SOURCE: Majewski, Henry F. “Painting as Intertext in Balzac's La Fille aux yeux d'or.” Symposium 45, no. 1 (spring 1991): 370-84.

In the following essay, Majewski analyzes the influence of Delacroix's paintings on Balzac's novella La fille aux yeux d'or.

La Duchesse de Langeais andLa Fille aux yeux d'or are dedicated respectively to Lîszt and Delacroix. These two novels, from the trilogy L'Histoire des Treize, can be considered experimental novels in which Balzac shows his skill at developing interartistic parallels as musician and painter. La Duchesse includes a conscious attempt to reproduce musical structures in fiction; La Fille aux yeux d'or is almost a romantic “transposition d'art.” Balzac endeavors to produce aesthetic effects similar to those of Delacroix's paintings: a strange beauty elicited by images of violent passion. Through the use of pictorial description, color symbolism, and structural devices related to painting, he creates exotic “oriental” scenes in the...