Shagreen leather. “Shagreen Skin” - a unique masterpiece of genius

History of creation

Balzac called this novel the “starting point” of his creative path.

Main characters

  • Raphael de Valentin, young man.
  • Emil, his friend.
  • Pauline, daughter of Madame Godin.
  • Countess Theodora, a secular woman.
  • Rastignac, a young man who is Emile's friend.
  • The owner of the antiquities shop.
  • Taillefer, newspaper owner.
  • Cardo, lawyer.
  • Aquilina, courtesan.
  • Euphrasinya, courtesan.
  • Madame Gaudin, a ruined baroness.
  • Jonathan, Raphael's old servant.
  • Fino, publisher.
  • Mr. Poriquet, former teacher Raphael.
  • Mister Lavril, naturalist.
  • Mister Tablet, mechanic.
  • Spiggalter, mechanic.
  • Baron Jafe, chemist.
  • Horace Bianchon, a young doctor and friend of Raphael.
  • Brisset, doctor.
  • Cameristus, doctor.
  • Mogredi, doctor.

Composition and plot

The novel consists of three chapters and an epilogue:

Mascot

The young man, Raphael de Valentin, is poor. Education brought him nothing. He wants to drown himself and, to pass the time until nightfall, he goes into an antiquities shop, where the old owner shows him an amazing talisman - shagreen leather. On the reverse side of the talisman there are signs in Sanskrit.; translation reads:

Possessing me, you will possess everything, but your life will belong to me. God wants it that way. Wish and your wishes will be fulfilled. However, balance your desires with your life. She is here. With every wish, I will decrease, as if your days. Do you want to own me? Take it. God will hear you. Let it be so!

Thus, any wish of Raphael will come true, but for this his life will also be shortened. Raphael agrees and plans to organize a bacchanalia.

He leaves the shop and meets friends. One of them, journalist Emil, calls on Raphael to head a wealthy newspaper and reports that he has been invited to a celebration of its establishment. Raphael sees this only as a coincidence, but not as a miracle. The feast truly fulfills all his desires. He admits to Emil that a few hours ago he was ready to throw himself into the Seine. Emil asks Rafael about what made him decide to commit suicide.

Woman without a heart

Rafael tells the story of his life.

He decides to live a quiet life in the attic of a miserable hotel in a remote quarter of Paris. The owner of the hotel, Madame Godin, in Russia, while crossing the Berezina, her baron husband went missing. She believes that someday he will return, fabulously rich. Polina, her daughter, falls in love with Rafael, but he has no idea about it. He completely devotes his life to working on two things: a comedy and a scientific treatise “The Theory of the Will”.

One day he meets young Rastignac on the street. He offers him a way to quickly get rich through marriage. There is one woman in the world - Theodora - fabulously beautiful and rich. But she doesn’t love anyone and doesn’t even want to hear about marriage. Rafael falls in love and begins to spend all his money on courtship. Theodora does not suspect his poverty. Rastignac introduces Raphael to Fino, a man who offers to write a forged memoir for his grandmother, offering a lot of money. Rafael agrees. He begins to lead a broken life: he leaves the hotel, rents and furnishes a house; every day he is in society... but he still loves Theodora. Deeply in debt, he goes to the gambling house where Rastignac was once lucky enough to win 27,000 francs, loses the last Napoleon and wants to drown himself.

This is where the story ends.

Raphael remembers the shagreen leather in his pocket. As a joke, to prove his power to Emile, he asks for six million francs. At the same time, he takes measurements - puts the skin on a napkin and traces the edges with ink. Everyone falls asleep. The next morning, the lawyer Cardo comes and announces that Raphael’s rich uncle, who had no other heirs, died in Calcutta. Raphael jumps up and checks his skin with the napkin. The skin shrank! He's terrified. Emil states that Raphael can make any wish come true. Everyone makes requests half seriously, half jokingly. Rafael doesn't listen to anyone. He is rich, but at the same time almost dead. The talisman works!

Agony

Beginning of December. Rafael lives in a luxurious house. Everything is arranged so that no words are spoken. Wish, Want etc. On the wall in front of him there is always a framed piece of shagreen, outlined in ink.

A former teacher, Mr. Porique, 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.

He goes to the theater and meets Polina there. She is rich - her father has returned, and with a large fortune. They meet in Madame Gaudin's former hotel, in the same old attic. Rafael is in love. Polina admits that she has always loved him. They decide to get married. Arriving home, Rafael finds a way to deal with the shagreen: he throws the skin into the well.

April. Rafael and Polina live together. One morning a gardener comes, having caught shagreen from the well. She became very small. Rafael is in despair. He goes to see the learned men, but everything is useless: the naturalist Lavril gives him a whole lecture on the origin of donkey skin, but he can’t stretch it; mechanic Tablet puts it in a hydraulic press, which breaks; the chemist Baron Jafe cannot break it down with any substances.

Polina notices signs of consumption in Rafael. He calls Horace Bianchon, his friend, a young doctor, who convenes a consultation. Each doctor expresses his scientific theory, they all unanimously advise going to the water, putting leeches on your stomach and breathing fresh air. However, they cannot determine the cause of his illness. Raphael leaves for Aix, where he is treated poorly. They avoid him and declare almost to his face that “since a person is so sick, he should not go to the water.” A confrontation with the cruelty of secular treatment led to a duel with one of the brave brave men. Raphael killed his opponent, and the skin shrank again. Convinced that he is dying, he returns to Paris, where he continues to hide from Polina, putting himself into a state of artificial sleep in order to last longer, but she finds him. Burnt with desires at the sight of her, he dies.

Epilogue

In the epilogue, Balzac makes it clear that he does not want to describe Polina’s further earthly path. In a symbolic description, he calls her either a flower blooming in a flame, or an angel coming in a dream, or the ghost of a Lady, depicted by Antoine de la Salle. This ghost seems to want to protect his country from the invasion of modernity. Speaking about Theodora, Balzac notes that she is everywhere, as she personifies secular society.

Screen adaptations and productions

  • Shagreen leather() - teleplay by Pavel Reznikov.
  • Shagreen skin () - short film by Igor Apasyan
  • Shagreen Bone () is a short pseudo-documentary feature film by Igor Bezrukov.
  • Shagreen Skin (La peau de chagrin) () - a feature film based on the novel by Honoré de Balzac, directed by Berliner Alain.
  • Shagreen skin () - radio play by Arkady Abakumov.

Notes

Links

  • Shagreen leather in the library of Maxim Moshkov
  • Boris Griftsov - translator of the novel into Russian

Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Dedicated to the problem of the collision of an inexperienced person with a society infested with vices.

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History of creation

Balzac called this novel the “starting point” of his creative path.

Main characters

  • Raphael de Valentin, young man.
  • Emil, his friend.
  • Pauline, daughter of Madame Godin.
  • Countess Theodora, a secular woman.
  • Rastignac, a young man who is Emile's friend.
  • The owner of the antiquities shop (antique dealer).
  • Taillefer, newspaper owner.
  • Cardo, lawyer.
  • Aquilina, courtesan.
  • Euphrasinya, courtesan.
  • Madame Gaudin, a ruined baroness.
  • Jonathan, Raphael's old servant.
  • Fino, publisher.
  • Mister Porique, Raphael's former teacher.
  • Mister Lavril, naturalist.
  • Mister Tablet, mechanic.
  • Spiggalter, mechanic.
  • Baron Jafe, chemist.
  • Horace Bianchon, a young doctor and friend of Raphael.
  • Brisset, doctor.
  • Cameristus, doctor.
  • Mogredi, doctor.

Composition and plot

The novel consists of three chapters and an epilogue:

Mascot

The young man, Raphael de Valentin, is poor. Education 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 reverse side of the talisman there are embossed signs in “Sanskrit” (in fact, it is an Arabic text, but it is Sanskrit that is mentioned in the original and in the translations); 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. Let it be so!

Thus, any wish of Raphael will come true, but for this his life will also be shortened. Raphael entered into an agreement with an old antique dealer (the motive of a deal with the devil, a connection with Goethe’s Faust), who had been saving his strength all his life, depriving himself of desires and passions, and wished him to fall in love with a young dancer.

The hero plans to organize a bacchanalia (the skin shrinks to such a size that you can fold it and put it in your pocket).

He leaves the shop and meets friends. His friend, journalist Emil, calls on Rafael to head a wealthy newspaper and reports that he has been invited to the celebration of its establishment. Raphael sees this only as a coincidence, but not as a miracle. The feast truly fulfills all his desires. He admits to Emil that a few hours ago he was ready to throw himself into the Seine. Emil asks Rafael about what made him decide to commit suicide.

Woman without a heart

Rafael tells the story of his life.

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 Emil, 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!

Agony

Beginning of December. Rafael lives in a luxurious house. Everything is arranged so that no words are spoken. Wish, Want etc. On the wall in front of him there is always a framed piece of shagreen, outlined in ink.

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 Godin'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, Rafael 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.

Epilogue

In the epilogue, Balzac makes it clear that he does not want to describe Polina’s further earthly path. In a symbolic description, he calls her either a flower blooming in a flame, or an angel coming in a dream, or the ghost of a Lady, depicted by Antoine de la Salle. This ghost seems to want to protect his country from the invasion of modernity. Speaking about Theodora, Balzac notes that she is everywhere, as she personifies secular society.

Screen adaptations and productions

  • Albert Capelani
  • Shagreen skin () - teleplay by Pavel Reznikov.
  • Shagreen skin () - short film by Igor Apasyan
  • Shagreen bone () is a short pseudo-documentary fiction film by Igor Bezrukov.
  • Shagreen skin (La peau de chagrin) () - a feature film based on the novel by Honoré de Balzac, directed by Berliner Alain.
  • Shagreen skin () - radio play by Arkady Abakumov.

Notes

Links

  • Shagreen leather in Maxim Moshkov's library
  • Boris Griftsov - translator of the novel into Russian

I. Talisman

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 kind of 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 Pont Royal. 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 mental torment young man 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 decrease How are 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 the 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 in order 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.

II. 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, studying 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 a 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 the realization of 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 only 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 became 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 " III. 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 everything in himself desires. The venerable old man came to ask the marquis to lobby the minister for the reinstatement of him, Porrica, 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 in his position. Realizing what had been said. ", the marquis became furious when he looked at the shagreen, it noticeably shrunk. 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 love each other with all their hearts and nothing interferes 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 shagreen by influencing it hydraulic press was not successful. 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. Chemist Jafe, broke a razor trying to cut the skin, tried to cut it electric shock, subjected to the action of 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 did 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 steamship "City of Angers" a young man and beautiful woman admired the 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 [...] One might think that this is the ghost of the Lady depicted by Antoine de la Salle, wants to protect his country from the invasion of modernity."

« 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. Let it be so!

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 Emil, 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 Godin'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, Rafael 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.


Balzac O., Shagreen leather.
I. Talisman
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 the 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.
II. 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 a house “where all of Paris visited” and introduced him to the charming Countess Theodora, 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 the realization of 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 only 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 overwhelmed by the ghostly chill of death, now “he could do everything - and no longer wanted anything.” III. 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 love each other with all their hearts and nothing interferes 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 the narrowing of the skin, Lavril replied: “Science is vast, but human life is very short. Therefore, we do not pretend to know all the phenomena of nature.” 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 the razor while trying to cut the skin, tried to cut it with 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: “it took a blow to break the window, but who did 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! Polina!" - 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."

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