Honoré de Balzac is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on November 17, 2007. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
|
This
level-4 vital article is rated FA-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Author:Honoré de Balzac was the Wikisource Collaboration of the Week starting 21 February 2008. |
I've added a citation needed tag to the bit about Truffaut's considering Balzac and Proust the greatest of French writers. Though Balzac is featured prominently in The 400 Blows, I've never run into this statement in anything I've read on Truffaut. -- Bateau ( talk) 21:09, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
Someone suggested retitling this to Honoré de Balzac on wikipedia:votes for deletion
I suspect some characters for accented letters were corrupted with my May 20th edit. Anyone able to help fix them? Andrew Sly 08:19, 20 May 2004 (UTC)
The image used in this article [ [1]] is a mirrored image of the one used in French version of the article.
The comparision with Dickens ( "...making him [Balzac] the Charles Dickens of the french literature" ) is bad ;Balzac is better and more famous than Dickens...it would make sense to say about Dickens that he is "the Balzac of the british literature" , but not the other way around.Please,remove the comparision from the text. Stefan Udrea 13:05, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
While I don't agree that Balzac can be said to be 'more famous' or 'better' than Dickens, I'd be in favour of removing the comparison simply on the grounds that it's fatuous to compare entirely different writers whose work is, moreover, internally pretty riven. The Balzac of Annette et le criminel is most unlike the Balzac of Splendeurs, and what has the crass Nicholas Nickleby to do with the genius of Great Expectations? - so what can we be comparing? Ajcounter 15:41, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
In fact I'm going to get executive and get rid of this, it's not doing any work at all in the article. Ajcounter 15:42, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
La Comédie humaine is in great need of its own detailed page with discussion of the different versions, repeating characters and so forth (if " Doctor Who can get twenty pages, what are we Balzac lovers waiting for?). I started the page by using your discussion of the work. If the Balzacian wikipedians are happy with the idea, then the C.H. section should be removed from this page. -- NYArtsnWords 00:57, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
OK thanks it was me who expanded the article recently, though there's more biog still to put in. Uncle Wes 23:00, 31 August 2005
Is "Marcel Proust (that other weaver of a great tapestry)" correct in tone for an encyclopedia? - anon passerby
Anyone notice Jon Lovitz looks like this guy?
Ron Jeremy too.
Honoré de Balzac was born "Honoré Balzac" (without aristocratic particle) and not "Balssa". Stephan Zweig quotes his birth certificate in his biography : "Aujourd'huy, deux Prairial, an sept de la République française, a été présenté devant moi Pierre Jacques Duvivier, officier public soussigné, un enfant mâle par le citoyen Bernard François Balzac, propriétaire, demeurant en cette commune, rue de l'Armée d'Italie, section du Chardonnet n°25, lequel m'a déclaré que ledit enfant s'appelle Honoré Balzac, né d'hier à onze heures du matin, au domicile du déclarant..." It was Honoré's father (Bernard François) who was born "Balssa". He changed his name in "Balzac" between 1773 and 1783.
Balzac's own family only started using the nobiliary particle ("de") in the 1820's; according to a brief footnote I happened upon, this was ostensibly "to improve their social position". -- Todeswalzer| Talk 03:27, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
Indeed the comparison with Dickens is not appropriate, not only because Balzac is a better writer, but also because their works are very different. Balzac shows a complete panorama of the French society during the Restoration on the topic of the "illusions perdues", but strictly speaking it is not a social work. Dickens could rather be compared to another great French novelist, who wrote later a social criticism, Emile Zola.
This article needs some serious work. Take a look at Henry James for how it should be done. 128.220.30.139 17:42, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
...is getting ridiculous. Not a day goes by without someone adding yet another entry; I can't think of any other major cultural figure whose article has a similar section. In particular, there are numerous entries which aren't really references to Balzac at all, just weak puns on the supposed similarity between his name and the phrase "ball sac": perhaps these could be reduced to one more concise entry, if not excised altogether. I am so uptight that I can't even spell "ballsack" the right way. No amount of lubricant could facilitate removal of the enormous stick up my ass for the suction is too great. Ajcounter 15:47, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
I've noticed that the all the titles of Balzac's works are listed in their original French, and those that link to independent articles also lead to articles under the original French titles as well.
As per Wikipedia's Naming Conventions, it was my understanding that these should be translated to English. Is there a reason that the native French has taken precendence over English? -- Todeswalzer| Talk 23:07, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
I simply wish to say that Balzac a french name should not be so easily denigrated by it english sonourus comparision, it only shows the highly infintile nature of english speaking people to always have floating a crude reference to things, particularlly words and names that arnt even english rather than, (and i refer to Americans most prominatly), show some sensitivity and appreciation to the inherent distinctions of forieng things and name particularily names. The grammer and spelling of this blurb also shows the crudness of my own American education. none-the-less this is a matter of mechanical apprehension and discliplin whereas if i were to meet a foriener out of respect for them and myself i would not trample over ther given name as if it were any ole' word. Cedar Frost.
Monsieur Frost, je ne sais pas si vous était sérieux au-desus ou non, mai je n'ai aucun problème avec le fait que Balzac était fraçais, bien sur. Ce n'est pas une question d'impérialisme culturelle, comme vous suggèrez, mais une question de politique de quoi faire avec les articles concernant des matériaux qui ont étés écrivés dans une langue d'autre que celle ce dont on voulait les discuter. Puisqu'on se trouve sur la vérsion de Wikipedia anglaise, et puisque c'est une << règle >> générale de traduissez les titres, ma question demandant pourquoi nous n'avons pas adopté cette règle ici est bien pertinent. De plus, je n'ai compris rien de ce que vous voulait dire par << mechanical apprehension and discipline >>. -- Todeswalzer| Talk 00:49, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
M. Frost, I'm not sure if you were trying to be serious above or not, but I have no problem at all with the fact that Balza was French, of course. It isn't an issue of cultural imperialism, as you suggest, but an issue of policy regarding what to do with articles addressing materials that are written in a language other than that in which we would like to discuss them. Since we're on the English version of Wikipedia, and since it's a general "rule" to translate all titles, my question asking why we haven't adopted that policy here is clearly relevant. Furthermore, I have no idea what you're trying to say with "mechanical apprehension and discipline". -- Todeswalzer| Talk 00:49, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
If you can read french, I suggest you might translate a few sources and references from de french version of subject Honoré de Balzac. Just go to [ [2]].
I'm looking for the date this work was originally published and the date it was originally translated into English by Katharine Prescott Wormeley. I've found 1896 or 1846 for the French publication but for the English I can only find that Katharine Prescott Wormeley lived from 1830 to 1908. Can anybody please provide or confirm these dates? — Hippietrail 08:40, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
The "this article needs references" tag was removed not long after it was added; no explanation appears to have been given. Anyone know why it's not there? Pretty striking for an article this long (and rated B-class by several projects) to have no references. -- Scartol 12:56, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
While sections of this article are very well-written and a pleasure to read, I'm afraid that I must still fail the article. Too much of it is unsourced and it is a little disorganized at the moment. A few weeks of hard work could easily bring this up to GA or even FA status, I think.
If you have any questions regarding this review, drop a line on my talk page. Awadewit | talk 04:11, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
Rogers and Robb both give 20 May as the DOB; but Saintsbury in The Works gives 16 May — and backs it up with the fact that it is the day of Saint Honoré of Amiens. So who do we believe? I vote for the latter, but I don't want to be an autocrat about this. -- Scartol 18:58, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
de Balzac, Honoré
Yeah, and Robb gives May 20 as well, indicating that the 16th (St. Honoré's day) had "just passed". I'll change it back to May 20. Thanks. — Scartol • Talk 01:48, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
What a wonderful improvement! I am so impressed! You must have had so much fun living and breathing Balzac for two days. Without question, the article is GA. I am adding a list of tiny, nit-picky things that you can address at your leisure. I would encourage you to take this to FAC after spending some time tweaking it and getting a peer review from some trusted editors at the Balzac WikiProject.
Additional material:
Organization:
Lead:
Infobox:
Small things:
Small/medium things:
MOS:
By the way, I love that you have actually used the word "haberdashers"! This is really a wonderful article - it is such a pleasure to read a well-written article. You have done a marvelous job of evoking Balzac's perspective. Have you checked out the French wikipedia article on Balzac to see if there are any nuggets to add here? I hope that you continue to work on Balzac articles. Literature articles (apart from those on American bestsellers) are sadly neglected on wikipedia. Awadewit | talk 18:06, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
Hi, I'm probably going to have to review this article piece-meal, so this section is for thought that occur to me as I look the article over (and over and over... ;) I'm no Balzac expert, so please forgive my lapses.
Anyway, that's it for now. In general, please group the main ideas into larger, connected arcs, to give the article a stronger current that draws the reader in and along. Good luck! :) Willow 23:43, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
I'm a little bit concerned about this source. Do you have any reason to believe that Fernquest has any other credentials than an interest in Balzac or that his site is peer-reviewed? It looks self-published to me. Since you don't use it much, perhaps more authoritative sources could be used? Awadewit | talk 00:02, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
Here are some supplementary queries and comments, largely about minor matters, which occurred to me when reading and copyediting the article during its FAC:
qp10qp 02:16, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
There were a number of discussion elements on the talk page here not long ago. Now they appear to have merged into the WikiProjects metabanner. Does anyone know what happened and why and how to fix it? – Scartol · Talk 14:17, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
Recalling the sculptures by Rodin I saw in Philadelphia a few years ago, I added a small piece of information to the article. What I did not mention was another sculpture I saw, not by Rodin, but a parody of his work on Balzac. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? The piece resembles Rodin's depictions, except that Balzac is a walrus. MagnesianPhoenix ( talk) 00:40, 17 November 2007 (UTC) [signed retroactively]
I don't know how the wiki works, so I apologize for my lack of understanding, however in the first main paragraph of the article it reads "Harry Balzac"? Surely this is a joke (I don't know enough to say for certain, and leave that to another to decide)
How about translating the titles of the works into English and giving the English titles in paranthesis? Not everyone reads French. -- RossF18 ( talk) 02:44, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
I agree with RossF18. This article in English should list titles in English. AaronCBurke ( talk) 12:39, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
I hope it's not just me: The sentence "While some of his books never reached a finished state, some – such as Les employés (The Government Clerks, 1841) – are still noted by critics." reads a bit confusing. -- 213.6.11.23 ( talk) 10:57, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
I'd like to thank everyone who's been monitoring this page (which I helped bring to FA status) and reverting the constant vandalism it's endured during its TFA run. I tried to get some preventative semi-prot, but I was denied. I knew this would happen, and I'm thankful that you folks are so diligent and prepared. Cheers. – Scartol · Talk 11:52, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
He was French and his name is French. Is it really relevant how English speakers mispronounce his name? So relevant, in fact, that it must be mentioned before the correct French pronunciation of his name? If pronunciation in other languages is really that relevant, why doesn't the article mention how his name is "pronounced in German", etc? -- 131.111.8.99 ( talk) 15:53, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
ok, now how would you pronounce "Gutmaker"? (hint: it derives from "Gutt Macher") 165.230.46.151 ( talk) 03:09, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
The problem is that the pronunciation given as it is perpetuates an unnecessary error. There's no reason to pronounce the first "a" of "Balzac" like the "a" in "ball"; English speakers are perfectly capable of pronouncing it correctly, as in "ballerina". What JayHenry is suggesting is the "correct" English pronunciation is only ever heard in America, and is a totally arbitrary deviation from the French. I agree that it would be affected to insist upon a fully French pronunciations - palatalised "l", firm emphasis on final syllables - but surely there's no reason to relocate the first vowel, assuming we can all pronounce the word "Alabama" without saying "Awlabawma"? Ajcounter ( talk) 18:21, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
An IP pointed out a possible error:
That can't possibly be correct, as Balzac died a few months before Stevenson was born. Is it possible that this remark refers to a different Stevenson? -- JayHenry ( talk) 20:15, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
References
Just for fun I took a stroll through the diffs. Here's the change between the 15th and right now. Absolutely no vandalism "slipped through the cracks" and remained in the article. So that's very positive.
While a featured article, Balzac received 150 edits, the majority of which were vandalism and reverts. By my count, the article was vandalized 44 times. Of this, 33 incidents were reverted in a minute or less. In total, by my estimate, the article contained some vandalism for 48 minutes in the last two days, which (conveniently) works out to precisely one vandalized minute per hour. And for the most part, the worse the vandalism the faster it was reverted.
There were a few outliers though. The worst was a 12 minute stretch here. The article received vandalism from two separate accounts in a minute. The second edit was immediately reverted, but the first edit -- changing his name to Ballsack in the infobox -- remained in the article. A third vandal struck the article repeatedly, and while his vandalism was instantly reverted, the ballsack in the infobox went unfixed for 12 minutes.
So not the worst I've seen but not exactly what I'd consider ideal either. -- JayHenry ( talk) 22:50, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
Recently Ilse@ made an changing the image at the top of the page from a color painting of Balzac to the original black-and-white daguerrotype. I believe that the color painting is much more appealing, and I'd advocate for a change back to the painting. Rather than risk an edit war by reverting, I'd like to seek consensus here and find out what other people think. – Scartol • Tok 13:46, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
I reverted some edits from an IP but wanted to flag their claim that the summary of La Peau de chagrin was very vague ... not totally accurate. Since it is sourced to Robb, and the IP simply removed the citation, I restored it. The IP is from Oxford, but our Oxfordian friend also removed the non-controversial claim about Balzac's role as a major practitioner of realism. -- JayHenry ( talk) 22:37, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
Legend has it that as Balzac was expiring, he called to his deathbed the great Doctor Horace Bianchon. Much to the amazement of those surrounding him. For they knew Horace Bianchon was a character invented by Balzac himself in La Comédie Humaine. And so in these last moments when life and death come to a blur, reality and fiction too were subtly dissolving into one another. Soon after, Balzac, Doctor Bianchon, and hundreds more, were reunited forever in the Legend. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.72.93.5 ( talk) 08:39, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
Cause: coronary arrhythmia resulting from excessive ingestion of caffeine. Lestrade ( talk) 00:30, 24 March 2012 (UTC)Lestrade
Looking at the page history, this article is constantly bombarded with anon vandalism. Would semi-protection be appropriate? Zazaban ( talk) 21:58, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
I remember that Balzac wrote around 30 trivial novels in his early days, and there is almost zero reference to that in the text. So, could somebody find any info considering them? I tried to find some info in English, but there are not many informations available, so, perhaps, there is some info in French? HeadlessMaster ( talk) 17:57, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
Why this article makes no mention of this persona? She seems rather important. -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 16:35, 2 July 2011 (UTC)
Some one has edited to change the age in the paragraph "At age eight Balzac was sent to the Oratorian grammar school in Vendôme, where he studied for seven years. His father, seeking to instill the same hardscrabble work ethic which had gained him the esteem of society, intentionally gave little spending money to the boy. This made him the object of ridicule among his much wealthier schoolmates."
Anyone know whether it should be eight or ten?-- 🍺 Antiqueight confer 21:56, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
The following sentence is unclear: "Marx's work Das Kapital also makes constant reference to the works of Balzac and urged Engels to read Balzac's work The Unknown Masterpiece." The implication here is that the text of Das Kapital (specifically) urged Engels (specifically) to read The Unknown Masterpiece. That seems possible but unlikely; more likely Marx elsewhere urged Engels to read it, and the sentence is just sloppily worded. 850 C ( talk) 19:52, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
The opening sentence of the Legacy section currently says: "He has been compared to Charles Dickens and has been called one of Dickens' influences." There is no reference for the second part of this sentence. I am not aware of any definite evidence that Dickens ever read Balzac or was influenced by his work. -- Michaelpeverett ( talk) 11:45, 10 June 2015 (UTC)-- Michaelpeverett ( talk) 11:45, 10 June 2015 (UTC)
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Honoré de Balzac's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.
Reference named "chancerel_pierrot":
{{
citation}}
: Unknown parameter |month=
ignored (
help)I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 22:43, 23 July 2014 (UTC)
Some old page history that used to be at the title "Honoré de Balzac" can now be found at Talk:Honoré de Balzac/Old history. Graham 87 12:29, 31 July 2015 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 4 external links on Honoré de Balzac. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 07:52, 20 May 2017 (UTC)
Any objections to throwing this article into the pile of potential TFA reruns for this year and next? Any cleanup needed? If it helps, here's a list of dead or dubious links. - Dank ( push to talk) 23:39, 10 September 2017 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on Honoré de Balzac. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 02:23, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 2 external links on Honoré de Balzac. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 03:26, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
Honoré de Balzac is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on November 17, 2007. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
|
This
level-4 vital article is rated FA-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Author:Honoré de Balzac was the Wikisource Collaboration of the Week starting 21 February 2008. |
I've added a citation needed tag to the bit about Truffaut's considering Balzac and Proust the greatest of French writers. Though Balzac is featured prominently in The 400 Blows, I've never run into this statement in anything I've read on Truffaut. -- Bateau ( talk) 21:09, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
Someone suggested retitling this to Honoré de Balzac on wikipedia:votes for deletion
I suspect some characters for accented letters were corrupted with my May 20th edit. Anyone able to help fix them? Andrew Sly 08:19, 20 May 2004 (UTC)
The image used in this article [ [1]] is a mirrored image of the one used in French version of the article.
The comparision with Dickens ( "...making him [Balzac] the Charles Dickens of the french literature" ) is bad ;Balzac is better and more famous than Dickens...it would make sense to say about Dickens that he is "the Balzac of the british literature" , but not the other way around.Please,remove the comparision from the text. Stefan Udrea 13:05, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
While I don't agree that Balzac can be said to be 'more famous' or 'better' than Dickens, I'd be in favour of removing the comparison simply on the grounds that it's fatuous to compare entirely different writers whose work is, moreover, internally pretty riven. The Balzac of Annette et le criminel is most unlike the Balzac of Splendeurs, and what has the crass Nicholas Nickleby to do with the genius of Great Expectations? - so what can we be comparing? Ajcounter 15:41, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
In fact I'm going to get executive and get rid of this, it's not doing any work at all in the article. Ajcounter 15:42, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
La Comédie humaine is in great need of its own detailed page with discussion of the different versions, repeating characters and so forth (if " Doctor Who can get twenty pages, what are we Balzac lovers waiting for?). I started the page by using your discussion of the work. If the Balzacian wikipedians are happy with the idea, then the C.H. section should be removed from this page. -- NYArtsnWords 00:57, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
OK thanks it was me who expanded the article recently, though there's more biog still to put in. Uncle Wes 23:00, 31 August 2005
Is "Marcel Proust (that other weaver of a great tapestry)" correct in tone for an encyclopedia? - anon passerby
Anyone notice Jon Lovitz looks like this guy?
Ron Jeremy too.
Honoré de Balzac was born "Honoré Balzac" (without aristocratic particle) and not "Balssa". Stephan Zweig quotes his birth certificate in his biography : "Aujourd'huy, deux Prairial, an sept de la République française, a été présenté devant moi Pierre Jacques Duvivier, officier public soussigné, un enfant mâle par le citoyen Bernard François Balzac, propriétaire, demeurant en cette commune, rue de l'Armée d'Italie, section du Chardonnet n°25, lequel m'a déclaré que ledit enfant s'appelle Honoré Balzac, né d'hier à onze heures du matin, au domicile du déclarant..." It was Honoré's father (Bernard François) who was born "Balssa". He changed his name in "Balzac" between 1773 and 1783.
Balzac's own family only started using the nobiliary particle ("de") in the 1820's; according to a brief footnote I happened upon, this was ostensibly "to improve their social position". -- Todeswalzer| Talk 03:27, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
Indeed the comparison with Dickens is not appropriate, not only because Balzac is a better writer, but also because their works are very different. Balzac shows a complete panorama of the French society during the Restoration on the topic of the "illusions perdues", but strictly speaking it is not a social work. Dickens could rather be compared to another great French novelist, who wrote later a social criticism, Emile Zola.
This article needs some serious work. Take a look at Henry James for how it should be done. 128.220.30.139 17:42, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
...is getting ridiculous. Not a day goes by without someone adding yet another entry; I can't think of any other major cultural figure whose article has a similar section. In particular, there are numerous entries which aren't really references to Balzac at all, just weak puns on the supposed similarity between his name and the phrase "ball sac": perhaps these could be reduced to one more concise entry, if not excised altogether. I am so uptight that I can't even spell "ballsack" the right way. No amount of lubricant could facilitate removal of the enormous stick up my ass for the suction is too great. Ajcounter 15:47, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
I've noticed that the all the titles of Balzac's works are listed in their original French, and those that link to independent articles also lead to articles under the original French titles as well.
As per Wikipedia's Naming Conventions, it was my understanding that these should be translated to English. Is there a reason that the native French has taken precendence over English? -- Todeswalzer| Talk 23:07, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
I simply wish to say that Balzac a french name should not be so easily denigrated by it english sonourus comparision, it only shows the highly infintile nature of english speaking people to always have floating a crude reference to things, particularlly words and names that arnt even english rather than, (and i refer to Americans most prominatly), show some sensitivity and appreciation to the inherent distinctions of forieng things and name particularily names. The grammer and spelling of this blurb also shows the crudness of my own American education. none-the-less this is a matter of mechanical apprehension and discliplin whereas if i were to meet a foriener out of respect for them and myself i would not trample over ther given name as if it were any ole' word. Cedar Frost.
Monsieur Frost, je ne sais pas si vous était sérieux au-desus ou non, mai je n'ai aucun problème avec le fait que Balzac était fraçais, bien sur. Ce n'est pas une question d'impérialisme culturelle, comme vous suggèrez, mais une question de politique de quoi faire avec les articles concernant des matériaux qui ont étés écrivés dans une langue d'autre que celle ce dont on voulait les discuter. Puisqu'on se trouve sur la vérsion de Wikipedia anglaise, et puisque c'est une << règle >> générale de traduissez les titres, ma question demandant pourquoi nous n'avons pas adopté cette règle ici est bien pertinent. De plus, je n'ai compris rien de ce que vous voulait dire par << mechanical apprehension and discipline >>. -- Todeswalzer| Talk 00:49, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
M. Frost, I'm not sure if you were trying to be serious above or not, but I have no problem at all with the fact that Balza was French, of course. It isn't an issue of cultural imperialism, as you suggest, but an issue of policy regarding what to do with articles addressing materials that are written in a language other than that in which we would like to discuss them. Since we're on the English version of Wikipedia, and since it's a general "rule" to translate all titles, my question asking why we haven't adopted that policy here is clearly relevant. Furthermore, I have no idea what you're trying to say with "mechanical apprehension and discipline". -- Todeswalzer| Talk 00:49, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
If you can read french, I suggest you might translate a few sources and references from de french version of subject Honoré de Balzac. Just go to [ [2]].
I'm looking for the date this work was originally published and the date it was originally translated into English by Katharine Prescott Wormeley. I've found 1896 or 1846 for the French publication but for the English I can only find that Katharine Prescott Wormeley lived from 1830 to 1908. Can anybody please provide or confirm these dates? — Hippietrail 08:40, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
The "this article needs references" tag was removed not long after it was added; no explanation appears to have been given. Anyone know why it's not there? Pretty striking for an article this long (and rated B-class by several projects) to have no references. -- Scartol 12:56, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
While sections of this article are very well-written and a pleasure to read, I'm afraid that I must still fail the article. Too much of it is unsourced and it is a little disorganized at the moment. A few weeks of hard work could easily bring this up to GA or even FA status, I think.
If you have any questions regarding this review, drop a line on my talk page. Awadewit | talk 04:11, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
Rogers and Robb both give 20 May as the DOB; but Saintsbury in The Works gives 16 May — and backs it up with the fact that it is the day of Saint Honoré of Amiens. So who do we believe? I vote for the latter, but I don't want to be an autocrat about this. -- Scartol 18:58, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
de Balzac, Honoré
Yeah, and Robb gives May 20 as well, indicating that the 16th (St. Honoré's day) had "just passed". I'll change it back to May 20. Thanks. — Scartol • Talk 01:48, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
What a wonderful improvement! I am so impressed! You must have had so much fun living and breathing Balzac for two days. Without question, the article is GA. I am adding a list of tiny, nit-picky things that you can address at your leisure. I would encourage you to take this to FAC after spending some time tweaking it and getting a peer review from some trusted editors at the Balzac WikiProject.
Additional material:
Organization:
Lead:
Infobox:
Small things:
Small/medium things:
MOS:
By the way, I love that you have actually used the word "haberdashers"! This is really a wonderful article - it is such a pleasure to read a well-written article. You have done a marvelous job of evoking Balzac's perspective. Have you checked out the French wikipedia article on Balzac to see if there are any nuggets to add here? I hope that you continue to work on Balzac articles. Literature articles (apart from those on American bestsellers) are sadly neglected on wikipedia. Awadewit | talk 18:06, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
Hi, I'm probably going to have to review this article piece-meal, so this section is for thought that occur to me as I look the article over (and over and over... ;) I'm no Balzac expert, so please forgive my lapses.
Anyway, that's it for now. In general, please group the main ideas into larger, connected arcs, to give the article a stronger current that draws the reader in and along. Good luck! :) Willow 23:43, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
I'm a little bit concerned about this source. Do you have any reason to believe that Fernquest has any other credentials than an interest in Balzac or that his site is peer-reviewed? It looks self-published to me. Since you don't use it much, perhaps more authoritative sources could be used? Awadewit | talk 00:02, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
Here are some supplementary queries and comments, largely about minor matters, which occurred to me when reading and copyediting the article during its FAC:
qp10qp 02:16, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
There were a number of discussion elements on the talk page here not long ago. Now they appear to have merged into the WikiProjects metabanner. Does anyone know what happened and why and how to fix it? – Scartol · Talk 14:17, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
Recalling the sculptures by Rodin I saw in Philadelphia a few years ago, I added a small piece of information to the article. What I did not mention was another sculpture I saw, not by Rodin, but a parody of his work on Balzac. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? The piece resembles Rodin's depictions, except that Balzac is a walrus. MagnesianPhoenix ( talk) 00:40, 17 November 2007 (UTC) [signed retroactively]
I don't know how the wiki works, so I apologize for my lack of understanding, however in the first main paragraph of the article it reads "Harry Balzac"? Surely this is a joke (I don't know enough to say for certain, and leave that to another to decide)
How about translating the titles of the works into English and giving the English titles in paranthesis? Not everyone reads French. -- RossF18 ( talk) 02:44, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
I agree with RossF18. This article in English should list titles in English. AaronCBurke ( talk) 12:39, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
I hope it's not just me: The sentence "While some of his books never reached a finished state, some – such as Les employés (The Government Clerks, 1841) – are still noted by critics." reads a bit confusing. -- 213.6.11.23 ( talk) 10:57, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
I'd like to thank everyone who's been monitoring this page (which I helped bring to FA status) and reverting the constant vandalism it's endured during its TFA run. I tried to get some preventative semi-prot, but I was denied. I knew this would happen, and I'm thankful that you folks are so diligent and prepared. Cheers. – Scartol · Talk 11:52, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
He was French and his name is French. Is it really relevant how English speakers mispronounce his name? So relevant, in fact, that it must be mentioned before the correct French pronunciation of his name? If pronunciation in other languages is really that relevant, why doesn't the article mention how his name is "pronounced in German", etc? -- 131.111.8.99 ( talk) 15:53, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
ok, now how would you pronounce "Gutmaker"? (hint: it derives from "Gutt Macher") 165.230.46.151 ( talk) 03:09, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
The problem is that the pronunciation given as it is perpetuates an unnecessary error. There's no reason to pronounce the first "a" of "Balzac" like the "a" in "ball"; English speakers are perfectly capable of pronouncing it correctly, as in "ballerina". What JayHenry is suggesting is the "correct" English pronunciation is only ever heard in America, and is a totally arbitrary deviation from the French. I agree that it would be affected to insist upon a fully French pronunciations - palatalised "l", firm emphasis on final syllables - but surely there's no reason to relocate the first vowel, assuming we can all pronounce the word "Alabama" without saying "Awlabawma"? Ajcounter ( talk) 18:21, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
An IP pointed out a possible error:
That can't possibly be correct, as Balzac died a few months before Stevenson was born. Is it possible that this remark refers to a different Stevenson? -- JayHenry ( talk) 20:15, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
References
Just for fun I took a stroll through the diffs. Here's the change between the 15th and right now. Absolutely no vandalism "slipped through the cracks" and remained in the article. So that's very positive.
While a featured article, Balzac received 150 edits, the majority of which were vandalism and reverts. By my count, the article was vandalized 44 times. Of this, 33 incidents were reverted in a minute or less. In total, by my estimate, the article contained some vandalism for 48 minutes in the last two days, which (conveniently) works out to precisely one vandalized minute per hour. And for the most part, the worse the vandalism the faster it was reverted.
There were a few outliers though. The worst was a 12 minute stretch here. The article received vandalism from two separate accounts in a minute. The second edit was immediately reverted, but the first edit -- changing his name to Ballsack in the infobox -- remained in the article. A third vandal struck the article repeatedly, and while his vandalism was instantly reverted, the ballsack in the infobox went unfixed for 12 minutes.
So not the worst I've seen but not exactly what I'd consider ideal either. -- JayHenry ( talk) 22:50, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
Recently Ilse@ made an changing the image at the top of the page from a color painting of Balzac to the original black-and-white daguerrotype. I believe that the color painting is much more appealing, and I'd advocate for a change back to the painting. Rather than risk an edit war by reverting, I'd like to seek consensus here and find out what other people think. – Scartol • Tok 13:46, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
I reverted some edits from an IP but wanted to flag their claim that the summary of La Peau de chagrin was very vague ... not totally accurate. Since it is sourced to Robb, and the IP simply removed the citation, I restored it. The IP is from Oxford, but our Oxfordian friend also removed the non-controversial claim about Balzac's role as a major practitioner of realism. -- JayHenry ( talk) 22:37, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
Legend has it that as Balzac was expiring, he called to his deathbed the great Doctor Horace Bianchon. Much to the amazement of those surrounding him. For they knew Horace Bianchon was a character invented by Balzac himself in La Comédie Humaine. And so in these last moments when life and death come to a blur, reality and fiction too were subtly dissolving into one another. Soon after, Balzac, Doctor Bianchon, and hundreds more, were reunited forever in the Legend. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.72.93.5 ( talk) 08:39, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
Cause: coronary arrhythmia resulting from excessive ingestion of caffeine. Lestrade ( talk) 00:30, 24 March 2012 (UTC)Lestrade
Looking at the page history, this article is constantly bombarded with anon vandalism. Would semi-protection be appropriate? Zazaban ( talk) 21:58, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
I remember that Balzac wrote around 30 trivial novels in his early days, and there is almost zero reference to that in the text. So, could somebody find any info considering them? I tried to find some info in English, but there are not many informations available, so, perhaps, there is some info in French? HeadlessMaster ( talk) 17:57, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
Why this article makes no mention of this persona? She seems rather important. -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 16:35, 2 July 2011 (UTC)
Some one has edited to change the age in the paragraph "At age eight Balzac was sent to the Oratorian grammar school in Vendôme, where he studied for seven years. His father, seeking to instill the same hardscrabble work ethic which had gained him the esteem of society, intentionally gave little spending money to the boy. This made him the object of ridicule among his much wealthier schoolmates."
Anyone know whether it should be eight or ten?-- 🍺 Antiqueight confer 21:56, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
The following sentence is unclear: "Marx's work Das Kapital also makes constant reference to the works of Balzac and urged Engels to read Balzac's work The Unknown Masterpiece." The implication here is that the text of Das Kapital (specifically) urged Engels (specifically) to read The Unknown Masterpiece. That seems possible but unlikely; more likely Marx elsewhere urged Engels to read it, and the sentence is just sloppily worded. 850 C ( talk) 19:52, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
The opening sentence of the Legacy section currently says: "He has been compared to Charles Dickens and has been called one of Dickens' influences." There is no reference for the second part of this sentence. I am not aware of any definite evidence that Dickens ever read Balzac or was influenced by his work. -- Michaelpeverett ( talk) 11:45, 10 June 2015 (UTC)-- Michaelpeverett ( talk) 11:45, 10 June 2015 (UTC)
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Honoré de Balzac's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.
Reference named "chancerel_pierrot":
{{
citation}}
: Unknown parameter |month=
ignored (
help)I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 22:43, 23 July 2014 (UTC)
Some old page history that used to be at the title "Honoré de Balzac" can now be found at Talk:Honoré de Balzac/Old history. Graham 87 12:29, 31 July 2015 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 4 external links on Honoré de Balzac. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 07:52, 20 May 2017 (UTC)
Any objections to throwing this article into the pile of potential TFA reruns for this year and next? Any cleanup needed? If it helps, here's a list of dead or dubious links. - Dank ( push to talk) 23:39, 10 September 2017 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on Honoré de Balzac. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 02:23, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 2 external links on Honoré de Balzac. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 03:26, 3 December 2017 (UTC)