Honore de Balzac and Thomas Wolfe were Promethean thieves of fire--and tricksters, for all artists are con men. Both were born as centuries turned, Balzac in 1799, Wolfe a century later in 1900. Both died young, Balzac at fifty-one, Wolfe at thirty-seven. A comparison of the lives and creations of these Prometheans, one French and one American, may illuminate our understanding of both men. Balzac and Wolfe lived with gargantuan gusto, out of a compulsion to experience and remember, and to profoundly and powerfully express, everything that is possible in life. Both determined to distill experience to its essence, with an intensity expressed in Wolfe's epigraph to The Web and the Rock: "Could I make tongue say more than tongue could utter! Could I make brain grasp more than brain could think!" (vi). In Wolfe's words both Balzac and Wolfe are distilled to their essences. But neither Balzac nor any other European or American writer, not even Whitman, ever soared on lyrical wings as high as this:
