Sarrasine

Sarrasine is a Nouvelle of Honore de Balzac, published for the first time in the Revue of Paris in 1830 and was published in volume in 1831 in the volume II Romance and philosophical Tales , with the editions Charles Gosselin. It consists of two accounts, an account tallies and an account enchased.

The account tallies

The rich person Lanty family organizes a festival in order to make display of his richnesses. The narrator opposes the tumultuous side, foil and étincelant festival at the winter, with his naked trees covered with snow.

The narrator is in company of a woman. They greet some important people among whom an old man whose aspect startles his/her partner. Later, he will tell him the history of this old man centenary, former singer of opera, known formerly under the name of Zambinella.

The enchased account

Sarrasine became sculptor while revolting against the education which his/her father wanted to give him. It had the childhood of a man of talent. There wanted to study only with its own way and remained sometimes whole hours plunged in confused meditations. It is only when it meets the Master Bourchardon sculptor whom it devotes with ardor to this art which will devour all its life: sculpture. Having obtained the price of sculpture rested by the marquis of Marigny, brother of Madam de Pompadour, it leaves to study in Italy where it éprend of Zambinella, a singer of opera. What Sarrasine is unaware of, it is that Zambinella is in fact a Castrat which will try to move away Sarrasine hopelessly by hiding its secrecy to him. But the young sculptor being done too pressing, Zambinella must acknowledge his true nature before being removed by his torturer, the Cicognara cardinal and his henchmen, with the orders of the pope. Insane of rage, Sarrasine wants to be avenged, but he dies cut down by the henchmen of the cardinal who says the protective of Zambinella.

Balzac covers here subject which it already tackled in Gambara and which it will dig in Massimilla Doni : the Music, the Lyric art and especially, artistic creation, its pangs, its misfortunes its pains. To create is painful says us sometimes it, inhuman (castration). But the pain is integral part of creation: it is because he suffers that Sarrazine makes a success of its most spectacular work: the representation of Zambinella the castrato.

Roland Barthes: S/Z

Ignored account, Sarrasine “was discovered” by Roland Barthes to which it must have been drawn from the oubliettes. Barthes devotes to him a famous analysis with S/Z (1970), in which the context of the Balzac world is completely evacuated with the profit of the wild imaginings of Barthes, which, for relevant that it are, bring a comprehension of Balzac neither of its work, nor of the biography of the author of the human Comedy without which one cannot apprehend thousand subtleties of a very dense text. One does not write Sarrasine , in the happy or simply balanced times (...) the text falls under a philosophical push and fantastic with clearly sociopolitic significance (fortunes, distorts it life, the life absurdity, Paris and its mysteries, the judged company, etc) which is of highest the importance a few months after the Monarchie of July.

Random links: