“The problem of life values in the work “Gobsek. The problem of life values in O Balzac’s work “Gobsek” Gobsek summary analysis

A difficult topic... How to determine where the values are imaginary and where the values are real? What do we mean? Say, is gold a mental or real value? I’m talking about gold because the main character is a moneylender. Gold is a fictitious value, since it is absolutely not needed by a person: it cannot be eaten, it is not suitable for making an ax or hoe. One philosopher, who is now out of fashion, proposed making toilets out of it. And although the philosopher is not in fashion, they have already begun to make this useful thing from gold. Nevertheless, try to live in peace without gold or its paper substitutes. You won’t eat money either, but you won’t be full without it either. So, is gold a fictional value or a real value in life?

Obviously, it was meant that I would immediately talk about sublime human qualities. For example, loyalty and gratitude. But I read about the life of Countess de Resto... She betrayed her husband with Maxim, who is none other than a gigolo. For the sake of this bastard, she made the Viscount de Resto almost a beggar... In another part of the “Human Comedy” we learn that she left her old father to the mercy of fate as soon as he gave his property to his daughter-heirs. Let's finally decide whether marital fidelity is a real value or not? Let's add maternal feelings... and daughter ones!

And let's return to thinking about gold, or money. The whole story told in Balzac's story is the story of the search for money, its importance in people's lives. Characters can be assessed in relation to money. Gobsek, for example, is none other than the priest of an ancient pagan cult. He does not need either a golden robe or a golden tiara - he already has the unsurpassed power of the Golden Calf, he only distributes and collects gold, which accumulates in him the more, the more he distributes it. The clientele of Gobsek (and this, so to speak, is the light of France) are only rams on the altar, which will be slaughtered when the last shred of gold ore is cut from them by the deft hands of the Great Priest.

However, they all pray to gold, making it the greatest value, the general equivalent of everything in their lives. The narrator of the story is lawyer Derville. The author did well to transfer the responsibility for assessing the situation to the hero. If something is wrong, let the wolf eat the grass. But…

Dealing with money and a loan shark, the lawyer cannot believe that everything in the world comes down to money. There is something that cannot be bought with gold or silver. Derville’s professional integrity is beyond doubt; people cordially trust him with their money and destinies. Nevertheless... Looking around me now, I ask myself a bad question: maybe gold simply hasn’t been given a real price yet? True, there are special feelings that are difficult to evaluate with money. For example, Fanny's love for Derville. We see how Anastasi, incurring new debt, buys herself a little more love from Maxime de Tray. So, can you buy it? And it's just a matter of price?

Or is the author deliberately putting us in situations where we must decide for ourselves what we will not sell in our lives? Is there anything that we would not sell for a glass necklace, just as the Indians sold Manhattan Island?

Balzac's novels and stories cover all the diversity of French life of that time. The characters, situations, and events invented by Balzac give the impression of an extremely convincing picture. He dedicated the story “Gobsek” to Baron Barsha de Penoin, his old friend. It is no coincidence that Balzac wrote that “society is the real historian, and he, the writer, is only its secretary.” Gobsek's story is told by lawyer Derville. At the center of the story is an extraordinary character, a representative of the French bourgeoisie, the moneylender Gobsek. The writer describes his hero as follows: “The moneylender’s hair was completely straight, always neatly combed, with strong gray hair. The eyes, yellow like those of a marten, had almost no eyelashes and were afraid of the light. His sharp nose, marked with smallpox at the tip, stuck up like a gimlet, and his lips were thin... He always spoke in a quiet, meek voice and never got angry.”

Gobsek is a cruel capitalist. Having millions, Gobsek lives in an abandoned room. He ruthlessly exploits his clients. Gobsek, like that spider, lures people to him, and then takes away all their property. It is then difficult for victims to buy back their belongings. Gobsek is old, but he saves on everything. After Gobsek's death, a lot of money, spoiled food and other valuables were left behind. The room was cluttered with furniture, silver items, lamps, paintings, vases, books, engravings... Gobsek did not sell the silver because he refused to bear the costs associated with delivery. He “sank into childhood and showed that incomprehensible tenacity which develops in old people, possessed by a strong passion that outlasts their mind.”

Throughout his life, Gobsek never took advantage of his accumulated wealth. Because of people like Gobsek, the destinies of many people are broken. This story teaches that money is not the main thing. The greatest value is your kind heart.

In the 30s, Balzac turned entirely to the description of the morals and life of modern bourgeois society. The origins of the “Human Comedy” lie in the short story “Gobsek,” which appeared in 1830. Although outwardly it appears to be a novella entirely of portraiture, a kind of psychological sketch, it nevertheless contains all the key points of Balzac’s worldview.

The short story, along with the novel, was Balzac's favorite genre. Moreover, many of Balzac's short stories are built not around a specific center - although they sometimes tell about very dramatic twists and turns - but around a certain psychological type. Taken together, Balzac's short stories are like a portrait gallery of various types of human behavior, a series of psychological sketches. In the general concept of The Human Comedy, they are, as it were, preliminary developments of characters, which Balzac later releases as heroes on the pages of his major plot novels.

And it is extremely significant that the first to appear in this gallery of types is Gobsek, the moneylender, one of the key, main figures of the entire bourgeois century, as if a symbol of this era. What is this new psychological type? In our critical literature, unfortunately, the image of Gobsek is often interpreted one-sidedly. If you do not read the story itself, but read other critical opinions about it, then we will be presented with the image of a kind of spider sucking the blood from its victims, a man devoid of any mental movements, thinking only about money - in general, this figure, as one can imagine, depicted by Balzac with hatred and disgust.

But if you carefully read the story itself, you will probably be somewhat confused by the categorical nature of these strictly negative judgments. Because in the story you will often see and hear something completely opposite: the narrator, a completely positive and honest person, lawyer Derville, speaks about Gobsek, for example, like this: “I am deeply convinced that, outside of his usurious affairs, he is a man of the most scrupulous honesty in all of Paris. Two creatures live in him: a miser and a philosopher, an insignificant and sublime creature. If I die, leaving young children, he will be their guardian." I repeat, this is said by the narrator, who clearly speaks on behalf of the author.

Let's take a closer look at this strange character. Gobsek is, without a doubt, ruthless towards his clients. He strips them, as they say, of three skins. He “plunges people into tragedy,” as they said of old.

But let's ask a logical question - who is his client, from whom does he take money? The novel features two such clients - Maxime de Tray, a socialite, gambler and pimp who squanders his mistress's money; the mistress herself is Countess de Resto, blindly in love with Maxim and robbing her husband and children for the sake of her lover. When her husband becomes seriously ill, his first concern is to make a will so that the money is left not to the wife, but to the children; and then the countess, truly losing her human appearance, protects the dying count’s office with vigilant surveillance in order to prevent him from handing over the will to the notary. When the count dies, she rushes to the dead man's bed and, throwing the corpse against the wall, rummages through the bed!

Do you feel how this complicates the situation? After all, these are different things - does the moneylender Gobsek rob just helpless people in trouble, or people like these? Here we must, apparently, be more careful in assessing Gobsek, otherwise we will logically have to feel sorry for the poor Maxime de Traya and Countess de Resto! But maybe Gobsek doesn’t care who to rob? Today he squeezed the Countess and Maxim, tomorrow he will squeeze a decent man?

We are assured that he almost drinks human blood, but he throws it in Maxime de Tray’s face: “What flows in your veins is not blood, but dirt.” He tells Derville: “I appear to the rich as retribution, as a reproach of conscience...”

It turns out that what kind of Gobsek is! But maybe this is all demagoguery, but in reality Gobsek takes just as much pleasure in fleecing poor and honest people? Balzac, as if anticipating this question, introduces into his short story the story of the seamstress Fanny - Gobsek feels sympathy and passion for her.

You don’t need to have any special instinct to see that the hero’s speeches here are not hypocritical: they sound completely sincere, they were composed by Balzac in order to highlight the human essence of Gobsek! True, in the same scene, Gobsek, getting emotional, almost offers her a loan of money at the minimum rate, “only 12%,” but then changes his mind. This seems to sound sarcastic, but if you think about the situation, it is again more complicated. Because Balzac has no ridicule here - on the contrary, the whole stronghold of Gobseck’s existence is shaking here! He is a moneylender, a seemingly ruthless character, he himself is ready to offer to lend money, and he forgets himself so much at the sight of Fanny that he is ready to demand the minimum interest in his understanding. Isn’t it obvious that here it is important for Balzac not to mock Gobsek’s sentimentality, but to emphasize precisely his shock - clearly human, humane feelings began to speak in him! His professional instinct remained stronger, but it is curious that his rejection of this idea was not due to greed, but to skepticism, distrust of people: “Well, no, I reasoned with myself, she probably has a young cousin who will force her to sign bills and will cleanse the poor thing!" That is, Fanny alone Gobsek was still ready to show kindness! Here we have before us not so much sarcasm or satire, but Balzac’s deep psychological insight; here the tragic sides of human psychology are revealed - even trying to do good to worthy people, he does not dare to take this step, because his entire psychology is already poisoned by distrust of people!

The entire plot of the story convinces us of the complexity of Gobsek’s character and the remarkable human resources of his soul. After all, at the end of it, it is Gobsek who trusts the dying Count de Resto to protect his children from the intrigues of his own mother! The Count, therefore, implies in him not only honesty, but also humanity! Further, when Derville is going to found his own notary office, he decides to ask Gobsek for money because he feels his friendly disposition. Another brilliant psychological detail follows - Gobsek asks Derville for the minimum amount of interest in his practice, he himself understands that it is still high, and therefore almost demands that Derville bargain! He is literally waiting for this request - so that, again, he himself does not violate his principle (not to take less than 13%). But ask Derville, he will reduce the amount even more! Derville, in turn, does not want to humiliate himself. The amount remains 13%. But Gobsek, so to speak, organizes for him additional and profitable clientele free of charge. And as a farewell, he asks Derville for permission to visit him. What you see in that scene is again not so much a spider as a victim of his own profession and his own distrust of people.

So Balzac, with subtle psychological skill, exposes to us the secret nerves of this strange soul, “the fiber of the heart of modern man,” as Stendhal said. This man, supposedly bringing “evil, ugliness and destruction,” is in fact himself deeply wounded in his soul. His insightful, sharp mind is cold to the extreme. He sees the evil reigning around, but he also convinces himself that this is all he sees: “If you live with me, you will learn that of all earthly blessings there is only one reliable enough for a person to chase after it. This is gold.”

Balzac shows us the path of thought that led the hero to such ethics, he shows us in all its complexity the soul that professes such principles - and then these words already sound tragic. Gobsek turns out to be a deeply unhappy man; the surrounding evil, money, gold - all this distorted his fundamentally honest and kind nature, poisoning it with the poison of distrust of people. He feels completely alone in this world. “If human communication between people is considered a kind of religion, then Gobsek could be called an atheist,” says Derville. But at the same time, the thirst for real human communication in Gobsek has not died completely, it is not for nothing that his soul was so drawn to Fanny, it is not for nothing that he becomes so attached to Derville and, to the meager measure of his strength, strives to do good! But the logic of the bourgeois world, according to Balzac, is such that these impulses most often remain just fleeting impulses - or acquire a grotesque, distorted character.

In other words, Balzac depicts here not the tragedy of Maxime de Traya and Countess de Resto, who fell into the clutches of a money-lender spider, but the tragedy of Gobseck himself, whose soul was distorted and twisted by the law of the bourgeois world - man is a wolf to man. After all, how senseless and tragic at the same time the death of Gobsek! He dies completely alone next to his rotting wealth - he dies like a maniac! His usury, his tight-fistedness is not a cold calculation, but a disease, a mania, a passion that consumes the person himself. We must not forget about his vengeful feelings towards the rich! And it is no coincidence, of course, that this whole story is put into the mouth of Derville, who tells it in a high-society salon - this story is clearly built on the fact that Derville is trying to dissuade his listeners, in any case, to tell them the truth about Gobsek’s life. After all, his listeners know this story from the same Gobsek victims - from the same Maxim, from the same Countess de Resto. And they, of course, have the same idea about Gobsek as in the critical judgments I quoted above - he is a villain, a criminal, he brings evil, ugliness, destruction, and Derville, a lawyer by profession, builds his entire story on mitigating circumstances. And so, paradoxically, it is Gobsek’s fate that becomes an indictment of bourgeois society - his fate, and not the fate of Maxim and Countess de Resto!

But having realized this, we also realize Balzac’s serious artistic protest in this image. After all, in pronouncing a condemnation of mercantile ethics, Balzac, as the main victim and accuser, chooses, of course, a figure who is not the most suitable for this role. Even if we assume that there were such moneylenders, it can hardly be assumed that such a moneylender’s fate was typical. She is definitely an exception. Meanwhile, Balzac clearly raises this story above the framework of a particular case; he gives it a general, symbolic meaning! And in order for Gobsek’s role as an accuser of society to look legitimate, so that the author’s sympathy for the hero seems justified, the author not only gives a subtle psychological analysis of Gobsek’s soul (which we saw above), but also reinforces this with a kind of demonization of the image. And this is a purely romantic procedure. Gobsek is shown as a brilliant but sinister expert on human souls, as a kind of explorer of them.

Balzac essentially elevates the private, everyday practice of the moneylender to majestic proportions. After all, Gobsek becomes not only a victim of the golden calf, but also a symbol of enormous practical and educational energy! And here the purely romantic manner of depicting irresistible demonic villains, for whose villainy the world is to blame, invades the technique of the remarkable realist. And not themselves.

Very little time will pass, and Balzac will become much more unambiguous and merciless in his portrayal of bourgeois businessmen - this will be the image of old Grandet. But now, in Gobsek, he is still clearly wavering on a very important point - the question of purposefulness, the moral cost of bourgeois energy.

By creating the figure of the all-powerful Gobsek, Balzac clearly pushes into the background the immorality of the ultimate goal of usury - pumping money out of people that you, in essence, did not give them. Gobsek’s energy and strength still interest him in themselves, and he is clearly weighing for himself the question of whether this practical energy is for good. That’s why he clearly idealizes and romanticizes this energy. Therefore, it is in matters of the ultimate goal that Balzac looks for mitigating circumstances for Gobsek that mystify the real state of affairs - either for Gobsek it is a study of the laws of the world, then observation of human souls, then revenge on the rich for their arrogance and heartlessness, then some kind of all-consuming “one single passion” ". Romanticism and realism are truly inextricably intertwined in this image.

As we see, the entire story is woven from the deepest dissonances, reflecting the ideological fluctuations of Balzac himself. Turning to the analysis of modern morals, Balzac still mystifies them in many ways, overloading the fundamentally realistic image with symbolic meanings and generalizations. As a result, the image of Gobsek appears on several levels at once - he is both a symbol of the destructive power of gold, and a symbol of bourgeois practical energy, and a victim of bourgeois morality, and also simply a victim of all-consuming passion, passion as such, regardless of its specific content.

Composition

Honore de Balzac entered world literature as an outstanding realist writer. It was he who conceived almost the world’s largest cycle of novels about the life of an entire society, which he called “The Human Comedy.” Indeed, human efforts spent on trifles, wastefulness, anger, and frivolity sometimes seem comical. They look comical until they start ruining someone else's life. Thus, Anastasi de Resto’s romance with a secular young man, Maxime de Tray, began as an easy flirtation that did not cause harm to anyone. But the shameless lover brazenly breaks into the life of the whole family, since the unscrupulous Madame de Resto allowed him to do so. And now the honor of the family and husband is being neglected. Anastasi doesn’t even think about children. Balzac seems to be watching this through the eyes of his hero, the moneylender Gobsek. This is an intelligent person, educated and even wise.

At least in relation to other people's lives. When it comes to money, he has no equal. But here’s a miracle: he didn’t live his life wisely at all. Gobsek did not even notice how money, which first gave him freedom and then power over people, gradually became his goal, his idol, subordinated his entire life to accumulation, replaced his entire life. He understood that a person needs just enough money so as not to think about it every second. So this is the amount that satisfies Fanny Malva, who borrows money from him for linen and thread to work.

But she borrows as much as she can repay, unlike Anastasi de Resto, who does not know the value of money, or of all other values. The writer psychologically accurately depicts not only the actions of the characters, but also their motives. Balzac is rightly considered an expert on human souls, since he managed to convey the subtlest notes of the souls of heroes, to look into the most hidden corners of the soul of his contemporaries, and, ultimately, of all people. Reading his works is very interesting precisely because they are vitally truthful and contain wise observations, answers to many questions that life will always pose to everyone.

One of the most important aspects of the entire work of the outstanding French realist Honore de Balzac was the desire to recreate a holistic picture of the era. Almost all of his works, according to the writer’s plan, were parts of the great epic “The Human Comedy”, which was supposed to cover all possible phenomena of life at that time. According to the plan, this epic cycle was supposed to consist of three sections: “Etudes on Customs,” works in which the life, way of life and customs of different strata of French society were depicted, “Philosophical Etudes,” which was supposed to summarize Balzac’s artistic discoveries and his idea of the laws of life , and, finally, “Analytical Studies”, in which the writer tried to formulate the laws that govern reality.

In the first section (“Studies on Customs”) Balzac created a gallery of the most typical images of his contemporaries, who had different social status and different professions. The story “Gobsek” is part of it. The name of the central character of this work - the moneylender Gobsek - became a household name. However, it was in his image that A. Balzac not only described a typical moneylender, but vividly reproduced a special psychological type of person who lives only by one feeling - greed in its purest form. Money is Gobsek’s only goal, his only love and calling. There are many images of self-interested people and misers in fiction, but they are not the same. The stingy knight of A. Pushkin really strives for power, money for him is only a means of achieving it. So he is more of a hidden power-lover than a real self-seeker. G. Gogol's Plyushkin is a petty miser of the “everyday” type. It is no coincidence that people who do not want to throw away yesterday’s newspaper or something similar are called “pluskins”: no one will compare them with Gobsek. This image summarizes completely different features of private property psychology, taken to their logical conclusion (albeit almost absurd from the point of view of a normal person).

Here is Gobsek’s philosophy of life: “What can satisfy our “I”, our vanity? Gold! Streams of gold. To satisfy our whims we need time, we need material opportunities and effort, gold has all this, and it actually gives everything.” At the same time, Gobsek does not try to take advantage of the opportunities of gold mentioned by him; it is enough for him to have it. Not for the sake of anything else. For Gobsek there is no satisfaction other than the awareness of his wealth.

Did he have other traits? Through the brightness of the main characteristic, his life's ultimate task, they are almost unnoticeable. “He was a human automaton who was wound up every day,” Balzac writes about him. Even to a person with whom he seems to sympathize, Gobsek lends money only on slightly relaxed terms than to others, and even provides a kind of “ideological basis” for this act, they say, it will be more useful for his character. In general, people turn to moneylenders only in the most difficult moments of life, in desperation, when there is no other source to get money. For example, when bankruptcy approaches and banks refuse credit. In usury itself as a phenomenon, there is initially something cruel, and Gobsek surpasses even his “colleagues” in this: observing people who are in a dead end becomes entertainment for him. We are not talking about sympathy at all.

Gobsek, for all its limited purposes, is, not surprisingly, not primitive. He is able to draw conclusions regarding the nature of society and analyze its destructive forces. He also knows the psychology of people. To draw a conclusion about the omnipotence of gold and create your own philosophy regarding this, you also need to be able to think. So, he is a smart man, but his passion turns out to be stronger than his mind. The power of gold, in which he believed so much, makes Gobsek himself his victim, he creates a trap for himself.

What could be more absurd than death from hunger in the midst of enormous wealth? Gobsek is killed by his own idea of \u200b\u200bthe omnipotence of gold and its immeasurable value. He was so afraid of losing his property that, unnoticed by himself, he destroyed them in the physical sense: expensive fabrics, dishes, paintings - everything deteriorated, everything was lost to the world. If we take into account the presence of the author's intention, this deliberate external absurdity is the natural conclusion of such an attitude towards life.

“Is there God in this man?” - another hero of the work, Derville, asks rhetorically. Yes, there is: this is Mammon, in other words, money. Gobsek gave his life to serve this ideal. Balzac harshly and mercilessly condemns the thirst for accumulation and the actual process of human enrichment. Gold does not bring happiness to Gobsek or others. And even though the image of Gobsek is an isolated case, it testifies to what the path of self-interest leads to, and the artistic skill of the writer makes this warning even more convincing.

Other works on this work

Composition

A difficult topic... How to determine where the values are mental and where the values are real? Say, is gold a mental or real value? I'm talking about gold because the main character is a moneylender. Gold is a mental value, since no one needs it at all: it cannot be eaten, it is not suitable for making an ax or hoe. One philosopher, who is now out of fashion, suggested making toilets out of it. And the philosopher argued that they had already begun to make this useful thing from gold. Nevertheless, try to live in this world without gold or its paper substitutes. You won’t eat money either, but you won’t be full without it either. So, is gold a mental or real life value?

Obviously, it was meant that I would immediately talk about high human qualities.

For example, loyalty and gratitude. But I read about the life of Countess de Resto. She betrayed her husband with Maxim, who is none other than a gigolo. For the sake of this bastard, she made Viscount de Resto almost a beggar... From another part of the “Human Comedy” we learn that she left her old father to the mercy of fate as soon as he gave his property to his daughter-heirs. Let's finally decide whether marital fidelity is a real value or not? Let's add mother's feelings... and daughter's!
And let's return to thinking about gold, or money. The whole story told in Balzac's story is the story of the search for money, its importance in people's lives. Characters can be assessed in relation to money. Gobsek, for example, is none other than the priest of an old pagan cult. He does not need a golden robe, a golden tiara, or an adamantium rod - he still has the unsurpassed power of the Golden Calf behind him, he only distributes and collects gold, which accumulates with him the more he distributes it. Gobsek's clientele (and this, so to speak, is the flower of France) consists of sheep in a stable, which will be slaughtered when the last shred of golden fleece is cut from them by the deft hands of the Great Priest.

Nevertheless, they all pray to gold, making it the greatest value, the general equivalent of everything in their lives. The narrator of the story is lawyer Derville. The author did well in transferring the responsibility for assessing the situation to the hero. When something goes wrong, let the wolf eat grass about it. But…

When dealing with money and a loan shark, a lawyer cannot believe that everything in the world rests on money. There is something that cannot be bought with gold or silver. Derville’s professional integrity is beyond doubt; people cordially trust him with their money and destinies. Nevertheless... Looking around me now, I ask myself a bad question; Maybe gold just hasn’t been given a real price yet?

True, there are intimate feelings that are difficult to count in money. For example, Fanny's love for Derville. But we see how Alastasi, having incurred a new debt, buys himself a little more love from Maxime de Tray. So, can you buy it? And it's just a matter of amount?

Or is the author deliberately putting us in a situation where we must decide on our own what we will not sell in our lives? Or is there something else that we didn’t sell for a glass necklace, like the Indians sold Manhattan Island?

Other works on this work

The image of the main character in Balzac's story "Gobsek" Money and man in O. de Balzac’s story “Gobsek” The tragedy of Gobsek Balzac's novel "Gobsek" Human comedy characterization of the image of Jean-Esther van Gobseck The main theme of Balzac's work "Gobseck" The ambiguity of the image of Gobsek in the story of the same name by Honore Balzac What is life if not a machine driven by money? Honore de Balzac "Gobsek" Tale (1830-1835) Balzac's realism turned out to be smarter than Balzac himself What is life if not a machine driven by money? (Based on the story “Gobsek” by O. Balzac) Gobsek the miser or philosopher (miniature essay based on the story “Gobsek” by O de Balzac) The theme of human moral fortitude in O. de Balzac’s story “Gobsek” The destructive power of money (Based on the stories of O. Balzac “Gobsek” and “Eugene Grande”) What is the tragedy of Gobsek What Gobsek lost and what he gained (based on O. Balzac’s story “Gobsek”)

Genre. Tale

Subject: depiction of the influence of the “golden bag” on a person’s inner world.

Idea: money is not to blame, since it is only a convention that people came up with; it matters who owns them and for what purpose they use them.

Conflict: feelings - reason, bourgeois society - talented personality.

System of images. Lawyer and notary Derville, Viscountess de Granlier and her daughter Camilla, moneylender Gobsek, seamstress Fanny Malva, Anastasi de Resto, her husband Count de Resto and son Ernest de Resto, Maxime de Tray

The action in the story takes place in the winter of 1829-1830. This is France during the last years of Bourbon rule on the eve of the July bourgeois revolution of 1830

Composition. Frame composition: a story within a story. Lawyer Derville tells Countess de Granlier a story that concerns the very beginning of his career and may change the view of the highest circle of Parisian society on the position of Ernest de Resto, who is in love with Camille de Granlier.

The work is included in the “Etudes on Morals” (“Scenes of Private Life”). It depicts a social phenomenon (“the power of gold,” which becomes the main one in society), explores the “history of the human heart” (the loss of true life guidelines by Gobsek) and the “history of society” (in which “gold is a spiritual essence”).