Catch Hold Of Droll Stories Produced By Honoré De Balzac Readily Available As Leaflet

neviem, čo som čakala, ale toto určite nie, Nečakala som, že to bude tak dobré!
V prvom rade, nie som veľká fanúšička poviedok.
V druhom rade som mala zrejme zo školy z nepochopiteľného dôvodu zafixované, že Balzac bude nudný.
Ani trochu!

Tieto poviedky boli veľmi vtipné, miestami absurdné, plné satiry a irónie.
Majstrovsky napísané. Poviedky sa týkajú lásky, sexu, nevery, ale aj výsmech cirkvi a ich pokrytectva som dosť prekvapená, že som túto knihu našla u svojej veriacej babky, autor sa s týmto veľmi nemaznal.
Autor niekoľkokrát zašiel ďaleko, oveľa ďalej, než by som čakala pri poviedkách z.
storočia, ale myslim to v tom najlepšom zmysle, Poviedky tiež často zobrazujú inteligentné ženy, ktoré používajú svoje kvality a vedia ich využiť pre svoj prospech, čiže Balzacovi tlieskam aj kvôli tomuto.


Mojim favoritom medzi poviedkami je jednoznačne Všedný hriech, čo bolo umelecké dielo dejovo, charaktermi postáv, aj takým tým situačným humorom absurditou situácie
Mimo toho sa tu nachádza aj pár priemerných poviedok, no žiadna si nevyslúžila menej než.
Za mňa teda obrovská spokojnosť a môžem vám tieto poviedky silno odporučiť.
Navyše je text obohatený úžasnými ilustráciami, For those unfamiliar with Balzac, he's one of the first realist writers of his time, Most of his work is vulgar and broad, but set in a time when vulgarity was a part of life.
It's refreshing to see that Shakespeare wasn't the first/only one to transcend the pattern of dark Europe.


While most of the stories contain subtle filth on bodily functions and bedroom escapades, it's not difficult to understand, even in translation.
It's all quite entertaining, and broad though it may be, still lends to an appropriate feeling of familiarity with the era the writer'sth century or the fictionalth century, or anywhere in between.


It wasn't all farts and tresses and entrails, however, a fourpart story in the middle of the collection concerns a witch trial ofsorts, "The Succubus" reminds me of Milton's Paradise Lost, which probably took clues from most witchcraft stories of the medieval era.


Overall, I found it light reading and worthy of my time, I recommend it to anyone weary of unrealistic, morallybound previctorian literature, I think that my edition is not this one listed here, but nevertheless my thoughts on de Balzac have stayed the same I hate him, his style, everything.
These stories are all over the place, vulgar and quite frankly they are supposed to be funny, but they are not.
I'm giving up on de Balzac, but maybe I'll find some of his work that I'll like, but it's not gonna be any time soon.


Sorry not sorry
I was really looking forward to reading Droll Stories, as it seemed to me that a ribald parody of medieval tales was subject matter I could easily find amusing treasures in.
However it seems as if Balzac had taken on a rabelaisian task without having the right mindset to offer the reader the same degree of grotesque bawdiness all the way through.


Balzac promises us a book of the "richest flavour, full of right hearty merriment, spiced to the palate of the illustrious and very precious tosspots and drinkers, to whom our worthy compatriot Francois Rabelais, the eternal honour of Touraine, addressed himself", and this is true of the first ten tales, and indeed somewhat into the second ten tales, but about midway through the second lot of stories the writing takes a turn towards more dramatic themes and the absurdity so well begun wanes.
Some of the early pieces I quite enjoyed such as The BrotherinArms, The Vicar of AzayLeRideau, and the most befitting The Merry Tattle of the Nuns of Poissy which has a novice nun searching her naked body by command of a senior sister for a potentially sinful flea.
This is the kind of bawdy absurdness I was hoping to unravel throughout the entire collection of stories, but by the time I had reached the third ten tales I was struggling to keep engrossed and felt that Balzac was writing in a completely different mood to when he had started out despite the verve of the prologues and epilogues that would have us believe otherwise.


"Give us a story, then, that stops at the girdle", this is what I was expecting all the way through Droll Stories, it may be that Balzac is tickled by the wit of Rabelais but I just don't think he has the same nuance of the absurd that is required to replicate it in his own outpourings.
It's worth reading for the few tales that will delight the more lewd of the senses and myedition has saucy illustrations by Steele Savage which enrich the feel of the collection, but if you are hoping for something that will make you gasp and guffaw then I'd recommend Rabelais himself.
Having said all that, it is splendid that Balzac attempted such an ode and I'm sure it is probably better read in the author's native tongue.
Ich muss gestehen, ich war vielleicht bereits zu Beginn dieses Buches etwas negativ voreingenommen, Zum einen hat mich Balzac bislang nie so wirklich begeistern können, da sein flüchtiger Stil neben den beiden anderen großen Realisten Flaubert und Stendhal verblasst.
Zum anderen war meine DDRAusgabe mit einem mikroskopisch kleinen Schriftbild versehen, dass das Lesen unangenehm macht und auch die Qualität der Reproduktionen der Stiches Gustave Dorés erheblich beeinträchtigte.


Aber auch ohne diese negative Vorprägung hätte mich das Buch nicht begeistern können.
Balzac versucht so etwas, wie einen Decameron seiner Zeit, den er allerdings in das Frankreich der Religionskriege verlegt.
Wer das versucht, der muss sich auch mit Boccaccio messen lassen und hier muss Balzac leider den Vergleich scheuen, den bei aller Zotigkeit sind die Tolldreisten Geschichten doch in vielen Punkten verschämt bieder.
Das aber passt nicht zum Thema, Da lobe ich mir doch den würzigen Witz der Renaissance! Das übrigens liegt nicht an der etwas altbackenen Übersetzung.
Der Übersetzer ist redlich bemüht, die Sprachwitze zu übertragen und dies gelingt ihm insbesondere dort gut, wo Balzac lokale französische Dialekte immitiert und unterschiedliche deutsche Dialekte an deren Stelle gesetzt werden.


Zugleich ist Balzac bei seinem historischen Setting unglaublich schlampig, Da wäre es konsequenter gewesen, die Geschichte in die ihm bekannte Gegenwart zu versetzen, wie das Julia Voznesenskaya bei ihrem schwer mit Balzac zu vergleichenden aber wesentlich gelungeneren "Dekameron der Frauen" gemacht hat.
I loved these stories and I loved Balzac's crazy interludes where he tries to reason about why he's writing them.
Some of them are just begging to be stage productions and are very amusing, Definitely not for prudish people, but also excellent for those interested in a version of historical France.
These stories present a much different Balzac than the one I'm used to, Much more the entertaining farce than the honest portrayal of human striving and suffering at the different levels of society.
Seems a bit awkward too, trying to mimic a bit much the older style of stories.
Still fun to read, though, "It is easy to sit up and take notice, What is difficult is getting up and taking action.
" A Medieval romp through the high castles and low morals of France, Some merry, some sad, all instructive, Only one pilgrim tells these tales, but they are rich as Chaucer's, He was not a beauteous as Scheherazade but he could well tell a tale, Fill a tankard and wade right in, The trough of all humanity is just fine,


Just as with The Arabian Nights and The Canterbury Tales, there is some really low humor here.
But some lovely innocent flowers as well, The tribe of the Cuckolds is increased, Ladies turn the tables on their husbands, But then again, True Love can sometimes conquer all,

This ebook is a different translation than the physical book I have, It was interesting and instructive to see the differences, It was also a different experience to read it atyears of age when the last time I read it, I was around.


The tale called The Succubus was still a long slog for the moral,

Innocence is a wonderfully sweet little tidbit,

One must remember that during this time most of the world's leaders were not more than teenaged, and it does show, as in The Merrie Jests of King Louis the Eleventh.


Still, it is an amusing read, ½
Blanche wallowed silently in her desire, like a cake which is being floured,

This is a book of the richest flavour, full of right hearty merriment, spiced to the palate of the illustrious and very precious tosspots and drinkers, to whom our worthy compatriot, François Rabelais, the eternal honour of Touraine, addressed himself.

From the prologue

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As much as I loved the few episodes of La Comédie Humaine I read so far sitelinkLost Illusions, sitelinkCousin Bette, sitelinkCousin Pons, I cannot say I was entirely enthralled by this collection of ribald short stories by Honoré de Balzac.
Published in three sets of ten stories each, in,, and, known as Contes drolatiques Droll stories, Balzac conceived these candid and wanton stories as an obvious homage to Rabelais.
The Dutch subtitle of the edition I read a classic erotic masterpiece divulges partly what to expect: lively, amatory and slightly grotesque comical stories set mostly in the thirteenth century, on the licentious mores of knights and dames, pages, courtesans, nuns, monks and others representing the ecclesiastic class.
Mostly dealing with cuckoldry, disingenuous wiles, fauxnaïvité, impotence or lost innocence the tales are rather to be situated in the sphere of eroticism than in the one of heroism and also turn out more scatological than eschatological.
The Contes drolatiques were added to the Index librorum prohibitorum inmaybe because most women characters are so admirably sensual and cunning in outwitting the men This teaches us to thoroughly verify and recognise women, Balzac muses wisely.


These libertine, saucy stories struck me as a curiosum in Balzacs oeuvre, On the historical and social context in which these stories were written and published, Graham Robb in his sitelinkBalzac: A Biography clarifies that The subjects were a form of protest at the new bourgeois society which had no regard for the truly important aspects of human existence: necrophilia, nymphomania, adultery and the essential bodily functions.
The first collection was published in what seemed bad taste during the cholera epidemic of spring.
Actually it was rather appropriate since Paris was temporarily plunged into the Dark Ages, with a curfew, corpses carried through the streets at midnight, and the ragpickers revolting when their rubbish heaps were swept away.
And apparently Balzac managed to lift the spirits, as for instance when the first story, on the courtesan Impéria, got published, it worked on the contemporaries like an aphrodisiac in a time of miserable chastity.


The collection I read contained nineteen stories in a Dutch translation that modernizes the style, so I assume the meticulous historical wordplay in imitation ofth century French these stories are renown for was a dimension that was unavoidably at least partly lost in translation allegedly one of the reasons he chose to write in this for the contemporaries rather remote pseudoarchaic style was his aim to restrain the enjoyment of his lascivious adventures to the elite in order to avoid his book being banned.
Nevertheless some of the flowery and juicy language, the vitality and the style mimicry echoes through with the often ambiguous language and plentiful double entendres, it seems that the translator conveys at least some of what must be the playful qualities of the original.


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One of my favourites scenes, in which the pleasures of reading are combined with the ones of the flesh, features inThe venial sin, of which I found two illustrations what will happen can be left to the imagination.
Some editions include illustrations by Gustave Doré, which capture the dark and at macabre undertone of some of the stories, in which many a man ends up on the scaffold exquisitely.
Both text and more illustrations can be found sitelinkhere,

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The repetitiveness and the often clerical context and setting the stories are supposedly collected from the abbeys of Balzacs native Touraine for me however made it hard to fully enjoy this collection reading it in one take possibly just too many nuns to my taste, having seen enough of them at school and by the end I struggled to get through the whole collection.
Good for a grin here and there, it seems more appropriate to pick a tale in between some other books, or to read one in bed to close the day maybe the smile it gives could inspire some amusing dreams I am wondering now how I would get along with Rabelais
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