SOURCE: Bresnick, Adam. “Absolute Fetishism: Genius and Identification in Balzac's ‘Unknown Masterpiece.’” Paragraph: A Journal of Modern Critical Theory 17, no. 2 (July 1994): 134-52.

In the following essay, Bresnick investigates the role of genius in The Unknown Masterpiece and considers how it impacts Balzac's aesthetics in the novella.

I. Balzac's Genius

For the genius each caesura, and the heavy blows of fate, fall like the gentle sleep itself into his workshop labour. About it he draws a charmed circle of fragments ‘Genius is application.’

—Benjamin

It is no secret that Balzac was obsessed with the problem of genius. In a letter to his sister written in 1819, Balzac confides, ‘I have no other concern than the desire to elevate myself, and all of my worries come from the small amount of talent that I believe myself to have. For … all the work in the world does not produce one speck of...