Zusammenfassung
Zusammenfassung von Sarrasine
Für wen es gedacht ist
For readers who love short, strange stories, artists consumed by obsession, and French writing of the nineteenth century. It also suits anyone curious about literary theory, frame stories, and the mysteries of desire and identity.
Worum es in diesem Buch geht
Sarrasine is a short tale by Honoré de Balzac, first published in 1830 in Paris. It belongs to his huge cycle of stories called The Human Comedy, which tries to map the whole of French society. Balzac wrote it as a story within a story, and that design is the key to how it works. A man at a Paris party tells a tale to a woman he wants to impress, and the tale is meant to explain a mystery in the very room where they sit.
In about fifty pages, Balzac gives you a rich family with no known past, a sculptor with a violent temper, an opera singer in eighteenth century Rome, and a love that goes terribly wrong. You get a sharp picture of Parisian high society and a vivid portrait of an artist who cannot tell his dream from the real world. You also meet a story that readers and critics have kept reopening for almost two centuries. So let us begin at the party, where a strange old figure walks into the light.
In dieser Zusammenfassung
- 1A ball and a family without a pastFree
- 2A strange old figure frightens the guests
- 3A bargain: a story for a night
- 4Sarrasine, the sculptor with a violent will
- 5Rome, the opera, and a voice
- 6Obsession grows, and powerful men stand in the way
- 7What the tale is about and how it is told
Punkt 1 von 7
A ball and a family without a past
The story opens at a grand party in a mansion in the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, a wealthy district of Paris. The tale is told by a man who sits in a window recess. Behind him is a garden in the cold. In front of him are the dancers, the jewels, and the glitter of the ball. He is between two worlds, and he feels it.
The house belongs to the Lanty family. They are very rich, and everyone in Paris society accepts their invitations. Yet nobody knows where the money comes from or where the family was before it came to France. Madame de Lanty is a woman of fading beauty. Her daughter Marianina is young, talented, and admired. Her son Filippo is handsome. Guests whisper, guess, and invent stories, but no one has a firm answer.
Balzac uses this gossip to show how Paris society works. People want to be near wealth, and they do not look too hard at where it came from. The house is a stage on which every guest plays a part. Rumors are traded like coins. The narrator knows these habits well and describes them with a dry, amused eye.
The mystery is not only about money. The narrator senses that something at the center of this family is hidden, and that it is hidden on purpose. The reader feels it too. Balzac has set a question before the tale has really begun, and the whole story that follows is built to answer it.
That’s 1 of 7 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Who’s who
- Ernest-Jean Sarrasine
- A gifted, headstrong sculptor who travels to Rome and becomes captivated by the celebrated singer La Zambinella.
- La Zambinella
- A celebrated singer on the Roman stage whose beauty and voice inspire Sarrasine's consuming fascination.
- The narrator
- A guest at a Paris ball who tells Sarrasine's tale to win Madame de Rochefide's favor.
- Madame de Rochefide
- An elegant young guest who questions the narrator about a disturbing figure at the Lanty family's party.
- Cardinal Cicognara
- A powerful Roman churchman who protects La Zambinella and stands against the sculptor's intentions.
- The Lanty family
- A wealthy Paris household whose mysterious background intrigues the society gathered at their grand ball.
About this edition
Every format is free to start, and print and large print are at cost.
- LengthAbout 13,000 words
- Reading timeAbout 55 min
- Listening time1 h 30 min
- FormatseBook, large-print eBook, audiobook, 15-minute summary
- LanguagesEnglish and 12 other languages
Questions about Sarrasine
What is Sarrasine about?
It is about a young French sculptor in Rome who falls obsessively in love with an opera singer. The tale is told by a man at a Paris party who uses it to explain a family's mystery.
Who is La Zambinella in Sarrasine?
La Zambinella is the celebrated singer on the Roman stage who captures the sculptor's heart. Sarrasine sees in the singer the ideal beauty he has long sought, and his love for that image drives the plot.
When was Sarrasine written?
Balzac published it in 1830. It is a work of fiction, though it uses real settings such as Paris and Rome, and it later became part of his cycle The Human Comedy.
Is Sarrasine hard to read?
It is short and quite readable. The tale moves between a Paris party and an earlier Rome, and the narrator's voice shapes everything you learn.
Why is Sarrasine famous in literary theory?
The critic Roland Barthes wrote a book called S slash Z in 1970 that studied the tale line by line. It became a major example of how to read a text closely and question its meanings.