Mind as Ruin: Balzac’s “Sarrasine”
125
without considering the historical dimensions of the formation of
modern French consciousness is not only to misinterpret the stakes of
Balzacian psychology but also to repress the crypto-religious dimension of modernity and modern consciousness that Balzac seeks to expose.
In “Sarrasine”, for example, Balzac secretly undertakes an
“excavation” of the eponymous character’s consciousness. Numerous
studies, including those inspired by Barthes’s S/Z – which many consider the definitive reading of “Sarrasine” – have attempted to resolve
the mysteries of the text without, however, managing to explain everything. Our hypothesis is that the narrative, textual and imagistic fragmentation characterizing the text is not gratuitous and does not
necessarily correspond to a postmodern or poststructuralist point of
view. Sarrasine undergoes a spiritual “catastrophe”, emerging from it
with his consciousness radically divided, with the archaic/mystified
part embodied in Sarrasine and the anonymous narrator incarnating
the modern/rational part. Sarrasine is born and raised in a prerevolutionary context, receiving a religious education with the Jesuits,
travelling to Rome to study art and eventually discovering the object
of transcendent love (la Zambinella) who drives him crazy and whose
absence of love “kills” him. As a child, Sarrasine is described as “sauvage” and “bizarre”, a family outcast, resistant to the will of authority,
including that of his father. The narrator, by contrast, is a debauched
mondain in nineteenth-century Paris. He considers la Zambinella –
without illusions and many years later – as an old man “en ruines”,
“un débris humain”, “un spectre” or “un cadavre ambulant”.
Barthes explains that the fragmentation of “Sarrasine” results
from “l’effondrement catastrophique” caused by the castration of la
Zambinella, which breaks the unity of the text, unleashing a proliferation of metonymies: “Le champ symbolique est occupé par un seul objet dont il tire son unité [...]. Cet objet est le corps humain. En somme
la nouvelle représente [...] un effondrement généralisé des
économies... Cet effondrement catastrophique prend toujours la même
forme: celle d’une métonymie effrénée”.
6
Initially, Barthes’s reading appears to be correct, revealing an
undeniable epistemic separation between the narrator and his object
___________________________
6 Roland Barthes, S/Z (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1970), p. 221. Subsequent page references to Balzac’s “Sarrasine” will be taken from this text, and will be given in brackets after the relevant quotation.
125
without considering the historical dimensions of the formation of
modern French consciousness is not only to misinterpret the stakes of
Balzacian psychology but also to repress the crypto-religious dimension of modernity and modern consciousness that Balzac seeks to expose.
In “Sarrasine”, for example, Balzac secretly undertakes an
“excavation” of the eponymous character’s consciousness. Numerous
studies, including those inspired by Barthes’s S/Z – which many consider the definitive reading of “Sarrasine” – have attempted to resolve
the mysteries of the text without, however, managing to explain everything. Our hypothesis is that the narrative, textual and imagistic fragmentation characterizing the text is not gratuitous and does not
necessarily correspond to a postmodern or poststructuralist point of
view. Sarrasine undergoes a spiritual “catastrophe”, emerging from it
with his consciousness radically divided, with the archaic/mystified
part embodied in Sarrasine and the anonymous narrator incarnating
the modern/rational part. Sarrasine is born and raised in a prerevolutionary context, receiving a religious education with the Jesuits,
travelling to Rome to study art and eventually discovering the object
of transcendent love (la Zambinella) who drives him crazy and whose
absence of love “kills” him. As a child, Sarrasine is described as “sauvage” and “bizarre”, a family outcast, resistant to the will of authority,
including that of his father. The narrator, by contrast, is a debauched
mondain in nineteenth-century Paris. He considers la Zambinella –
without illusions and many years later – as an old man “en ruines”,
“un débris humain”, “un spectre” or “un cadavre ambulant”.
Barthes explains that the fragmentation of “Sarrasine” results
from “l’effondrement catastrophique” caused by the castration of la
Zambinella, which breaks the unity of the text, unleashing a proliferation of metonymies: “Le champ symbolique est occupé par un seul objet dont il tire son unité [...]. Cet objet est le corps humain. En somme
la nouvelle représente [...] un effondrement généralisé des
économies... Cet effondrement catastrophique prend toujours la même
forme: celle d’une métonymie effrénée”.
6
Initially, Barthes’s reading appears to be correct, revealing an
undeniable epistemic separation between the narrator and his object
___________________________
6 Roland Barthes, S/Z (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1970), p. 221. Subsequent page references to Balzac’s “Sarrasine” will be taken from this text, and will be given in brackets after the relevant quotation.