Gillette or the Unknown Masterpiece

Fiction. Short Story. Translated from the French by Anthony Rudolph. GILLETTE OR THE UNKNOWN MASTERIECE is one of Balzac’s most brilliant and fascinating works, and one of the great short stories in European literature. It has been widely influential among painters and writers since its early editions, and speaks to our own days in unexpected ways. Anthony Rudolf has made the first complete translation into English in over eighty years. In a long accompanying essay he discusses the text as a love story, as a parable of writing told in terms of painting, and as a remarkable foreshadowing of certain later developments in art, such as the work of Giacometti. He also discusses the sexual, mythological, financial and other aspects of this extraordinary multi-layered text, and vigorously contests the widespread view that Frenhofer is nothing but a failure and his painting nothing but a disaster. This reprint marks Balzac’s bicentenary and Menard’s 30th birthday.