The novel written in 1830-1831 Shagreen leather“is dedicated to the problem, as old as the world, of the collision of a young, inexperienced person with a society corrupted by numerous vices.
The main character of the work- the young, impoverished aristocrat Raphael de Valentin, goes through a difficult path: from wealth - to poverty and from poverty - to wealth, from a passionate, unrequited feeling - to mutual love, from great power to death. The character's life story is depicted by Balzac both in the present tense and in retrospect - through Raphael's story about his childhood, years of studying the art of law, and meeting the Russian beauty Countess Theodora.
The novel itself begins with a turning point in Raphael's life when, humiliated by the woman he loves and left without a single sou in his pocket, the young man decides to commit suicide, but instead acquires a wonderful talisman - a small piece of shagreen leather, the size of a fox. Containing the seal of Solomon on the reverse side and a number of warning inscriptions, they indicate that the owner unusual item gets the opportunity to fulfill all his desires in exchange for his own life.
According to the owner of the antiquities shop, no one before Raphael had dared to “sign” to such a strange agreement, which actually resembled a deal with the devil. Having sold his life for unlimited power, the hero, along with it, gives up his soul to be torn to pieces. Raphael's torment is understandable: having received the opportunity to live, he watches with trepidation as the precious minutes of his existence flow away. What just recently was of no value to the hero suddenly became a real mania. And life became especially desirable for Raphael when he met his true love- in the person of a former student, now a young and rich beauty, Pauline Godin.
Compositionally The novel “Shagreen Skin” is divided into three equal parts. Each of them is a constituent element of one great work and, at the same time, acts as an independent, complete story. In "The Talisman" the plot of the entire novel is outlined and at the same time a story is given about the miraculous escape from death of Raphael de Valentin. “A Woman Without a Heart” reveals the conflict of the work and tells the story of unrequited love and the same hero’s attempt to take his place in society. The title of the third part of the novel, “Agony,” speaks for itself: it is both a climax and a denouement, and touching story about unhappy lovers separated by evil chance and death.
Genre originality The novel “Shagreen Skin” consists of the peculiarities of the construction of its three parts. "Talisman" combines the features of realism and fantasy, being, in fact, a gloomy romantic fairy tale in the Hoffmannian style. The first part of the novel raises themes of life and death, gambling (for money), art, love, freedom. “A Woman Without a Heart” is an exceptionally realistic narrative, imbued with a special, Balzacian psychologism. Here we are talking about true and false - feelings, literary creativity, life. “Agony” is a classic tragedy in which there is a place for strong feelings, all-consuming happiness, and endless grief, ending in death in the arms of a beautiful beloved.
The epilogue of the novel draws a line under the two main female images of the work: the pure, gentle, sublime, sincerely loving Polina, symbolically dissolved in the beauty of the world around us, and the cruel, cold, selfish Theodora, who is a generalized symbol of a soulless and calculating society.
Women's images the novel also includes two minor characters who are persons of easy virtue. Raphael meets them at a dinner with Baron Taillefer, a famous patron of young scientists, artists and poets. The majestic beauty Aquilina and her fragile friend Efrasia lead free life because of his lack of faith in love.
The first girl’s lover died on the scaffold, the second girl does not want to tie the knot. Ephrasia in the novel takes the same position as Countess Theodora: they both want to preserve themselves, just at different costs. Poor Efrasia agrees to live as she wants and die, unwanted in the hospital. Rich and noble Theodora can afford to live according to her needs, knowing that her money will give her love at any stage - even in the most severe old age.
Love theme in the novel is closely related to the theme of money. Raphael de Valentin confesses to his friend Emile that in a woman he values not only her appearance, soul and title, but also wealth. The lovely Polina attracts his attention no sooner than she becomes the heiress of a large fortune. Until this moment, Raphael suppresses all the feelings that the young student evokes in him.
Countess Theodora kindles his passion with everything she has: beauty, wealth, inaccessibility. For the hero, love for her is akin to conquering Everest - the more difficulties Raphael encounters on the way, the more he wants to solve the riddle of Theodora, which in the end turned out to be nothing more than emptiness...
It is not for nothing that the Russian countess in her hard-heartedness correlates with high society society: the latter, like Theodora, strives only for contentment and pleasure. Rastignac wants to marry profitably, his literary friend wants to become famous at someone else's expense, the young intelligentsia wants, if not to make money, then at least to eat in the house of a rich patron of the arts.
The true realities of life, such as love, poverty, illness, are rejected by this society as something alien and contagious. It is not surprising that as soon as Raphael begins to move away from the light, he immediately dies: a man who knew true values life cannot exist within deception and lies.
- “Shagreen Skin”, a summary of the chapters of the novel by Honore de Balzac
Honore de Balzac conceived and almost brought to life a daring plan: to write a series of novellas and short stories in which a literary model of contemporary France would be created. He called the main creation of his life “The Human Comedy”, by analogy with Dante Alighieri’s “The Divine Comedy”. The writer hoped that it would become as significant for the 19th century as the creation of the great Florentine was for the Middle Ages. The anthology was supposed to contain 144 works, connected by transitional characters, a single style and issues. However, Balzac managed to write only 96 of them. “Shagreen Skin” (1831) is also included in this cycle and is located in the “Philosophical Studies” section.
This novel examines the conflict between the individual and society, which was the focus of contemporary literature (for example, Stendhal's The Red and the Black). However, the philosophy of this book and the multiple meanings make it seem like a parable with deep meaning. "Shagreen skin" summary which boils down to a truly Buddhist conclusion that desires kill, nevertheless carries a life-affirming message: happiness is possible without a “magic wand”; it can be found in selfless love and the desire to give rather than take and own.
The main character of the work is Raphael de Valentin, an impoverished educated aristocrat. For several years he ekes out a poor man's existence in the attic of a small hotel, unaware that the owner's daughter, Polina, is in love with him. He himself became infatuated with the brilliant socialite Countess Theodora, and for her sake he began to play in the casino, spend madly on gifts, after which there was only one way out for his honor - suicide. This is how the novel “Shagreen Skin” begins.
For lack of best ideas, the hero enters an antique shop, where he purchases a piece of donkey skin, on the back of which is embossed in some oriental language the inscription: “When you take possession of me, I will take possession of you. I will fulfill your wishes, but with each of them I will decrease - just like your life. Therefore, balance your desires.” Not believing in the effectiveness of what was written, Rafael plans a revelry, and immediately meets his friends who invite him to have a drink. He traces the contours of his talisman in ink and makes a wish to receive great wealth. The next morning, the solicitor informs him that his uncle died in India and bequeathed all his considerable savings to the young de Valentin. Raphael reaches into his pocket and takes out the antique dealer's gift. The shagreen skin has shrunk in size!
The subsequent narrative unfolds rapidly: having believed in the effectiveness of the talisman, Raphael tries to give up his desires. But an accidentally dropped phrase of politeness “I wish you happiness,” attraction to the woman he loves and the thirst to win a duel quickly wipe out his days.
Shagreen skin decreases in size; no physical experiments can stop this process. In the end, the hero dies in his luxurious home in the arms of Polina, who loves him without any miracles or talismans.
It seems that the entire work is a parable about soul-burning desires, symbolized by shagreen skin. An analysis of the style of the novel still shows that Balzac works in a narrative style and builds on the romanticism of his predecessors, writers early XIX century, using very realistic details coupled with a colorful and dynamic composition. The hero describes the story of his kind of ruin in such a way that anyone who knows the economic and political realities of France at the end of his reign will not doubt the veracity of his words. The sincerity of this novel, despite the fantastic plot, puts it among best works classical realism.
History of creation
Balzac called this novel the “starting point” of his creative path.
Main characters
- Raphael de Valentin, young man.
- Emil, his friend.
- Pauline, daughter of Madame Godin.
- Countess Theodora, a secular woman.
- Rastignac, a young man who is Emile's friend.
- The owner of the antiquities shop.
- Taillefer, newspaper owner.
- Cardo, lawyer.
- Aquilina, courtesan.
- Euphrasinya, courtesan.
- Madame Gaudin, a ruined baroness.
- Jonathan, Raphael's old servant.
- Fino, publisher.
- Mister Porique, former teacher Raphael.
- Mister Lavril, naturalist.
- Mister Tablet, mechanic.
- Spiggalter, mechanic.
- Baron Jafe, chemist.
- Horace Bianchon, a young doctor and friend of Raphael.
- Brisset, doctor.
- Cameristus, doctor.
- Mogredi, doctor.
Composition and plot
The novel consists of three chapters and an epilogue:
Mascot
The young man, Raphael de Valentin, is poor. Education brought him nothing. He wants to drown himself and, to pass the time until nightfall, he goes into an antiquities shop, where the old owner shows him an amazing talisman - shagreen leather. On the reverse side of the talisman there are signs in Sanskrit.; translation reads:
Possessing me, you will possess everything, but your life will belong to me. God wants it that way. Wish and your wishes will be fulfilled. However, balance your desires with your life. She is here. With every wish, I will decrease, as if your days. Do you want to own me? Take it. God will hear you. So be it!
Thus, any wish of Raphael will come true, but for this his life will also be shortened. Raphael agrees and plans to organize a bacchanalia.
He leaves the shop and meets friends. One of them, journalist Emil, calls on Raphael to head a wealthy newspaper and reports that he has been invited to a celebration of its establishment. Rafael sees this as only a coincidence, but not a miracle. The feast truly fulfills all his desires. He admits to Emil that a few hours ago he was ready to throw himself into the Seine. Emil asks Rafael about what made him decide to commit suicide.
Woman without a heart
Rafael tells the story of his life.
He decides to live quiet life in the attic of a beggarly hotel in a remote quarter of Paris. The owner of the hotel, Madame Godin, in Russia, while crossing the Berezina, her baron husband went missing. She believes that someday he will return, fabulously rich. Polina, her daughter, falls in love with Rafael, but he has no idea about it. He completely devotes his life to working on two things: a comedy and a scientific treatise “The Theory of the Will”.
One day he meets young Rastignac on the street. He offers him a way to quickly get rich through marriage. There is one woman in the world - Theodora - fabulously beautiful and rich. But she doesn’t love anyone and doesn’t even want to hear about marriage. Rafael falls in love and begins to spend all his money on courtship. Theodora does not suspect his poverty. Rastignac introduces Raphael to Fino, a man who offers to write a forged memoir for his grandmother, offering a lot of money. Rafael agrees. He begins to lead a broken life: he leaves the hotel, rents and furnishes a house; every day he is in society... but he still loves Theodora. Deeply in debt, he goes to the gambling house where Rastignac was once lucky enough to win 27,000 francs, loses the last Napoleon and wants to drown himself.
This is where the story ends.
Raphael remembers the shagreen leather in his pocket. As a joke, to prove his power to Emile, he asks for six million francs. At the same time, he takes measurements - puts the skin on a napkin and traces the edges with ink. Everyone falls asleep. The next morning, the lawyer Cardo comes and announces that Raphael’s rich uncle, who had no other heirs, died in Calcutta. Raphael jumps up and checks his skin with the napkin. The skin shrank! He's terrified. Emil states that Raphael can make any wish come true. Everyone makes requests half seriously, half jokingly. Rafael doesn't listen to anyone. He is rich, but at the same time almost dead. The talisman works!
Agony
Beginning of December. Rafael lives in a luxurious house. Everything is arranged so that no words are spoken. Wish, Want etc. On the wall in front of him there is always a framed piece of shagreen, outlined in ink.
To Raphael - to an influential person- a former teacher, Mr. Porique, comes. He asks to secure a position for him as an inspector at a provincial college. Rafael accidentally says in a conversation: “I sincerely wish...”. The skin tightens and he screams furiously at Porika; his life hangs by a thread.
He goes to the theater and meets Polina there. She is rich - her father has returned, and with a large fortune. They meet in Madame Gaudin's former hotel, in that same old attic. Rafael is in love. Polina admits that she has always loved him. They decide to get married. Arriving home, Raphael finds a way to deal with the shagreen: he throws the skin into the well.
April. Rafael and Polina live together. One morning a gardener comes, having caught shagreen from the well. She became very small. Rafael is in despair. He goes to see the learned men, but everything is useless: the naturalist Lavril gives him a whole lecture on the origin of donkey skin, but he can’t stretch it; mechanic Tablet puts it in a hydraulic press, which breaks; the chemist Baron Jafe cannot break it down with any substances.
Polina notices signs of consumption in Rafael. He calls Horace Bianchon, his friend, a young doctor, who convenes a consultation. Each doctor expresses his scientific theory, they all unanimously advise going to the water, putting leeches on your stomach and breathing fresh air. However, they cannot determine the cause of his illness. Raphael leaves for Aix, where he is treated poorly. They avoid him and declare almost to his face that “since a person is so sick, he should not go to the water.” A confrontation with the cruelty of secular treatment led to a duel with one of the brave brave men. Raphael killed his opponent, and the skin shrank again. Convinced that he is dying, he returns to Paris, where he continues to hide from Polina, putting himself in a state artificial sleep, to hold out longer, but she finds him. Burnt with desires at the sight of her, he dies.
Epilogue
In the epilogue, Balzac makes it clear that he does not want to describe Polina’s further earthly path. In a symbolic description, he calls her either a flower blooming in a flame, or an angel coming in a dream, or the ghost of a Lady, depicted by Antoine de la Salle. This ghost seems to want to protect his country from the invasion of modernity. Speaking about Theodora, Balzac notes that she is everywhere, as she personifies secular society.
Screen adaptations and productions
- Shagreen skin () - teleplay by Pavel Reznikov.
- Shagreen skin () - short film by Igor Apasyan
- Shagreen Bone () is a short pseudo-documentary feature film by Igor Bezrukov.
- Shagreen leather (La peau de chagrin) () - feature film based on the novel by Honoré de Balzac, directed by Berliner Alain.
- Shagreen skin () - radio play by Arkady Abakumov.
Notes
Links
- Shagreen leather in the library of Maxim Moshkov
- Boris Griftsov - translator of the novel into Russian
| Human Comedy | |
|---|---|
| Scenes of private life | |
| Scenes of life in Paris | |
| Scenes of political life |
A case from the times of terror Dark Case Z. Markas |
| Scenes of military life | |
| Scenes of village life | |
| Philosophical studies |
Shagreen leather Forgiven Melmoth An unknown masterpiece Search for the absolute |
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The theme of the all-consuming passion that possesses a person - a theme, of course, directly inherited from the romantics - worried Balzac from the very beginning - already as a purely psychological problem, outside the social plane. Evidence of how important this topic was for Balzac is his major work, published in 1831, the novel Shagreen Skin.
In this novel, Balzac unfolds before us a motley picture of contemporary French society. The beginning of the events of the novel is clearly dated - the end of October 1829. This picture is presented in sharp, contrasting contrasts - from the gambling house the action is transferred to secular living rooms; main character- a young talented man - Raphael de Valentin - is opposed to a crowd of corrupt writers and corrupt women; the main ones are sharply contrasting female images Romana - cold, vain socialite Theodora and the humble, loving worker Polina. Modern society depicted by Balzac as a playground of unbridled low passions, be it the passion for profit or vice. Balzac deliberately thickens these colors, bringing them to a gloomy grotesque, as, for example, in the image of a gambling house or an orgy with the participation of courtesans.
It would be too one-sided to consider this novel as just another Balzac parable about destructive power money, gold. The novel's problematics are much broader; it is clearly of a philosophical and symbolic nature, and social pictures here exist only as a necessary background, but not as the main goal.
It was not by chance that Balzac singled out this novel in terms of genre, classifying it as a cycle of the “Philosophical Studies” genre, and he organized the action of the work around an extraordinary, clearly mystical event.
The plot is based on the history of shagreen leather (the skin of a special, unusual breed of wild donkeys living in Persia - onagers). The inscription on the skin reads: “Wish - your desires will be fulfilled. But measure your desires with your life. It is here. With every desire, I will decrease, like your days. Do you want me? Take it!”
Raphael takes this fatal talisman, driven by the first and such natural desire to get out of poverty, out of obscurity. But from the very beginning he makes a psychological mistake, interpreting the concept of "desire" in a very specific sense - in at the moment It seems to him that the category of “desire” only fits the desire for a miracle, something supernatural, unusual, roughly speaking, like in the fairy tale about the goldfish. But, having immediately become rich and famous, he suddenly discovers that the effect of shagreen skin extends not only to such “major” desires, but also to the most elementary, habitual movements human soul. It turns out that it is enough for him to let slip about some little thing, to wish for something completely ordinary, some little thing, as happens a thousand times in everyday life, the mechanism of the fatal contract immediately works - the desire is fulfilled, but the skin immediately decreases in size, life is shortened.
It turns out that shagreen skin implies desire in the literal sense, any, the smallest, most involuntary desire. Raphael finds himself in a devil's trap: he - as in another, also folklore, plot - cannot even curse and tell something to hell, so that this desire is not immediately fulfilled and his life is not immediately shortened. And then he, overwhelmed with panic, tries to isolate himself from outside world, suppress all desires in yourself, exclude the very concept of desire from your psychology. But this already means dying alive, dying even before physical death occurs!
It is quite obvious that Balzac does not mean the corrupting power of money here. The entire mechanism of interaction between shagreen skin and Raphael’s fate is based on something completely different - on purely psychological nature the word "desire". In other words, Balzac is exploring here the mechanism of action of human desires and passions in general. Shagreen leather - ominous symbol the fact that every desire, every passion is bought by a shortening of life span, a decrease vital energy in man. For any desire a person pays with a piece of his life. And the antiquarian who gifts Raphael with this dubious talisman does not hide its basic meaning from the very beginning. “Man,” he says, “is weakened by two instinctive actions that deplete and dry up the sources of our life. Two verbs express all the forms taken by these two causes of death: to want and to be able. To want burns us, to be able destroys us.”
But Raphael, I repeat, is far from realizing the meaning of this generalization, from listening to the words of the antiquarian. And only on own experience he then becomes convinced of the terrible literalness of these words.
Thus, shagreen skin becomes a sign of the deepest psychological contradiction: desires and passions give us visible satisfaction, it is only temporary, transitory and essentially illusory; the same desires and passions shorten our lives. The flip side of a fulfilled desire is another step on the path to death. Emptyness inevitably follows satiety.
This is, of course, psychology tired man, exhausted by aspirations and exhausted in the pursuit of their fulfillment - a person disappointed in life, a person fed up and devastated eternal struggle for existence. Behind the image of Raphael lies life experience young Balzac, who through his own fate had already experienced the withering effect of passions and desires, the pursuit of happiness, endless attempts to rise above the limit set for you by fate and which does not satisfy you. But here not only personal writer's fate. Balzac's generalization is broader - he summarizes the spiritual experience of an entire generation - a generation of romantic geniuses and dreamers who suddenly discovered a cold zone of emptiness in their souls and around them.
Here we summarize a whole stage in the development of romantic psychology, which began with the early Byron and Chateaubriand and which was then completed by Musset in France, Buchner in Germany, and Lermontov in Russia. Disappointment in romantic ideals gave rise to a reaction of satiety, fatigue, emptiness. Romantic geniuses increasingly discovered that their combustion took place in an airless environment, that their energy did not find application or application outside. Then the images appeared" extra people" - Russian literature gave especially many formulas for this state, primarily in the poetry of Lermontov: "the barren heat of the soul", "the heat of the soul wasted in the desert", "Desires? What good is it worth wishing for in vain and forever?" etc. Naturally, objectively, the fate of such superfluous people depends on external circumstances. But the intentions of the poets depicting such “superfluous people” were not limited to “criticism of reality,” which oppressed the heroes; An equally important role for them was played by the general philosophical interpretation of the tragedy of a generation - precisely as a generation of people who desired too much and therefore fell victim own desires- not in the sense of some reprehensible, vicious passions, but, on the contrary, even sublime passions, but precisely too sublime and too strong. This problem was studied in various aspects by Kleist, Hölderlin, and Byron.
And so Balzac in “Shagreen Skin” tries to give, as it were, a philosophical and psychological form of this dependence between the starting point - passion - and the end point - empty satiety and death.
So, the main initial idea of the novel “Shagreen Skin” is an analysis of a certain stage in the development of romantic psychology. But now it’s time to return to the other side of the issue - to the problem external environment, the surrounding circumstances in which this psychology develops. Now we can more accurately understand the function of the social-critical elements of the novel. Balzac's hero himself is already connected by many strong threads with the environment; he does not just burn in the fire of his own desires - his fate, his character is in constant interaction with society.
And society, as, for example, Balzac shows in the image of Countess Theodora, is inherently hostile to the individual. And this hostility is revealed especially clearly when a person suffers. Society is afraid of human suffering, it shuns such people, it pushes a person out of its body like a foreign body, and, on the contrary, surrounds the successful with care and affection. Thus, quite realistic, concrete moments are included in the romantic-abstract philosophical idea of the novel.
Honore Balzac(1799-1850) along with Stendhal belongs to the classical stage realism XIX century. Balzac was able to most fully express the spirit XIX century; according to English writer To Oscar Wilde, the master of paradoxes, the 19th century, “as we know it, was largely invented by Balzac.” Wilde means that Balzac had the most powerful literary imagination, after Shakespeare, and in his work managed to create a self-sufficient, self-developing, universal model of the world, or more precisely, of the French society of the first half of the 19th century century. Balzac's main creation is The Human Comedy. It unites all the works of the mature stage of his work, everything he wrote after 1830. The idea of combining his separately published novels, stories, and short stories into a single cycle of works first arose from Balzac in 1833, and initially he planned to call the gigantic work “Social Studies” - a title emphasizing the similarity of the principles of Balzac as an artist with the methodology of science of his time. However, by 1839 he settled on a different title - "Human Comedy", which expresses author's attitude to the mores of his century, and the literary audacity of Balzac, who dreamed that his work would become for modern times what " Divine Comedy"Dante was for the Middle Ages. In 1842, the "Preface to" was written Human Comedy", in which Balzac outlined his creative principles, described the ideas underlying compositional structure and figurative typification of the “Human Comedy”. The author's catalog and final plan date back to 1844, which contains the titles of 144 works; Of these, Balzac managed to write 96. This is the largest work literature of the 19th century century, for a long time, especially in Marxist criticism, which became the standard literary creativity. The gigantic edifice of the “Human Comedy” is cemented by the personality of the author and the unity of style determined by it, the system of transitional characters invented by Balzac and the unity of the problematics of his works.
Novel "Shagreen Skin"(1831) is based on the same conflict as Stendhal's The Red and the Black: the clash young man with your time. Since this novel belongs to the section of the “Human Comedy” called “Philosophical Studies”, this conflict is resolved here in the most abstract, abstract form, moreover, in this novel the connection of early realism with the previous literature of romanticism is more clearly demonstrated than in Stendhal’s. This is one of Balzac's most colorful novels, with a dynamic, whimsical composition, a flowery, descriptive style, and a fantasy that excites the imagination.
The main character of "Shagreen Skin" is Raphael de Valentin. The reader gets to know him at the moment when he, exhausted by humiliating poverty, is ready to commit suicide by throwing himself into the cold waters of the Seine. On the verge of suicide, chance stops him. In the shop of an old antique dealer he becomes the owner magic talisman- shagreen leather that fulfills all the wishes of the owner. However, as wishes are fulfilled, the talisman decreases in size, and with it the owner’s life shortens. Raphael has nothing to lose - he accepts the antique dealer's gift, not really believing in the magic of the talisman, and begins to waste his life in desires for all the pleasures of his youth. When he realizes that the shagreen skin is actually shrinking, he forbids himself to desire anything at all, but late - at the height of wealth, when he is passionately loved, and without the shagreen skin, charming Polina, he dies in the arms of his beloved. The mystical, fantastic element in the novel emphasizes its connection with the aesthetics of romanticism, but the very nature of the problems and the way they are presented in the novel are characteristic of realistic literature.
Raphael de Valentin is a sophisticated aristocrat by birth and upbringing, but his family lost everything during the revolution, and the action in the novel takes place in 1829, at the end of the Restoration era. Balzac emphasizes that in post-revolutionary French society, ambitious desires naturally arise in a young man, and Raphael is overwhelmed by desires for fame, wealth, love beautiful women. The author does not question the legitimacy and value of all these aspirations, but accepts them as a given; the center of the novel's problems shifts to the philosophical plane: what is the price that a person has to pay for the fulfillment of his desires? The problem of career is posed in "Shagreen Skin" in the very general view- the boiling of pride, faith in his own destiny, in his genius force Raphael to experience two paths to fame. The first is hard work in complete poverty: Raphael proudly tells how for three years he lived on three hundred and sixty-five francs a year, working on the works that were to glorify him. Purely realistic details appear in the novel when Raphael describes his life in a poor attic “for three sous - bread, two - milk, three - sausage; you won’t die of hunger, and the spirit is in a state of special clarity.” But passions carry him away from the clear path of a scientist into the abyss: love for the “woman without a heart,” Countess Theodora, who embodies secular society in the novel, pushes Raphael to the gambling table, to insane spending, and the logic of the “hard labor of pleasure” leaves him the last option - suicide .
The sage antiquarian, handing over the shagreen leather to Raphael, explains to him that from now on his life is only a delayed suicide. The hero has to comprehend the relationship between two verbs that govern not just human careers, but the entire human life. These are verbs want And be able: "Want burns us and be able- destroys, but the knowledge gives our weak body the opportunity to remain in a calm state forever." Here is the symbolism of the talisman - in shagreen skin they are connected be able And want, but the only possible price for his power is human life.