French literary genius Honore de Balzac was born 200 years ago
By Valery KOSTIUKEVYCH, The Day
Almost 150 years ago, in St. Barbara's Roman Catholic Church in Berdychiv,
he wedded Eveline Hanska, a Polish aristocrat, who had been born and spent
most of her life in Ukraine.
I was deeply impressed in my youth by Honore de Balzac's novel La
peau de chagrin (The Ass's Skin). The story of a young Parisian
Rafael Valentin, who became capable of realizing any wish by sorcery but
never reached true happiness, made me look even then upon life from the
standpoint of the price we pay for our own hopes and desires. Only much
later, after becoming familiar with the life story and correspondence of
the author of La comedie humaine (The Human Comedy), did
it occur to me that Balzac had to an extent prophesied his own destiny
in his novel. His life was full of exhausting work, powerful surges of
creative genius, and simultaneously bitter disappointment of his fondest
hopes and dreams. And Balzac died precisely when, after marrying his beloved,
his dream seemed to be coming true.
HE LOVED HER WITH ABANDON
Volumes have been written about the love story of Honore and Eveline
at various times by historians, philologists, and creative writers in France,
Ukraine, Poland, Russia, and elsewhere. One of the first (if not the first)
Ukrainian scholars to tackle this theme was the historian and literature
expert Fedir Savchenko. In a 1924 issue of the Ukrainian-studies quarterly
Ukrayina (then edited by Academician Mykhailo Hrushevsky) he published
"Balzac and Ukraine" based on his research of the famed Frenchman's correspondence.
"On February 28, 1832," Savchenko writes, "Balzac received from his Paris
publisher a letter postmarked Odesa and signed with the romantic words
"A foreign lady." As the intrigued and equally romantic Balzac learned
later, the letter was penned by Eva or Eveline, Hanska, nee Rzewuska, born
in the village of Pohrebyshche in Kyiv guberniya" (now this is a small
town in Vinnytsia oblast with a nearby railway station until recently named
Rzhevutska - Author). The letter contained some opinions about Balzac's
works, in particular on his already published La peau de chagrin.
Let us put aside Savchenko's study for awhile and turn to other sources.
It is known from archival documents that Eveline was born on December 24,
1800. "The old family from which she descended gave Poland some powerful
and ambitious individuals," the Russian historian of literature L. Grossman
wrote in Balzac in Russia published in 1937. At the same time, as
some Polish researchers noted, it was characteristic of the Rzewuskis to
combine innate culture and good manners with a proclivity to antics and
criticism resembling, to some extent, mysticism. The great novelist's oeuvres,
noted Polish journalist Jan Kozieski in a series of articles called "Balzac
in Verkhivnia" published in 1992, often contained the repercussions of
Eveline's narratives of her ancestors' heroic feats. In 1819 she was married
off to a rich Polish magnate Wenceslaw (Waclaw) Hanski, 22 (25 by other
data) years older than his bride. The couple settled in the ancestral Hanski
estate in Verkhivnia (now Zhytomyr oblast). Four of their five children
died young, with only the daughter Hanna surviving.
After receiving several letters, Savchenko continues, Balzac informed
Madame Hanska, as she had suggested herself, about receiving his epistles
in the newspaper Le quotidien. These cautious and at first timid
contacts by mail later led to a personal meeting (in secret from Mr. Hanski)
in the Swiss town of Neuchatel in 1833. On returning to Paris, Balzac would
write to Eveline, whom he called his Northern Star, "I love you like a
child, with all joys, superstitions, and illusions of a first love." And
more: "My dear, my beloved little lady..., a new and indescribably beautiful
life has come upon me. I saw you, I spoke to you, our bodies entered into
the same union as did our souls." And there also were other secret meetings
of the lovers (in general, Balzac rather often rubbed shoulders with the
Hanskis when they went abroad and maintained a respectful relationship
with the family head): in 1834 in Geneva and 1835 in Vienna.
Mr. Hanski died in late 1841. Now in almost every letter to Verkhivnia,
the writer doggedly tried to persuade Eveline to marry him. However, they
only met in 1843, eight years after the previous date in Saint Petersburg.
Later, in the spring of 1845, there was a rendezvous in Dresden, from where,
as Kozielski writes, all four of them (including Eveline's daughter Hanna
and her fiancО Jerzy (Georges) Mniszek) set out on a tour of Europe, Paris
included. Balzac's paramour became pregnant during the journey. Balzac
even chose a name for the expected son, Victor-Honore. But the child was
born premature. "There was no Victor; a girl was born and died," AndrО
Maurois wrote in his 1966 book, Prometheus: The Life of Balzac.
The baby was buried in a small chapel at Verkhivnia, next to Eveline's
first husband and their deceased children.
HE CAME HERE IN SEARCH OF HAPPINESS
From the very beginning of Honore's relationship with his Northern Star,
he dreamed of visiting Ukraine and staying on her estate. But Balzac first
came to Verkhivnia only in the fall of 1847 and stayed there until February
1848 with short intervals. Savchenko points out that Balzac hoped to improve
both his moral and material situation. He lived in these places for the
second (and last) time from September 1848 to April 1850. While visiting
Ukraine, the novelist would go to Kyiv, Saint Petersburg, Berdychiv, and
other places. In Verkhivnia he worked on a play, The Stepmother,
a short story, "The Initiated," and other pieces, thinking over grandiose
commercial projects never to be implemented. In one of his letters from
Verkhivnia, he wrote, "I have here a luxurious small suite: a drawing-room,
a study, and a bedroom; the study is finished with pink marble and has
a fireplace, wonderful carpets, and comfortable furniture; the windows
are made of pure glass without foil and overlook a beautiful landscape
from all sides..."
"The French guest," the researcher Liudmyla Zhuravska writes in her
1966 study, "familiarized himself with Verkhivnia's everyday life and nature,
and writes about it in detail in his letters to friends and relatives in
Paris, is delighted with E. Hanska's skillful serfs, and records 77 recipes
for making bread." "The park around the palace," she continues, "was the
place for frequent strolls. The lanes were paved with red bricks, which
allowed him to wander over them even after rains. There was a bridge spanning
a ravine in the park - all this has been preserved in Verkhivnia." And
the Hanski Palace itself with Balzac's small suite now houses an agricultural
college. Some sections of the building are kept as Balzac memorial rooms.
However, the author's health had already been undermined. He suffered
frequent and long illnesses in Verkhivnia, especially during the second
visit. At the same time, various circumstances forced the wedding to be
postponed: awaiting for the Russian Tsar's permission, Eveline's property
litigation, and her family's disapproval. But still, on March 14, 1850
(by the Gregorian calendar), the wedding did take place at St. Barbara's
Church in Berdychiv, far from the inquisitive eyes of the provincial public.
Only those closest to the couple were present: Eveline's daughter Hanna
and best men Gustave Olizar and Georges Mniszek. The ritual was conducted
by a Roman Catholic priest Viktor Ozarowky assisted by Berdychiv parish
canon Jozef Bjeloblocky. The Zhytomyr oblast state archives still keep
the church register recording the wedding.
A month after the wedding, the couple traveled from Verkhivnia to Paris.
This journey lasted almost a month due to the muddy spring roads. Balzac,
as Eveline wrote to her daughter, arrived in a terrible state.
IN LIEU OF EPILOGUE
...Even before their marriage was blessed, Eveline Hanska did not entertain
special hope for her future, knowing about Balzac's ailing condition. "I
know only too well," she wrote to her brother Adam Rzewuski, "that Mr.
Balzac is doomed and cannot hold out long even if attended to very well...
However, the awareness of being indispensable to this great mind and this
big noble heart is also a reward. I will give him all the happiness he
deserves, and, by doing so I will be happy myself. He has been betrayed
so often, so I will remain faithful to him unlike all the others, and...
let him die with my hand in his hand and my image in his heart..."
Balzac died exactly like this: Eveline's hand held his hand to the last
moment. Such devotion is perhaps every man's dream.
After Honore's death, his widow repaid his large debts. The Northern
Star outlived him by 32 years. They lie buried side by side at the Pere-Lachaise
Cemetery in Paris. Eveline's daughter Hanna and her son-in-law also found
eternal rest there beside them.






