Comedie Humaine Book Club Discussion Guide: An Episode Under the Terror, by Honoré de Balzac
I was only able to come up with 2-3 questions about this book, but I found a lot of contextual material and we discussed how learning more about the setting changed our understanding of the sory. What we used is below...
Background, Plot, and Setting
Balzac is to France as Dickens is to England. He creates an immense and expressionistic panorama of French society, with a focus on odd character types, from a perspective of fascinated wonder. (“What Are the Pros and Cons of Reading Honore de Balzac?” Quora, qr.ae/ps7WcQ. Accessed 17 Feb. 2024.)
Un Episode sous la Terreur is one of the brilliant things in a small way, which the author did not attempt afterwards to expand at the obvious risk of weakening. It is compressed into compass commensurate with its artistic limits, and, thus preserved, it displays all the strength and vivacity which the plot demands. When Balzac was thus content to leave a ‘skit’ of this sort, or when he condensed as only Balzac could condense – as in the case of La Maison du Chat-qui-Pelote – the result was a story the like of which could scarcely be duplicated in the whole range of French literature. (Scamperpb. “Saintsbury Introduction, Volume XVI – Part II.” La Comedie Humaine by Balzac, 20 Aug. 2012.)
Plot summary (Wikipedia)
Plot summary (Wikipedia)An elderly woman buys a package from a bakery on 22 January 1793, and suspects she is being followed. She asks for protection from the baker, but when he sees the stranger following her he refuses. She returns home alone, and it is revealed that she is an ex-Carmelite nun in hiding with another nun and a priest. All are elderly, and the box she bought contains communion wafers. The stranger comes up to their room, and asks the priest to say a mass for the recently executed King Louis XVI. He returns later to attend the mass. He also says that he will come back in a year for another mass for the king, and promises that they will be safe from any danger. He leaves a blood stained handkerchief with royal insignia as a present.
The next year the stranger returns for the mass. Later, the priest visits a shop owned by some Royalist friends of his, and notices a tumbril passing by with the executioner and his victims. The priest faints when he recognises that the executioner is the stranger who has been helping them, and realises that the handerkerchief was the king's.
The story takes place during the Reign of Terror, from 1793 to 1794. It starts the day after the execution of King Louis XVI. The story is fictional, but it features an historical figure, Charles-Henri Sanson, who was the High Executioner, and conducted the execution of Louis XVI. However the story does not give his name.
The Reign of Terror (French: la Terreur) was a period of the French Revolution when, following the creation of the First Republic, a series of massacres and numerous public executions took place in response to revolutionary fervour, anticlerical sentiment, and accusations of treason by the Committee of Public Safety.
The Reign of Terror was a period during which there was a process of Dechristianisation occurring in France. The nuns and priest in the story are in hiding because of this.
Dechristianization of France during the French Revolution (Wikipedia)
The aim of a number of separate policies conducted by various governments of France during the French Revolution ranged from the appropriation by the government of the great landed estates and the large amounts of money held by the Catholic Church to the termination of Christian religious practice and of the religion itself.[1][2][3] There has been much scholarly debate over whether the movement was popularly motivated or motivated by a small group of revolutionary radicals.[1] These policies, which ended with the Concordat of 1801, formed the basis of the later and less radical laïcité policies.
The French Revolution initially began with attacks on Church corruption and the wealth of the higher clergy, an action with which even many Christians could identify, since the Gallican Church held a dominant role in pre-revolutionary France. During a two-year period known as the Reign of Terror, the episodes of anti-clericalism became some the most violent of any in modern European history. The new revolutionary authorities suppressed the Church, abolished the Catholic monarchy, nationalized Church property, exiled 30,000 priests, and killed hundreds more.
Reviews by Other Readers
“Episode” chronicles the furtive religious worship carried on by two nuns and a priest who now have to live in hiding and conceal their Roman Catholic faith because traditional religion has been “abolished” by the tenets of the Revolution. Though in constant fear of being betrayed to the authorities, they extend fellowship to a mysterious stranger who claims to share their faith. But then a momentous occurrence reveals the truth of his identity.
This story is intriguing and fast-paced (also short). It considers huge questions of morality, personal responsibility, faith, and humanity in the midst of horrific circumstances. (gailbird. “Reviews - a Man of Business: The Storygraph.” Reviews - A Man Of Business | The StoryGraph. Accessed 17 Feb. 2024.)
The stranger claims to be guiltless, yet his grief and repentance is profound. He asks the priest the question which has bedevilled moralists from Henry VIII to the Nuremburg Trials: should participation in evil acts be punished when one is only following orders? For him there are two competing dogmas: obedience as the first principle of military law versus respect for the king as a matter of religion. (“Lisa (Melbourne, Australia)’s Review of an Episode under the Terror.” Goodreads. Accessed 17 Feb. 2024.)
Questions
“It considers huge questions of morality, personal responsibility, faith, and humanity in the midst of horrific circumstances.”
Such as...
Should participation in evil acts be punished when one is only following orders?
In response to radical right's takeover of the Montana and national Republican parties and their cult following of the former president: How many and what types of sins have already been committed in the names of freedom and justice?
This is the question asked in 1830 by the genius French writer Honore’ de Balzac in his novel, "An Episode Under the Terror." (Haven, Jeff. “‘Reign of Horror.’” The Independent Record, Helena, MT, 13 June 2023)
An Episode Under the Terror is also a clear proof of the influence of Romanticism on Balzac's work, and is evident in the general atmosphere of the story and its structure (the mystery of the main character and the drama of the final scene). (Wikipedia)
Agree?
NEXT BOOK
The Exiles, by Honoré de Balzac
NEXT MEETING
5/11/2024 3:00 pm
NEXT MONTH
Code Blue: Inside America's Medical Industrial Complex, by Mike Magee, MD
Discussion
3/16/2024 3:00 pm
