh, “gleams like another light.”
In answer to Wilfrid’s demand to know more about the birth and circumstances of Seraphita’s life, Pastor Becker announces that it will first be necessary “to disentangle the obscurest of all Christian creeds,” whereupon he proceeds to launch into a sustained and eloquent account of Swedenborg’s doctrine. It appears that he has read from beginning to end the seventeen volumes of Swedenborg’s work bequeathed to him by the Baron Seraphitus, deceased father of Seraphita.
The subject of angels, an obsession with the author, affords Balzac the opportunity to reveal his own true religion. He describes the three stages of love—love of self, as exemplified by the human genius; love of the world at large, as exemplified by the prophets and those great men “whom the earth accepts as guides and hails as divine”; and love of heaven, which forms angelic spirits—such as Seraphita.
The angelic spirits he characterizes as “the flowers of humanity.” They must have either the love or the wisdom of heaven; but, he emphasizes, “they must dwell in that love before they dwell in wisdom.” Thus, he concludes, “the first transformation of man is to love” (italics mine throughout).
He then compares the superficial knowledge of the scientific man with that other wisdom which comes from the knowledge of the “correspondences,” adding that science saddens man, whereas love enraptures the angel. “Science is still seeking; love has found.” As if to give the clue to his own secret experience, he thereupon puts in Pastor Becker’s mouth these words: “It is enough to have the smallest inkling of it to transform one forever.”
Here, it seems to me, lies the true secret of Balzac’s greatness, for not to recognize the significance of this utterance in relation to his work is to misinterpret the man’s whole life. In the next instant, almost as if to corroborate the fact, he adds, again through Pastor Becker: “The perpetual ecstasy of the angels is produced by the faculty, bestowed on them by God, of giving back to Him the joy they have in Him.”
Does this not explain, in the deepest sense, the record of his almost superhuman efforts? Were not his Titanic struggles to create another universe a joyous restitution for the precious moments of illumination which had been vouchsafed him as a boy? In Louis Lambert, which precedes Seraphita by two years, we have the record of his parting with his real self, the double whom he calls Louis Lambert.
The description of the letter’s life after leaving the College, his life with the angels, is it not a projection of Balzac’s own aborted desire? And the punishment which he metes out to his double at the end, was it also not an expression of his secret fears—the fear, I should say, of taking the straight and narrow path?
Perhaps in refusing to follow the angel in himself he displayed a discretion which was another kind of wisdom, but we know that as a result of his choice he was burdened with a guilt which assumed gigantic form in the demon of Work which drove him to a premature death. It is often said that he possessed extraordinary powers of illusion, so much so that he was able not only to create his own world, but to live in it.
But are we to regard this ability simply as another evidence of the artist’s desire to escape reality, as is said? If by reality we mean the everyday world, yes, but if we refer to that other, greater reality, then surely it was not “escape,” but a desire for union. In dedicating himself to art, Balzac, who had the potentiality and equipment for leading a hundred different lives, signified his willingness to accept the cross of suffering, to acknowledge his fate and to work it out heroically, confident that in doing so he was contributing to the welfare of humanity in his own unique way; confident, too, that if not in this life, then in the next, or the next, he would free himself of his shackles.
In Seraphita we have a sublime expression of his desire to live in and by the Light. But it was a light, as he remarks, “that kills the man who is not prepared to receive it.”
To resume. .
