Literature debt primer
Donald Trump should read this guide from the 19th century
As of: 7:23 p.m. | Reading time: 3 minutes
Donald Trump, once again in court
Quelle: picture alliance / ASSOCIATED PRESS
If you want to live big, it’s best to throw your money out the window. The anonymous author of an advice book from 1827 already knew this. In other words: the more debt, the more credit. Sounds like the ideal book for the former and perhaps future US president.
It is unclear who wrote “The Art of Paying Your Debts.” Since time immemorial, the tempting title has been attributed to the great novelist and connoisseur of French society Honoré de Balzac. In fact, the original essay was published anonymously in 1827. Balzac was only 28 years old and still had a lot of debt in front of him. It would also be the only guide from his pen.
It is more likely that the long-forgotten feature writer Marco de Saint-Hilaire wrote the book. But of course that fits in wonderfully with the text, because ultimately “The Art of Paying One’s Debts” is about imposture, and with Balzac it stacks up higher than with a Saint-Hilaire.
The big bankrupts
One doesn’t really know whether the big debt and bankruptcy makers who are now being asked to pay should really adhere to the advice of the clever uncle, who here gives ten lessons on “satisfying your creditors without so much as a sou.” to take it out of your own pocket,” to quote the entire title.
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Donald Trump, for example, who is now so spectacularly about to be relieved of a considerable number of his millions (certainly not all of them!), at least doesn’t need his uncle’s ultimate advice, which is: “If you can’t do it in any other way, should make himself famous through his debts”. Trump is already famous, one might add: infamous.
In any case, Saint-Hilaire, not unlike the great Balzac, invented a character with the alleged uncle as the fictional narrator of this book who very much corresponded to their own character, and that was that of the gambler, that is, the social adventurer. They viewed incurring debts, no matter how much trouble it caused them, as a trivial offense.
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The whole book is bursting with humor and mischief and lots of cynicism. For both men, getting into debt also has something to do with dandyism. Dandies simply owe it to themselves to live large in all aspects of life, and that requires loans. Anyone who pays it back has of course done something wrong as a man of the world. Because it is the unpaid, not the paid, debts that provide “indisputable proof of the happiness of the person who made them,” as the evil uncle knows in “The Art of Paying Your Debts.”
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Neither Balzac nor St. Hilaire experienced the great speculatorism of the French in the 19th century; It only happened with the advancing capitalism in the Second Empire. But “The art of paying your debts without taking a single sou out of your pocket” sarcastically describes a law that continues to apply in all boom times.
The evil uncle puts it this way: “The more debt, the more credit; The fewer creditors, the fewer sources of money.” You always have to make full use of everything. Only breaking the rules on a large scale leads to something. In this respect, it might be worth it for Mr. Trump to take a look at this current classic.
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In order to display embedded content, your revocable consent to the transmission and processing of personal data is necessary, as the providers of the embedded content require this consent as third party providers [In diesem Zusammenhang können auch Nutzungsprofile (u.a. auf Basis von Cookie-IDs) gebildet und angereichert werden, auch außerhalb des EWR]. By setting the switch to “on”, you agree to this (revocable at any time). This also includes your consent to the transfer of certain personal data to third countries, including the USA, in accordance with Art. 49 (1) (a) GDPR. You can find more information about this. You can revoke your consent at any time using the switch and privacy at the bottom of the page.
2024-03-30 19:08:12
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