Balzac’s Cane is an English translation of Delphine de Girardin’s 1836 novella, La Canne de M. de Balzac, which centers around a protagonist named Tancred Dorimont, a brilliant young man plagued by his devastating good looks. In a social context in which appearance is everything, it seems for several chapters that beauty will break, rather than make, this young man’s fortune. One evening as Tancred seeks to forget his problems by spending an evening at the opera, he observes M. de Balzac and learns the secret to this famous author’s ability to know the innermost secrets of all walks of life with such detail and intimacy; M. de Balzac’s cane, a famously hideous walking stick, has the power to render the bearer invisible. A deal, which straddles the line between a favor and blackmail, is worked out between these two men and the cane comes into Tancred’s possession. With this tool Tancred is able to overhear state secrets, make his fortune, and then set his sights upon finding a woman truly worthy of his love. Voyeurism, surveillance, courtship, feminism, authorship, and the vanishing distinction between public and private lives are all raised in this novella. This work will be a useful text in either French literature or comparative survey courses due to its examination of contemporary nineteenth-century life, social organization and morals, its parody of bildungsroman and romance novels, and its combination of genres: several lengthy poems are an essential part of the novella’s text.
Wilkinson
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Acknowledgments – Introduction: The Seen, the Unseen, and the Power of Possession in Girardin’s Balzac’s Cane – Translator’s Note – Timeline for Delphine de Girardin (née Gay) – Balzac’s Cane by Delphine de Girardin – Preface – A Fatal Gift – First Obstacle – Second Obstacle – Third Obstacle – Monsieur de Balzac’s Cane – Concerns – Subtle Maneuvers – Fatality – Great Discovery – Wonder – A Happy Accident – The Cane Is in Danger – Without Knowing – New Perils – Seductions – Grace! Grace for Yourself! And Grace for Myself! – Unknown Joy – A Poetic Evening – A Muse – The Sibyl’s Cave – A Ghost – A Day of Inspiration – An Illusion Shattered – A Dream Come True – Notes – Selected Bibliography.
Marta L. Wilkinson is Associate Professor of English and Director of the Global Education Program at Wilmington College, where she has won both SOCHE and GCCCU Excellence in Teaching awards. She earned her Ph.D. in comparative literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara and is the author of Antigone’s Daughters: Gender, Family and Expression in the Modern Novel (Lang, 2008).
