A study on Balzac’s figurability: The disfiguration of Camille Maupin’s retrato

Abstract

http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/2175-7917.2016v21n2p134

In this article, the current idea of reading the descriptive in Balzac’s novels as a stylistics "mania" or as the inscription of the sensible world in the text, thus, prefiguring a novel with a coherent and cohesive signification is re-evaluated. The intent here is to suggest to the reader an analysis of a poetic element in Balzac´s work - the figurability - its aesthetic achievements and possible problems in the relationship between the novel and the representation issues. Camille Maupin’s portrait, a character of the novel Béatrix, thus appears as a problematic figurative composition regarding the affirmation that in Balzac’s novels the key characteristics are a faithful representation of the common world. Instead of this faithful reproduction, we notice a reconfiguration of the sensible body. Following chiefly Georges Didi-Huberman’s study about the formless resemblance in Georges Bataille and the Battailean concept of materialism, we suggest the reading of the Camille Maupin’s body as a description of a formless body, prioritizing how Balzac’s fictional text makes the human figure visible.