The Wild Ass's Skin Read online

  The mixture of boldness and tentativeness with which Balzac speaks of the talismanic power of the mind reflects his approach to the problem of the universe’s overall comprehensibility. As the preface puts it: ‘Let everyone choose between materialism and spiritualism!’ This declaration is a surprising one for those who know the mature Balzac, who within a year or two of the publication of The Wild Ass’s Skin would become a firm supporter of the Roman Catholic Church, allied with a traditional monarchy, as the necessary guarantee of social order. In the years after 1831 public opinion would also move on in various ways from its scepticism about commitment. Alongside the resurgence of an authoritarian Catholicism, new forms of progressive thought, including philosophical positivism and an undogmatic, humanitarian religiosity, also broadened their appeal, and were often combined in the socialism of the revolutionary movements of 1848. Still, it is important to take notice of the remarkable metaphysical openness Balzac expresses in the preface to The Wild Ass’s Skin. This oscillation between ‘supernaturalist’ and ‘materialist’ points of view has its roots in Balzac’s explorations of the science of his day, which undermined traditional ways of distinguishing between the ‘material’ and the ‘spiritual’. In addition to scientists such as Cuvier and Arago, who continue to enjoy high reputations today, Balzac cites with equal admiration and respect the names of other real-life figures in the scientific world, notably those of Mesmer, Lavater, and Gall. Their theories about the curative powers of magnetism, a physical force whose operations (except in special circumstances) were as invisible as those of any spiritual force; or the diagnostic value of physiognomy or phrenology, in which the physical characteristics of the face or skull offer keys to the interpretation of an inner character (not to say soul) that could not itself be localized, may be ridiculed today, but many people at the time, including Balzac, took them seriously. Their work suggested a creative way forward, because whatever its weaknesses it implied that adopting a ‘materialist’ perspective did not mean bringing all phenomena down to one disenchanted level, such that ‘spiritual’ experiences—including the ‘talismanic’ power of the mind that allowed the artist to enter into other minds alien to his own—would be explained away as illusory. Rather, intimations of the unseen and the unknown would receive a new scientific grounding. The mere prospect of such discoveries was enough to give the anticipatory intuitions and experiments of art the legitimacy Balzac needed. It enabled him to present his fictional enterprise as a serious and socially constructive project even as it set his imagination free.

  Thus it is not surprising that the years around 1830, before another set of circumstances drove him to declare his allegiance to a particular conception of social order, were the ones in which Balzac wrote almost all his fantastic tales. He would later favour more realistic modes of writing, but this metaphysical openness (and the use of objects or events that resist explanation) would never disappear. The distinguishing characteristic of Balzac’s later work, after all, will be the perception of the marvellous hidden within the ordinary and the conviction that the interest of ordinary life, from the point of view of art at least, is inexhaustible. Of course, the Balzac of 1831 would add with a smile that none of us will live long enough to know for sure. In its combination of a fantastic premise and plot with a clear-eyed analysis of social forces, The Wild Ass’s Skin is a key text for understanding the sources of Balzac’s ‘realistic’ vision, but it is also a unique achievement that is still worth pondering today.

  NOTE ON THE TEXT

  The Wild Ass’s Skin (La Peau de chagrin) was first published in August 1831 in two volumes by the associated booksellers Charles Gosselin and Urbain Canel. It consisted of a preface, a text divided into three parts (‘The Wild Ass’s Skin’, ‘The Woman without a Heart’, and ‘The Death Agony’), and fifty-three continuously numbered chapters, a ‘Conclusion’, and a ‘Moral’. A fragmentary sketch of the first scene (significantly different from the book version) had previously appeared as a free-standing article, under the title ‘The Last Napoleon’, in the weekly La Caricature in December 1830. In May 1831 the two serious literary reviews that had recently established themselves as the leading ones of the day had also published excerpts that whetted the public’s appetite for the book, the first full-length novel Balzac published after the Revolution of 1830.

  The novel sold so well that a second edition (published by Gosselin alone) appeared in September 1831, together with a dozen of the short stories that had been the focus of Balzac’s fictional writing in the previous two years, in a collection titled Philosophical Novels and Tales. The preface was replaced by a more general one to the whole collection. It was signed ‘P.’, for Philarète Chasles, a young man of letters who had written an enthusiastic review of The Wild Ass’s Skin. Much of this preface was inspired by Balzac, and in fact it reproduced (with slight changes) the bulk of the more ‘philosophical’ section in Balzac’s original preface.

  Gosselin published a new edition of the Philosophical Novels and Tales in 1833. The short stories appeared in a different order, and the text of The Wild Ass’s Skin was modified. The ‘Moral’ was dropped, a new passage describing the Lac du Bourget was added, and Balzac made a number of stylistic revisions to refine his prose.

  In early 1835 the novel was repackaged by another publisher, Werdet, in a new collection titled Philosophical Studies, presented in parallel with another collection of more realistic fiction called Studies of Manners. Chasles’ preface was replaced by a new and more elaborately programmatic introduction by another of Balzac’s friends, Félix Davin, who wrote a similar preface to the Studies of Manners. Davin laid out for the first time in public what would become the definitive tripartite classification of Balzac’s works (the third being the Analytical Studies that were still in flux). In this edition the chapter divisions in The Wild Ass’s Skin were eliminated, and the ‘Conclusion’ was changed to ‘Epilogue’.

  A luxurious illustrated edition of 1838 was the first to include the passage in Arabic script. It had no preface and changed the title of the first part of the novel to ‘The Talisman’.

  Finally, in 1846, the novel was published by Furne in the edition of the complete Comédie humaine that had begun in 1842 with Balzac’s own summing-up of his fictional ambitions in a ‘Foreword’ to the first volume. For this edition Balzac gave a number of minor characters new names drawn from his other novels. He made further small corrections (notably one in the very last line of the book) by hand on his personal copy of this edition, the last he supervised in his lifetime. It is this text, known as the Furne corrigé, that provides the basis for the standard French critical edition of the Comédie humaine (Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1976–81), and for this translation.

  TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

  I hope this translation of a strange, difficult, but fascinating book will be some help to readers in appreciating the bizarre and exuberant genius of Balzac. I have tried to make it more accessible in a modern English idiom while still not losing the flavour of 1830s Paris. The paragraphing is my own: I have divided Balzac’s sometimes dense prose in order to make it a little easier on the eye. My text and talisman has been the paperback Flammarion edition with an introduction and notes by Nadine Satiat, though I have sometimes consulted the Pléiade edition as well.

  I should like to thank Judith Luna of OUP for asking me to do the translation; the Centre des Traducteurs Littéraires in Arles, where I was able to concentrate on and complete a substantial part of the text; and also to the late Herbert J. Hunt whose Penguin translation was published in 1977 and who must have struggled, as I did, with some of the more abstruse and wild Balzacian forays into physics and chemistry and the supernatural. I am sure he would have agreed that some of Balzac’s sentences were as resistant to kneading and manipulating—stretching, bending, elongating, or compressing—as the notorious shagreen itself.

  My grateful thanks go also to my editor Patrick Coleman for his enthusiastic and expert help in rev
ising the translation, and most of all to David Constantine for generously giving up his time to make stylistic suggestions and read my text with his usual scrupulousness.

  Helen Constantine

  SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Editions and Works in French

  The standard critical edition is Honoré de Balzac, La Comédie humaine, ed. P.-G. Castex (12 vols., Paris, 1976–81). Among the various paperback editions of the French text of La Peau de chagrin, the most useful for their introductions, annotations, and bibliographies are the ones by Jacques Martineau (Paris, Livre de poche classique, 1995) and Nadine Satiat (Paris, GF, 1996).

  Two introductory guides to the novel published since these editions are Pierre Glaudes, Balzac: La Peau de chagrin (Paris, 2003) and Alain Schaffner, Honoré de Balzac: La Peau de chagrin (Paris, 1996). Current scholarship in many languages is reviewed in the journal L’Année balzacienne, and on the website founded by the Groupe d’Études balzaciennes, http://www.balzac-etudes.paris4.sorbonne.fr/balzac/index.php?section=0&part=1.

  Biography

  Carter, David R., Brief Lives: Honoré de Balzac (London, 2008).

  Hunt, H. J., Honoré de Balzac: A Biography (London, 1957; repr. with corrections New York, 1969).

  Pritchett, V. S., Balzac (London, 1973). Richly illustrated.

  Robb, Graham, Balzac: A Biography (London, 1994). A comprehensive and insightful work.

  Historical Background

  In addition to standard histories of France, the following offer lively and illuminating accounts of the period:

  Hemmings, F. W. J., Culture and Society in France 1789–1848 (Leicester, 1987). Especially informative on the institutional dimensions of cultural life (publishing practices, the cost of books, theatres and their audiences, etc.).

  Mansel, Philip, Paris Between Empires: Monarchy and Revolution 1814–1852 (London, 2001). A lively portrait of Paris society, especially that of the upper classes, based largely on contemporary diaries and memoirs.

  Criticism

  GENERAL

  Hemmings, F. W. J., Balzac: An Interpretation of La Comédie humaine (New York, 1967).

  Hunt, H. J., Balzac’s Comédie humaine (London, 1959). A chronological rather than a thematic account.

  McCormick, Diana Festa, Honoré de Balzac (Boston, 1979).

  Regrettably, neither in French nor in English is there a general work on Balzac that takes full account of recent criticism. The three following essay collections provide, however, a sampling of critical views:

  Bloom, Harold (ed.), Honoré de Balzac (Philadelphia, 2003).

  Kanes, Martin (ed.), Critical Essays on Honoré de Balzac (Boston, 1990).

  Tilby, Michael (ed.), Balzac (London, 1995).

  THE WILD ASS’S SKIN

  While many studies of Balzac mention the novel at least in passing, the following selection is limited to works in English that include a substantial discussion or introduce a fresh perspective:

  Baker, Geoffrey, Realism’s Empire: Empiricism and Enchantment in the Nineteenth-Century Novel (Columbus, Ohio, 2009).

  Bandry, Anne, ‘Romantic to Avant-Garde: Sterne in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century France’, in Peter de Voogd and John Neubauer (eds.), The Reception of Laurence Sterne in Europe (London, 2004), 32–67.

  Bell, David F., ‘Epigrams and Ministerial Eloquence: The War of Words in Balzac’s La Peau de chagrin’, Nineteenth-Century French Studies, 15: 3 (1987), 252–64.

  Brombert, Victor, The Hidden Reader: Stendhal, Balzac, Hugo, Baudelaire, Flaubert (Cambridge, Mass., 1988).

  Brooks, Peter, Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative (New York, 1984).

  Coleman, Patrick, Reparative Realism: Mourning and Modernity in the French Novel 1730–1830 (Geneva, 1998).

  Kanes, Martin, Balzac’s Comedy of Words (Princeton, 1975).

  Kelly, Dorothy, Reconstructing Woman: From Fiction to Reality in the Nineteenth-Century French Novel (University Park, Penn., 2007).

  —— Telling Glances: Voyeurism in the French Novel (New Brunswick, NJ, 1992).

  Petrey, Sandy, In the Court of the Pear King: French Culture and the Rise of Realism (Ithaca, NY, 2005).

  Sprenger, Scott, ‘Death by Marriage in Balzac’s Peau de chagrin’, Dix-Neuf, 11: 1 (2008), 59–75.

  Starobinski, Jean, Action and Reaction: The Life and Adventures of a Couple, trans. S. Hawkes and J. Fort (New York, 2003).

  Talbot, Émile J., ‘Pleasure/Time or Egoism/Love: Re-reading La Peau de chagrin’, Nineteenth-Century French Studies, 11: 1–2 (1982), 72–82.

  Watson, Janell, Literature and Material Culture from Balzac to Proust (Cambridge, 1999).

  Weber, Samuel, Unwrapping Balzac (Toronto, 1979).

  Further Reading in Oxford World’s Classics

  Balzac, Honoré de, Cousin Bette, trans. Sylvia Raphael, ed. David Bellos.

  —— Eugénie Grandet, trans. Sylvia Raphael, ed. Christopher Prendergast.

  —— Père Goriot, trans. and ed. A. J. Krailsheimer.

  Constant, Benjamim, Adolphe, trans. Margaret Mauldon, ed. Patrick Coleman.

  Maturin, Charles, Melmoth the Wanderer, ed. Douglas Grant, intro. Chris Baldick.

  Stendhal, The Red and the Black, trans. Catherine Slater, ed. Roger Pearson.

  Sterne, Laurence, Tristram Shandy, ed. Ian Campbell Ross.

  A CHRONOLOGY OF HONORÉ DE BALZAC

  1799

  Born at Tours, the son of Bernard-François Balzac and his wife Anne-Charlotte-Laure Sallambier. Put out to nurse till he is four.

  1804

  Sent as a boarder to the Pension Le Guay, Tours.

  1807–13

  A boarder at the Oratorian college in Vendôme.

  1814

  Restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in France with the accession of Louis XVIII. The Balzac family moves to Paris, where Honoré continues his education.

  1815

  Flight of Louis XVIII on Napoleon’s escape from Elba, but second Restoration of the Bourbons after Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo.

  1816

  Honoré becomes a law student and works in a lawyer’s office.

  1819

  Becomes a Bachelor of Law. The family moves to Villeparisis on the retirement of Bernard-François Balzac. Honoré stays in Paris, living frugally at the Rue Lesdiguières, in an effort to start a career as a writer. He writes a tragedy, Cromwell, which is a failure.

  1820–5

  Writes various novels, some in collaboration, none of which he signs with his own name.

  1822

  Beginning of his liaison with forty-five-year-old Laure de Berny, who remains devoted to him till her death in 1836.

  1825–8

  Tries to make money by printing and publishing ventures, which fail and saddle him with debt.

  1829

  Publication of Le Dernier Chouan, the first novel he signs with his own name and the first of those to be incorporated in the Comédie humaine. Publication of the Physiologie du mariage.

  1830

  Publication of Scénes de la vie privée. Revolution in France resulting in the abdication of Charles X and the accession of Louis-Philippe.

  1831

  Works hard as a writer and adopts a luxurious, society life-style which increases his debts. Publication of La Peau de chagrin and some of the Contes philosophiques.

  1832

  Beginning of correspondence with Madame Hanska. Publication of more ‘Scènes de la vie privée’ and of Louis Lambert. Adds ‘de’ to his name and becomes ‘de Balzac’.

  1833

  Meets Madame Hanska for the first time in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, and then in Geneva. Signs a contract for Études de mœurs au XIXe siècle, which appears in twelve volumes between 1833 and 1837, and is divided into ‘Scènes de la vie privée’, ‘Scènes de la vie de province’, and ‘Scènes de la vie parisienne’. Publication of Le Médecin de campagne and the first ‘Scènes de la vie de province’, which include Eugénie Grandet.