The Alkahest

by Honoré de Balzac

Book Overview

Regarded by many critics as one of Honore de Balzac's foremost literary achievements, the novel The Alkahest offers an incisive look at the dangers of obsession. Scientist Balthazar Claes begins his research into alchemical properties with the best of intentions, but before long, he begins to neglect everything else in his life.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1505286816
• ISBN13: 9781505286816
• Release Date: December 2014
• Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
• Length: 200 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A Flamand portrait

A Flamand portrait of the ups and downs on a burgeois family whose head turns deranged about chemical research. The title is not about any moral or philosophical absolute but about the "absolute basic element" that will allow him to transform substances like the good old philosophical stone of the alchemists. Most of the book is about the wreckage that this guy puts on his family while ruining his family a couple times, but the other main characters , his wife, daughter, a pure gentle guy in love with his daughter and a cold and calculating notary public who's also interested in the daughter are quite original, live and real. Exactly like Flamand paintings it is warm, soft, slow but charming. On the down side Balzac, being an outsider to science, shows not to have a clear distinction in his mind between a scientist and a crackpot.

Philosophal Stone and psychology

You'll have to like slow-rated stories... but that one will seduce you! There's some fantastic in it, with the famous quest of the Philosophal Stone. And also many psychology, with the interaction of all those souls living together in a rich house in Belgium. The first pages of that book are VERY important, explaining WHY Balzac just does not like to enter his novels "in medias res". Of course he takes his time to explain... So the reticent Balzac reader may understand better the writer. Not bad, eh?