A Passion in the Desert

Honoré De Balzac

Description

A Passion in the Desert (1830) is a short story by French author Honoré de Balzac. Written as part of his La Comédie humaine sequence, A Passion in the Desert is a frequently anthologized work of short fiction that explores humanity’s relationship with nature as well as the effects of conquest and colonization. The story was loosely adapted into a 1997 feature film and remains one of Balzac’s most acclaimed works. The story’s frame narrative begins after a man and woman attend a menagerie in Paris. The woman is horrified by what she has seen: a man working with a tamed hyena as though it were human. Her companion, the story’s narrator, reveals his experience in these matters, and agrees to tell her a tale reported to him by a crippled veteran of Napoleon’s conquests. This soldier, he explains, was captured by Ottoman forces during the emperor’s campaign in Egypt. Managing to escape, he fled across the desert on horseback toward the safety of the Nile. When his horse died from exhaustion, he continued on foot and discovered, in the damp protection of a cave, a sleeping panther. Terrified at first, he slowly came to an understanding with the creature, learning to live at her side without angering her or falling prey to her animal hunger. One day, however, emerging from the cave to admire an eagle in flight, he is struck with the feeling that the panther had become jealous, and devises a plan to escape her inevitable wrath. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Honoré de Balzac’s A Passion in the Desert is a classic of French literature reimagined for modern readers.

Sujets

• Classiques
• Tous les classiques
• Desierto del Sahara
• Egipto
• Egypt
• Napoleonic Wars
• Classics
• Fiction
• Sahara

Informations

• Publié par: Mint Editions
• Date de parution: 03 août 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781513273280
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

A Passion in the Desert
Honoré de Balzac
 

A Passion in the Desert was first published in 1830.
This edition published by Mint Editions 2021.
ISBN 9781513268286 | E-ISBN 9781513273280
Published by Mint Editions®
minteditionbooks.com
Publishing Director: Jennifer Newens
Design & Production: Rachel Lopez Metzger
Translation: Ernest Dowson
Typesetting: Westchester Publishing Services
 

C ONTENTS B EGIN R EADING
 

“ The whole show is dreadful,” she cried coming out of the menagerie of M. Martin. She had just been looking at that daring speculator “working with his hyena,”—to speak in the style of the programme.
“By what means,” she continued, “can he have tamed these animals to such a point as to be certain of their affection for—”
“What seems to you a problem,” said I, interrupting, “is really quite natural.”
“Oh!” she cried, letting an incredulous smile wander over her lips.
“You think that beasts are wholly without passions?” I asked her. “Quite the reverse; we can communicate to them all the vices arising in our own state of civilization.”
She looked at me with an air of astonishment.
“But,” I continued, “the first time I saw M. Martin, I admit, like you, I did give vent to an exclamation of surprise. I found myself next to an old soldier with the right leg amputated, who had come in with me. His face had struck me. He had one of those heroic heads, stamped with the seal of warfare, and on which the battles of Napoleon are written. Besides, he had that frank, good-humored expression which always impresses me favorably. He was without doubt one of those troopers who are surprised at nothing, who find matter for laughter in the contortions of a dying comrade, who bury or plunder him quite light-heartedly, who stand intrepidly in the way of bullets;—in fact, one of those men who waste no time in deliberation, and would not hesitate to make friends with the devil himself. After looking very attentively at the proprietor of the menagerie getting out of his box, my companion pursed up his lips with an air of mockery and contempt, with that peculiar and expressive twist which superior people assume to show they are not taken in.