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Bibliotherapy

Honoré de Balzac – A Foreword To The ‘Mystical Book’

Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850).

Daguerréotype de Louis-Auguste Bisson (1814-1876).

Paris, Maison de Balzac.

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🌿Today’s sharing from the Blue House of Via-HYGEIA, is a foreword written by Honoré de Balzac published in his edition of his ‘philosophical and mystical’ works published in 1835-1836, comprising among others: ‘Séraphita’ (1835), with the theme of the androgyn, in which Séraphitüs-Séraphîta is the perfect example of humanity seen through the visionary mysticism of Swedenborg , ‘Louis Lambert’ (1832) in which Balzac attempts to construct a viable theory to unify spirit and matter, devoted to both Swedenborg and Louis Claude de Saint-Martin and ‘The Exiles’ (1831), about two poets, Dante and Godefroid de Gand, who attend the Sorbonne at the start of the fourteenth century. It explores questions of metaphysics, particularly the spiritual quest for illuminism and enlightenment but is also is deeply permeated by Swedenborg’s own theories🌿In this forgotten gem, probably unpublished in the English world, a truly biting vindication, Balzac especially hoped that these three works would “produce an dazzling effect of incontestable superiority” and provide “a glorious rebuttal” to critics who ridiculed his interest in metaphysics🌿English translation by Via-HYGEIA from our French Gallimard Folio 1980 pocket edition. From pages 280 to 285. More to come soon !🌿

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Detail of a larger group, Balzac’s face by Zacharie Astruc in 1886. ‘The mask vendor’ in the jardins du Luxembourg in Paris.

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Composed of three works spread among the thirty in-12 volumes of the ‘Philosophical Studies’, this book’s intention is to offer a clear expression of the mystical and religious thought, described as a soul thrown throughout its pages.

Here, we are not in the moral studies, the first part of the work, where the author describes social behaviors as they are, but in the philosophical studies, its second part, where the feelings and the human systems are personified. Therefore, SERAPHITA, Mysticism’s alabastrine expression, would  certainly not have upon mathematics the same opinion the academy of science would have; it could impersonate everything but being a member of the Institute; if it knows the infinite, the calculations of the finite must seem to it pretty petty. Despite this naive observation of the sculptor who came to tell you that when he chiseled in its marble a mermaid, he was bent to finalize it with a fish tail, because the mermaid, once its conceptual existence accepted, wouldn’t wear common socks, you would still meet many people believing the author to be nuts, bonkers enough to have had the folly wanting to prove that 2 + 2 did not make 4; others would accuse him to be an atheist; they would pretend that he doesn’t believes in what he writes, hence having fun at the expense of the public-those would say that this work is a smoking fudge pot!

Hereby the author protests and vouch for his out-most respect for the great geniuses busying themselves to expend the limits of human science; he is very fond of the straight line, but still-unfortunately-hasn’t got over his infatuation of the curve; but he kneels in front of the glory of mathematics and the miracles of chemistry; he believes-if we admit the existence of the Spiritual Worlds-that the most beautiful theorems are but useless there, that all the calculations of the finite dimension are obsolete when opposed to the infinite, that the infinite-being like God-must be similar to is itself in all of its parts, the question of the equality of the square and the circle ought to have its solution, and that this possibility ought to emulate the love for the heavens to the surveyors. Do note, also, that he does not have the impiety to challenge the importance of mathematics upon the happiness of humanity taken as a whole; thesis defended by Swedenborg and Saint-Martin. As too many will come to the defense of the Holy Science of Man, still too few will spark an interest for the distant lights of Mysticism, the author must take the side of the weakest, at the mercy to be prone of jokes-often slanderous-libels the periodical press is pouring out upon any new idea-and that fortunately invokes in return the hardest of human breastplate: Contempt.

So, at the moment, doubt is fondling France.

After losing the political steering of the world, Catholicism is also losing its moral leadership. Catholic Rome will take as much time pantheistic Rome took to fall. What form religious piety will take? what will be its new expression? The answer is a secret only the future knows. The Saint-Simonians fancied that the social chainmail had recently offered its biggest defect: to an industrial century, they offered their positivist religion, as sharp like an axiom, as mysterious like a factual account; A Napoleonian civilisation mode in which the minds were to be enrolled, alike men were to be staggered in the imperial Guard. for them, the game seems less lost than postponed. Martin Luther was a much more agile observer of the human nature than the Saint-Simonian College; he understood in wanting to establish a religion in times of scrutiny, we ought to give ourselves a second Jesus and this very Jesus would not re-start everything again; in order to slip between all of the vanities and self-loves without offending them, we ought to come up with a ready made religion. What was needed was to bring back the court in Rome to the initial simplicity of the primitive Church. The cold negations of Protestantism-beliefs similar to bank safes, excellent economical dogmas for the disciple of scales, weighted religion scrutinized without any poetry, made possible because it is without mystery-overcame by using the Gospel’s swords.

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Mysticism is precisely Christianity in its pure principle. Here, the author didn’t make up anything and doesn’t provide anything new; he took advantage of buried wealth, he dived in many seas and gathered from their depths virgin pearls to use for the necklace of his Muse (Via-HYGEIA note: Madame Hanska). Doctrine of the early Christians, religion of the desert anchorites, Mysticism exists without government and priesthood; therefore, it has always been the object of the greatest persecutions by the Roman Church. Here, lies the secret of the sentence against Fenelon; here lies the meaning of his controversy with Bossuet. As a religion, Mysticism proceeds in a strait line from Christ through Saint John, the author of the Apocalypse; because the Apocalypse is an ark, thrown between Christian mysticism and Indu mysticism, in turn Egyptian and Greek, originating from Asia, preserved in Memphis, formulated for the benefit if his ‘Five Books’ by Moses, kept in Eleusis, in Delphi and understood by Pythagoras, renewed by the Eagle (A Via-HYGEIA note: the Holy-Ghost) of the Apostles, nebulously bequeathed to the University of Paris. In the XII th century, (see ‘The Exiles’), Magister Doctor Sigier teaches, as the science of all sciences, the Mystical Theology, in this University, queen of the intellectual world whom the four Catholic Nations were courting. You can see Dante who came to seek the preeminent Professor to shed some light upon his ‘Divine Comedy’; the good doctor otherwise would have been forgotten without Dante’s grateful verses devoted his Master. This very Mysticism-that you find dominant in the society of that time without Rome being too much bothered, because it was omnipotent, beautiful and sublime in the Middle Ages-that was bequeathed to madame Guyon, to Fenelon, to mademoiselle Bourignon by German authors, whom among them the most notorious is Jacob Boehme. Then, during the XVIII th century, there was Swedenborg, an evangelist and a prophet, whose figure rises at the same heights than Saint John, Pythagoras or Moses. Mister de Saint-Martin, who died recently, is the last of the great mystical writers. He acknowledged the proeminence of Jacob Boehme over Swedenborg, but the author of ‘Seraphita‘ grants to Swedenborg a supremacy without a possible contest over Jacob Boehme, whose works he must confess he didn’t understand anything.

The poetry of the Mystics is so great, the author didn’t believe that i would be honorable for French Literature to stay mute upon it. French literature carries for five centuries a crown to which a jewel would be missing if this lack wouldn’t be filled, even imperfectly, like it will be with this very book I now present you. After long and patient research, the author has now ventured in the most difficult project, to paint the perfect being existing within firmly applied conditions deriving from Swedenborg’s laws. Unfortunately, there are very few worthy juges. The inextricable difficulties of his work, the very dangers his spirit was bound to while he was diving in the infinite pits opened by the Mystics, glanced and surveyed by them, who would appreciate them? How many people with instruction can we count in France with a liking for the mystical sciences, or that would even only know the titles of books that in Germany are read by thousands of readers? If I wouldn’t have been passionate since my childhood for this beautiful religious system-having made when i was nineteen a ‘Seraphita’, having dreamt of the two-natured being, having sketched the statue, stuttered the poem that would be the backbone of my whole industrious life-I wouldn’t finally have been able to give this skeleton i present you now.

What the author wishes to contribute is fortunately enough for the general interest. The thorny barrier, that until now has made Mysticism an inaccessible country, is obscurity, deadly defect in France, where nobody wants to give the credit of their attention to the most sublime writer, where even Dante may have never seen his glory. Do we understand that those who proclaim the light present in them only darkness? The books deemed sacred in these intellectual spheres, are written without method, without breath, and their sentences structures are so weird that we can read thousands of pages of Madame Guyon or of Swedenborg and especially Jacob Boehme without grasping anything! I will tell you why. In the eyes of these Believers, everything is demonstrated. It is then but shouts of conviction, love psalms sung to celebrate continual pleasures, shout erupted in front of the beauty of such a view! Very much alike the clamors of a whole people seeing fireworks in the middle of the night. Despite these disheveled torrents of sentences, the whole is sublime and the arguments strike like lightnings, when the spirit catches them in this great swishing of celestial waves. Imagine the sea set ablaze by just one glance; it ravishes you, transports you, enchants you! But you stand on a rock dominating it and the sun bathes it with a physiognomy that speaks of infinity. If you start swimming, everything is chaotic, you see this sea always everywhere itself and the lines of the horizon escaping you and everywhere but these dark green waters; the monotony of its voice tires you. Therefore, in order to catch an intuition of the infinite, you must stand upon a mighty rock; the spirit of God then appears in front of you over the waters and you see a moral sun illuminating them. What was up to now lacking to Mysticism was form and poetry. When Saint Peter showed the keys of Paradise and baby Jesus in the arms of a virgin, the crowd understood! And the Catholic religion then started to exist. Sly old Saint Peter, a man of deep understanding of politics and government outplayed Saint Paul-this lion of the Mystics, as Saint John is their eagle.

If you can imagine thousands of theorems swiftly born one from another in Swedenborg’s writings, alike gushing waters; of you can imagine endless marches these writers invite you to tread upon; if you can compare the flaming spirit trying to fit into the borders of logic a sea of raging sentences, to the eye trying to perceive a light in the middle of darkness, you will certainly appreciate the studies of this writer-yours truly- the effort he took upon him to give a body to this doctrine and bring it into the reach of the French thought-lessness, always eager to guess what it does not know, and know what it can’t guess. And from an early age he fore-saw what he feels to be a new divine comedy. Alas! The rhythm was asking for a whole life and his life required other works; the scepter of rhythm hence escaped him. Poetry without measure is perhaps an impotence? Perhaps, as being such an humble prosaic writer, he heralded this very subject to some great poet! Perhaps Mysticism will gain from existing in our so positive language of our country, obliged to run straight, alike a train car upon the rail tracks!

The Exiles‘ are the peristyle of this building; there the idea appears during the Middle Ages in its naive triumph. ‘Louis Lambert’ is Mysticism caught in the act, the Seer marching through his vision leads to Heaven by facts, by his ideas, his temperament; here lies the story of the Seers. ‘Seraphita‘ is Mysticism taken as a truth, personified and showed among all its consequences.

In this book, the most incomprehensible doctrine now stands on its feet and the author labored to make it attractive like a modern novel. There is within Nature substances that when taken bare can strike down the ill person; medical science then takes them and prepare its own diluted preparations; it is the same with this writer-yours truly-the reader and this subject. Therefore, he hopes that the Believers and the Seers would forgive him to have put the feet of ‘Seraphita’ in the mud of our material world-convinced of the popularity it can provide to this sublime religion. He hopes that educated people, aroused by its form, will understand the future that Swedenborg’s hand raised towards Heaven shows; if the wise men will admit a spiritual and divine universe, they would acknowledge that the sciences of the material universe are without any utility. To the eyes of the poets, does this writer need any excuses to have poetized a doctrine, to have tried the myth and given it wings? What ever could happen from a writer that has tried to build an oeuvre based upon faith in an un-faithful age, he couldn’t possibly be blamed for by those who are neither wise, nor poets, nor seer-especially for having embodied a system born out of the obscurity.

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Original French

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Bust of Balzac by Pierre-Eugene-Emile HÉBERT (1828–1893) at the Clark Art Institute in New York.

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More about Balzac: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honoré_de_Balzac🌿Maison de Balzac in Passy, Paris: https://www.maisondebalzac.paris.fr
Honoré de Balzac – A Foreword To The ‘Mystical Book’

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