Balzac shagreen leather analysis. Shagreen leather

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- 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.

Genre originality 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.

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 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.

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 person who has learned the true values ​​of life cannot exist within deception and lies.

• “Shagreen Skin”, a summary of the chapters of the novel by Honore de Balzac

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.

Balzac unfolds before us in this novel 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 did not find application or application 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 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.

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, the 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 the desires of 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.” This 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 appeal. It is constantly found in various contexts, in speech and literature, as a generally understood image of necessity and 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.

A 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 the 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 disappointed “children of the century” about unbelief 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.

“Shagreen Skin” is one of the most famous novels by the titan of French prose Honore de Balzac. The work was published in two volumes in August 1831 and was later included in the grandiose cycle “The Human Comedy”. The author placed “Shagreen Skin” in the second section called “Philosophical Studies.”

The reader was already partially familiar with Shagreen Skin before the release of the official two-volume edition. Individual episodes of the novel are first published in the magazines “Caricature”, “Revue de De Monde”, “Revue de Paris”. Balzac's realistic fantasy was liked by fans. “Shagreen Skin” was a huge success and was reprinted seven times during the writer’s lifetime.

This novel captivates with a dynamic, intriguing plot and at the same time makes you think about the magnitude and versatility of such concepts as life and death, truth and lies, wealth and poverty, true love and its ability to transform the world around lovers. The setting for “Shagreen Skin” is brilliant, insatiable, greedy Paris, which most clearly manifests its vicious traits in secular society.

The main character of the novel is a young provincial, writer, seeker Raphael de Valentin. Along with Valentin, Balzac introduces already familiar characters into the figurative structure of the work. One of them is the adventurer Eugene de Rastignac. He appeared more than once on the pages of the “Human Comedy” novels (sometimes in the main role, sometimes in a secondary role). Thus, Rastignac solos in “Père Goriot”, is included in the figurative structure of “Scenes of Political Life”, “The Secrets of the Princess de Cadignan”, “The Banking House of Nucingen”, “Cousin Brette” and “The Captain of Arcee”.

Another star of “The Human Comedy” is the banker Taillefer, also known as the “murderer drowning in gold.” The image of Taillefer is colorfully depicted on the pages of the novels “Père Goriot” and “The Red Hotel”.

The compositional and semantic structure of the novel is represented by three equal parts - “Talisman”, “Woman without a Heart” and “Agony”.

Part one: "Talisman"

A young man named Raphael de Valentin wanders through Paris. Once this city seemed to him a valley of joy and inexhaustible possibilities, but today it is only a reminder of his failure in life. Having experienced happiness and found it, being disappointed and losing everything, Raphael de Valentin made a firm decision to die. This night he will be thrown into the Seine from the Royal Bridge, and tomorrow afternoon the townspeople will fish out the unidentified corpse of a man. He does not hope for their participation and does not rely on pity. People are deaf to everything that does not concern themselves. Raphael understood this truth perfectly.

Walking through the streets of Paris for the last time, our hero wandered into an antiquities shop. Its owner, a dry, wrinkled old man with an ominously crooked grin, showed the late guest the most valuable product in his shop. It was a piece of shagreen leather (approx. - soft rough leather (lamb, goat, horse, etc.). The flap was small - the size of an average fox.

According to the old owner, this is not just shagreen, but a powerful magical artifact that can change the fate of its owner. On the reverse side there was an inscription in Sanskrit, the ancient message said: “By possessing me, you will possess everything, but your life will belong to me... Wish and your desires 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. Let it be so".

Until now, no one has dared to become the owner of this piece of shagreen and secretly sign an agreement that suspiciously resembles a deal with the devil. However, what does a destitute poor man who just wanted to give up his life have to lose?!

Raphael acquires shagreen skin and immediately makes two wishes. The first is for the old shopkeeper to fall in love with the dancer, the second for him, Raphael, to take part in the bacchanalia that night.
Before your eyes, the skin noticeably shrinks to such a size that you can put it in your pocket. For now, this only amuses our hero. He says goodbye to the old man and goes out into the night.

Before Valentin had time to cross the Pont des Arts, he met his friend Emil, who offered him a job in his newspaper. It was decided to celebrate the joyful event at a party in the house of the banker Taillefer. Here Raphael meets various representatives of Parisian society: corrupt artists, bored scientists, tight wallets, elite prostitutes and many others.

Together with Raphael de Valentin, we are carried back many years ago, when he was still a very young boy and knew how to dream. Valentin remembers his father - a tough and stern man. He never showed the love that his sensual son so needed. De Valentin the elder was a buyer of foreign lands that became available as a result of successful military campaigns. However, the golden age of Napoleonic conquests is passing. Things are starting to go bad for the Valentens. The head of the family dies, and the son has no choice but to quickly sell off the land to pay off creditors.

Rafael has a modest amount left at his disposal, which he decides to spread over several years. This should be enough for as long as he becomes famous. Valentin wants to be a great writer, he feels talent in himself, and therefore rents an attic in a cheap Parisian hotel and begins to work day and night on his literary brainchild.

The owner of the hotel, Madame Gaudin, turned out to be a very kind and sweet woman, but her daughter Polina was especially good. Valentin likes the young Gaudin, he happily spends time in her company, but the woman of his dreams is different - she is a society lady with excellent manners, brilliant outfits and substantial capital, which gives her owner a certain charm.

Soon Valentin was lucky enough to meet just such a woman. Her name was Countess Theodora. This twenty-two-year-old beauty had an income of eighty thousand. The whole of Paris unsuccessfully wooed her, and Valentin was no exception. At first, Theodora shows favor towards her new boyfriend, but it soon becomes clear that she is not driven by an amorous feeling, but by calculation - the countess needs the protection of Valentin's distant relative, Duke de Navarrene. The insulted young man reveals his feelings to the tormentor, but she declares that she will never sink below her level. Only the Duke will become her husband.

A love fiasco forces Valentin to once again become close to his adventurous friend Eugene de Rastignac (it was he who introduced Raphael to the countess). Friends start having fun, playing cards, having won a large sum of money, they squander it uncontrollably. And when nothing was left of the solid winnings, Valentin realized that he was on the social bottom, his life was over. Then he went outside and decided to throw himself off the bridge.

But, as we know, this did not happen, because on his way he met an antiquities shop... The narrator pauses the narration. He completely forgot about the magical shagreen that grants wishes. We need to check it out! Valentin takes out a piece of skin and makes a wish - to receive 120 thousand in annual income. The next day, Raphael is informed that his distant relative has died. He left Raphael a huge fortune, which amounts to exactly 120 thousand a year. Taking out a piece of shagreen, the newly rich man realized that the magic was working, the shagreen had shrunk, which meant his earthly existence had shortened.

Now Raphael de Valentin no longer has to huddle in a dark, damp attic, he lives in a spacious, richly furnished house. True, his real life is constant control of his own desires. As soon as Raphael utters the phrase “I want” or “I wish,” the piece of shagreen immediately shrinks.

One day Rafael goes to the theater. There he meets a wizened old man with a beautiful dancer on his arm. This is the same shopkeeper! But how the old man has changed, his face is still covered with wrinkles, but his eyes glow like those of a young guy. What is the reason? – Rafael is surprised. It's all about love! - the old man explains, - A single hour of true love is worth more than a long life.

Raphael watches the dressed-up audience, a string of ladies' shoulders, gloves, men's tailcoats and collars. He meets Countess Theodora, as brilliant as ever. Only she no longer evokes his former admiration. She is as artificial and faceless as all high society society.

One lady attracts Valentin's attention. What a surprise Raphael was when this social beauty turned out to be Polina. The same Polina with whom he spent long evenings in his wretched attic. It turns out that the girl became the heir to a huge fortune. Returning home, Valentin wished that Polina would fall in love with him. Shagreen shrank treacherously again. In a fit of anger, Raphael throws her into the well - come what may!

Raphael de Valentin's last wish

Young people begin to live in perfect harmony, make plans for the future and literally bathe in each other’s love. One day the gardener brings a piece of leather - he accidentally fished it out of the well. Valentin rushes to the best Parisian scientists with a plea to destroy shagreen. But neither the zoologist, nor the mechanic, nor the chemist find a way to destroy the outlandish artifact. The life that Valentin once wanted to part with voluntarily now seems to him to be his greatest treasure, because he loves and is loved.

Rafael's health begins to fail, doctors discover signs of consumption in him and shrug their shoulders - his days are numbered. Everyone except Polina turns out to be indifferent to the man doomed to death. In order not to torment himself, Rafael runs away from the bride, and when after a while their meeting does take place, he is unable to resist the beauty of his beloved. Shouting out, “I wish you, Polina!”, Valentin falls dead...

...And Polina remains to live. True, nothing is known about her further fate.

Honoré de Balzac's novel “Shagreen Skin”: summary

At the end of October, a young man, Raphael de Valentin, entered the building of the Palais Royal, in whose gaze the players noticed some terrible secret, his facial features expressed the impassivity of a suicide and a thousand disappointed hopes. Lost, Valentin squandered his last Napoleon and began to wander the streets of Paris in a daze. His mind was consumed by a single thought - to commit suicide by throwing himself into the Seine from the Royal Bridge. The thought that during the day he would become the prey of the boatmen, which would be valued at fifty francs, disgusted him. He decided to die at night, “to leave an unidentified corpse to society, which despised the greatness of his soul.” Walking carelessly, he began to look at the Louvre, the Academy, the towers of the Cathedral of Our Lady, the towers of the Palace of Justice, the Pont des Arts. To wait until nightfall, he headed to the antiquities shop to ask the price for works of art. There a thin old man appeared before him with an ominous mockery on his thin lips. The insightful old man guessed about the young man’s mental torment and proposed to make him more powerful than the monarch. He handed him a piece of shagreen, on which the following words were engraved in Sanskrit: “By possessing me, you will possess everything, but your life will belong to me. Wish - and your desires will be fulfilled. With every desire, I will fade like your days.. ."

Raphael entered into an agreement with the old man, whose whole life consisted of conserving his strength unspent in passions, and wished, if his fate did not change in the shortest possible time, that the old man would fall in love with the dancer. On the Pont des Arts, Valentin accidentally met his friends, who, considering him an outstanding person, offered him a job in a newspaper in order to create an opposition “capable of satisfying the dissatisfied without much harm to the national government of the citizen king” (Louis Philippe). Friends took Raphael to a dinner party at the newspaper's founding house in the house of the richest banker Taillefer. The audience that gathered that evening in a luxurious mansion was truly monstrous: “Young writers without style stood next to young writers without ideas, prose writers, greedy for poetic beauty, stood next to prosaic poets. There were two or three scientists created for the purpose of to dilute the atmosphere of the conversation with nitrogen, and several vaudeville performers, ready at any moment to sparkle with ephemeral sparkles, which, like the sparks of a diamond, do not shine or warm.” After a sumptuous dinner, the public was offered the most beautiful courtesans, subtle imitations of “innocent timid maidens.” The courtesans Aquilina and Euphrasia, in a conversation with Raphael and Emil, argue that it is better to die young than to be abandoned when their beauty fades.

Woman without a heart

Rafael tells Emil about the reasons for his mental anguish and suffering. From childhood, Raphael's father subjected his son to severe discipline. Until he was twenty-one, he was under the firm hand of his parent; the young man was naive and thirsty for love. Once at a ball, he decided to play with his father’s money and won an impressive amount of money for him, however, ashamed of his action, he hid this fact. Soon his father began to give him money for maintenance and share his plans. Raphael's father fought for ten years with Prussian and Bavarian diplomats, seeking recognition of rights to foreign land holdings. His future depended on this process, to which Raphael was actively involved. When the decree of loss of rights was promulgated, Raphael sold the lands, leaving only the island, which had no value, where his mother's grave was located. A long reckoning with creditors began, which brought my father to the grave. The young man decided to stretch the remaining funds over three years, and settled in a cheap hotel, doing scientific work - “The Theory of Will”. He lived from hand to mouth, but the work of thought, occupation, seemed to him the most beautiful work in life. The owner of the hotel, Madame Gaudin, took care of Raphael like a mother, and her daughter Polina provided him with many services, which he could not refuse. After a while, he began to give lessons to Polina, the girl turned out to be extremely capable and smart. Having plunged headlong into science, Raphael continued to dream of a beautiful lady, luxurious, noble and rich. In Polina he saw the embodiment of all his desires, but she lacked the salon polish. “...a woman, even if she is attractive, like the beautiful Helen, this Galatea of ​​Homer, cannot win my heart if she is even the slightest bit dirty.”

One winter, Rastignac brought him into the house “where all of Paris visited” and introduced him to the charming Countess Theodora, the owner of eighty thousand livres of income. The Countess was a lady of about twenty-two, enjoyed an impeccable reputation, had a marriage behind her, but did not have a lover, the most enterprising red tape in Paris suffered a fiasco in the struggle for the right to possess her. Raphael fell madly in love with Theodora, she was the embodiment of those dreams that made his heart tremble. Parting with him, she asked him to visit her. Returning home and feeling the contrast of the situation, Raphael cursed his “honest, respectable poverty” and decided to seduce Theodora, who was the last lottery ticket on which his fate depended. What kind of sacrifices did the poor seducer make: he incredibly managed to get to her house on foot in the rain and maintain a presentable appearance; He used his last money to take her home when they returned from the theater. In order to provide himself with a decent wardrobe, he had to enter into an agreement to write false memoirs, which were to be published under the name of another person. One day she sent him a note by messenger and asked him to come. Appearing at her call, Raphael learned that she needed the protection of his influential relative, the Duke de Navarrene. The madman in love was only a means to realize a mysterious business that he never knew about. Raphael was tormented by the thought that the reason for the countess's loneliness could be a physical disability. To dispel his doubts, he decided to hide in her bedroom. Having left the guests, Theodora entered her apartment and seemed to take off her usual mask of politeness and friendliness. Raphael did not find any flaws in her, and calmed down; falling asleep, she said: “Oh my God!” The delighted Raphael made a lot of guesses, suggesting what such an exclamation could mean: “Her exclamation, either meaningless, or deep, or accidental, or significant, could express happiness, grief, bodily pain, and concern.” . As it turned out later, she just remembered that she had forgotten to tell her broker to exchange the five percent rent for a three percent one. When Raphael revealed to her his poverty and all-consuming passion for her, she replied that she would not belong to anyone and would agree to marry only the Duke. Raphael left the countess forever and moved to Rastignac.

Rastignac, having played in a gambling house with their joint money, won twenty-seven thousand francs. From that day on, the friends went on a rampage. When the funds were wasted, Valentin decided that he was a “social zero” and decided to die.

The narrative returns to the moment when Raphael is in Taillefer's mansion. He takes a piece of shagreen leather from his pocket and expresses a desire to become the owner of two hundred thousand in annual income. The next morning, notary Cardo informs the public that Raphael has become the rightful heir of Major O'Flaherty, who died the day before. The newly rich man looked at the shagreen and noticed that it had decreased in size. He was overcome with a ghostly chill of death, now “he could do everything - and no longer wanted anything.”

Agony

One December day, an old man came to the luxurious mansion of the Marquis de Valentin, under whose leadership Raphael-Mr. Porrique once studied. The old devoted servant Jonathan tells the teacher that his master leads a reclusive life and suppresses all desires. The venerable old man came to ask the marquis to ask the minister to reinstate him, Porrique, as an inspector at a provincial college. Raphael, tired of the old man's long outpourings, accidentally said that he sincerely wished that he could achieve reinstatement. Realizing what was said, the Marquis became furious; when he looked at the shagreen, it noticeably decreased. In the theater he once met a dry old man with young eyes, while in his gaze now only echoes of outdated passions were read. The old man was leading Raphael’s acquaintance, the dancer Euphrasia, by the arm. To the questioning glance of the Marquis, the old man replied that now he was happy as a young man, and that he misunderstood existence: “All life is in a single hour of love.” Looking at the audience, Raphael fixed his gaze on Theodora, who was sitting with another admirer, still just as beautiful and cold. On the next chair with Raphael sat a beautiful stranger, attracting the admiring glances of all the men present. It was Polina. Her father, who at one time commanded a squadron of mounted grenadiers of the Imperial Guard, was captured by the Cossacks; According to rumors, he managed to escape and reach India. When he returned, he made his daughter the heiress of a million-dollar fortune. They agreed to meet at the Saint-Quentin Hotel, their former home, which kept the memories of their poverty; Polina wanted to hand over the papers that Raphael bequeathed to her when he moved.

Finding himself at home, Rafael looked longingly at the talisman and wished that Polina would love him. The next morning he was filled with joy - the talisman had not decreased, which means the contract was broken.

Having met, the young people realized that they loved each other with all their hearts and nothing would interfere with their happiness. When Raphael once again looked at the shagreen, he noticed that it had shrunk again, and in a fit of anger he threw it into the well. “What will be will be,” the exhausted Rafael decided and began to live in perfect harmony with Polina. One February day, the gardener brought the Marquis a strange find, “the dimensions of which now did not exceed six square inches.”

From now on, Raphael decided to seek a means of salvation from scientists in order to stretch the shagreen and prolong his life. The first person he went to was Mr. Lavril, the “priest of zoology.” When asked how to stop skin narrowing, Lavril replied: “Science is vast, but human life is very short. Therefore, we do not pretend to know all natural phenomena.”

The second person the Marquis turned to was the professor of mechanics, Tablet. An attempt to stop the narrowing of the shagreen by applying a hydraulic press to it was unsuccessful. Shagreen remained safe and sound. The amazed German hit the skin with a blacksmith's hammer, but there was no trace of damage left on it. The apprentice threw the skin into a coal firebox, but even from it the shagreen was taken out completely unharmed.

The chemist Jafe broke a razor while trying to cut the skin, tried to cut it with an electric current, exposed it to a voltaic column - all to no avail.

Now Valentin no longer believed in anything, began to look for damage to his body and called the doctors. For a long time he began to notice signs of consumption, now it became obvious to both him and Polina. The doctors came to the following conclusion: “a blow was needed to break the window, but who delivered it?” They attributed it to leeches, diet and climate change. Raphael smiled sarcastically in response to these recommendations.

A month later he went to the waters of Aix. Here he encountered the rude coldness and neglect of those around him. They avoided him and declared 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.

After leaving the waters, he settled in the rural hut of Mont-Dore. The people with whom he lived deeply sympathized with him, and pity is “the most difficult feeling to endure from other people.” Soon Jonathan came for him and took his master home. He threw Polina's letters to him, in which she poured out her love for him, into the fireplace. The opium solution prepared by Bianchon put Raphael into artificial sleep for several days. The old servant decided to follow Bianchon's advice and entertain his master. He convened a full house of friends, a magnificent feast was planned, but Valentin, who saw this spectacle, became furious. After drinking a portion of sleeping pills, he fell back into sleep. Polina woke him up, he began to beg her to leave him, showed a piece of skin that had become the size of a “periwinkle leaf”, she began to examine the talisman, and he, seeing how beautiful she was, could not control himself. “Polina, come here! Pauline!" - he shouted, and the talisman in her hand began to shrink. Polina decided to tear her chest and strangle herself with a shawl in order to die. She decided that if she killed herself, he would live. Raphael, seeing all this, became drunk with passion, rushed to her and died immediately.

Epilogue

What happened to Polina?

On the steamer City of Angers, a young man and a beautiful woman admired a figure in the fog over the Loire. “This light creature, now an undine, now a sylph, hovered in the air - so the word that you are looking for in vain hovers somewhere in your memory, but you cannot catch it. You would think that this is the ghost of the Lady depicted by Antoine de la Salle, wants to protect her country from the invasion of modernity."