Mind as Ruin: Balzac’s “Sarrasine”
131
and figures (allegory, personification, metaphors) and by use of an
archaeologically structured narrative: the reader’s task is to piece together the fragments of the narrator’s lost illusion from an another era.
Returning to the question of the twenty-two-year-old half of
the personified thought, Sarrasine is himself precisely this age when
he discovers la Zambinella’s love in Rome. Is this pure coincidence,
or an important piece of evidence in the secret story of the union between the narrator / Sarrasine and la Zambinella? For it is the narrator
who insists on this detail, and why would he be so precise in stating
the age of the partner in both unions with la Zambinella if no secret
link existed between the two? Marianina, in our view, figures Sarrasine in the modern, bourgeois era. The narrator needs her feminine
identity in order to indicate discreetly to the modern and bourgeois
reading public the scandalous union of Sarrasine and la Zambinella,
while giving us the key to deciphering his identity in her. When the
narrator sees the old man for the first time after so many years, emotions and memories attached to the young Zambinella rise to consciousness alongside his current appearance, leaving the narrator
divided between two images and two sets of emotions. La Zambinella’s reality is contained in neither of the images: it is, strictly
speaking, ruptured by the historical dichotomy. Yet no scientific, historiographic or narrative convention existed at the time to capture this
split reality of his consciousness, especially with one half anchored in
an admissible love. It falls to the reader to archaeologically reconstruct the past from the present fragments of the narrator’s fractured
psyche.
Consider now the key scene where Sarrasine imagines himself
in a mystical union with la Zambinella. Rochefide’s question (“Est-ce
son mari?”) is reformulated, reminding us of the narrator’s original
objective in telling the story of Sarrasine, i.e. to solve the mystery. We
begin to perceive that la Zambinella symbolizes a spiritual or religious
kind of love for Sarrasine.
First, the context: the love is “revealed” to Sarrasine while in
Rome, and more precisely, in the Papal territory. Balzac wrote “Sarrasine” soon after the Revolution of 1830, that is, just after
“l’effondrement catastrophique” of the Restoration, in a France separated from its Old Regime / Catholic foundations – a rupture originating in the eighteenth century but marked dramatically by the
Revolutions of 1789 and 1830. Situating Sarrasine’s religious experi-
131
and figures (allegory, personification, metaphors) and by use of an
archaeologically structured narrative: the reader’s task is to piece together the fragments of the narrator’s lost illusion from an another era.
Returning to the question of the twenty-two-year-old half of
the personified thought, Sarrasine is himself precisely this age when
he discovers la Zambinella’s love in Rome. Is this pure coincidence,
or an important piece of evidence in the secret story of the union between the narrator / Sarrasine and la Zambinella? For it is the narrator
who insists on this detail, and why would he be so precise in stating
the age of the partner in both unions with la Zambinella if no secret
link existed between the two? Marianina, in our view, figures Sarrasine in the modern, bourgeois era. The narrator needs her feminine
identity in order to indicate discreetly to the modern and bourgeois
reading public the scandalous union of Sarrasine and la Zambinella,
while giving us the key to deciphering his identity in her. When the
narrator sees the old man for the first time after so many years, emotions and memories attached to the young Zambinella rise to consciousness alongside his current appearance, leaving the narrator
divided between two images and two sets of emotions. La Zambinella’s reality is contained in neither of the images: it is, strictly
speaking, ruptured by the historical dichotomy. Yet no scientific, historiographic or narrative convention existed at the time to capture this
split reality of his consciousness, especially with one half anchored in
an admissible love. It falls to the reader to archaeologically reconstruct the past from the present fragments of the narrator’s fractured
psyche.
Consider now the key scene where Sarrasine imagines himself
in a mystical union with la Zambinella. Rochefide’s question (“Est-ce
son mari?”) is reformulated, reminding us of the narrator’s original
objective in telling the story of Sarrasine, i.e. to solve the mystery. We
begin to perceive that la Zambinella symbolizes a spiritual or religious
kind of love for Sarrasine.
First, the context: the love is “revealed” to Sarrasine while in
Rome, and more precisely, in the Papal territory. Balzac wrote “Sarrasine” soon after the Revolution of 1830, that is, just after
“l’effondrement catastrophique” of the Restoration, in a France separated from its Old Regime / Catholic foundations – a rupture originating in the eighteenth century but marked dramatically by the
Revolutions of 1789 and 1830. Situating Sarrasine’s religious experi-