Mind as Ruin: Balzac’s “Sarrasine”
123
ever, the Freudian unconscious, since for Balzac modern French consciousness is grounded in an historical rupture: the sudden break with
feudalism and Catholicism realized in Republican modernity, rationalism, individualism and secularism. The “other-of-the-self” emerging
from this rupture is thus a conglomeration of residual feelings, habits
and memories that animate consciousness and behaviour but do not
align with the rationalist concept of the self inherited from the
Enlightenment and enacted by modern Republicanism. Balzac, like
Freud, was probably atheist, considering the metaphysical substance
of religion a simple illusion. As a moral archaeologist, however, he
clearly recognized the residual influence of Old Regime customs on
modern consciousness. It is this contradiction between the myths of
modernity (individualism, rationalism, freedom from Catholicism,
etc.) and the residual religious feelings hidden beneath that Balzac
sought to expose.
In novels such as Louis Lambert, Adieu, L’Auberge Rouge, La
Recherche de l’absolu or “Sarrasine”, Balzac systematically uses archaeological metaphors to draw attention to the correspondence between psychical discontinuity in characters and the historico-cultural
discontinuity of early nineteenth-century France. The metaphors signal an epistemic rupture between apparently conscious thoughts and
behaviours at an adult age and archaic, involuntary habits from childhood (and/or a bygone era) that nonetheless determine thoughts and
behaviours. Often, after a traumatic event, characters find themselves
distanced from their affective or “moral” past, leading to symptoms of
nostalgia or madness that Balzac codes metaphorically as archaeological debris in order to signal that the problem originates in the remote
past and consequently eludes voluntary memory.
The influence of scientific archaeology can be found throughout Balzac’s work, from his early theoretical treatises to his last novels. In La Théorie de la démarche, for example, the novelist compares
his way of decrypting human behaviour to the Egyptian paleontology
of Champollion, “[qui] a consumé sa vie à lire les hiéroglyphes [...] et
nul n’a voulu donner la clef des hiéroglyphes perpétuels de la
démarche humaine” (XII, 261). Balzac was also inspired by the naturalist Georges Cuvier, whose reconstructions of lost forms of animal
life sparked the idea of reconstructing lost forms of human consciousness: “Il existe une anatomie comparée morale, comme une anatomie
comparée physique. Pour l’âme, comme pour le corps, un détail mène
123
ever, the Freudian unconscious, since for Balzac modern French consciousness is grounded in an historical rupture: the sudden break with
feudalism and Catholicism realized in Republican modernity, rationalism, individualism and secularism. The “other-of-the-self” emerging
from this rupture is thus a conglomeration of residual feelings, habits
and memories that animate consciousness and behaviour but do not
align with the rationalist concept of the self inherited from the
Enlightenment and enacted by modern Republicanism. Balzac, like
Freud, was probably atheist, considering the metaphysical substance
of religion a simple illusion. As a moral archaeologist, however, he
clearly recognized the residual influence of Old Regime customs on
modern consciousness. It is this contradiction between the myths of
modernity (individualism, rationalism, freedom from Catholicism,
etc.) and the residual religious feelings hidden beneath that Balzac
sought to expose.
In novels such as Louis Lambert, Adieu, L’Auberge Rouge, La
Recherche de l’absolu or “Sarrasine”, Balzac systematically uses archaeological metaphors to draw attention to the correspondence between psychical discontinuity in characters and the historico-cultural
discontinuity of early nineteenth-century France. The metaphors signal an epistemic rupture between apparently conscious thoughts and
behaviours at an adult age and archaic, involuntary habits from childhood (and/or a bygone era) that nonetheless determine thoughts and
behaviours. Often, after a traumatic event, characters find themselves
distanced from their affective or “moral” past, leading to symptoms of
nostalgia or madness that Balzac codes metaphorically as archaeological debris in order to signal that the problem originates in the remote
past and consequently eludes voluntary memory.
The influence of scientific archaeology can be found throughout Balzac’s work, from his early theoretical treatises to his last novels. In La Théorie de la démarche, for example, the novelist compares
his way of decrypting human behaviour to the Egyptian paleontology
of Champollion, “[qui] a consumé sa vie à lire les hiéroglyphes [...] et
nul n’a voulu donner la clef des hiéroglyphes perpétuels de la
démarche humaine” (XII, 261). Balzac was also inspired by the naturalist Georges Cuvier, whose reconstructions of lost forms of animal
life sparked the idea of reconstructing lost forms of human consciousness: “Il existe une anatomie comparée morale, comme une anatomie
comparée physique. Pour l’âme, comme pour le corps, un détail mène