The meaning of the expression shagreen skin. Shagreen leather. Screen adaptations and productions

Shagreen leather

Shagreen leather
From French: Le peau chagrin.
The expression became popular after the publication of the novel of the same name (1830-1831) by the French writer Aupore de Balzac (1799-1850). The hero of the novel becomes the owner of a piece of magical shagreen leather, which, like a magic wand, fulfills his every will - gives wealth, youth, pleasure, etc. But after each wish fulfilled, the shagreen leather irreversibly decreases in size, and the capabilities of the hero of the novel decrease accordingly.
Shagreen leather in the truest sense of the word is well-processed leather made from goatskin (not goatskin), which is used in furrier production.
Allegorically: about something that is irreversibly and constantly decreasing, disappearing (time, resources, etc.).

Encyclopedic Dictionary of winged words and expressions. - M.: “Locked-Press”. Vadim Serov. 2003.

See what “Shagreen leather” is in other dictionaries:

Leather - get an active Tehport coupon on Akademika or buy leather at a low price on sale at Tehport

- “SHAGREEN SKIN”, Russia, SPiEF (Lenfilm) / LENFILM, 1992, color, 39 min. Experimental fiction film. Cast: Olga Kondina, Andrei Khramtsov, Andrei Slavini, Natalya Fisson (see FISSON Natalya Vladimirovna), Sergei Shcherbin. Director: Igor... ... Encyclopedia of Cinema

This term has other meanings, see Shagreen skin (meanings). Shagreen leather La Peau de Chagrin The title of the novel cannot be accurately translated. In French, chagrin means both a type of leather and sadness. It could be translated as... Wikipedia

SHAGREEN LEATHER- 1992, 39 min., color, “Lenfilm”, PiEF. Genre: experimental film. dir. Igor Bezrukov, screenplay Igor Bezrukov, opera. Valery Revich, comp. Yuri Khanin. Cast: Olga Kondina, Andrei Khramtsov, Andrei Slavini, Natalia Fisson, Sergei Shcherbin... Lenfilm. Annotated Film Catalog (1918-2003)

Shagreen leather (French Peau de chagrin, chagrin): Shagreen leather (material), or shagreen (French chagrin) soft rough leather (goat, lamb, horse); also leather embossing technology, used in the processing of leather with... ... Wikipedia

Shagreen leather La Peau de Chagrin Genre: Romance

This term has other meanings, see Shagreen skin (meanings). Shagreen leather La peau de chagrin ... Wikipedia

- “Shagreen Bone” by Y. Khanon at the doors of the Mariinsky Theater Shagreen Bone ... Wikipedia

- “Shagreen Bone” by Y. Khanon at the doors of the Mariinsky Theater Shagreen Bone Genre avant-garde Director Igor Bezrukov Producer Alexey Grokhotov ... Wikipedia

- “Shagreen Bone” by Y. Khanon at the doors of the Mariinsky Theater ... Wikipedia

LEATHER, leather, women's 1. The outer cover of animal (sometimes plant) organisms. The skin was cracked from the cold. All the skin wrinkled. Snakes change their skin. Peel the skin from the apple. 2. Tanned animal skin, freed from wool. Pork suitcase... ... Ushakov's Explanatory Dictionary

Books

• Shagreen leather, Balzac Honore de. "Shagreen Skin" is one of the most striking works that make up the "Human Comedy". Open the book and you will see an unusual epigraph - a writhing black line. This is the line the hero drew...

History of creation

Balzac called this novel the “starting point” of his creative path.

Main characters

• Raphael de Valentin, young man.
• Emil, his friend.
• Pauline, daughter of Madame Godin.
• Countess Theodora, a secular woman.
• Rastignac, a young man who is Emile's friend.
• The owner of the antiquities shop.
• Taillefer, newspaper owner.
• Cardo, lawyer.
• Aquilina, courtesan.
• Euphrasinya, courtesan.
• Madame Gaudin, a ruined baroness.
• Jonathan, Raphael's old servant.
• Fino, publisher.
• Mister Porique, Raphael's former teacher.
• Mister Lavril, naturalist.
• Mister Tablet, mechanic.
• Spiggalter, mechanic.
• Baron Jafe, chemist.
• Horace Bianchon, a young doctor and friend of Raphael.
• Brisset, doctor.
• Cameristus, doctor.
• Mogredi, doctor.

Composition and plot

The novel consists of three chapters and an epilogue:

Mascot

The young man, Raphael de Valentin, is poor. Education brought him nothing. He wants to drown himself and, to pass the time until nightfall, he goes into an antiquities shop, where the old owner shows him an amazing talisman - shagreen leather. On the reverse side of the talisman there are signs in Sanskrit.; translation reads:

Possessing me, you will possess everything, but your life will belong to me. God wants it that way. Wish and your wishes will be fulfilled. However, balance your desires with your life. She is here. With every wish, I will decrease, as if your days. Do you want to own me? Take it. God will hear you. Let it be so!

Thus, any wish of Raphael will come true, but for this his life will also be shortened. Raphael agrees and plans to organize a bacchanalia.

He leaves the shop and meets friends. One of them, journalist Emil, calls on Raphael to head a wealthy newspaper and reports that he has been invited to a celebration of its establishment. Raphael sees this only as a coincidence, but not as a miracle. The feast truly fulfills all his desires. He admits to Emil that a few hours ago he was ready to throw himself into the Seine. Emil asks Rafael about what made him decide to commit suicide.

Woman without a heart

Rafael tells the story of his life.

He decides to live a quiet life in the attic of a miserable hotel in a remote quarter of Paris. The owner of the hotel, Madame Godin, in Russia, while crossing the Berezina, her baron husband went missing. She believes that someday he will return, fabulously rich. Polina, her daughter, falls in love with Rafael, but he has no idea about it. He completely devotes his life to working on two things: a comedy and a scientific treatise “The Theory of the Will”.

One day he meets young Rastignac on the street. He offers him a way to quickly get rich through marriage. There is one woman in the world - Theodora - fabulously beautiful and rich. But she doesn’t love anyone and doesn’t even want to hear about marriage. Rafael falls in love and begins to spend all his money on courtship. Theodora does not suspect his poverty. Rastignac introduces Raphael to Fino, a man who offers to write a forged memoir for his grandmother, offering a lot of money. Rafael agrees. He begins to lead a broken life: he leaves the hotel, rents and furnishes a house; every day he is in society... but he still loves Theodora. Deeply in debt, he goes to the gambling house where Rastignac was once lucky enough to win 27,000 francs, loses the last Napoleon and wants to drown himself.

This is where the story ends.

Raphael remembers the shagreen leather in his pocket. As a joke, to prove his power to Emil, he asks for six million francs. At the same time, he takes measurements - puts the skin on a napkin and traces the edges with ink. Everyone falls asleep. The next morning, the lawyer Cardo comes and announces that Raphael’s rich uncle, who had no other heirs, died in Calcutta. Raphael jumps up and checks his skin with the napkin. The skin shrank! He's terrified. Emil states that Raphael can make any wish come true. Everyone makes requests half seriously, half jokingly. Rafael doesn't listen to anyone. He is rich, but at the same time almost dead. The talisman works!

Agony

Beginning of December. Rafael lives in a luxurious house. Everything is arranged so that no words are spoken. Wish, Want etc. On the wall in front of him there is always a framed piece of shagreen, outlined in ink.

A former teacher, Mr. Porique, comes to Rafael, an influential man. He asks to secure a position for him as an inspector at a provincial college. Rafael accidentally says in a conversation: “I sincerely wish...”. The skin tightens and he screams furiously at Porika; his life hangs by a thread.

He goes to the theater and meets Polina there. She is rich - her father has returned, and with a large fortune. They meet in Madame Godin's former hotel, in that same old attic. Rafael is in love. Polina admits that she has always loved him. They decide to get married. Arriving home, Raphael finds a way to deal with the shagreen: he throws the skin into the well.

April. Rafael and Polina live together. One morning a gardener comes, having caught shagreen from the well. She became very small. Rafael is in despair. He goes to see the learned men, but everything is useless: the naturalist Lavril gives him a whole lecture on the origin of donkey skin, but he can’t stretch it; mechanic Tablet puts it in a hydraulic press, which breaks; the chemist Baron Jafe cannot break it down with any substances.

Polina notices signs of consumption in Rafael. He calls Horace Bianchon, his friend, a young doctor, who convenes a consultation. Each doctor expresses his own scientific theory, they all unanimously advise going to the water, placing leeches on your stomach and breathing fresh air. However, they cannot determine the cause of his illness. Raphael leaves for Aix, where he is treated poorly. They avoid him and declare almost to his face that “since a person is so sick, he should not go to the water.” A confrontation with the cruelty of secular treatment led to a duel with one of the brave brave men. Raphael killed his opponent, and the skin shrank again. Convinced that he is dying, he returns to Paris, where he continues to hide from Polina, putting himself into a state of artificial sleep in order to last longer, but she finds him. Burnt with desires at the sight of her, he dies.

Epilogue

In the epilogue, Balzac makes it clear that he does not want to describe Polina’s further earthly path. In a symbolic description, he calls her either a flower blooming in a flame, or an angel coming in a dream, or the ghost of a Lady, depicted by Antoine de la Salle. This ghost seems to want to protect his country from the invasion of modernity. Speaking about Theodora, Balzac notes that she is everywhere, as she personifies secular society.

Screen adaptations and productions

• Shagreen skin () - teleplay by Pavel Reznikov.
• Shagreen skin () - short film by Igor Apasyan
• Shagreen Bone () is a short pseudo-documentary feature film by Igor Bezrukov.
• Shagreen Skin (La peau de chagrin) () - a feature film based on the novel by Honoré de Balzac, directed by Berliner Alain.
• Shagreen skin () - radio play by Arkady Abakumov.

Notes

Links

• Shagreen leather in the library of Maxim Moshkov
• Boris Griftsov - translator of the novel into Russian

Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

See what “Shagreen leather” is in other dictionaries:

Leather - get an active Tehport coupon on Akademika or buy leather at a low price on sale at Tehport

The legend of shagreen leather came to us from the darkness of centuries. Its essence is that with each of our desires (a desire is a thought that generates an action), we spend a part of ourselves; This means that the more desires, the sooner our life decreases.

Reverse logic: the more measured and inactive we live, the more likely we are to live a long time.

This image is the fruit of worldly wisdom, and a typical case when the visible is taken for the real. After all, everything is so obvious! Youth is taken as the starting point - the time of the most violent and uncontrollable desires. The more you “allowed” yourself in your youth (burning the candle at both ends at once), the less remains for the rest of your life. And in all cases, life goes downhill, downhill.

If the same scheme is expanded wider - from birth to death - it becomes even more convincing. Starting his journey from practically nothing (well, what is a fertilized egg? Without a microscope it’s hard to even believe in it), a person develops, gains strength, reaches a peak in his youth - and then slowly slides down to turn into practically nothing in feeble old age.

“The first step of a child is the first step towards death.”

True, this scheme contradicts the second law of thermodynamics, because it is not clear where the incredible growth energy comes from at the first stage. The child eats a lot, and yet the food energy is not enough to satisfy and compensate for growth. But today we see this contradiction, but before we simply did not notice it.

And the second contradiction is about the essence of desires. From the principle of shagreen skin it follows that one must avoid desires and strong feelings. Peace is an ideal. The less contacts with the outside world, the more balanced the inner world, the better...

But desire (we repeat) is a thought that gives rise to action! That action that alone can accumulate energy potential and create energy surplus value, and thereby maintain energy potential at the same level. Only by acting can we save ourselves. But with the condition (and you already know this too) that these actions should not go beyond the boundaries of what is permitted.

Let us recall one more circumstance: the energy potential of a newborn is so great that it is almost impossible to surpass it. This means we can take it as the maximum. Optimal maximum. The maximum is within the limits of what is permitted.

This is a measure. And a landmark. A guide for life.

So the task of each of us has become clear: to use our energy potential in such a way, to correct it with additional energy, so that its level does not deviate far from the original one. And since the energy potential is either consumed or accumulated, this line should resemble a sine wave. A sinusoid that rolls within the boundaries of what is permitted, each time with its peak trying to reach the standard - the level of the energy potential of a newborn. (And reaches out! - in moments of inspiration.)

Such a life schedule cannot but cause mistrust. How! And a newborn, a young man in the prime of life, and an old man have the same level of energy potential?..

Imagine - yes. It’s just that energy potential expresses itself differently at different ages. It provides growth to a newborn, the ability to act to transform the world to a young man, and wisdom to an old man. Intellectual effort is as energy-intensive as the emotion of a young man. The height to which a young man soars in a burst of inspiration is also accessible to an old man who slowly climbs to it through the steps of reason. Of course, our old man should be practically healthy.

Dedicated to the problem of the collision of an inexperienced person with a society infested with vices.

Encyclopedic YouTube

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✪ Shagreen Leather

✪ Book of this week. Issue 2. Honore de Balzac. Shagreen leather

Subtitles

History of creation

Balzac called this novel the “starting point” of his creative path.

Main characters

• Raphael de Valentin, young man.
• Emil, his friend.
• Pauline, daughter of Madame Godin.
• Countess Theodora, a secular woman.
• Rastignac, a young man who is Emile's friend.
• The owner of the antiquities shop (antique dealer).
• Taillefer, newspaper owner.
• Cardo, lawyer.
• Aquilina, courtesan.
• Euphrasinya, courtesan.
• Madame Gaudin, a ruined baroness.
• Jonathan, Raphael's old servant.
• Fino, publisher.
• Mister Porique, Raphael's former teacher.
• Mister Lavril, naturalist.
• Mister Tablet, mechanic.
• Spiggalter, mechanic.
• Baron Jafe, chemist.
• Horace Bianchon, a young doctor and friend of Raphael.
• Brisset, doctor.
• Cameristus, doctor.
• Mogredi, doctor.

Composition and plot

The novel consists of three chapters and an epilogue:

Mascot

The young man, Raphael de Valentin, is poor. Education has given him little; he is unable to provide for himself. He wants to commit suicide, and, waiting for the right moment (he decides to die at night, throwing himself from a bridge into the Seine), he enters an antiquities shop, where the old owner shows him an amazing talisman - shagreen leather. On the reverse side of the talisman there are embossed signs in “Sanskrit” (in fact, it is an Arabic text, but it is Sanskrit that is mentioned in the original and in the translations); translation reads:

Possessing me, you will possess everything, but your life will belong to me. God wants it that way. Wish and your wishes will be fulfilled. However, balance your desires with your life. She is here. With every wish, I will decrease, as if your days. Do you want to own me? Take it. God will hear you. Let it be so!

Thus, any wish of Raphael will come true, but for this his life will also be shortened. Raphael entered into an agreement with an old antique dealer (the motive of a deal with the devil, a connection with Goethe’s Faust), who had been saving his strength all his life, depriving himself of desires and passions, and wished him to fall in love with a young dancer.

The hero plans to organize a bacchanalia (the skin shrinks to such a size that you can fold it and put it in your pocket).

He leaves the shop and meets friends. His friend, journalist Emil, calls on Rafael to head a wealthy newspaper and reports that he has been invited to the celebration of its establishment. Raphael sees this only as a coincidence, but not as a miracle. The feast truly fulfills all his desires. He admits to Emil that a few hours ago he was ready to throw himself into the Seine. Emil asks Rafael about what made him decide to commit suicide.

Woman without a heart

Rafael tells the story of his life.

The hero was brought up in strictness. His father was a nobleman from the south of France. At the end of the reign of Louis XVI he came to Paris, where he quickly made his fortune. The revolution ruined him. However, during the Empire he again achieved fame and fortune thanks to his wife's dowry. The fall of Napoleon was a tragedy for him, because he was buying up lands on the border of the empire, which were now transferred to other countries. A long trial, in which he also involved his son, a future doctor of law, ended in 1825, when M. de Villele “unearthed” the imperial decree on the loss of rights. Ten months later, the father died. Raphael sold all his property and was left with 1120 francs.

He decides to live a quiet life in the attic of a miserable hotel in a remote quarter of Paris. The owner of the hotel, Madame Godin, has a baron husband who has gone missing in India. She believes that someday he will return, fabulously rich. Polina, her daughter, falls in love with Rafael, but he has no idea about it. He completely devotes his life to working on two things: a comedy and a scientific treatise “The Theory of the Will”.

One day he meets young Rastignac on the street. He offers him a way to quickly get rich through marriage. There is one woman in the world - Theodora - fabulously beautiful and rich. But she doesn’t love anyone and doesn’t even want to hear about marriage. Rafael falls in love and begins to spend all his money on courtship. Theodora does not suspect his poverty. Rastignac introduces Raphael to Fino, a man who offers to write a forged memoir for his grandmother, offering a lot of money. Rafael agrees. He begins to lead a broken life: he leaves the hotel, rents and furnishes a house; every day he is in society... but he still loves Theodora. Deeply in debt, he goes to the gambling house where Rastignac was once lucky enough to win 27,000 francs, loses the last Napoleon and wants to drown himself.

This is where the story ends.

Raphael remembers the shagreen leather in his pocket. As a joke, to prove his power to Emil, he asks for two hundred thousand francs in income. Along the way, they take measurements - put the skin on a napkin, and Emil traces the edges of the talisman with ink. Everyone falls asleep. The next morning, the lawyer Cardo comes and announces that Raphael’s rich uncle, who had no other heirs, died in Calcutta. Raphael jumps up and checks his skin with the napkin. The skin shrank! He's terrified. Emil states that Raphael can make any wish come true. Everyone makes requests half seriously, half jokingly. Rafael doesn't listen to anyone. He is rich, but at the same time almost dead. The talisman works!

Agony

Beginning of December. Rafael lives in a luxurious house. Everything is arranged so that no words are spoken. Wish, Want etc. On the wall in front of him there is always a framed piece of shagreen, outlined in ink.

A former teacher, Mr. Porrique, comes to Rafael, an influential man. He asks to secure a position for him as an inspector at a provincial college. Rafael accidentally says in a conversation: “I sincerely wish...”. The skin tightens as he screams furiously at Porrika; his life hangs by a thread.

Rafael goes to the theater and meets Polina there. She is rich - her father has returned, and with a large fortune. They meet in Madame Godin's former hotel, in that same old attic. Rafael is in love. Polina admits that she has always loved him. They decide to get married. Arriving home, Raphael finds a way to deal with the shagreen: he throws the skin into the well.

End of February. Rafael and Polina live together. One morning a gardener comes, having caught shagreen from the well. She became very small. Rafael is in despair. He goes to see the learned men, but everything is useless: the naturalist Lavril gives him a whole lecture on the origin of donkey skin, but he can’t stretch it; mechanic Tablet puts it in a hydraulic press, which breaks; the chemist Baron Jafe cannot break it down with any substances.

Polina notices signs of consumption in Rafael. He calls Horace Bianchon, his friend, a young doctor, who convenes a consultation. Each doctor expresses his own scientific theory, they all unanimously advise going to the water, placing leeches on your stomach and breathing fresh air. However, they cannot determine the cause of his illness. Raphael leaves for Aix, where he is treated poorly. They avoid him and declare almost to his face that “since a person is so sick, he should not go to the water.” A confrontation with the cruelty of secular treatment led to a duel with one of the brave brave men. Raphael killed his opponent, and the skin shrank again. Convinced that he is dying, he returns to Paris, where he continues to hide from Polina, putting himself into a state of artificial sleep in order to last longer, but she finds him. When he sees her, he lights up with desire and rushes at her. The girl runs away in horror, and Rafael finds Polina half-naked - she scratched her chest and tried to strangle herself with a shawl. The girl thought that if she died, she would leave her lover alive. The life of the main character is cut short.

Epilogue

In the epilogue, Balzac makes it clear that he does not want to describe Polina’s further earthly path. In a symbolic description, he calls her either a flower blooming in a flame, or an angel coming in a dream, or the ghost of a Lady, depicted by Antoine de la Salle. This ghost seems to want to protect his country from the invasion of modernity. Speaking about Theodora, Balzac notes that she is everywhere, as she personifies secular society.

Screen adaptations and productions

• Albera Capellani
• Shagreen skin () - teleplay by Pavel Reznikov.
• Shagreen skin () - short film by Igor Apasyan
• Shagreen bone () is a short pseudo-documentary fiction film by Igor Bezrukov.
• Shagreen skin (La peau de chagrin) () - a feature film based on the novel by Honoré de Balzac, directed by Berliner Alain.
• Shagreen skin () - radio play by Arkady Abakumov.

Notes

Links

• Shagreen leather in Maxim Moshkov's library
• Boris Griftsov - translator of the novel into Russian

Shagreen leather

From French: Le peau chagrin.

The expression became popular after the publication of the novel of the same name (1830-1831) by a French writer Support de Balzac(1799-1850). The hero of the novel becomes the owner of a piece of magical shagreen leather, which, like a magic wand, fulfills his every will - gives wealth, youth, pleasure, etc. But after each wish fulfilled, the shagreen leather irreversibly decreases in size, and the capabilities of the hero of the novel decrease accordingly.

Shagreen leather in the truest sense of the word is well-processed leather made from goatskin (not goatskin), which is used in furrier production.

Allegorically about what is irreversibly and constantly decreasing, disappearing (time, resources, etc.).