Zusammenfassung
Zusammenfassung von Das Chagrinleder
Für wen es gedacht ist
For readers who love a story with a fable at its heart, old Paris, moral puzzles and Balzac's close eye for money and ambition.
Worum es in diesem Buch geht
The Magic Skin is a novel by Honoré de Balzac, first published in Paris in 1831. Balzac was thirty-one years old, deep in debt, and already writing at a furious pace. The book made his name, and it later became one of the first pieces of his huge cycle of novels called The Human Comedy. It mixes sharp portraits of Paris with a fantasy about an object that grants every wish.
The story follows Raphaël de Valentin, a young man of good family and no money, who is ready to end his life. A strange old dealer offers him a scrap of leather that will give him whatever he desires. The price is that each wish makes the leather smaller, and his life shrinks with it. You get a tale of gamblers, feasts, poverty, love and doctors, and a hard question about how much of life we spend on wanting. Let us begin on the night when Raphaël has nothing left.
In dieser Zusammenfassung
- 1A last coin lost at the tablesFree
- 2An antique shop offers a dangerous bargain
- 3The first wish is granted, and the skin shrinks
- 4Raphaël tells his friend how he fell
- 5Wanting and living cannot both be spent
- 6A fable told in the voice of a realist
Punkt 1 von 6
A last coin lost at the tables
The novel opens in Paris in the early years of the 1830s. A young man climbs the stairs of a gambling house in the Palais-Royal, a district of arcades, shops and vice. He is Raphaël de Valentin, and he has one coin left. He leaves his hat with the doorkeeper, as the rules require, and goes in to stake the coin.
Balzac describes the gaming room with a cold, almost comic detail. There are the bored attendants, the silent players and the old men who seem part of the furniture. Raphaël bets his last piece and loses it. Nobody looks at him twice, and the loss means nothing to anyone in the room except him.
He goes back for his hat and finds that the doorkeeper hands him a different one, old and battered. It is a small insult, and it adds to his sense that the world has no place for him. He walks out into the street with nothing, and he has already decided what he will do. The Seine is close.
He does not hurry. He wants to wait until night, so that the act will draw no crowd, and he drifts along the quays. Here Balzac gives us the first hint of Raphaël's character. He is proud, educated and sensitive, and he has been ruined by his own dreams as much as by bad luck. The reader is pulled into his despair and then, just as he nears the river, into a doorway that will change the story.
That’s 1 of 6 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Questions about Das Chagrinleder
What is The Magic Skin about?
It is about Raphaël de Valentin, a ruined young man who receives a piece of leather that grants every wish. Each wish shrinks the leather and shortens his life, so he must weigh desire against survival.
What does the magic skin symbolize?
The skin stands for the life energy that every desire uses up. As it shrinks, it makes visible the cost of ambition, pleasure and greed, and it shows that wanting and living draw on the same supply.
When was The Magic Skin written?
Balzac published it in 1831, in Paris. It is a work of fantasy and not a true story, though it paints a detailed picture of the city and its society at that time.
Is The Magic Skin part of The Human Comedy?
Yes. Balzac later placed it among his Philosophical Studies inside The Human Comedy, his large cycle of linked novels about French life. Some characters, such as Rastignac, also appear elsewhere in the cycle.
Is The Magic Skin hard to read?
It is fairly easy to follow in plot. Readers find a strong story and sharp scenes.