5 h 45 minAudiobook14 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
In a village enclosed by snow and mountains, two people love the same being—and see someone different.
In Honoré de Balzac’s mystical novel Seraphita, a remote Norwegian village holds a mystery that ordinary distinctions cannot contain. Minna, the pastor’s daughter, sees Seraphitus as a man. Wilfrid sees Seraphita as a woman. Both seek closeness and understanding, yet the being they love points them toward a love beyond possession and bodily desire.
Above the village, Minna and Seraphitus climb through a snowy mountain landscape that reveals the distance between them. Below, Pastor Becker introduces the ideas of Swedish religious thinker Emanuel Swedenborg. Within this spiritual framework, earthly things carry deeper meanings, and human life is only one stage of existence. Love and religious doubt meet the longing to rise beyond ordinary life.
What you’ll discover
- A being beyond categories Meet Seraphita, whose appearance unsettles the distinctions Minna and Wilfrid bring to love.
- Love without possession Follow two admirers as their desire for closeness meets a radically different understanding of love.
- The soul in question Explore Swedenborg’s spiritual ideas through Becker’s account and the novel’s searching religious conversations.
- Snow, height, and stillness Enter a northern landscape where mountains and distance give spiritual separation a physical presence.
- Longing beyond earthly life Consider the tension between human attachment and Seraphita’s devotion to a life beyond desire.
Who will love it
Readers who love spiritual questions, northern landscapes and strange, luminous characters. It suits anyone curious about Swedenborg, about angels and visions, or about how a great novelist turns belief into drama.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A fiord at the edge of the world
- Two figures climb the forbidden peak
- The same being, seen as a woman
- The pastor tells the story of Swedenborg
- A child of heaven and a night of temptations
- The great argument at the tea table
- Spring, a man's ambition and a refusal
- What the story is really about
- How Balzac tells this story
Who’s who
- SeraphitaA being of seventeen, seen as a youth by Minna and as a woman by Wilfrid, who lives in the Swedish castle and longs for heaven.
- MinnaThe pastor's gentle daughter, who loves Seraphitus with a pure devotion and wants only to follow and to suffer in his place.
- WilfridA strong and learned man with a stormy past, who has fled to Norway and now desires Seraphita and the peace she seems to hold.
- Monsieur BeckerThe kindly pastor of Jarvis, a reader of Swedenborg and of books on witchcraft, who explains everything and believes little.
- DavidSeraphita's servant of more than eighty years, who comes to life only when his mistress is near and who guards her faithfully.
- SwedenborgThe Swedish scientist and visionary whose teachings shape the book, and who is said to have appeared at Seraphita's birth.
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- Large print paperback
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Seraphita
by Honoré de Balzac · 1834
In a Norwegian fiord village, one being appears as a young man to Minna and as a woman to Wilfrid.
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In short
Seraphita is a mystical novel by Honoré de Balzac, the French writer who died in 1850. He dedicated it to Madame Eveline de Hanska, who had asked him for a book about a figure she and he had both dreamed of since childhood.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A fiord at the edge of the world
The novel opens with geography before it brings in a single person. Balzac describes the Norwegian coast as a lace of granite inlets, and he settles on the Strom-fiord, halfway between Trondhjem and Christiansand. The sea forces its way in through a maze of reefs. At the far end the river Sieg tumbles down in cascades, and across the water rises the great mountain called the Falberg.
Below the mountain, in the valley of Jarvis, lies a village of some two hundred wooden houses. The villagers live by fishing, by their small pastures and by patient farming. Roads and sea passages are so difficult that the outside world rarely reaches them. They are cut off, but they are content, like bees in a forest.
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What is Seraphita about?
A being in a Norwegian fiord village seems to be a youth to Minna and a woman to Wilfrid. Around this figure the book sets love, doubt and a vision of the spiritual path drawn from Swedenborg.
Who was Swedenborg and why is he in the book?
Emanuel Swedenborg was a Swedish scientist who, from 1745, wrote of visions of heaven and hell. Balzac uses his teachings as the book's foundation, and the pastor's account of his life explains the ideas behind Seraphita.
Why does Seraphita have two names?
Minna sees a young man, Seraphitus, while Wilfrid sees a woman, Seraphita. The double name shows that each person sees what their own love and longing bring, and that the being belongs to neither sex.
The author
Honoré de Balzac
1799–1850 · French novelist
Honoré de Balzac was a French novelist and playwright born in Tours in 1799. He lived and worked in Paris, where he died in 1850. He wrote The Magic Skin in 1831, Eugénie Grandet in 1833, and Father Goriot in 1835. Many of his works belong to La Comédie humaine.
More by Honoré de Balzac
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