When André Gide first read
Le Cousin Pons, he was “dans le ravissement, dans l’extase, ivre, perdu…” [“in raptures, in ecstasy, intoxicated, lost…”] (104; my translation). Although one of Balzac’s last novels, Gide admired it as perhaps his greatest. Written between June 1846 and May 1847, and first published in serial form in
Le Constitutionnel, it forms one panel of the diptych
Les Parents Pauvres[
The Poor Parents], with
La Cousine Bette[
Cousin Bette] forming the other. Balzac’s novel, like its eponymous hero, is rather jaundiced, offering an unblinking portrayal of a greedy, grasping society in which all human values are subjugated to exchange value, in which the family is little more than a mechanism for the accumulation of wealth, and in which art itself has…
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Citation: Bielecki, Emma . "Le Cousin Pons". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 26 March 2013 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=11197, accessed 25 November 2024.]
