Short Fiction Balzac, Honoré de: Pierre Grassou, v1, 22 Aug 2007.

[Patricia]

Honoré de Balzac: Pierre Grassou
Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley

A short story of about 7,700 words.

A mediocre painter, Pierre Grassou, paint bad pictures of mediocre people. (Grassou knows that he is incompetent but, being a Breton, he is too stubborn to give up art.) Yet he eclipses artists of genius because mediocrity is the spirit of the age.

(-Rather like today: Plus ça change plus c’est la même chose.)


The translation is rather pedestrian but is the only one available. I’ve corrected a number of errors against the Pléiade text, restored accents, and added a picture plus a couple of brief notes.

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