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; the main character - a young talented man - Raphael de Valentin - is opposed to a crowd of corrupt writers and corrupt women; The main female characters of the novel are in sharp contrast - the cold, vain socialite Theodora and the modest, loving worker Polina. Modern society is 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 only as another Balzac parable about the destructive power of 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 - at the moment it seems to him that only the desire for a miracle, something supernatural, unusual, roughly speaking, like in a fairy tale, fits into the category of “desire.” about a 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 of the 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 wish 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, overwhelmed by panic, he tries to isolate himself from the outside world, suppress all desires within himself, and exclude the very concept of desire from his 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 the purely psychological nature of the word “desire”. In other words, Balzac is exploring here the mechanism of action of human desires and passions in general. Shagreen skin is an ominous symbol of the fact that every desire, every passion is bought by a shortening of life span, a decrease in vital energy in a person. 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 through his own experience does he later become 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, of course, is the psychology of a tired person, exhausted by aspirations and exhausted in the pursuit of their fulfillment - a person disappointed in life, a person fed up and devastated by the eternal struggle for existence. Behind the image of Raphael lies the life experience of the 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 it is not only the writer’s personal fate that is symbolically summarized here. 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, and emptiness. Romantic geniuses increasingly discovered that their combustion took place in an airless environment, that their energy was not used or applied outside. Then the images of “superfluous people” appeared - Russian literature gave especially many formulas for this state, primarily in the poetry of Lermontov: “sterile heat of the soul”, “heat of the soul wasted in the desert”, “Desires? What is the use of wishing in vain and forever?” etc. Naturally, objectively, the fate of such extra 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 their 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 of the 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.
Written in 1830-1831, the novel “Shagreen Skin” 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 passionate, unrequited feelings 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 say that the owner of the unusual item receives the opportunity to fulfill all 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 his former student, now the 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 large 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 a touching story about unhappy lovers separated by evil chance and death.
The genre uniqueness of the novel “Shagreen Skin” consists of the peculiarities of the construction of its three parts. “The Talisman” combines the features of realism and fantasy, being, in fact, a dark romantic fairy tale in the Hoffmannian style. In the first part of the novel, themes of life and death, gambling (for money), art, love, and freedom are raised. “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.
The female characters of the novel also include 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 a free life due to their disbelief 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 adheres to 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.
The theme of love 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 his way, the more he wants to solve Theodora’s riddle, 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 person who has learned the true values of life cannot exist within deception and lies.
« Shagren skin"(French La Peau de Chagrin), 1830-1831) - novel by Honoré de Balzac. Dedicated to the problem of the collision of an inexperienced person with a society infested with vices.
A deal with the devil - this question has interested more than one writer and not one of them has already answered it. What if everything can be turned around so that you end up winning? What if Fate smiles on you this time? What if you become the only one who manages to outwit the forces of evil?.. So thought the hero of the novel “Shagreen Skin”.
The novel consists of three chapters and an epilogue:
Mascot
The young man, Raphael de Valentin, is poor. Education has given him little; he is unable to provide for himself. He wants to commit suicide, and, waiting for the right moment (he decides to die at night, throwing himself from a bridge into the Seine), he enters an antiquities shop, where the old owner shows him an amazing talisman - shagreen leather. On the back of the talisman there are embossed signs in “Sanskrit” (in fact, it is an Arabic text, but in the original and in the translations it is Sanskrit that is mentioned); 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!
A woman without a heart
Rafael tells the story of his life.
The hero was brought up in strictness. His father was a nobleman from the south of France. At the end of the reign of Louis XVI he came to Paris, where he quickly made his fortune. The revolution ruined him. However, during the Empire he again achieved fame and fortune thanks to his wife's dowry. The fall of Napoleon was a tragedy for him, because he was buying up lands on the border of the empire, which were now transferred to other countries. A long trial, in which he also involved his son, a future doctor of law, ended in 1825, when M. de Villele “unearthed” the imperial decree on the loss of rights. Ten months later, the father died. Raphael sold all his property and was left with 1120 francs.
He decides to live a quiet life in the attic of a miserable hotel in a remote quarter of Paris. The owner of the hotel, Madame Godin, has a baron husband who has gone missing in India. 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 two hundred thousand francs in income. Along the way, they take measurements - put the skin on a napkin, and Emil traces the edges of the talisman 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!
And persecution
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.
A former teacher, Mr. Porrique, comes to Rafael, an influential man. 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.
Rafael 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.
End of February. 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 own scientific theory, they all unanimously advise going to the water, placing 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 into a state of artificial sleep in order to last longer, but she finds him. When he sees her, he lights up with desire and rushes at her. The girl runs away in horror, and Rafael finds Polina half-naked - she scratched her chest and tried to strangle herself with a shawl. The girl thought that if she died, she would leave her lover alive. The life of the main character is cut short.
E pilog
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.
Honore de Balzac. Shagreen skin - summary updated: December 20, 2016 by: website
Honoré de Balzac's novel "Shagreen Skin"
French novelist, considered the father of the naturalistic novel. Honore de Balzac was born on May 20, 1799 in the city of Tours (France). Honore de Balzac's father, Bernard François Balssa (some sources indicate Vals's surname), is a peasant who became rich during the revolution by buying and selling confiscated noble lands, and later became an assistant to the mayor of Tours. Having entered the service in the military supply department and finding himself among officials, he changed his “native” surname, considering it plebeian. At the turn of the 1830s. Honore, in turn, also modified his surname, arbitrarily adding the noble particle “de” to it, justifying this with the fiction of his origins from the noble family of Balzac d’Entregues.
In 1807-1813, Honore studied at the college of Vendôme; in 1816-1819 - at the Paris School of Law, while serving as a clerk in a notary's office. The father sought to prepare his son for lawyering, but Honoré decided to become a poet. At the family council, it was decided to give him two years to fulfill his dream. Honore de Balzac writes the drama “Cromwell,” but the newly convened family council recognizes the work as worthless and the young man is denied financial assistance. This was followed by a period of material adversity. Balzac's literary career began around 1820, when he began publishing action-packed novels under various pseudonyms and composing morally descriptive “codes” of secular behavior. Later, some of the first novels were published under the pseudonym Horace de Saint-Aubin. The period of anonymous creativity ended in 1829 after the publication of the novel “Chouans, or Brittany in 1799.” Honore de Balzac called the novel “Shagreen Skin” (1830) the “starting point” of his work. Since 1830, short stories from modern French life began to be published under the general title “Scenes of Private Life.” Honoré de Balzac considered Moliere, Francois Rabelais and Walter Scott to be his main literary teachers. Twice the novelist tried to make a political career, nominating his candidacy for the Chamber of Deputies in 1832 and 1848, but failed both times. In January 1849, he also failed in the elections to the French Academy.
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 both the author’s attitude towards the mores of his century, and the literary audacity of Balzac, who dreamed that his work would become for modern times what Dante’s “Divine Comedy” was for Middle Ages. In 1842, the “Preface to the Human Comedy” was written, in which Balzac outlined his creative principles and described the ideas underlying the 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 of literature of the 19th century, which for a long time, especially in Marxist criticism, became the standard of 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.
In 1832, Balzac began corresponding with the Polish aristocrat E. Hanska, who lived in Russia. In 1843, the writer went to visit her in St. Petersburg, and in 1847 and 1848 - to Ukraine. The official marriage with E. Ganskaya was concluded 5 months before the death of Honore de Balzac, who died on August 18, 1850 in Paris. In 1858, the writer’s sister, Madame Surville, wrote his biography - “Balzac, sa vie et ses oеuvres d"apres sa correspondance.” The authors of biographical books about Balzac were Stefan Zweig (“Balzac”), Andre Maurois (“Prometheus, or the Life of Balzac"), Wurmser ("Inhuman Comedy") Balzac shagreen leather novel).
“Shagreen Skin” is a work of extraordinary depth. Many researchers are attracted by the sharpness of its problems, unusual aesthetics, and innovative methods of the author against the backdrop of the literature of the era. Each of the novel's many aspects holds great potential and suggests different points of view. Balzac himself gives hints in which directions the scientist’s thought might move. In his notes, he gave the following definitions of the novel: “philosophical study”, “oriental fairy tale”, “system”.
The novel is, of course, a “synthetic” work. In it we will see the vicissitudes of an individual’s life, a stage in the development of society, a historical era, a philosophical idea and an entire ideological system. Each of these meanings deserves detailed study, and together they give an idea of the scale of the novel and Balzac’s work in general.
This work is devoted to the most interesting aspects of the work, and also pays attention to Balzac’s artistic synthesis. The purpose of the work is to familiarize yourself with the various semantic facets of the novel, with the existing points of view of literary scholars and critics.
The novel Shagreen Skin (1831) is based on the conflict of a young man's encounter with his 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 idea of “Shagreen Skin,” as will be the case with many of Balzac’s works, went through several stages. According to a contemporary, Balzac initially wanted to write a short story in which the idea of the power of the psyche over the vital forces should have been expressed differently. The properties of the talisman, according to this plan, were assumed to be an invention of the antiquarian; the hero believed the gross deception and died only from horror in front of his imaginary ruler. It is clearly visible how far the author was from mysticism - and this feature of the plan has been fully preserved. This plan did not promise much artistic depth, and a major shift occurred. Balzac announced a metamorphosis of the plot: the talisman would be “real.” Science fiction left the basis of the plan intact - the idea of an inextricable connection between the physical and spiritual principles, but complicated it: a contrast between two types of life, “economical” and “wasteful”, appeared, the idea of switching energy from passions to “pure” contemplation and knowledge.
In Balzac’s workbook “Shagreen Skin” several entries are dedicated: “Skin was invented that personifies life. Eastern fairy tale." “Shagreen skin. An expression of human life as such, its mechanics. At the same time, the personality is described and assessed, but poetically.”
The creative history of the novel lies between two milestones: from the “oriental fairy tale” to the “formula of the present century.” The old meaning was synthesized with the burning modernity.
“Shagreen Skin” was written hot on the heels of the July Revolution of 1830, and the time of action in the novel almost coincides with the time of writing. The novel is replete with signs of those years. To depict this time with its spiritual atmosphere meant to portray the discontent and deep disappointment that dominated the minds. “The disease of the century” is lack of faith and longing for integrity, for meaningfulness, involuntary egoism. Longing for an ideal, young people of the century asked the question in different ways: “Oh world, what have you done to me to cause such hatred? What high hopes have you disappointed? All these sentiments were embodied in the novel.
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 of a magical talisman - shagreen leather, which 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 antiquarian'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, and the love of 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 a career is posed in “Shagreen Skin” in the most general form - boiling pride, faith in one’s own destiny, in one’s 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, for two - milk, for three - sausages; you won’t die of hunger, and your 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 way out - 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 the verbs to desire and to be able: “To desire burns us, and to be able destroys us, but to know gives our weak body the opportunity to forever remain in a calm state.” Here is the symbolism of the talisman - in shagreen skin the ability and desire are united, but for its power there is the only possible price - human life.
The main character is the embodiment of Balzac's ideas about the high mission of the artist-creator, combining in himself a “true scientist”, endowed with “the ability to compare and reflect,” who considers it natural to “enter the field of fine literature.”
Balzac called his novel “philosophical.” “Shagreen skin represents a new quality of the genre. It combines the artistic techniques of a philosophical story of the 18th century with the breadth and ambiguity of symbolic images and episodes. Balzac implemented in the novel the idea of freedom from genre restrictions. This novel was an epic, a history, and a pathetic satire; it was a “philosophical study” and a “fairy tale.”
Balzac himself called this novel, later referred to as “philosophical studies,” “the beginning of my whole business.” In it, in the form of a parable, something that would later be developed realistically in dozens of novels was put into the form of a parable. The form of a parable does not change the fact that this work provides a condensed picture of real life, full of contrasts and seething passions. Raphael receives a talisman that grants wishes at the cost of his life. “To desire” and “to be able” - between these two words, according to the mysterious antiquarian, is all human life. A young man finds himself at a crossroads and must choose a path. Gaining a position in society means selling your own soul. This is one of many cases when Balzac's artistic generalization rises to the level of myth. A true myth is an image, a situation that is deeply meaningful and has great universal significance. In myth, the eternal and the historical are merged as the general and the specific.
Shagreen leather. “Symbol” for Balzac is a broad concept, one of the central and most stable in his aesthetics. He also refers to his own types or those created by other artists as symbols.
The talisman, created by the imagination of Balzac, has become a widespread symbol and has the widest circulation. It is constantly found in a variety of contexts, in speech and literature, as a generally understandable image of necessity and an inexorable objective law. What exactly does the talisman represent in the novel? The symbol is far from unambiguous, and many very different answers have been given to this question. Thus, F. Berto sees in shagreen skin only the embodiment of consumption devouring Raphael, turning the symbolism of the novel into a fable-type allegory; B. Guyon is a symbol of the fundamental depravity and immorality of civilization, of any social system. M. Shaginyan and B. Raskin connect the power of the skin with “things,” the power of things over people. I. Lileeva highlights the following idea in the novel: “The image of shagreen skin provides a generalization of bourgeois life, subordinated only to the pursuit of wealth and pleasure, a generalization of the power of money, the terrible power of this world, which devastates and cripples the human personality.” Most of the proposed solutions are not mutually exclusive and find their basis in the text of the novel, which, thanks to its artistic richness, naturally lends itself to many interpretations. All decisions have one common premise: shagreen skin is a symbol of the immutability of objective law, against which any subjective protest of the individual is powerless. But what kind of law is this according to the author’s intention? What did Balzac see as the problematic axis of his novel? There is an Arabic inscription on the shagreen, the meaning of which is explained by the antiquarian: “All forms of two reasons come down to two verbs, to desire and to be able... to desire burns us, and to be able destroys us.” Longevity is achieved by a vegetative or contemplative existence, excluding exhausting passions and actions. The more intensely a person lives, the faster he burns out. Such a dilemma leaves a choice, and this choice between opposing decisions determines the essence of a person.
Game. Raphael's visit to the gambling house and losing his last gold is an image of extreme despair caused by poverty and loneliness. The gambling house in all its squalor is a place where “blood flows in streams,” but is invisible to the eye. The word “game” is highlighted twice in the text in large font: the image of the game symbolizes the reckless wastefulness of a person in excitement, in passion. This is how the old wardrobe keeper lives, losing all his earnings on the day he receives them; such is the young Italian player, from whose face one could smell “gold and fire”; so is Raphael. In the acute excitement of the game, life flows out like blood through a wound. The hero’s state after a loss is conveyed by the question: “Wasn’t he drunk with life, or perhaps with death?” - a question that is in many ways key to the novel, in which life and death are constantly and acutely correlated with each other.
Antique shop. The antique store stands in opposition to the roulette scene as a symbolic representation of a different way of life. On the other hand, the shop is a hyperbolic collection of values; in the museum world, opposites collide, contrasts of civilizations are outlined. Raphael’s thought, while inspecting the shop, seems to follow the development of mankind; he turns to entire countries, centuries, kingdoms. The shop fully reflects the mutual influence of verbal and visual art. One of the symbolic meanings is that the shop represents a condensed image of world life of all ages and in all its forms. The antique store is also called “a kind of philosophical garbage dump”, “a vast marketplace of human follies.” The law inscribed on the skin must appear as substantiated by the experience of centuries, therefore an antiquarian shop is a worthy environment for a talisman.
Orgy. The next of the main symbolic scenes of the novel is the banquet on the occasion of the founding of the newspaper. An antique shop is the past of humanity, an orgy is living modernity, which poses the same dilemma to a person in an aggravated form. Orgy - the fulfillment of Raphael's first requirement for a talisman. In the romantic literature of the thirties, descriptions of feasts and revelries were common. In Balzac's novel, the orgy scene has many functions in his "analysis of the ills of society." An excess of luxury expresses a reckless waste of vitality in sensual passions and pleasures. The orgy is a show of skepticism of the era in the main issues of social and spiritual life - in a “mass stage”, where the characters of the interlocutors are clearly depicted in remarks and the author’s remarks. Balzac mastered the art of creating an image with the help of one or two lines, one gesture.
In the complaints of the disappointed “children of the century” about lack of faith and inner emptiness, the main place is occupied by the destruction of religious feeling, disbelief in love; unbelief in other questions of existence seems to be a derivative of this main thing.
The revelry also has its own poetry; Raphael puts into his mouth a unique experience of explaining it, almost a panegyric. Revelry attracts, like all abysses, it flatters human pride, it is a challenge to God. But, having depicted the intoxication of the senses in its seductiveness, Balzac will also paint the morning in a merciless light. This is the author's usual method - to show both sides of the coin.
The fantastic image of shagreen skin, a symbol of diminishing life, combined generalization with the possibilities of an entertaining story. Balzac veils the fantasy, depicting the fantastic action of the talisman, leaving room for a possible natural explanation of the events. The fantastic is presented in such a way as not to exclude the substitution of the natural. The second path is truly original: Balzac brought together and correlated the fantasy theme with the scientific one, imbued fantasy with the spirit of science, moving it onto new tracks. Whenever fantasy appears in action, the break from the probable occurs gently. The author achieves the impression of naturalness by various means. For Balzac, the miraculous, equal to the inexplicable, is truly impossible and unthinkable, hence the realistic motivations. His workbook says: “There is nothing fantastic. We imagine only what is, will be or was.”
The artistic symbolism of the novel diverges from tradition and is full of surprises. A pact with diabolical power is a fairly common motif in pre-romantic and romantic literature, but there is no religious feeling in the novel, the pact is irreversible, the talisman is inalienable. While the skin exists outside of the contract, it is neutral, but once connected to the owner, it comes to life.
Balzac's fiction develops in a different sphere than, for example, Hoffmann's fiction. The highest manifestations of life destroy it most of all, bringing it closer to death. This is hidden in everyday life. For Balzac, the truth is obvious that “the negation of life is essentially contained in life itself.” His fiction is like the accelerated scrolling of a film, “compressing” time and making obvious a process that, due to its slowness, is invisible to the eye.
Fantastic symbolism best suited the goal that Balzac set in this novel. And here fantasy is one of the means in his artistic arsenal.
Literature
1. Brahman, S.R. Balzac//History of foreign literature of the 19th century. -M., 1982. - P. 190-207.
2. Griftsov, B. The genius of Balzac // Questions of literature. - 2002. -№3. - P.122-131.
3. Reznik, R. How we see Balzac // Questions of literature. - 1990. -№6. - P.242-250.
4. Reznik, R.A. Balzac's novel "Shagreen Skin". - Saratov, 1971.
5. Elzarova, G.M. “Fantastic” works of Balzac // Bulletin of the Leningrad University. Series 2. - 1986. - Issue 1. - P.180-110.
Several decades before Wilde, Honoré de Balzac published the philosophical parable “Shagreen Skin.” It describes the story of a young aristocrat who came into possession of a piece of leather covered with old writings, which has the magical ability to do whatever the owner wishes. However, at the same time, it shrinks more and more: each fulfilled desire brings the fatal end closer. And at that moment when almost the whole world lies at the hero’s feet, awaiting his commands, it turns out that this is a worthless accomplishment. Only a tiny piece of the all-powerful talisman remained, and the hero now “could do anything - and didn’t want anything.”
Balzac told a sad story about the corruption of an easily seduced soul. In many ways, his story echoes the pages of Wilde, but the very idea of \u200b\u200bretribution takes on a more complex meaning.
This is not retribution for the thoughtless thirst for wealth, which was synonymous with power, and therefore with one’s human worth for Raphael de Valentin. Rather, we need to talk about the collapse of an extremely attractive, but still fundamentally false idea, about a daring impulse not supported by moral firmness. Then other literary parallels immediately arise: no longer Balzac, but Goethe, his Faust, first of all. I really want to identify Dorian with the warlock doctor from the ancient legend. And Lord Henry will appear as Mephistopheles, while Sybil Vane can be perceived as the new Gretchen. Basil Hallward will become the “Guardian Angel”.
But this is too straightforward an interpretation. And factually it is not entirely accurate. It is known how the idea for the novel arose - not from reading, but from direct impressions. One day, in the studio of a painter friend, Wilde found a model who seemed to him perfection. And he exclaimed: “What a pity that he cannot escape old age with all its ugliness!” The artist noted that he was ready to rewrite the portrait he had begun at least every year if nature was satisfied that her destructive work would be reflected on the canvas, but not on the living appearance of this extraordinary young man. Then Wilde’s fantasy came into its own. The plot came together as if by itself.
This does not mean that Wilde did not remember his predecessors at all. But indeed, the meaning of the novel does not boil down to a refutation of that “deeply selfish thought” that captivated the owner of Raphael’s shagreen skin. It is also different when compared with the idea that completely dominates Faust, who does not want to remain an earthworm and longs - although he cannot - to become equal to the gods who decide the future of humanity.
Wilde's heroes have no such claims. They would always only like to preserve youth and beauty lasting - contrary to the ruthless law of nature. And this would least of all be a benefit to humanity. Dorian, and even more so Lord Henry, is egocentrism personified. They are simply unable to think about others. Both understand quite clearly that the idea that inspired them is unreal, but they rebel against this ephemerality itself, or, at least, do not want to take it into account. There is only a cult of youth, sophistication, art, impeccable artistic flair, and it does not matter that real life is infinitely far from the artificial paradise that they set out to create for themselves. That in this Eden the criteria of morality are, as it were, abolished. That he is, in essence, just a chimera.
Once upon a time, this chimera had undeniable power over Wilde. He also wanted to taste all the fruits that grow under the sun, and did not care about the cost of such knowledge. But there still remained a significant difference between him and his characters. Yes, the writer, like his heroes, was convinced that “the purpose of life is not to act, but to simply exist.” However, having expressed this idea in one essay, he immediately clarified: “And not only exist, but change.” With this amendment, the idea itself becomes completely different from how both Dorian and Lord Henry understand it. After all, they would like imperishable and frozen beauty, and the portrait should serve as its embodiment. But it turned out to be a mirror of the changes that Dorian was so afraid of. And he couldn't avoid it.
Just as he could not avoid the need to judge what was happening according to ethical criteria, no matter how much was said about their uselessness. The murder of the artist remains murder, and the guilt for the death of Sibylla remains guilt, no matter how, with the help of Lord Henry, Dorian tried to prove to himself that by these actions he was only protecting the beautiful from the encroachments of the rough prose of life. And ultimately, the results, which turned out to be catastrophic, depended on his choice.
Dorian strived for perfection, but did not achieve it. His bankruptcy is interpreted as the collapse of a selfish man. And as retribution for apostasy from the ideal, expressed in the unity of beauty and truth. One is impossible without the other - Wilde’s novel speaks precisely about this.
So, in the novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” Henry Wotton appears before us as a “demon tempter.” He is a lord, an aristocrat, a man of extraordinary intelligence, the author of elegant and cynical statements, an esthete, a hedonist. In the mouth of this character, under the direct “guidance” of whom Dorian Gray took the path of vice, the author put many paradoxical judgments. Such judgments were characteristic of Wilde himself. More than once he shocked the secular public with bold experiments on all kinds of common truths.
Lord Henry charmed Dorian with his elegant but cynical aphorisms: “A new hedonism is what our generation needs. It would be tragic if you didn’t have time to take everything from life, because youth is short,” “The only way to get rid of temptation is to give in to it,” “People who are not selfish are always colorless. They lack personality."
Having adopted the philosophy of “new hedonism”, chasing pleasures and new impressions, Dorian loses all idea of good and evil and tramples on Christian morality. His soul is becoming more and more corrupted. He begins to have a corrupting influence on others.
Finally, Dorian commits a crime: he kills the artist Basil Hallward, then forces the chemist Alan Campbell to destroy the corpse. Alan Campbell subsequently commits suicide. The selfish thirst for pleasure turns into inhumanity and crime.
The artist Basil Hallward appears before us as a “Guardian Angel” in the novel. Basil put his love for him into the portrait of Dorian. Basil's lack of a fundamental distinction between art and reality leads to the creation of such a life-like portrait that its revival is only the last step in the wrong direction. Such art naturally, according to Wilde, leads to the death of the artist himself.
Turning to Honore de Balzac's novel “Shagreen Skin,” we can conclude that the antiquarian appears to us in the image of the “tempter demon,” and Polina appears as the “guardian angel.”
The image of the antiquarian can be compared with the image of Gobsek (the first version of the story was created a year earlier than “Shagreen Skin”), and we have the right to consider the antiquarian as a development of the image of Gobsek. The contrast between senile decrepitude, physical helplessness and the exorbitant power that the possession of material treasures gives them emphasizes one of the central themes of Balzac's work - the theme of the power of money. Those around them see Gobsek and the antiquarian in an aura of peculiar grandeur, on them there are reflections of gold with its “limitless possibilities.”
The antiquarian, like Gobsek, belongs to the type of philosophizing money-grubbers, but is even more alienated from the everyday sphere, placed above human feelings and worries. In his face “you would read... the bright calm of a god who sees everything, or the proud strength of a man who has seen everything.” He had no illusions and did not experience sorrows, because he did not know joys either.
In the episode with the antiquarian, Balzac selected lexical means with extreme care: the antiquarian introduces the theme of shagreen leather into the novel, and his image should not be disharmonious with the image of a magical talisman. The author's descriptions and Raphael's perception of the antiquarian emotionally coincide, emphasizing the full significance of the main theme of the novel. Raphael was struck by the gloomy mockery of the old man's imperious face. The antiquarian knew the “great secret of life,” which he revealed to Raphael. “A person exhausts himself with two actions that he performs unconsciously, and because of them the sources of his existence dry up. All forms of these two causes of death come down to two verbs - to desire and to be able... To desire burns us, and to be able to destroy us...”
The most important principles of life are taken here only in their destructive sense. Balzac brilliantly comprehended the essence of the bourgeois individual, who is captured by the idea of a merciless struggle for existence, the pursuit of pleasure, life, which wears out and devastates a person. To desire and to be able - these two forms of life are realized in the practice of bourgeois society outside of any moral laws and social principles, guided only by unbridled egoism, equally dangerous and destructive for the individual and for society.
But between these two concepts, the antiquarian also names a formula accessible to the sages. This is knowing, this is the thought that kills desire. The owner of an antique shop once walked “through the universe as if through his own garden,” lived under all sorts of governments, signed contracts in all European capitals and walked through the mountains of Asia and America. Finally, he “got everything because he managed to neglect everything.” But he never experienced “what people call sadness, love, ambition, vicissitudes, sorrows - for me these are just ideas that I turn into a dream... instead of allowing them to devour my life... I amuse myself with them , as if these are novels that I read with the help of my inner vision.
One cannot ignore the following circumstance: the year of publication of “Shagreen Skin” - 1831 - is also the year of the completion of “Faust”. Undoubtedly, when Balzac made Raphael's life dependent on the cruel condition of fulfilling his desires with shagreen skin, he had associations with Goethe's Faust.
The first appearance of the antique dealer also evoked the image of Mephistopheles: “The painter... could have turned this face into the beautiful face of the eternal father or into the sarcastic mask of Mephistopheles, for sublime power was imprinted on his forehead, and an ominous mockery on his lips.” This rapprochement will prove to be stable: when at the Favar theater Raphael again meets the old man who has renounced his wisdom, he will again be struck by the similarity “between the antiquarian and the ideal head of Goethe’s Mephistopheles, as painters paint it.”
The image of the “guardian angel” in the novel is Pauline Godin.
Freed from everyday motifs, created by an “unknown painter” from the shades of a blazing fire, a female image appears like “a flower that bloomed in the flame.” “An unearthly being, all spirit, all love...” Like a word that one seeks in vain, she “hovering somewhere in the memory...” Perhaps the ghost of a medieval Beautiful Lady who appeared to “protect her country from the invasion of modernity”? She smiles, she disappears - “an unfinished, unexpected phenomenon that arose too early or too late to become a beautiful diamond.” As an ideal, as a symbol of perfect beauty, purity, harmony, it is unattainable.
Raphael is attracted to Pauline Godin, the daughter of the owner of a modest boarding house, by the best sides of his nature. Choosing Polina - noble, hardworking, full of touching sincerity and kindness - means giving up the frantic pursuit of wealth, accepting a calm, serene existence, happiness, but without bright passions and burning pleasures. “Flemish”, motionless, “simplified” life will give its joys - the joys of a family hearth, a quiet, measured existence. But to remain in the patriarchal little world, where humble poverty and unclouded purity reign, “refreshing the soul,” to remain, having lost the opportunity to be happy in the generally accepted sense among Raphael’s circle—this thought outrages his selfish soul. “Poverty spoke to me in the language of selfishness and constantly stretched out an iron hand between this good creature and me.” The image of Polina in the novel is an image of femininity, virtue, a woman with a soft and gentle disposition.
Thus, having analyzed the images of the “tempter demon” and the “guardian angel” in both novels, we can see vivid literary parallels between the images of “demons” - Henry Wotton and the antiquarian, and between the images of “angels” - Basil Hallward and Pauline Godin.