El gabinet dels antics: 4 - Honoré De Balzac

The novel El gabinet dels antics tells the story of a noble family from the provinces who are ruined by the revolution and forgotten by the Bourbon Restoration. They live as if they were a relic of the past, with the power of nobility abolished by Napoleon and that period where historical eras overlap and the remnants of a pretentious time would like to turn back the wheel of time. El gabinet dels antics is the nickname given by the liberals in the city to the salon of the house of the ruined marquise, where he meets with the few nobles who remain.

Balzac liked to set the action of his novels in the provinces because it is there that personal vendettas and rivalries quickly escalate into a physical confrontation that in Paris takes on more general forms. Balzac uses this setting to make a deep portrait of these old aristocrats, but also of the liberals who, excluded from the nobility, enjoy taking revenge on them. The son of the marquise is the leading character of this story. Educated in the dogma of the supremacy of lineage, he was handsome, intelligent and pampered, and made distinction his calling card.

Sent to Paris with the aim of being admitted to court, worldly customs soon dissipate that tender spirit. In the dissipation of the young man, the head of the liberals in the village finds the opportunity to definitively ruin the house of Esgrignon and settle accounts for the rejection suffered by the marquise's sister, whom he had pretended to marry. Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) is considered the most important novelist in French literature. La Comédie Humaine, the colossal literary project of a lifetime (including transcendent and timeless works such as El cosí Pons, El padre Goriot or Eugénie Grandet, among many others), made him the historian of the present and the master of future generations.