the ordinary reality of femininity: balzac, poe, and the men who couldn’t love us
by dr.med. denisa legac
they weren’t monsters. they were dreamers.
balzac’s balthazar claës didn’t beat his wife. he didn’t rage. didn’t seduce the neighbor girl or gamble away the family name. he simply disappeared. into glass beakers. into theories. into the safety of obsession. he told himself it was for the absolute. for science. for humanity. but what he couldn’t face was this. he couldn’t tolerate her.
not her body. not her rhythm. not her dying. not her softness. not her need. not her ordinariness.
that’s how women die in these stories. slowly. elegantly. quietly. and the men never notice until it’s too late.
and then they say they loved us.
the ideal is sterile
let’s not pretend this is about chemistry. it’s about fear.
balthazar, like poe’s narrators, those haunted, fevered men with decaying houses and dead-eyed birds, is in love with control. with elevation. with the idea of purity. in both poe and balzac, the object of desire is either unreachable;-‘ lenore, ligeia, the chemical compound — or already dead. because once she becomes real. once she needs sleep or attention or money. they split. idealize or devalue. glorify or abandon.
this is narcissism, yes. but not the flashy kind. not the instagram flex. this is the kind that smells like incense and lectures. the kind that recites rilke and says you’re too much when you cry.
the erotic as a threat
what’s really being avoided isn’t the woman. it’s the erotic.
the erotic is chaotic. it moves. it leaks. it doesn’t ask permission. it cares about presence. only!
claës doesn’t touch his wife. he experiments with gold dust. poe’s narrators whisper to phantoms. they want what can’t touch back. because to touch back is to make them vulnerable. and to be vulnerable is to lose the illusion of mastery.
that’s the wound.
they want the feminine to be either muse or corpse.
the ordinary reality of femininity
here is what they couldn’t bear. a woman who ages. a woman who bleeds. a woman who gets tired and interrupts their thought with a question like, did you pay the butcher.
they call it mundane. i call it sacred.
a woman who stays, even when she’s disappointed. a woman who knows the smell of old books and warm skin. a woman who sees through YOU and still wants you anyway. not because you’re brilliant. but because you’re there.
lou andreas-salomé would have said they wanted the mystery of woman. not the woman herself.
and she was right.
the seduction of the absolute
the quest for the absolute is seductive. of course it is. it promises transcendence. escape. some final moment where you don’t have to feel longing anymore.
but longing is life.
the erotic isn’t the death of purity. it’s its companion. the absolute isn’t found in formulas or ravens. it’s found when you kiss someone who knows the worst of you and stays. when you smell the same soup your mother used to make and let yourself cry. when you stop needing perfection and choose contact.
that’s when the real begins.
that’s when you stop being claës. or poe’s narrator. or rilke in his tower.
that’s when you come back to your body.
final words
balzac gave us the man who couldn’t stay with the living. poe gave us the men who collapsed under beauty. salomé gave us the woman who watched and understood.
men who say they want truth but mean control. women who say they want safety but mean silence. and underneath it all, the hunger for something they’ve never dared let in.
the ordinary. the erotic. the real.
the woman who says, i’m here. will you stop dreaming long enough to touch me.
and sometimes, finally, they really do.
both of them.
