The Skin of Sable

«The Skin of Sable» — another novel from «Scenes of Life in Paris» of the great cycle «The Human Comedy», written by O. de Balzac in 1830-1831. The author paints a picture of the life of an ordinary person whose... fate is intertwined with an ancient mystical talisman from the mysterious East.
Illustrations for the novel were created by the French artist of the 19th century, Charles Werd. His works emphasize the social direction of the piece. With a light hand of Balzac, the expression «the skin of sable» became a catchphrase. It can refer to any important resource that quickly and irreversibly diminishes. For example, it might be time, opportunities, or finances. Sable refers to well-tanned soft goat or sheep leather with a characteristic rough surface. In Balzac's novel «The Skin of Sable», a piece of such sable plays the role of a mystical and powerful talisman that the main character, Raphael de Valentin, acquires in an antique shop. The young man, ready to end his life due to chronic poverty, is saved by the talisman, as this skin is capable of fulfilling any desires of its owner. This is indicated by a mysterious inscription on it, which the antiquarian believes is made in Sanskrit. However, for each realized dream, one must pay. The skin, symbolizing the life of its owner, inevitably shrinks each time. In the large cycle «The Human Comedy», which Balzac began to write after crossing the thirty-year mark, the novel «The Skin of Sable» is referred to as «Philosophical Studies». The unusual mystical plot of the novel allowed the writer to ponder both the underlying desires of people and the price often paid for their realization. Interestingly, in the first edition of the novel, published in 1831, Balzac provided the content of the magical inscription only in French. It was in the form of a triangle beginning with the line «By possessing me, you will possess everything…». The inscription contained 45 words and 237 letters without articles. The «original» inscription appeared only in the 1838 edition, but it was not in Sanskrit, but in Arabic. The prominent Austrian orientalist Baron Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall helped to translate the magical text invented by Balzac. In his notes, there was an error that typesetters took for a letter. In another hastily written word, they replaced one initial letter with another that looked similar, losing the meaning of the phrase. As a result, in the 1839 edition, the Arabic text was reproduced with two mistakes. In later publications of the novel, including its translations into Russian and English, inaccuracies in the magical formula in Arabic only increased, and only in this edition was it reproduced absolutely correctly — according to Hammer's original record.