Acerca Del Encogimiento 12p

That Sudden Shrinking Feeling: Exchange in La Peau de chagrin
Author(s): Warren Johnson

Source: The French Review, Vol. 70, No. 4 (Mar., 1997), pp. 543-553
Published by: American Association of Teachers of French
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/398242
Accessed: 15-04-2020 22:33 UTC
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms
American Association of Teachers of French is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,

preserve and extend access to The French Review
This content downloaded from 200.3.149.5 on Wed, 15 Apr 2020 22:33:38 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
THE FRENCH REVIEW, Vol. 70, No. 4, March 1997 Printed in U.S.A.
That Sudden Shrinking

Feeling: Exchange in
La Peau de chagrin
by Warren Johnson
FAR MORE THAN AN ASSORTMENT Of quaint curios valuable for their obso-
lescence, the antiquarian's shop that the suicidal Raphael de Valentin
stumbles upon reflects the desultory wanderings of a man devoted to
accumulating erudition. "Vouloir nous bruile et Pouvoir nous d6truit; mais
SAVOIR laisse notre faible organisation dans un perp tuel 6tat de calme"
(85). Thus runs this most quotable of Balzacian homilies, so memorable
that its accuracy as a reflection of the implied author's thought has often
been taken for granted. At once infinitives and substantives, the trinity of
vouloir, pouvoir, and savoir teeters between representing unbounded ca-
pacity (both grammatically and quantitatively) and circumscribed forces
that mutually constrain each other. Wishing, desiring, willing, insist-
ing-vouloir figures the flux of energies that attempt to bring the outside
within the individual's grasp, to impose his stamp on the inescapably
alien. More ambiguously, pouvoir seems at first to be the centripetal
counterforce to the outward movement of willing, the oppressive con-
strictions of societal and governmental disciplinary mechanisms that reg-
iment and control the self. But for the antiquarian, pouvoir designates the
individual capacity to act, to implement the subject's will, a power that
he has trained himself to repress. Savoir, according to the antiquarian,
has been his moderating overseer, the conserver of vital energies that
denies the stresses of wanting and the consequences of being able. By in-
tellectualizing desire, the centenarian has achieved a balancing of forces
that leaves him content with the cozy jumble of his mind and store.
Savoir promises a middle term, an exemplary resolution of the problem
posed by the novel of saving and spending, or so has been a usual read-
ing. Instead, I will argue that the speech of the antiquarian, frequently
taken as a Rosetta stone to unlock the meaning of this baroque text,
needs to be set against the discourse of the engineer Planchette, which
cannot be dismissed (in the way some have done) as naive positivism.
The onager's skin, by its progressive diminution, affords an understand-
ing of how will and vital energy in La Peau de chagrin operate within con-
543
544 FRENCH REVIEW
straints similar to
change-systems in
Raphael, in ignori
loir-"Eh bien, oui,
the leather talism
conforms to the a
the contemplative
his "oriental" reje
to the skin and it
enough to accept t
addition to unbou
of savoir, but one
the term: a faithfu
stock of energy in
grammatically, vo
seeing (voir). "Ma
"Voir, n'est-ce pas
Raphael lies in its
reads fluently wha
of its power rema
precisely what Rap
In presenting to R
clearly not offerin
may hope that th
Raphael the incen
tremes of a rapid
the wizened sage m
for the skin-and n
himself in at the m
For the essential characteristic of the skin is not to have essential charac-
teristics, to not be an object that can be given or exchanged, but rather to
act as a pure contract ("ce contrat propos6 par je ne sais quelle puis-
sance," in the antiquarian's own words [85]), that is, as pure representa-
tion. Rigid like a sheet of metal when Raphael first reads the inscription
(84), it becomes once lu et approuve by the young man "souple comme un
gant," molding itself to his being (89). Without a clearly defined shape,
its successive reductions, from the size of a fox's pelt to that of ever small-
er leaves, suggest the loss of wisdom and strength in its possessor.' As
non-object, once contractually accepted, it cannot be stretched, pulver-
ized, alienated, sold, transferred, or exchanged.2 Nor does anyone except
Raphael believe in and care about its self-proclaimed proleptic powers. It
is the exact opposite of the fetishized commodity, whose hypertrophic
exchange-value according to Marx derives from a fundamentally social
process of the circulation of goods and hence signification.
As pure representation, the skin has no causal link with the unfurling
EXCHANGE IN LA PEAU DE CHAGRIN 545
of Raphaal's life. Death, according to the

indefinitely, try as the nouveau riche hedo
the old man abjures agreeing to the ter
"Peut-on arreter le cours de la vie? L'hom
mort?" (85). What is inevitable is the exhau
tion, which will leave the self in a comat
as Raphael will dream of spending the re
that sleeping is at least existing.
Raphael has not learned his lesson from t
to maintain while clinging to Foedora. The
tion figures an expenditure without retu
side of the coin from the retention witho
on himself after becoming bound by the
in order to fritter away on the "femme sa
island home of his family remains, is alwa
it turns an irreversible monetary trade i
him from an emotional exchange with
endowed with a heart. In both excessiv
retention, the result is a dead end that ca
lost is precisely the production of value th
ters. In swinging wildly from one extrem
mimic the antiquarian's aloof apostasy fr
the movement that is the source of the itinerant collector's savoir.
If nothing can stretch out the image of Raphaal's remaining days, nei-
ther the hydraulic presses nor hammers nor chemicals that fail to distend
the magic skin, then despite his skill in oriental languages he has funda-
mentally misread the inscription on its back. The destruction of the talis-
man is not a cause but an effect of Raphael's decline. By trying to have
the scientists reverse the skin's contraction, the desperate owner of the
talisman has mistakenly fetishized it, believing its material condition
influences his existence, when in truth the artifact merely reflects it. The
shrinking skin does not kill Raphael, but only predicts the moment of his
death. By its nature incapable of entering into commodity-based ex-
change-systems, the skin proposes instead a perfect and balanced ex-
change of an unwanted savoir for a life sentence of vegetation, effectively
withdrawing the pouvoir it ostensibly promises.
When Raphael in desperation takes the onager's skin to Planchette, the
celebrated professor of mechanics, for help in arresting its incessant dim-
inution, he receives instead a lecture of the nature of the universe as flux.
Nature for Planchette is a given that humans should seek to understand
and imitate, not change. Content like the antiquarian to observe dispas-
sionately what he encounters, to live for knowledge, he views ironically
those who treat the natural world as some kind of gigantic son-et-lumikre
show, like the nitwit who asked for the eclipse to be started all over
again. For him, "Tout est mouvement. La pensde est un mouvement. La
546 FRENCH REVIEW
nature est 6tablie sur le mouvement. La mort est un mouvement dont les
fins nous sont peu connues" (244).
Though fundamental, movement remains indeterminate. "Quant au
mouvement en lui-meme, je vous le d clare avec humilite, nous sommes
impuissants ' le d finir" (243). Even according to the Newtonian me-
chanics of Balzac's age, movement is a relation, not an absolute, a process
of repositioning that has no meaning except as defined in terms of other
relative quantities such as force, time, and space. Since the shrinkage of
the skin can be perceived only over time-the tracing of its position rep-
resents its shape at a given moment-the all-important space occupied
by the skin signifies only through a process of contraction or change.
Thus the skin illustrates how through the working of exchange-systems
even space takes on a dependent position, deriving its meaning from
other factors equally in flux. "Mouvement, locomotion, changement de
lieu?" muses Planchette. "Quelle immense vanite cach e sous les mots!
Un nom, est-ce donc une solution?" (243). More solution de continuite than
resolution, the word mouvement describes merely a continuous negation
of the relation that just obtained, a statement that the object is no longer
where it was. Where it was, there shall I be: the task of the scientist in
Planchette's view is to follow faithfully this movement, to trace what
remains fundamentally beyond understanding. Mouvement resists defini-
tion, for like le hasard, it is at best a convenient shorthand for avowing
our incapacity to comprehend.
This breakdown in the functioning of scientific savoir derives from
Planchette's view of movement as referring to the originary indivisibility
of force or energy. "Un mouvement, quel qu'il soit, est un immense pou-
voir. Le pouvoir est un, comme le mouvement, l'essence meme du pou-
voir" (244). God himself, source of all power, may be essentially move-
ment. Far from being a blind disciple of the positivism Comte had started
to preach a few years before the novel's publication, Planchette, through
the strength of his negative capability, provides a corrective to the anti-
quarian's ultimately misguided attempt to repudiate pouvoir, a rejection
that will darken Raphadl's listless final days. Planchette's view of
exchange-based relativism provides the real moral center and middle
term to the extremes of expenditure and conservation.
The failure of Planchette's colleagues in the face of the skin's recalci-
trant inelasticity should not be read as narratorial scoffing at his mus-
ings, any more than the antiquarian's longevity ought to recommend the
renunciation of all desire, at least in the fashion Raphael will end up
practicing it. For the explosion of the hydraulic press when the skin will
not distend and the inefficacy of fire to expand it by the molecular mo-
tion of heat reinforce Planchette's Pyrrhonic belief that there are more
things in heaven and on earth than are dreamed of in mortals' philoso-
phies. When the chemist Japhel exclaims in frustration with the skin that
it leads him to believe in the devil, Planchette responds simply, "Et moi g
Dieu" (252). While for others the invu

received ideas, the supernaturalism of
that it belongs to a divine sphere abo
As elsewhere in the Etudes philosoph
part of a continuum with the world a
Raphael pays no more heed to Plan
initially to the antiquarian's proselyti
nizing that flux, change, and exchan
inherent constituents of being could
ing of the contract to which he has b
quarian's exhortations to renounce de
of exchange as origin of value, as not
and tales imply, can help us avoid the
fallen of seeing Raphaal's fetishization
systems in general, notably those ass
necessarily are doomed to exhaustion
Criticism of the 1831 novel tends to
posit a Balzac astride the horns of a d
dissipation of forces, a death-in-life
d&che's terms), and those who see i
exhaustion of energy. This latter, "en
ble anachronism, permeated by a Zeit
erly the closing decades of the cen
Esseintes, as well as by a misapplie
fetishism in the treatment of the fata
This "entropic" reading is articulated
En s'incamant dans la Peau et en se rep

d grade dans le temps: comme toute
et de decomposition de la matiere. To
echange, et tout &change atteste la d p
From misleading premises, Bayard's a

warranted conclusions. Raphaal's de
novel makes clear as he rushes to his
suicide, has not been dissipated, only
rate inventions and methodical routine
isman. Once he has abandoned the
disillusioned retirement absorbs m
actively restraining the velleity of desir
The skin, as Bayard acknowledges, is
is fundamentally immaterial and can
general law of decomposition of matt
The finiteness of the skin even if it c
which Planchette reminds Raphaal-
their limits.4 "Vouloir nous brfile": co
548 FRENCH REVIEW
inevitable results
exhaustion resemb
dissipation of the
of Thermodynami
operation of excha
not follow, least of all in Balzac, that loss is the unavoidable result of
exchange.
That loss that the text supposedly demonstrates is used to buttress the
Marxian critique that Linda Rudich and Samuel Weber impute to Balzac
through the story of Raphaal's premature mummification. La Peau de cha-
grin for Rudich allegorizes an industrial system that forces the individual
to consume himself in order to live (66). Weber, misreading like Raphadl
the causal relation between the young man and the talisman, asserts that
the skin offers to exchange wealth for Raphaal's vital substance, a move
that parallels the fetishistic capitalist mode of production. In rightly see-
ing, as have numerous other critics," the centrality of the motif of ex-
change to this novel, Weber attempts to force a linkage between the
circulation of money and goods as the France of the early July Monarchy
knew it with a necessary depletion of the proletariat's energies and the
eventual destruction of the capitalist system, a reading of La Peau that
can at best be called stretched.
Jean-Pierre Richard, as always, provides a cogent, balanced, and ele-
gantly concise interpretation that avoids the heavy-handedness of the crit-
ics discussed above. Richard points out how Balzac is faced with the di-
lemma that the only way to avoid death is not to live, and therefore the
choice is between two forms of not being. Escaping from these two poles
requires a middle path of wanting, being able to want, without desiring,
an equilibrium in practice difficult to achieve (52). Madeleine Ambriere,
with her impressive command of the Balzacian corpus, sees La Peau de
chagrin as only a stage in the evolution of the novelist's thinking as Balzac
will later come to see an alternation of expending and recuperating as the
solution to the what he initially saw as a problematic alternative.
Vital force or energy in Balzac is structurally homologous with money,
as Lucienne Frappier-Mazur observes, since both are general equivalents
in closed exchange-systems where neither can be dissipated or lost to the
systems as a whole. Invoking Jean-Joseph Goux's concept of the general
equivalent, the perfect sign of value dissociated from its material mani-
festations (e.g., gold), allows us to connect Raphaal's self-induced stasis
with the Balzacian critique of hoarding.6 For Balzac, avarice is a social
crime, as Marco Diani observes, because money is essentially movement
and circulation and thus closely linked to the expenditure of psychic
energies. Elsewhere in the Comedie humaine, exchange is seen as essential
to a life that does not degenerate into the grotesque, as does Raphaal's.
The stockpiling of cash, a nefarious effect of the bourgeois desire to save
in order to acquire some of the biens nationaux after the Revolution (made
explicit in Le Curd de village), crippl

father and eventually herself. The
exchange of marriage that twists t
Gamard in Le Curd de Tours is explic
commercial exchanges: "La morale
egalement l'individu qui consomme
tion without production or vice versa
the production of value, in the case
wealth and the willingness to recip
generous Pauline.
Yet it is misleading to see the skin it
Franqoise Gaillard), for while the t
own economy, representing the depl
phael's expenditure. In fact, what t
Raphaal's refusal to enter into the ex
receiving. Though not a Harpagon, hi
disbursements obviate the craving fo
Pauline at arm's length until the clima
in a vain attempt to stop the witherin
have been cathected or put into cir
Pauline becomes turned back on itself
Yet when Raphael bursts open the
half-strangled young woman, he exp
melodramatic tradition. The skin d
knowledge that his entire attempt to
exchange has been misguided, because
ation of what is worthwhile and mean
exchange-systems, whether of the sp
guage, or physics (energy), is to estab
attractiveness. The determination of v
comparison of a series of differences
circulation of goods, affections, or fo
most obviously those for stocks, are d
tion involving both supply and desire
similar permutable mechanism drives
was increasingly the case in the nine
stantly changing balancing rather th
predetermined mode of the Ancien R6
ue-negotiating function of these sy
change-system is liable to break down
such as that which constricts Raph
determinate talisman, are essentially
plex, and "chaotic," informed by chan
that the will is a material force lik
between the psychic and physical w
550 FRENCH REVIEW
sophiques participat
ics and psychology
lent that marks va
analysis a sense of
ing of the necessit
tional exchanges th
but flows like an a
the skin. In desirin
the thread the Fate
subvert the inevita
Both the dissipat
financial black hole
systems that cann
accurately the happ
Raphael must choo
diture figured by
While in the Paris
be sold for so much
Bixiou declares that
trouverez-vous aill
tre les pens es .. ."
mercial transaction
the enabling condi
guage have lost the
Bourgeois King. Th
reserve, a life of p
ity differs cruciall
or speculation in a
Rapha6l's self-tor
appearances and sh
calculating stratage
tal by affecting to
approach may be, a
and exchange it ho
pha6l's ill-fated wa
bling does not dep
courage, and intell
Impoverished by h
the skin his accept
of the gambling de
to lose. Though bor
trat retains its ety
tractus = "drawn t
contract is to repr
vices and the term
in this novel designates a non-negotiab

last coin onto the tapis vert, Raphael su
make chance unfailingly beneficial for t
bling differs radically from that of the
the latter are stipulated, but those of th
an implied consent while being driven
The contract of wagering remains uncer
one's hat upon entering a mandatory cl
essentially less appealing to the young
question as nature supposedly does a va
total legibility in love as well: "Aimer u
par elle constitue un vrai contrat dont
entendues" (142). The impossibility, or so
gain blocks his relation with Pauline
made possible by becoming the possessor
attainable, since his life "will belong" t
terms of the contract as its inscription
that closes it brooks no contradiction.
If for Balzac contractual obligations imply a clamping down in vital
energies, the alternative, as we have seen, lies in opening oneself to the
flux of circulation and exchange. A nostalgia for fixed points of reference
in monarchy and the deity does not inhibit Balzac's admiration for the
energetic individual such as Vautrin who intrinsically holds no alle-
giance to pre-Revolutionary centers of moral gravity. But the social fluid-
ity that allows for the rise of a Vautrin or a Rastignac is what permits
their reconciliation with Balzacian values by their eventual inclusion and
recuperation within the framework of the social order. The very open-
ness of a society dominated by bourgeois ascendancy, its adherence at a
fundamental level to the principle of exchange, is the enabling condition
of its strength and perpetuation.
Exchange, in this broad sense, of course is not the exclusive province of
capitalism, just as trade (the restricted meaning of exchange) occurs in all
but the most primitive subsistence economies. But inasmuch as the de-
centralized nascent industrialism of the early 1830s and attendant reli-
ance on competition imply mutability and fluidity, those forces that seek
merely to hoard and subtract from the process of exchange create only
impoverishment, not a return to an authoritarian order.
The Balzac wary of paper currency because of its abstraction from a
material object-the very move that enables it to become a general equiv-
alent-recognized the threat inherent in exchange-systems of falsity,
fraud, and forgery, as Christopher Prendergast describes. For Prender-
gast, Balzac's moralizing position that assumes the necessity of exchange
contradicts his critique of the uses of money he depicts. But negative
examples can serve as a cautionary tale without implying an attack on
the underlying system. They in fact convey through this conte ?' dormir
552 FRENCH REVIEW
debout of a magic
come to predomin
The same concern
change as the onl
manent authority
within an econom
modities but as gu
the Romantic exce
pletely innocent)
sponsibility to ren
contemporary life
phaal's stock of en
ideal realist text.
despite its supern
guillotined women
never one to be p
forgery are twin
exchange of story
atic that transactio
Planchette's lectur
as the common me
dancing flames of
Appealing as the a
for some readers
cepting it as the te
tion of what the n
death. In seeking
Rapha l necessari
value-significance
grin from the per
Balzacian belief th
ing circulation as a
GENEVA, IL
Notes
'The editors of the Pleiade edition point to an apparent contradiction in the fact that ini
tially the skin regenerates when Raphail gouges out a piece but obstinately refuses t
respond to any mechanical or chemical abuse that the scientists can dish out. Can we not i
fact see that before RaphaZl accepts the pact the skin has no determined form, is a materi
equivalent of the unbounded infinitive, but that Raphadl's agreement to its condition
binds it to being a definite and faithful representation of his remaining days, as the conju
gated verb reflects in its endings the subject to which it is linked?
2Thus Bayard's musing on why Raphael does not simply sell the skin to get rid of it dis
plays a crucial misunderstanding.
3This repression is in a sense a codification of a

for as Raphail notes, "J'ai vecu dans tous les to
divorait elle-meme" (129).
4Bayard seems to elide a contradiction when he
tionist mode in asserting how exchange (circulati
les signes paraissent fonder un ordre de represen
doxal de circulation oi0 peut s'&changer (des re
proces sans fin" (171). It is difficult to reconcile
exhaustion.
5See the articles cited by Bernard, Diaz, Laszlo, Mazet, and Michel.
6See Goux's Freud, Marx: &conomie et symbolique and later books. Ian Reid provides an
interesting extension of the views of Goux and other theoreticians in Narrative Exchanges.
The description of the operation of exchange-systems in the following pages, however, is
my own.
Works Cited
Ambrie're, Madeleine. "Balzac et l'energie." Romantisme 46 (1984): 43-48.

Balzac, Honore de. Le Cure de Tours. La Comedie humaine. Ed. Pierre-Georges Castex. Vol 4.
Paris: Pleiade, Gallimard, 1976. 12 vols. 1976-81.
. La Peau de chagrin. La Comedie humaine. Vol. 10. Paris: Pleiade, Gallimard, 1979.
Bardeche, Maurice. "Autour des Etudes philosophiques." L'Annie Balzacienne 1960: 109-24.
. Balzac romancier. Paris: Plon, 1940.
Bayard, Pierre. Balzac et le troc de l'imaginaire: lecture de la Peau de chagrin. Paris: Lettres
Modernes, Minard, 1978.
Bernard, Claude E. "La Problematique de l"&change' dans 'Le Chef-d'oeuvre inconnu
d'Honore de Balzac." L'Annte Balzacienne 1983: 201-13.
Diani, Marco. "La Revolution dans la forme: l'inscription immaterielle de l'argent ch

Balzac." Stanford French Review 15 (1990): 373-92.
Diaz, Jos&-Luis. "Esthetique balzacienne: l'&conomie, la depense et l'oxymore." Balzac et L
Peau de chagrin. Ed. Claude Duchet. Paris: SEDES, 1979.
Frappier-Mazur, Lucienne. L'Expression metaphorique dans la Comedie humaine. Par
Klincksieck, 1976.
Gaillard, Franqoise. "L'Effet peau de chagrin." Le Roman de Balzac: recherches critiques, m
thodes, lectures. Ed. Roland Le Huenen and Paul Perron. Montreal: Didier, 1980. 213-30
Goux, Jean-Joseph. Freud, Marx: economie et symbolique. Paris: Seuil, 1973.
Les Iconoclastes. Paris: Seuil, 1978.
Les Monnayeurs du langage. Paris: Galilee, 1984.
Laszlo, Pierre. "Production d'energie romanesque: La Peau de chagrin. MLN 97 (198
862-71.
Mazet, Leo. "Rkcit(s) dans le recit: l'Fchange du recit chez Balzac." L'Annie Balzacienn
1976: 129-61.
Michel, Arlette. "La Poetique balzacienne de l'energie." Romantisme 46 (1984): 49-59.

Prendergast, Christopher. The Order of Mimesis. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986.
Reid, Ian. Narrative Exchanges. London: Routledge, 1992.
Richard, Jean-Pierre. Etudes sur le romantisme. Paris: Seuil, 1970.
Rudich, Linda. "Balzac et Marx: theorie de la valeur." La Lecture sociocritique du texte
romanesque. Ed. Graham Falconer and Henri Mitterand. Toronto: Samuel Stevens
Hakkert, 1975. 63-78.
Weber, Samuel. Unwrapping Balzac: A Reading of La Peau de chagrin. Toronto: U of Toronto
P, 1979.

Acerca Del Encogimiento 12p

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Acerca Del Encogimiento 12p

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

That Sudden Shrinking Feeling: Exchange in La Peau de chagrin

Author(s): Warren Johnson

American Association of Teachers of French is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,

That Sudden Shrinking

of Raphaal's life. Death, according to the

Dieu" (252). While for others the invu

En s'incamant dans la Peau et en se rep

From misleading premises, Bayard's a

explicit in Le Curd de village), crippl

in this novel designates a non-negotiab

3This repression is in a sense a codification of a

Ambrie're, Madeleine. "Balzac et l'energie." Romantisme 46 (1984): 43-48.

Diani, Marco. "La Revolution dans la forme: l'inscription immaterielle de l'argent ch

Michel, Arlette. "La Poetique balzacienne de l'energie." Romantisme 46 (1984): 49-59.

You might also like