Images from Balzac

Also on Ionarts: How Much Do You Love Balzac? (February 11, 2004)

La Maison de Balzac is one of the cooler small museums of Paris, and they have developed a well-designed and rather useful Web site. This includes an online version of the first edition of Balzac's vast fictional project, La Comédie humaine, and the vast database of all the words of those books, put together by Kazuo Kiriu in Japan, as mentioned here at Ionarts last year. Balzac lived in an apartment in a beautiful house in the village of Passy, now incorporated into the 16th arrondissement of Paris. Now one of the city's literary museums, it has good things regularly displayed and interesting exhibits, too. An article by Sophie Haubois (Balzac producteur d'images, December 22) for Le Figaro reviews the latest one. De la plume à l'écran. Balzac en 3D is an exhibit of the many illustrations found in editions of Balzac's novels.

For many years film adaptations of novels in series have been multiplying: The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter... Before that it was Shakespeare's plays, the adventures of Jules Verne, and especially the immense study of morals that is Balzac's La Comédie humaine, with no fewer than 170 adaptations. [...]

The text of Balzac is unique. It is read by an actor and remains the only reference point for the visitor confronted by several screens showing excerpts from films adapted from one novel or another. Five versions of Eugénie Grandet are side by side, with as many different portrayals of the girl. Transferred to the screen, the words clothe all of the directors' realities, and the imaginary world of each one corresponds in a unique way to the writer's creativity.

It sounds worth a visit. The exhibit continues through February 19.