Suicide, Société et Sociologie: De Durkheim à Balzac

Sociologists no less than novelists have recognized that suicide represents a crisis in the relationship of the individual to society. Starting from the categories of suicide types elaborated by the sociologist Emile Durkheim (Le Suicide, 1897) examination of suicide in the Comédie humaine brings to light both Balzac's negative attitude toward a certain Romanticism (exemplified by Julien Sorel) and his properly sociological imagination. Balzac's condemnation of the excessive individualism of anomic or Romantic suicide derives from his conception of and his ideal of Society as an external constraint on the individual, as the incarnation of what Durkheim called social facts. The Comédie humaine realizes social facts as literary facts, the active social structure generates the æsthetic and philosophical structure, and a sociological perspective is integrated into literary creation. (In French) (PPC)