![]() ![]() The scene is laid in Paris in 1612, and the central figure is an invention of Balzac’s, a demonic personality who might have stepped out of the fantastic tales of E.T.A. ![]() However, no work of his was more completely or profoundly rewritten than Le Chef d’oeuvre inconnu. It was a subject close to the author’s heart: his books generally went through several versions before and after publication. One of Balzac’s most interesting tales, Le Chef d’oeuvre inconnu ( The Unknown Masterpiece), deals imaginatively and succinctly with revision. Most revise and, as they do so, create more problems than they resolve. She replied, “I write very fast and I never correct.” This is the ideal. Revision comes from the conscious intellect or will, and this, as Wordsworth wrote, “is the very littleness of life,…relapses from the one interior life that lives in all things.” 1 Some years ago, a novelist-Muriel Spark, I believe-was asked how she was able to write so many books in such a short space of time. It is a convenient and pleasing Romantic myth that the true work of art springs full-blown from the unconscious mind. ![]()
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