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Lucien Chardon, an aspiring young poet leaves his small provincial hometown and attempts to succeed in the Parisian literary circles of the early 19th century. He is befriended by aristocratic patrons but finds himself relentlessly drawn to the low life of the big city. Handsome would-be poet Lucien Chardon is poor and naïve, but highly ambitious. Failing to make his name in his dull provincial hometown, he is taken up by a patroness, the captivating...

The imaginative breadth and the intellectual depth of [this novel] make it one of the greatest of Balzac's "Etudes philosophiques'. With its central symbol of the magic piece of shagreen, it expresses the peculiarly Balzacian idea of the human will and dramatizes with startling urgency the choice between ruthless self-gratification and asceticism, between vice and virtue, between dissipation and restraint. The symbolism is powerful but not overpowering:...