Sarrasine by Honoré de Balzac

First published: 1831 (English translation, 1899)

Type of work: Psychological realism

Time of work: The 1820’s

Locale: Paris

Principal Characters:

• The Narrator, who knows the Lantys’ secret
• A young Dancer, who loves the narrator
• Ernest-Jean Sarrasine, a French sculptor
• Zambinella, an Italian opera singer
• Count de Lanty, an extremely wealthy resident of Paris
• Countess de Lanty, his wife
• Marianina de Lanty, their daughter
• Filippo de Lanty, their son

The Novel

As the action of this short but intricately plotted novella begins, the narrator is attending an evening reception given by Count and Countess de Lanty. The narrator has a very pessimistic if not fatalistic view of life. For example, he sees many trees partially covered by snow in front of the Lantys’ house. This tranquil winter scene, however, reminds him of nothing less than a “dance of the dead.” He then describes the refined elegance of this party as a “dance of the living.” The narrator affirms that such opposing realities as life and death, love and violence, and happiness and bitter frustration always exist side by side. He also states that one should not confuse appearance with reality. The story of Sarrasine and Zambinella will, in fact, demonstrate the tragic consequences of mistaking appearance for reality.

Many mysteries surround the members of the Lanty family, which is composed of the Count, the Countess, and their children, Marianina and Filippo. All four speak five languages fluently, and no one knows their country of origin or even the source of their immense wealth. They seem to be very happy, although each becomes extremely disturbed whenever an unidentified elderly gentleman, always dressed in black, comes unexpectedly to their parties. At this particular reception, the mysterious man appears while Marianina is singing an Italian concert aria. The Lantys all turn pale. The partygoers soon realize that this person holds extraordinary power over the Lantys, who fear him for reasons that others do not understand.

A young dancer and the narrator then begin to discuss this secretive family. He tells her that things are rarely what they seem to be at the Lanty residence. When the girl praises an exquisite portrait representing Adonis, he informs her that the model for this painting was a woman and not a man. The young dancer is mystified, but she does not ask him to explain this apparent contradiction. Only at the end of Sarrasine does she discover that the model was Zambinella, an Italian opera singer. The dancer entreats the narrator, whom she loves, to tell her and her friend Mme de Rochefide the story of the elderly man whom the four Lantys fear.

The name of this gentleman is Ernest-Jean Sarrasine. During his adolescence, Sarrasine studied sculpture. Bouchardon, his teacher, strove both to cultivate Sarrasine’s artistic talents and to control the tendency toward violence in his pupil’s character. For six years, under Bouchardon’s direction, Sarrasine learned much about art, but, unfortunately, his personality never changed. During a visit to Rome, the young Sarrasine attended an operatic performance at which the celebrated Zambinella was singing. He so admired her ideal and classical beauty that he wanted to rush onto the stage in order to embrace her. His sole desire became to “possess” Zambinella, as he explained it to himself. While listening to the narrator’s tale, the young dancer quickly realizes that Sarrasine’s concept of love is both violent and dangerous.

The narrator’s tale takes center stage in the novella, as events of sixty years before are “replayed”: When Sarrasine finally meets Zambinella at a dinner party, he praises her physical beauty, but he remains indifferent to her feelings. At the party, she tries repeatedly to discourage Sarrasine, then becomes convinced that he will kill her if she rejects his love. Sarrasine learns from another dinner guest that Zambinella is not really a woman but rather a castrato, one who dresses as a woman and sings female roles in Italian operas. Sarrasine does not accept this explanation, and he hires criminals to abduct Zambinella. Zambinella, afraid of being beaten or raped by Sarrasine, finally admits the truth to the young sculptor. The egotistical and cruel Sarrasine spares Zambinella’s life and then announces his decision to renounce all pleasures and human emotions for the rest of his life. At the end of this novella, the narrator states that Zambinella was the granduncle of Marianina and Filippo. The Lantys’ fear of Sarrasine is thus perfectly understandable.

The Characters

The four members of the Lanty family do not differ appreciably from the numerous other wealthy men and women who people La Comedie humaine (1829-1848; The Human Comedy, 1895-1896), the integrated series of novels and short stories in which Honore de Balzac sought to describe all levels of French society in the years immediately following the restoration of the monarchy in 1815. The four lovers in Sarrasine, however, are all fully developed characters with individual personalities. In this novella, Balzac contrasts very effectively these two sets of lovers. Sarrasine and Zambinella are both egotistical and superficial, whereas the urbane narrator and the young dancer by their wit and moral sensitivity create a favorable impression on Balzac’s readers.

Unlike Sarrasine, the narrator never tries to dominate his beloved. Instead, he fully respects her freedom of choice. The narrator also has a very refined sense of humor. Tongue in cheek, he promises to tell her the story of Sarrasine if she will agree to sleep with him. The dancer understands that this is not a serious proposal, and she responds with a witty double entendre. She assures the narrator that she has “an ardent desire to know this secret.” Her ambiguous rejoinder may refer either to the very private act of love or to the secret of Sarrasine. After answering the narrator, she leaves him and waltzes with others at the party. The following day, the narrator, with whom she has not slept, willingly tells her the story of Sarrasine. The narrator and the young dancer are morally responsible characters with whom the reader can identify. At the end of Sarrasine, both sympathetic lovers rejoice that moral progress has occurred since the singing days of Zambinella. Young men are no longer deformed so that they can interpret the operatic roles once sung by castrati.

The other lovers, however, are quite unsympathetic. Zambinella expresses general hatred for both men and women, and he views the world as “a desert” for him. From others Zambinella seeks nothing more than superficial companionship and conversation. Indeed, he frequently attends dinner parties primarily so that he will not have to think about his profound unhappiness. When Sarrasine asks him why he deceived him for so long, Zambinella explains that he did so only in order “to please his friends who wanted to laugh.” It is only near the end of Sarrasine that the reader discovers why such a sensitive and gifted singer has become so cynical and superficial. Although Zambinella is a victim of physical deformation, his extreme bitterness makes it difficult for others, including the narrator and the young dancer, to comprehend fully the depth of his suffering.

Zambinella’s pessimistic view of life is, at least, understandable. Sarrasine, however, is a totally cruel and irrational character. During his years of study with Bouchardon, Sarrasine developed no social graces and never learned how to treat others with respect. Upon hearing Zambinella sing for the first time, he decides “to be loved by her or to die,” an extreme reaction with which no sensible reader can identify. Once Sarrasine has Zambinella abducted, he considers neither the severe legal consequences for his crime nor the terror which the victim will certainly feel. When he finally learns that Zambinella is a castrato, Sarrasine is so self-centered that he expresses no compassion. Indeed, Sarrasine thinks about only his own offended vanity. Sarrasine is an extraordinary grotesque whose cruelty has caused much suffering for three generations of the Lanty family.

Critical Context

Honore de Balzac wrote Sarrasine in 1831, near the beginning of his literary career. When he finally put the novels and short stories in The Human Comedy into specific categories, he included Sarrasine in his “Scenes of Parisian Life.” Like other works in this series, Sarrasine is rich with details that evoke a particular time and place. A critic, however, should not stress too much the distinctively Parisian elements in Sarrasine, for this novella, with profound psychological insight, explores universal emotions.

Sarrasine was rescued from obscurity by the critic Roland Barthes, who devoted an entire book, S/Z (1970; English translation, 1974), to Balzac’s novella. In S/Z , Barthes analyzes Balzac’s text minutely, dividing the novella into 561 sections ranging in length from a single word to a dozen lines or more. Barthes undertook this project during the heyday of structuralism, with its aspirations to infuse literary studies with the rigor of the sciences, and S/Z bristles with talk of narrative “codes.” As a brilliantly sustained act of reading, however, S/Z transcends critical dogma. Indeed, few works of literature in any language have enjoyed the loving attention which Barthes lavishes on Sarrasine; thanks to S/Z, Balzac’s novella remains in circulation.

Bibliography

Barthes, Roland. S/Z, 1974.

Bertault, Philippe. Balzac and “The Human Comedy,” 1963.

Festa-McCormick, Diana. Honore de Balzac, 1979.

Hunt, Herbert J. Balzac’s “Comedie humaine,” 1959.

Pritchett, V.S. Balzac, 1973.

Zweig, Stefan. Balzac, 1946.