Balzac and Kafka: From Realism to Magical Realism

Introduction

French author Honoré de Balzac defined the genre of realism in the early 19th century with his novel Old Man Goriot, which served as a cornerstone for his more ambitious project, The Human Comedy. Old Man Goriot also served as a prototype for realistic novels, establishing narrative parameters that included plot, structure, characterization, and point of view. The 20th century, however, digressed considerably from the genre of realism. Franz Kafka, for example, has been considered one of the forerunners of the genre known as magical realism. Wendy B. Faris defines the genre as the combination of "realism and the fantastic so that the marvelous seems to grow organically within the ordinary, blurring the distinction between them... [including] different cultural traditions" (1). Faris finds magical realism to exist at the crossroads of modernism and post-modernism, as a kind of fairy-tale reminder of existence. This paper analyzes the narrative expectations of the novel of realism through Balzac's Old Man Goriot and shows how they changed in the 20th century through Kafka's "The Metamorphosis."

Plot and character in the realistic novel are derived from real-life situations and events and are meant to be comprehensive. Essentially, the realistic novel serves as a kind of document: more than a drama, it is an epic narrative that attempts to illustrate all aspects of a particular time and place. For Balzac in Old Man Goriot, that time and place is Paris in the early 19th century. In order to reflect the divisions of Parisian society, Balzac focuses on three central characters, each with a separate story. There is Vautrin, the criminal with a secret past; Goriot, the pathetically doting father figure — a kind of 19th-century Lear whose daughters are more interested in his money than his kindness; and Rastignac, a representation of the ambitious young person out to climb the social ladder by any means available. All three are united under the roof of a boarding house.

Realism in Old Man Goriot: Plot, Character, and Structure

The plot focuses on their experiences, which Balzac drew from real-life observations, even going so far as to base the character of Vautrin on a real-life criminal turned police officer with whom he was acquainted. Yet, even while the novel is realistic in its depiction of time and place, its characterization is somewhat Romantic — though, of course, Balzac was writing in a Romantic era.

The expectations of the realistic novel's narrative are set forth in Balzac's treatment of setting: he devotes great care and attention to describing scenes — the way the boarding house looks, who lives there, and what their stories are. The realistic novel is detail-oriented and acts as a kind of literary photograph of a time period. The narrative of Old Man Goriot therefore fluctuates among Vautrin, Rastignac, and Goriot, creating parallels for dramatic effect — such as Goriot's death scene juxtaposed with his daughters' and Rastignac's attendance at a ball. In Kafka's tale, by contrast, the characters are considerably more grotesque, exaggerated so as to alarm and command attention.

The structure of the realistic novel does not allow for loose ends. It is meant to be definitive and strong. Balzac weaves together several strands, forming a tapestry of events and lives. The structure is complex: it unites three stories in one narrative and combines realistic depictions with philosophical explanations and dramatic renderings. This model of realism would be adopted by all the great 19th-century novelists, from Dickens to Melville to Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. In many ways, the 19th-century novel is a sweeping illumination of mankind as it appeared to the author in all its many facets and traits — a vision that required great scope and imagination.

By the 20th century, however, literary focus was shifting from the outward to the inward. Modern writers wanted to describe less of the world around them and more of the world they found within themselves.

Point of View and the Omniscient Narrator in Balzac

Old Man Goriot is written from the perspective of the third-person omniscient narrator. The point of view is meant to be objective, with Balzac's voice expounding the mysteries of life as they appeared to him in his own time and place. This exercise of third-person perspective is less confident in the novels of the 20th century, especially in Kafka's, which are marked by an ironic and wondering tone.

Magical Realism in The Metamorphosis

Magical realism is a genre that sets out not so much to describe as to criticize and to wonder. Bruno Bettelheim might characterize "The Metamorphosis" as satirical commentary on the modern age's inability to properly assess itself. If children's literature deals with the transformation of a frog into a human (implying sexual and moral growth), Kafka's human transforms into a bug, implying not growth but regression: "The idea that as he grows up, his sexuality too must, in his own best interest, undergo a metamorphosis" (Bettelheim 290) can readily be applied to the inverted adult fairy tale that is "The Metamorphosis." One can thus see the change in narrative expectations in the 20th-century novel: fantasy is used to delve into the mind and the soul.

Vladimir Nabokov attempts to trace the structure of Kafka's tale by proclaiming "that since art and thought, manner and matter, are inseparable, there must be something of the same kind about the structure of the story, too." Gregor, the main character of "The Metamorphosis," is "endowed with a certain amount of human pathos among grotesque, heartless characters, figures of fun or figures of horror, asses parading as zebras, or hybrids between rabbits and rats... [The] intonation of 'I cannot get out, I cannot get out,' said the starling" is perfectly embedded in Kafka's structure. The structure of magical realism is thus different from that of realism: it is inward-looking, but longs for escape or explanation.

The 20th-century novel still grows out of the realistic novel and therefore fulfills its structural expectations in a certain way. As Nabokov indicates, the structure of "The Metamorphosis" can be divided into three parts. Characterization, however, departs from the expectations of the realistic novel — as do plot and point of view. The plot is simple; the point of view is third person, but much bleaker and less omniscient.

Conclusion: From Documentary to the Fantastic

Yet, Kafka's magical realism is not so different from Balzac's realism — in both, the good die and the bad are relieved of their suffering and able to go out and enjoy the sunshine (or a fancy ball). Kafka's work, however, includes a more precise articulation of justice by describing less. The reader is left to groan under the weight of the fantastic reality that has just been displayed. The three-fold nature of the tale — three parts, three rooms in the house, three main relationships (brother, sister, parents) — invokes the traditional triptych symbol, which invests narratives with a kind of spiritual revelation: the Trinity, for instance, is representative of higher power, order, justice, and mercy. In Kafka, however, the triptych does not lead to any of the defining characteristics of the Trinity. Love, mercy, judgment, and justice are absent from the story's conclusion. Kafka's tale emphasizes not detail but ideal — specifically, how love, justice, and mercy are forgotten and left out of modern life.