The "Cynical" Balzac

Balzac is, like pretty much every author who has dared to say a critical word about the social order, routinely charged with the crime of "cynicism"; while like pretty much every author against whom the charge is made undeserving of the charge.

Balzac was absolutely scathing in his criticism of a world where there was "no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, callous 'cash payment.'" But it was the cynicism of that world that he condemned, in part because of all those things that he happened to value--not least, human connections and human virtues. The way modern society corrupted and destroyed all that--cynically--was what he exposed and attacked, with the result that if the genteel folk of the salons regarded him as a monster, those fed up with the official lies and the hypocrisy have ever since found in his honesty, and his feeling, a breath of fresh air.

And that— was what seemed "cynical" to "respectable" opinion that did not like attention being called to such realities, of which it was defensive then and remains defensive now, such that he is less read today than he might be if he had their approval.

Indeed, it says everything that Henry James, at best an epigone of French realists like Balzac who willfully abandoned all that was best in them--indeed, while personally laying against Balzac the charge that he lacked a moral sense--became the god of Anglo-American letters.