Sexual attraction, artistic insight, and the often ironic relationship between them are the dominant themes in the three short works by Balzac collected in this volume.
In Sarrasine, an impetuous young sculptor falls in love with a diva of the Roman stage, but rapture turns to rage when he discovers the reality behind the seductiveness of the singer's voice. The ageing artist in The Unknown Masterpiece, obsessed with his creation of the perfect image of an ideal woman, tries to hide it from the jealous young student who is desperate for a glimpse of it. And in The Girl with the Golden...

"Responses: Contemporaries and Other Novelists" illustrates Balzac's immense influence on other writers, among them Charles Baudelaire, Hippolyte Taine, Emile Zola, and Marcel Proust "Twentieth-Century Criticism" presents a superb selection of critical writing about the novel The critics include Ernst Robert Curtius, Albert Beguin, Erich Auerback, Georges Poulet, Michel Butor, Louis Chevalier, Pierre Barberis, Peter Brooks, Sandy Petrey, Nicole Mozet, and Janet L. Beizer.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

In this novel of obsessive passion the author tells stories of Old Goriot and the ungrateful daughters he adores; young Rastignac, a country lad determined to make his way in Paris; and Vautrin, his satanic tempter. Their lives all cross in the Maison Vauquer, a boarding house in Paris.

Honore de Balzac: Vater Goriot. (Le pere Goriot) Erstdruck in: La Revue de Paris, 14.-28.12. 1834 und 28.1.-11.2. 1835. Hier nach der Ubers. v. Gisela Etzel, 6.-10. Tsd., Leipzig: Insel, 1950. Vollstandige Neuausgabe. Herausgegeben von Karl-Maria Guth. Berlin 2015, 2. Auflage. Textgrundlage ist die Ausgabe: Balzac, Honore de: Vater Goriot. Ubers. v. Gisela Etzel, 6.-10. Tsd., Leipzig: Insel, 1950. Die Paginierung obiger Ausgabe wird in dieser Neuausgabe als Marginalie zeilengenau mitgefuhrt. Umschlaggestaltung von Thomas Schultz-Overhage unter Verwendung des Bildes: Franz von Lenbach, Franz...

Honore de Balzac: Vater Goriot. (Le pere Goriot) Erstdruck in: La Revue de Paris, 14.-28.12. 1834 und 28.1.-11.2. 1835. Hier nach der Ubers. v. Gisela Etzel, 6.-10. Tsd., Leipzig: Insel, 1950. Vollstandige Neuausgabe. Herausgegeben von Karl-Maria Guth. Berlin 2015, 2. Auflage. Textgrundlage ist die Ausgabe: Balzac, Honore de: Vater Goriot. Ubers. v. Gisela Etzel, 6.-10. Tsd., Leipzig: Insel, 1950. Die Paginierung obiger Ausgabe wird in dieser Neuausgabe als Marginalie zeilengenau mitgefuhrt. Umschlaggestaltung von Thomas Schultz-Overhage unter Verwendung des Bildes: Franz von Lenbach, Franz...

An old man arrives at the offices of the lawyer Derville, claiming to be Colonel Chabert, a hero of the Napoleonic Wars who was left for dead on the battlefield, but in fact managed to survive under a pile of corpses before spending years as a recovering amnesiac. Having returned to Paris and discovered that his wife has married an aristocrat who has liquidated all his assets, Chabert enlists the help of Derville to recover both his name and his fortune. Part of Balzac's La Comedie humaine cycle, Colonel Chabert is a poignant tale about the pursuit of justice, as well as a portrait of...