Categories
review

“Sarrasine” by Honoré de Balzac

This is a famous story written by Balzac in 1830 about Zaminella, a beautiful castrato who is taken to be a woman that embodies the ideal of feminine beauty by Sarrasine, a sculptor passionately devoted to depicting beauty. Famous French egghead, Roland Barthes, wrote a famous book (“S/Z”) devoted to decoding various themes in it. It’s a book I have no interest in reading, by the way.

This story is the only thing I’ve ever read by Balzac. It’s not long, only a little over thirty pages. It doesn’t really have much of a narrative arc. The meat of the story is taken up with describing Sarrasine’s obsession with Zaminella.

SPOILER ALERT: At the end, when Sarrasine discovers his mistake he becomes enraged and is about to kill Zaminella when some henchmen belonging to Zaminella’s protector (a cardinal) break in on the scene and stab Sarrasine to death.

This is really just a high-class tranny/trap fantasy about ‘passing’ and, of course, not femdom castration at all.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *