On France Culture, a Historian Traces Balzac's Contested Afterlife
A new episode of the podcast Concordance des temps looks at how, after his death, Balzac was claimed by rival political camps eager to make his vast body of work speak for them.
France Culture has released an episode of its history podcast Concordance des temps devoted to the posthumous political fortunes of Honoré de Balzac. The episode, titled "Balzac à tous les vents de la mémoire," was published on 26 September and features the historian Judith Lyon-Caen, according to the programme's own summary.
The starting point is a description of Balzac left by Baudelaire, who called him "le plus grand homme du siècle." Balzac died having produced 91 works populated by some 2,500 characters, a body of writing so vast and varied, the summary notes, that opposing political camps subsequently tried to claim it for their own ends.
Lyon-Caen's account, as presented by France Culture, traces this tug-of-war over Balzac's legacy without settling on a single reading of the author himself. The episode is framed as an inquiry into memory and appropriation rather than a work of literary criticism.
No further details on the episode's content, length or guests beyond Lyon-Caen were provided by France Culture in the material released so far.
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