Modeste Mignon
1844
In the coastal town of Le Havre, Modeste Mignon dreams of love and literary glory. Confined to her father's house, she pours her romantic soul into letters to the celebrated poet Canalis, basking in the attention of France's most famous versifier. But Canalis never reads her letters. His secretary, Ernest de la Brière, answers them instead and falls genuinely, desperately in love. What begins as literary flirtation becomes a tangled web of performed passion and authentic feeling, of a poet who is all surface and a secretary who is all depth. When Modeste's father returns from India unexpectedly wealthy, three suitors materialize: the arriviste Canalis, the devoted Ernest, and a conveniently titled duke. Balzac constructs a brilliant comedy of errors that interrogates what we love when we claim to love a famous person, and whether the author of beautiful words is necessarily capable of beautiful feeling.
