Landscape in the novel by Honore de Balzac "Letters of two brides": motifs of heaven and hell

Honore de Balzac is the author of one book, a novel about 19th century France. Its title, The Human Comedy, is a direct allusion to Dante's Divine Comedy. In Balzac's book, we are also talking about the perfection of the soul and the comprehension of the true law of the universe – mystical love, about the knowledge of good and evil necessary for comprehending the truth.

The formation of Balzac's ethical and aesthetic ideas was significantly influenced by the ideas of the mystical philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg. The writer mentions him in the forewords to The Human Comedy and The Mystical Book ^[1]. In his essay "On heaven, on the World of Spirits and Angels," Swedenborg argues that matter does not exist independently, but completely depends on spiritual principles. In his ideas, three mystical regions of the universe are distinguished. These are heaven inhabited by human angels, hell, where selfish human demons are located, and between them the world of spirits (the dead who did not make a choice between good and evil). The essence of life according to Swedenborg is love. A person has free will and is able to choose between "self–love" (or hellish love – amor infernalis), which is the basis of all mortal sins, evil, and "spiritual love" – "love for another" (amor spiritualis) - it is the basis of good. The choice of one or another foundation forms the space of either hell or heaven in earthly life ^[2].

The motifs ^[3] of heaven and hell arise in the landscapes ^[4] of the epistolary novel "Memoirs of two Young Wives" (1842), which was included in the "Scenes of Private Life". Researchers believe that all the monastic memories of the heroines, Louise and Rene, are based on George Sand's stories about the Augustinian Catholic monastery in which she was raised. Some even consider the writer to be the prototype of Louise. However, it is impossible to say unequivocally that Louise is George Sand, since even externally, according to Vera Arkadyevna Milchina, Rene is closer to the writer ^[5].

The plot of the novel is based on the description of the lives of two young women – Louise de Chaulieu and Rene de Mocomb. They became close friends during their novitiate at the Carmelite monastery in Blois. But when they leave the walls of the holy monastery, their lives go in two completely different ways. Despite the distance and the completely different way of life, their friendship is preserved through correspondence, which lasts from 1823 to 1835. The landscape accompanies the key scenes of the novel. Narration on behalf of two narrators – Louise and Rene – gives a special psychologism to landscape details, sketches and descriptions.

The first landscape sketch (urban landscape) appears in a letter from Louise to Rene dated December 15, where she describes her first appearance after returning to Paris from the monastery in Blois: "It was one of those autumn days that we so admired on the banks of the Loire. I finally saw Paris! Louis XV Square is really beautiful, but this beauty lacks naturalness" ^{[6, p. 47]}.

The landscape sketch conveys the ecstatic state of Louise, anticipating her appearance in high society and expecting universal delight from her beauty. At the same time, she is smart and observant enough to notice the artificial beauty of Paris in comparison with Blois.

And in Rene's letter there is a landscape sketch, she describes life in the provinces, meeting her future husband, his father's estate. The landscape sketch serves as an introduction to the story of Rene's marriage and outlines the features of her character. The detailed image of the estate testifies to Rene's observation and sensitivity, at the same time, there is a symbolic subtext in it. The valley where the estate of Rene's future husband is located is beautiful, the garden is similar to all the gardens of Provence, the old castle of Mokomb is the pride of a beautiful valley, but the old baron does not live in a castle, but in a bastide – a simple rustic house, the walls of the house are made of stone blocks and fastened with yellowish cement. The roof bends under the weight of the stone tiles. The windows are arranged without any symmetry. The garden is surrounded by a low wall made of large round stones; the wall is covered with clay, which has crumbled in places. There is a stone porch leading into the house, and a canopy over the door that would not arouse the envy of even a peasant from the Loire, the owner of a charming white house under a blue roof sparkling in the sun. The garden is terribly dusty, the leaves on the trees are withered ^{[6, pp. 52-53]}.

The landscape that appeared before Rene's eyes reflects the mental state of the old Baron de l'Estorade. For a long time he lived with the oppressive feeling of losing his son, who was considered dead in Russia during the war of 1812. Here, Swedenborg's idea of the dependence of material form, physical space on the mental state of a person is embodied in a figurative form. And the soul of the Baron de l'Estorade is the hell of a father who has lost his son.

Next, Rene describes her future husband and mentions the condition under which she will marry him. This condition will be the transformation of a dry desert into an oasis. She sets herself the task of creating an earthly paradise: "I graciously agreed to become Madame de l'Estorade <...> , but with the prerequisite that I will be able to transform the bastide to my liking and set up a park around it. I demanded in all form that my father take some water here from Mokomb." ^{[6, pp. 53-54]}.

She clearly imagined her future life in the provinces, accepted its mediocrity and monotony, but this did not prevent her from seeing it in an idyllic light, among beautiful and harmonious nature, where she would raise children, live their joys: "The monotony of my days will be brightened by the quiet joys of rural life. I will plant beautiful trees around my house and turn our estate into an oasis that will merge with the Gemenos Valley. The lawns in my park will be green all year round, as everywhere in Provence; the park will stretch all the way to the hill, on top of which I will order some beautiful gazebo to be built, from where, perhaps, I can see the sparkling Mediterranean Sea. Orange and lemon trees – the most beautiful pearls of the plant world – will decorate this corner, where I will be the absolute mistress. We will be surrounded by eternal poetry – the poetry of nature. <...> Life spreads out in front of me like a wide road, smooth and smooth, overshadowed by centuries-old trees. There are no two Buonapartes in one century; therefore, if I have children, I will be able to raise them, bring them out into the world and live with their cares and joys" ^{[6, pp. 54-55]}.

Landscape details, in tune with Louise's mood in the early days of marriage, appear in her letter to Renee. She describes the impressions of a trip to the estate bought by her husband and mentions how she admired the Loire, the bright light of the moon and the park, from where wonderful aromas poured, but with the same admiration she speaks of a cozy Gothic bedroom, "decorated with all the inventions of modern luxury" ^{[6, pp. 149-150]}.

Rene's reply letter to Louise begins with a landscape description, which shows that the sad estate is gradually turning into a beautiful garden: "Far away, like a steel blade, the Mediterranean Sea glitters. This bench is overshadowed by fragrant trees – I ordered a huge jasmine bush, honeysuckle and Spanish droc to be transplanted here. One day, the entire rock will be covered with a carpet of plants. The grapes have already been planted" ^{[6, p. 155]}.

The final transformation takes place only with the birth of the firstborn. It was this event that made Renee feel amor spiritualis – spiritual love, and the material space of her life is becoming more and more perfect: This estate, which, however, will soon become a entail, the lands of our Armand," she writes, "has turned into a promised land for me. The desert was left behind ^{[6, p. 171]}.

Louise, who has become a widow, sees the space around her differently: the land in a beautiful blooming park seems to her like a "damp grave": I'm sitting by the window and looking into the distance: there's a wonderful view from here, Felipe has admired it so often, <…> . Ah, dear, changing places is painful for someone whose heart is dead. I shudder when I look at the damp earth in the garden, it looks like a large grave ^{[6, p. 207]}.

The details of the landscape correspond to the state of her soul: I fell in love with the shadow, the silence and the night; <...> My only joy is a quiet park, where I see pictures of former happiness, invisible to others, but eloquent and alive to me ^{[6, pp. 208-209]}.

A new love brings Louise back to life and, like Renee, she creates a harmonious environment around herself: Two years ago, I bought twenty arpans of land above the ponds of Ville d'avre, on the way to Versailles: meadows, a forest edge and a beautiful garden. Among the meadows, I ordered to dig a pond with an area of about three arpans, leaving a picturesque island in the center. A small valley is sandwiched between two wooded hills, from where wonderful streams run down, the waters of which my architect skillfully distributed throughout the park. <…>. The small, beautifully planned park is surrounded by hedges <…> . On the side of the Rhone Forest on the slope there is a lawn descending to the pond – there I ordered to build a chalet, like two drops of water similar to the one that travelers admire on the way from Sune to Brig <...> Its decoration is not inferior to the most famous chalets. <…>. All the buildings are surrounded by greenery, so that only the exquisitely simple facade of the chalet is visible. Another house – gardeners live in it – hides the entrance to the garden.

The entrance to the estate is from the forest side, the gate is almost impossible to find. Tall trees will completely hide all buildings from view in two or three years. Only the smoke from the chimneys, visible from the top of the hill, will indicate to the traveler that someone lives here, and in winter, when the trees are bare, the walls will be visible between the trunks. <…> .

My park is modeled on the so-called Royal Garden at Versailles, but the windows of the chalet look out over the pond and the island. <...> I ordered the gardeners to plant flowers in abundance and only fragrant ones in order to turn this piece of land into a fragrant emerald. The chalet is covered with wild grapes running along the roof, and from all sides it is braided with hops, clematis, jasmine, azaleas, cobeas. <…>. There is a whole flotilla of white swans floating in the pond.

About Rene! There is a dead silence in this valley. Here you wake up to the singing of birds or the whisper of the breeze in the branches of poplars. While building a stone fence on the side of the forest, the workers found a spring, and now a streamlet flows through silver sand from watercress between two banks, flowing into a pond: you can't buy such beauty for any money ^{[6, pp. 217-219]}.

Landscape details continue to appear in Louise's letters. She talks about a happy secluded life in a happy marriage, walking in the evenings when the foliage has not yet dried out after a short rain, and the bright green grass glistens with dew ^{[6, p. 233]}, about admiration for "the scarlet colors of the sunset, spilled over the tops of the hills, and the glare scattered on the gray bark of trees" ^{[6, p. 233]}, on the absolute unity of feelings and thoughts: "Gaston and I are so close in spirit," she says, "that our minds seem to me to be two editions of the same work. <...> We are both endowed with the habit or gift of examining every thing in the most careful way, and constantly finding new and new evidence of the purity of our inner feelings, we bring ourselves more and more new joys. In the end, we considered the agreement of our minds to be evidence of love, and if our unanimity were ever violated, it would be tantamount to treason for us ^{[6, p. 235]}.

But Louise's absolute identification of her personality with her husband's personality leads to dramatic consequences: she makes a mistake, suspecting her husband of infidelity, and deliberately destroys her health, but when she dies, she learns that her suspicions were a mistake.

The main theme of the novel and one of the main themes of the "Private Life Scenes" is the theme of a woman's happiness. The motif of love is involved in the development of this theme in The Memoirs of Two Young Wives. It develops in two variations. The first of them, spiritual love (or amour spiritualis, as Swedenborg called it), is Rene's maternal love for her children, husband, and Louise. Rene sacrifices herself in the name of others. She chooses "love for another" of her own free will and the space surrounding her bears the features of an earthly paradise. She actually manages to resurrect her husband. Rene's love helps him transform from a man devoid of vitality, gloomy, sullen, who has known the hardships of war into a happy family man and a prominent political figure.

The second variation of the motif of love – self-love, love-passion (amour infernalis) is peculiar to Louise. "The example of your life, based on cruel selfishness, although covered by the poetry of the heart, confirms my opinion <...> in love, you think only of yourself and love Gaston not so much for his sake as for your own," Rene writes to her ^{[6, pp. 240-242]}.

Louise's love is destructive, selfish. She seems to love her husbands, but she loves herself more with them. Her love causes the death of her first husband and her own death. She creates hell in Felipe's soul, allowing herself to be loved and making him jealous, and in her second marriage in her own soul, jealous of Marie Gaston and suspecting him of treason.

The motif of spiritual love defines Rene's space – she is surrounded by blooming nature: "carpets of plants", vineyards, reflections of sunset on the tops of trees, the warmth of the sun. This is an open space: the Mediterranean Sea glitters in the distance in the sun, Rene arranges the estate herself and orders to plant trees so that the park connects with the valley ^{[6, pp. 54-55]}.

Louise's estate is rich, luxurious, with a huge park, hills, streams and a river has the features of isolation: "a small valley is squeezed between two wooded hills", "the entrance to the estate from the forest, the gate is almost impossible to find." This space is not only enclosed, but it has features of artificiality and imitation: "I ordered the construction of a chalet, like two drops of water similar to the one that travelers admire on the way from Sune to Brig", "it is not inferior in decoration to the most famous chalets", "the park is modeled after the so-called Royal Garden in Versailles" ^{[6, pp. 217-219]}. And the landscape ends with a mention of the "dead silence" reigning around (il règne dans ce vallon un silence à réjouir les morts ^{[7, p. 372]})

Landscape descriptions in Balzac's novel are an important compositional element in the structure of the narrative, they serve as an exposition to each new stage of Rene and Louise's life. Descriptions of nature become "portraits of the soul", reflect the difference in the nature of the heroines: amor spiritualis (spiritual love for another) – the basis of Rene's character and amor infernalis – the basis of Louise's character. And at the same time, the landscape becomes one of the main components of the image system, forming a symbolic space of earthly paradise (Rene's estate) or hell (Louise's estate).