Talk:La Peau de chagrin

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message: Well, last time we had a Balzac TFA (the article on the man himself), it was a right gruesome vandalfest. Let's see how bad it gets this time. Thanks in advance to all the counter-vandalism soldiers on the front line! Scartol • Tok 00:07, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  TFA 

message: In the interest of avoiding a series of short, choppy paragraphs, I combined the different parts of the "Influence" section. Soon afterwards,  split it up again. Rather than engage in an edit war, it seems better for us to discuss it here. 
While I understand the desire to divide bits of info into different topics, I feel that we must avoid a series of one- and two-sentence paragraphs, and we should combine the discussions of various interpretations and adaptations into one paragraph. What do other folks think? Scartol • Tok 13:45, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Influence section structure 

message: Presumably the title is a pun? Yet the article doesn't mention this anywhere. Readers who know French might get this; but readers who don't know French might either a) assume that chagrin has the same meaning as in English; or b) guess (based on their similar sounds) that chagrin is French for shagreen. The article  should address the title. Doops |  talk 16:33, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, it's assumed by most critics, but there's no reliable source that confirms it (least of all as an intentional turn of phrase by the author). So we kinda have to hope we find one someday. D'oh! (The same is true of the word "bete" meaning "stupid" in relation to La Cousine Bette. It's obviously a homophone, but we can't reference it without a reliable source.) Scartol • Tok 16:49, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Even if you don't feel justified in using the word 'pun' unsourced, there can be no objection to a simple statement that in French the word chagrin may mean either "chagrin" or "shagreen". That's literally the first thing I wanted to know when I started to read this page. Doops |  talk 03:28, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I had not seen that source before, Doops. Thanks for it! I will add a reference soon. Scartol • Tok 11:17, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pun 

message: I removed the part which portrayed La Peau de chagrin as "what boosted his career" and "made him known".
Honoré de Balzac became known because of his work(first volumes) "La Comédie Humaine"(1815-1848), not due to La Peau de chagrin--Sarandioti (talk) 10:21, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: La Peau de chagrin is part of La Comédie humaine. And because this was one of the first books he published under his own name, it launched him into the public eye. Those phrases deserve to remain in the article. Scartol • Tok 01:51, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Sarndioti reverted with the comment "2 sentences because of no citation and false argument" - but of course no citation is required in the lead as it is justified in the main text. I will restore the two sentences removed. 78.32.103.197 (talk) 15:33, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

text: Although in fairness, besides the (essentially anecdotal) fact that he picked up one remarkable reader in Poland/Ukraine, it is not obvious from the content of the article that "La Peau de chagrin firmly established Balzac as a writer of significance ... abroad". Bearing in mind some of the comments in the sources about his foreign reception above, it seems that in the English-speaking world in particular, La Peau de chagrin may have gone untranslated for decades and Balzac remained little known, especially outside the handful of novels deemed "safe" for translation. Eugénie Grandet (1833, one of the "safer" novels) has several far earlier translations, especially in the United States where English editions appeared only years after the French original, as well as a translation into Russian in 1843 by Dostoyevsky (his first major work, although according the wiki article, not something that brought him much attention). I really don't know enough to stick my neck out and claim that Eugénie Grandet was what established Balzac's reputation abroad, but I can't see strong evidence (particularly within the article itself, which is the justification for not having to put references in the lead) to suggest that La Peau de chagrin did. So for now is it fair enough if I remove the words "and abroad"? 78.32.103.197 (talk) 15:54, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, that's fine. (For the record the bit about the book establishing his reputation is mentioned at the start of the "Reception" section of the article.) The problem with referring to the different translations as evidence for when he gained popularity is that it verges on the edge of original research, which we're not supposed to do. I've always stuck to books like Bellos when it comes to what kinds of reception Balzac got after publication. (BTW, IP 78.32.103.197: Why not start an account for easier communication?) Scartol • Tok 16:01, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I was commenting in relation to that section actually - I just couldn't see anything in that section of the article that showed that this was the book that established him as a significant writer abroad; the fact that Goethe reviewed him and that the work reached a Polish noblewoman doesn't seem to be quite proof of that. It would indeed be OR to attempt to track down his popularity by records of translation - I was really thinking back to the comment that Balzac was described as being little known in England due to being little-translated, and this seems to be one of the works that wasn't translated into English for decades. The lack of translation just seemed to make the "established his reputation ... abroad" comment seem more tenuous, that's all. 78.32.103.197 (talk) 17:34, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: About the significance of La Peau de chagrin in his career

message: Somebody added the statement "In 1960 Croatian animator Vladimir Kristl made an animated short entitled Šagrenska koža (The Piece of Shagreen Leather) inspired by Balzac's novel" to the "Influence" section. This seems noteworthy in the sense that Kristl was a noted animator, and this is the only point in the article where there is a suggestion of a filmed (even if short) adaptation of the novel.
While I'm fairly certain from rooting around online that Vladimir Kristl did indeed create an animated short Šagrenska koža based on La Peau de chagrin, I can't find a satisfactory reference for it. Somebody added a "reference" (although not properly formatted as a web cite, e.g. date of last access not given) to IMDB, but the linked entry doesn't quite confirm what it needs to. "Vlado" Kristl is given as the director on IMDB - definitely the same person, but we do have an article at Vladimir Kristl so it's not clear which way the name should be given. The IMDB entry also doesn't confirm that Kristl is Croatian, although perhaps (?) that can be treated as uncontentious. The date 1960 does appear in the IMDB entry (but I'm not sure whether this corresponds to year of release, or year of creation - my own ignorance about IMDB more than anything). The big problem is that the title Šagrenska koža does not appear at all on the IMDB entry, so it doesn't reference the statement that actually appears in the article. In fact the title is given as Le peau de chagrin (with Balzac listed as the writer responsible for the story), which at least confirms the link to the novel. But I can't believe that a film would be released under a French title which gets the definite article wrong (it should be "La", not "Le").
To muddy the waters there is apparently a duplicate entry on IMDB, with the title "Sagrenska koza" (which unfortunately doesn't confirm the Croatian diacritics in the statement added to the article, but "The Piece of Shagreen Leather" is given as the alternative English title, so this seems to be the same thing). There are a couple of discrepancies - one of these is listed as nine minutes long, the other as eleven - but the director and year are given as the same. Unfortunately the link to Balzac is not made explicit other than the fact that the English title is a direct translation of La peau de chagrin.
Does anybody possess a reliable source (I suspect in practice this means "not IMDB") that shows that in 1960, the Croatian animator Vladimir (or "Vlado" - which is the way we should refer to him?) Kristl made an animated short entitled Šagrenska koža (or, possibly depending on source consulted, The Piece of Shagreen Leather, or La peau de chagrin, or more unbelievably, Le peau de chagrin) and that this short was based on, or inspired by, the Balzac novel La peau de chagrin? 78.32.103.197 (talk) 16:53, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for looking into this. Your dedication to this page is splendid. I command you to create an account! =) And you're right — IMdB is not considered a reliable source for Wikipedia. Scartol • Tok 17:40, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  This is hardly a contentious point of the kind that requires twelve Nobel prize winners to sign to it in blood. True, the IMDB is usually not considered reliable for establishing controversial or debatable items, but for merely establishing that such a film exists, it's usually considered perfectly fine. But it's not a big deal, I won't edit war over it. --GRuban (talk) 18:23, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The problem isn't just the existence of the film though - and even for that, IMDB doesn't help in this matter by apparently mistakenly duplicating the film, with slightly different details under each title. There also needs to be evidence that the animated short is an adaptation of the novel. I seem to recall that the plot synopsis part of IMDB is considered less reliable than other parts because it relies on user-generated content. I imagine that the best sources to document the film will be in Croatian unfortunately. 78.32.103.197 (talk) 23:59, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  You are correct, the only website that provides the reference is Croatian - the site of the company which made the film (Zagreb Film). Here's the link to the site, and the English version of the entry  'Vlado' is short for 'Vladimir', btw, so these two Kristls are one and the same. Tamait (talk) 18:36, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Šagrenska koža by Vladimir Kristl  

message: Perhaps nobody related to this subject will find this interesting, but we were having this discussion on another discussion page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Writing_systems#The_mystery_of_the_writing_that_is_not_Sanskrit.
The Arabic portrayed here is not only frequently misspelled (it really would have to be to be coherently and completely Arabic) but the translation in Balzac is also way off.  I provided mine, a very literal translation (as literal as you can get with words that do not seem to exist), on the other discussion page, but I thought it might be interesting to note that the French translation provided in Balzac can not be correct.  Msheflin (talk) 01:13, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, I added "from the book" to the bit about the full translation in the article, and added the word "imprecise" before "Arabic" in the summary. Thanks again for your attention to detail. Scartol • Tok 12:34, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Arabic... 

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