The Quest Of The Absolute

The Quest of the Absolute "La Recherche de l'Absolu" was published in 1834, with a touching dedication to Madame Josephine Delannoy: "Madame, may it please God that this, my book, may live when I am dead, that the gratitude which is due from me to you, and which equals, I trust, your motherlike generosity to me, may hope to endure beyond the limits set to human love." The novel became a part of the "Human Comedy" in 1845. The struggle of Balthazar Claes in his quest for the Absolute, his disregard of all else save his work, and the heroic devotion of Josephine and Marguerite, are characteristic features of Balzac's art; the sordidness of life and the mad passion for the unattainable are admirably relieved, as in "Eugénie Grandet" and "Old Goriot," by a certain nobility and purity of motive.