Marxman
22nd March 2002, 20:17
I shall post a paragraph from a French artist Honore de Balzac from his cycle of stories COMEDIE HUMAINE. This story is called Father Goriot and this paragraph is about how Honore criticises about the French corrupted society. You must know that the REALISM age of literature was the time when Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote Communist manifesto and all the authors of that time were writing about society and conditions, the real situations. Anyway, please read this and think carefully if these words that describe the conditions in Paris in that time has changed nowadays.
"HONESTY IS WORTH NOTHING"
"To get to fortune fast, is the problem, which is solved at this moment by fifty thousand young people in the same position, that you are. You are just a one in that number. Now think about the exertions, that you will have to do, and the struggle untill the last. You must devour side by side like spiders in a pot, because there are not fifty thousand good jobs. Do you know, how a human penetrates here? With a great brilliance or a cunning corruption. Do you bang into these people like from a cannon, or do you creep like a plague. Honesty is worth nothing. To a genius and his force are they bent, they try to blacken him, because he takes and doesn't share with the others; but they bent him, and when he insists, for long and for a while, they honor him on his knees, when they coulnd't bury him in mud. Corruption is abundant, talent is rare. And that is how corruption is the weapon of average, which grows exuberantly, and you will always feels its force. You will see women, which their husbands have upmost six thousand franks of income, which they spend over ten thousand for clothes. You will see officials with twelve thousand franks that buy the land. You will see women prostitutes, so that they can sit in a carriage of a rich man. I do not believe that you can step two times in Paris to see hell intrigues. I bet my head to see you flushing towards a woman that pleases, and let her be young, rich and beatiful. They all walk in wrong directions, they all walk towards rich men. I couldn't stop to tell you all the tricks that women do for lovers, richness and rarely for honesty, believe me. And that is how an honest man is the enemy of all. Who do you think an honest man is! The one who shuts up and defends himself from working with the others. I am not talking about the poor beggars and paupers that work like slaves and get nothing for it and I call them the god's paupers. Certainly, here is where honesty is in the best flourishment of its stupidity, but here is nothing but poverty. How vividly I see grim faces of these god's wolves. So, if you want to get to fortune, you must already be very rich or you must look like very rich. If there are in hundres jobs, which you meant to attempt to, ten people that quickly get something, they're all thieves. Now make your own summary. This is your life, whatever it is. There is nothing more beatiful than in the kitchen, it smells, you have to clean your hands. So, if you want to entertain, just be careful to clean yourself and that is the morale of this age. If I speak this about the world, than I have a right to, I know it. And do you think I blame it? Absolutely not. It was always like this. Moralists never alter it. Human is imperfect. Sometimes he is a hypocrite and then silly people say that it's characterised or non-characterised. I do not blame richmen in favour of poormen. The human is the same up, down and in the middle. About every million of these species, there are ten boys who are on top of everything, even above laws: I am one of them. You, if you are the upper man, step forward with your chin up. But you have to fight against envy, average, detraction, against the whole world. Napoleon headed to the war minister, who was called Aubry, who nearly sent him into the colonies. Feel your heart and kidneys! Watch out, if you have to wake up every morning with a strengthen will, that you had yesterday."
I kind of shortened it and simplified it a little. Now think, IF THE SITUATION HAS CHANGED SINCE THAT TIME. Please, and thank you.
"HONESTY IS WORTH NOTHING"
"To get to fortune fast, is the problem, which is solved at this moment by fifty thousand young people in the same position, that you are. You are just a one in that number. Now think about the exertions, that you will have to do, and the struggle untill the last. You must devour side by side like spiders in a pot, because there are not fifty thousand good jobs. Do you know, how a human penetrates here? With a great brilliance or a cunning corruption. Do you bang into these people like from a cannon, or do you creep like a plague. Honesty is worth nothing. To a genius and his force are they bent, they try to blacken him, because he takes and doesn't share with the others; but they bent him, and when he insists, for long and for a while, they honor him on his knees, when they coulnd't bury him in mud. Corruption is abundant, talent is rare. And that is how corruption is the weapon of average, which grows exuberantly, and you will always feels its force. You will see women, which their husbands have upmost six thousand franks of income, which they spend over ten thousand for clothes. You will see officials with twelve thousand franks that buy the land. You will see women prostitutes, so that they can sit in a carriage of a rich man. I do not believe that you can step two times in Paris to see hell intrigues. I bet my head to see you flushing towards a woman that pleases, and let her be young, rich and beatiful. They all walk in wrong directions, they all walk towards rich men. I couldn't stop to tell you all the tricks that women do for lovers, richness and rarely for honesty, believe me. And that is how an honest man is the enemy of all. Who do you think an honest man is! The one who shuts up and defends himself from working with the others. I am not talking about the poor beggars and paupers that work like slaves and get nothing for it and I call them the god's paupers. Certainly, here is where honesty is in the best flourishment of its stupidity, but here is nothing but poverty. How vividly I see grim faces of these god's wolves. So, if you want to get to fortune, you must already be very rich or you must look like very rich. If there are in hundres jobs, which you meant to attempt to, ten people that quickly get something, they're all thieves. Now make your own summary. This is your life, whatever it is. There is nothing more beatiful than in the kitchen, it smells, you have to clean your hands. So, if you want to entertain, just be careful to clean yourself and that is the morale of this age. If I speak this about the world, than I have a right to, I know it. And do you think I blame it? Absolutely not. It was always like this. Moralists never alter it. Human is imperfect. Sometimes he is a hypocrite and then silly people say that it's characterised or non-characterised. I do not blame richmen in favour of poormen. The human is the same up, down and in the middle. About every million of these species, there are ten boys who are on top of everything, even above laws: I am one of them. You, if you are the upper man, step forward with your chin up. But you have to fight against envy, average, detraction, against the whole world. Napoleon headed to the war minister, who was called Aubry, who nearly sent him into the colonies. Feel your heart and kidneys! Watch out, if you have to wake up every morning with a strengthen will, that you had yesterday."
I kind of shortened it and simplified it a little. Now think, IF THE SITUATION HAS CHANGED SINCE THAT TIME. Please, and thank you.