Vanished Dreams

Lost Illusions, written between 1835 and 1843, sits at the pinnacle of Balzac's The Human Comedy (1830-1850), as Balzac himself stated. The three parts that comprise the novel depict the political and social transformations of early 19th-century France and the downfall of the novel's protagonist. It portrays, in three acts, the romanticism identified with the imperial fervor of the Napoleonic era, the bourgeois power intertwined with capital during the Restoration, and the rise of realism in literature. Thus, themes such as love, the press, and the world of capital become elements of a comparison between Paris and the provinces.

While the first part, Two Poets, is characterized by stagnation, the second part, A Great Man of the Provinces in Paris, gains pace in terms of both plot and narrative, and the final part, The Inventor's Sorrows, describes the protagonist's return to the provinces, defeated and with his dreams extinguished in this confrontation.

If Balzac were to see the current state of the world, he would most likely not be very surprised. We can also say that the century he lived in foreshadowed our present in many respects. Perhaps this is why we feel that Lost Illusions describes our contemporary world as we read it.