HAPPINESS IN DESPERATION - STUDY ON THE SKIN OF ONAGRO, BY HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Balzac; happiness; desire; desperation; consumption.
This research studies the desire for happiness in the book “The Magic Skin: La Comédie Humaine: La Peau de Chagrin”, written by Honoré de Balzac, whose main character, Raphaël de Valentin, agrees to take possession of a magic skin, with which all his wishes can be fulfilled. Nonetheless, with each wish, the skin shrinks, as does Raphaël’s own life. Is happiness, as we have experienced it since the XIX Century, linked to consumption, to the fact of having something and, consequently, to the annihilation of oneself? The theoretical and methodological discussion of this study is based on Balzac’s novel and on the intersection between literature and thinkers, such as historian Georges Minois, who studied the meaning of paradise and happiness from the early days of mankind until the current times; Sigmund Freud who, in his social psychology, addresses happiness as a symptom and “uneasiness” provoked by culture; Edgar Morin, in his Mass Culture in the XX Century; Gilles Lipovetsky, who adds the prefix “hyper” to consumption in post-modernity; and André Comte-Sponville, who proposes happiness as an exercise in wisdom and not in accumulation, whether of goods or emotional accessories.