Balzac's Weird Tales
by Jessica Amanda Salmonson
Balzac is one of the great weird writers. "The Elixir of Life" (1830, also known as "Don Juan; or, The Elixir of Long Life"), as rbadac underscored in his commentary for The Weird Review, is certainly one of his greatest. Some years ago I sent copies of "Specters" by Turgeniev & "The Elixir of Life" by Balzac to Marvin Kaye as examples of what I regarded as world-class weird stories of the first order of excellence. Marv turned veritable cartwheels of joy & afterward put both tales in anthologies he contracted to Doubleday.
There are many others nearly as good. If someone put together a fat volume called, say, The Elixir of Life & Other Weird Tales by Honore de Balzac, it would be a humdinger of a book. "Melmoth Reconciled" is a wonderful coda to Maturin's arch classic -- about what happens when Melmoth finally finds someone with whom to exchange souls. Balzac's spectacular conte cruel "La Grand Breteche" (1832, aka "The Mysterious Mansion") is well known to horror readers because it was included in the standard Wise/Fraser anthology of supernatural & terror tales; it is nearly equalled in ferocity & grotesquery by "El Verdugo" (literally "The Executioner," 1830). "The Red Inn" (1831) is set in an inn that seems to compel men to murder. "The Unknown Masterpiece" reads in part like an old English ghost story though set in a Paris art studio & regarding a mad artist whose work is beyond understanding. It inspired a controversial illustration by Picasso, who felt an easy affinity for the mad painter. An entire website exists devoted to Picasso's Unknown Masterpice, including at the site a fascinating article on the Balzac connection.
"Adieu" (aka "Farewell" & "The Story of a Mad Sweetheart") is a long tale of insanity & the supernatural. "Christ in Flanders" (1831) is ironical religious supernaturalism. "Passion in the Desert" is the story of a Napoleonic soldier who, lost in the desert, finds an oasis ruled by a beautiful leopardess, with whom he develops a mutual sexual attraction. It's a thrilling erotic fantasy that was quite recently adapted as a pro-bestiality film, an artful gem of a tale that made almost as good a film as it was a short story, except that the star seemed a bit afraid of his feline costar whenever they embraced & that spoiled the mood a bit.
In a class of its own is the novella The Magic Skin (La Peau de chagrin, 1831, also translated as "The Fatal Skin" "The Heartless Woman" "Slave of Desire" & "Luck & Leather") about a man who, on his way to committing suicide, stops in at a junkshop for one last look at the flotsam of peoples' useless lives, & acquires a piece of a donkey's hide that grants wishes -- to increasingly frustrating effect, until it really begins to seem that suicide would've been better. It's a great work & his first popular success. He extended its themes in two other supernatural novellas which Balzac regarded as something of a trilogy of the human spirit, with "spirit" being a literal manifestation. Louis Lambert (1832) is a Swedenborgian occult novel crammed with weird & mystical incidents. The trilogy closed with Seraphita (1835), having Klarashtonian moments of cosmic grandeur, regarding the evolution of an angel. It is frequently dismissed by scholars who do not wish it to be a major work, being troubled by elements that can be, & have been, construed as pro-homosexual. Balzac personally regarded it as the culmination of own belief in moral evolution.
Sharing the Swedenborgian-metaphysical interest of that loose "trilogy" is his later Ursule Mirouet (1842), a science fictionish occult novel using themes of curative animal magnetism, mesmerism, profound somnombulant trances, & mediumship. So too the novella The Quest for the Absolute (Alkahest, 1834; variously translated as "The Alchemist" "The Philosopher's Stone" "The Tragedy of Genius" or "Balthazar") is about alchemical magic.
There are a couple items I've never tracked down but have seen reviewed. An early work is The Centenarian; or, The Beringhelds (Le Centenaire, ou les Deux Beringheld 1822). The 400 year old Beringheld remains alive for so long as he can find new persons willing to supply him with the vague vital substance that sustains him. I gather The Centenarian is not the same as "The Unknown Martyrs" (Les Martyrs ignores) which developes the idea that the brain, like a battery, has only a finite fund of power; & if this power can be stored up, or drawn vampire-like from victims, life can be indefinitely extended.
As a Balzac fan I try always to have some of these in the Violet Books stock because they're so easy for me to recommend. There's apt to be something available right now in the online Catalog of Vintage Weird Fictions For Sale. I don't ask a lot for them, yet even as inexpensive superior tales they sell a bit slowly, because it's just so hard, I think, for horror fans to completely believe Balzac of all people could really be "that kind" of writer. Yet he surely is.