The Wild Asss Skin: (La Peau De Chagrin) (Classics)

Wild Asss Skin by Honoré Balzac . The Wild Ass's Skin (Penguin Classics): Honoré de Balzac The Wild Ass's Skin: (La Peau De Chagrin) (Classics).
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Fuse Book Review: Classic Supernatural Satire — “The Wild Ass’s Skin”

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French Author Spotlight: Balzac

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The Wild Ass's Skin by Honoré De Balzac (1977, Paperback)

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You already recently rated this item. Your rating has been recorded. Write a review Rate this item: Preview this item Preview this item. Harmondsworth ; New York: English View all editions and formats Summary: The imaginative breadth and the intellectual depth of [this novel] make it one of the greatest of Balzac's "Etudes philosophiques'. My personal favorites among the Balzacian treasure trove tend to be those that gleam with a fantastical, semi-tawdry shine—there are a half dozen of his lesser known books that I devoured with delirious delight.

The Wild Ass's Skin

But the secret is out: Thirty years ago, I discovered another of my epiphanic Balzacs, the most perversely compelling of them all, The Fatal Skin in a translation by Atwood H. I still have the Signet paperback edition, the date of when I finished the book scrawled on the inside cover. Would this Faustian fantasia of excess retain for me the mind-blowing zing of decades ago? Would I, older and more disgruntled, be disappointed with what had once captivated me as a hell of a fictional ride?

But the novel is more than a winning sales maneuver.

See a Problem?

Raphael de Valentin comes from fallen aristocratic stock, a penniless would-be author struggling to complete a grand philosophical work about the will while courting a beautiful, wealthy woman who is superficiality incarnate. Things go terribly wrong, and Raphael heads off to the Seine to kill himself. Before throwing himself into the drink, he stumbles into a giant antique store think of every episode of Antiques Roadshow packed into one building , owned by a shriveled centenarian who has swapped experiencing life for the disinterested thrill of owning it in the form of objects.

Seeing that Raphael is suicidal, the shopkeeper offers him an enchanted animal skin from the days of King Solomon—the shagreen will grant its owner any wish, but once that desire becomes a reality, the miraculous leather shrinks, as does the lifetime of its owner. The more you want, the sooner you die. Dreaming of having Paris at his feet, Raphael accepts the set-up and takes the skin. He gives himself enormous wealth and a title and is pursued by an innocent, virtuous beauty who fell in love with him when he was poor.

Reader Interactions

Yet Raphael becomes increasingly isolated, fighting to protect himself from his appetites as well as the desires of others. Every wish brings him closer to death. As Patrick Coleman points out in his informative introduction, what was striking about the book when it was published is that Balzac did not set his fairy tale back in time, as was customary, but plunks it in contemporary Paris, a city then in political and cultural turmoil. Balzac clearly relishes the ironic short circuiting: Here are your ideas of society, your excessive desires, your intemperance, the joys that kill, your griefs that make you live too intensely; for evil is perhaps nothing but violent pleasure.

Who can determine the point where delight becomes an evil or evil a delight?


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  4. The wild ass's skin = (La peau de chagrin) (Book, ) [leondumoulin.nl].

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