Abstract: Compared to the great later novel, a short tale like “La Mort de Baldassare Silvande” hardly seems to deserve critical attention beyond its theme, which was so common at the time. But a certain number of motifs, among them the evocation of the danse macabre, make this text the prelude to the central theme of the novel: the awareness of the self that stems from the imminence of death makes the protagonist discover the importance of the past and the intimate relationship between memory and death.
