The Wild Ass's Skin: (La Peau De Chagrin) (Classics)
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Product Description
Product Description
Balzac is concerned with the choice between ruthless self-gratification and asceticism, dissipation and restraint, in a novel that is powerful in its symbolism and realistic depiction of decadence.
About the Author
Balzac was born in 1799, the son of a civil servant. At the age of thirty - heavily in debt and with an unsucessful past behind him - he started work on the first of what were to become a total of ninety novels and short stories that make up The Human Comedy. He died in 1850.
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First Sentence
Towards the end of October 1830 a young man entered the Palais-Royal1 just as the gambling-houses were opening in conformity with the law which protects an essentially taxable passion. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Towards the end of October 1830 a young man entered the Palais-Royal1 just as the gambling-houses were opening in conformity with the law which protects an essentially taxable passion. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
If you only read one Balzac novel read this one .In its conception and execution as complete as Anna Karenina. It tells the story of a initially destitute young man comtemplating suicide, great opening scene where he gambles his last money, he then enters a curiosity shop where he is given an animal skin which will give him everything he desires but will shrink in response to the degree of his request. Thus the novel explores how we are damaged by attainment of the things we desire, all Balzac is good but in my view this is the best
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Until very recently I had shied away from Balzac, for a number of admittedly stupid reasons: the feeling that I still had loads of unexplored English authors (as if it's an excuse to read the work of less gifted authors for the sole reason that they write/wrote in English) , the prejudice that Balzac (worse still: just about any French novelist) rarely wrote a sentence of less than half a page, ... I'm happy to say I have been and shall remain cured of these silly notions.
Having first read Old Goriot (Classics) I eagerly began 'The wild ass's skin'. This is one of Balzac's 'Philosophical studies', as Balzac put it himself: 'In the Studies of Manners I shall have depicted human feelings and their action, life and its tendencies. In the Philosophical Studies I shall explain the cause of those feelings and the foundation on which life rests.' (letter to Madame Hanska of 26 October 1834). An ambitious undertaking, by any standard, but I tend to think that Balzac pretty much accomplished what he set out to do, or at least came very close.
'The wild ass's skin' is all about the human will, and in Balzac's universe every human being has a certain amount of 'Willpower', which one may 'husband carefully or expend rashly' (introduction, p. 10) with a direct effect on one's lifespan. The wild ass's skin symbolizes exactly that: it can grant any wish, but each wish fulfilled makes it shrink a little further, signifying the ever-shortening lifespan of its owner. The main character Raphael buys the skin form an old antiquarian who has lived to an extreme old age (by abstaining from any desire of wish), while Raphael at first uses it to live to excess, and in his frantic chase to satisfy each and every whim he even rejects the true love of the innocent (one might say 'simple') Pauline.
Now dreary as this may sound in my meagre attempt at summarizing the basic plot, rest assured that the novel itself is another matter entirely. It's peopled with many colourful characters, captures the mood of Paris in the 1830s (when Louis-Philippe I had just come to power after the July Revolution) , moves along at a rapid pace and - surprise! - hardly contains any sentences at all longer than a couple of lines (by the way, the translation by H.J. Hunt is very good). I heartily recommend it to each and every one, and will meanwhile start reading Cousin Bette: Poor Relations Pt. 1 (Classics)!
Having first read Old Goriot (Classics) I eagerly began 'The wild ass's skin'. This is one of Balzac's 'Philosophical studies', as Balzac put it himself: 'In the Studies of Manners I shall have depicted human feelings and their action, life and its tendencies. In the Philosophical Studies I shall explain the cause of those feelings and the foundation on which life rests.' (letter to Madame Hanska of 26 October 1834). An ambitious undertaking, by any standard, but I tend to think that Balzac pretty much accomplished what he set out to do, or at least came very close.
'The wild ass's skin' is all about the human will, and in Balzac's universe every human being has a certain amount of 'Willpower', which one may 'husband carefully or expend rashly' (introduction, p. 10) with a direct effect on one's lifespan. The wild ass's skin symbolizes exactly that: it can grant any wish, but each wish fulfilled makes it shrink a little further, signifying the ever-shortening lifespan of its owner. The main character Raphael buys the skin form an old antiquarian who has lived to an extreme old age (by abstaining from any desire of wish), while Raphael at first uses it to live to excess, and in his frantic chase to satisfy each and every whim he even rejects the true love of the innocent (one might say 'simple') Pauline.
Now dreary as this may sound in my meagre attempt at summarizing the basic plot, rest assured that the novel itself is another matter entirely. It's peopled with many colourful characters, captures the mood of Paris in the 1830s (when Louis-Philippe I had just come to power after the July Revolution) , moves along at a rapid pace and - surprise! - hardly contains any sentences at all longer than a couple of lines (by the way, the translation by H.J. Hunt is very good). I heartily recommend it to each and every one, and will meanwhile start reading Cousin Bette: Poor Relations Pt. 1 (Classics)!
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A truly great novel and one that readers' familiar with Balzac's work may find very interesting. I think the novel occupies a unique place in his fiction as it gives an insight into the development of his style of realism, but is also one of his most imaginative and fantastic plot lines. This combination allows him to create a stark allegory on human nature and our desires. Surely one of the greatest novels ever written.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Fantastic tale that's too tangential to be a classic
A young, borderline destitute Parisian walks into a gambling house to stake his last coin on the roulette wheel. Read more
Published 3 months ago by jacr100
horrible story brilliantly told
The strange story of a suicidal young man who is given a magic ass's skin by an antique dealer who explains it will grant his every wish, yet will shrink on each use, and his life... Read more
Published 10 months ago by sally tarbox
BALZAC DISTILLED
Honore de Balzac divided his vast Human Comedy into "Studies of Manners" and "Philosophical Studies" - and in "The Wild Ass's Skin" we have the earliest and most important of the... Read more
Published on 20 Feb 2009 by Deborah H. Maccoby
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