Young Peter Schlemiel, marveling at the prodigal purse of a grey stranger at a millionaire's party, eagerly agrees to trade his shadow for limitless wealth. Not realizing the true value of something so intangible, God's fool discovers to his sorrow that he's made a hellish bargain: he is soon shunned as a cursed man by all levels of society. The one thing he can not buy is the unconditional acceptance by other human beings. Hounded by persistent and universal Superstition, he is forced to wander the globe in bitter loneliness.

Still, wiser men than simple
Peter Schlemiel have grapped with the loathesome stranger who used a man's shadow as a stepping stone to perdition; for his
ultimate goal was, of course, Peter's Soul. Is there no way this naive fellow can dissolve the fiendish bond between them?
This short novel is written in a Romantic style, with an additional element of fantasy at the end. This morality tale loses some plot value in the latter chapters, but the premise remains tantalyzing--both as literature and spirituality. This story is even mentioned in a tale by ETA Hoffman, whose protagonist trades his Reflection. Who can set a price on such ephemeral yet vital objects? What is the real source of human happiness?

This is the story of Peter Schlemihl, an impoverished, ineffectual young student whose misguided yearning for the finer things in life leads him into contact with a mysterious party guest who offers him fulfillment of his dreams in exchange for his shadow.

The outcome of the deal is pretty much a foregone conclusion, since Chamisso takes no pains concealing the satanic identity of his antagonist. As is usual in these cases, the Devil appears to get the better part of the bargain. Schlemihl, provided with a never-empty "purse of Fortunatus," has piles of gold, but no one to spend them on. The fraulein who is the object of his affection will have nothing to do with a shadowless man.

The story is one in a long line of cautionary tales that warn against dealing with the likes of Mephistopheles. The critic, Karl Miller, points out that Schlemihl is denied a comfortable existence, since "he begins and ends as an outcast: by hazarding his soul for gain, he is barred from family life, from the happiness of marriage." The idea of an outsider whose self-will bars him from middle class comforts can be traced in German Romantic literature from the late 18th century to the time of Hesse.

Chamisso's tale may strike the modern reader as little more than a literary curio, a moralistic fairy tale replete with enchanted moneybags and seven-league boots. In Chamisso's day, however, the work was highly esteemed and had enormous influence on writers such as E.T.A. Hoffman and Hans Christian Anderson, who wrote stories of their own in the "Schauerroman" genre.

One facet of the story that has bearing in terms of modern critical inquiry is Chamisso's adoption of a framing device that is in many respects self-reflexive. The central narrative is epistolary, which, in terms of the conventions of the day, was nothing out of the ordinary (Richardson being the most common example). What makes things more interesting about "The Man Who Lost His Shadow" is the author's including himself as a character in the story. At the tale's conclusion, Schlemihl signs off with the announcement: "So ends my story. On a cloudy day I will take these papers to you, my friend Chamisso, that you may do with them what you think right." We have here an attempt, however crude (especially when compared with the subtleties of Borges or Nabokov), on the part of an author investigating the boundaries between fictional and "real" worlds. Chamisso's depiction of the dissociated self also represents a departure from earlier German Romantic authors such as Kleist and Richter, who tended to represent Doubles more obliquely and figuratively. Peter Schlemihl's shadow will lead to the more concrete manifestations of the double motif found in the works of Hoffman, Hogg and Conrad.

This novella is short and well paced. It can definitely be read for pleasure as well as for an appreciation of its place in an important literary movement.

This is a wonderful tale of the absurd and the fantastic. Peter Schlemiel is a young man who trades his shadow for a bag of gold coins which never gets empty of them. But, no one must notice his lacking a shadow. Those who do, despise him and get away. Peter goes to a resort and falls in love with a girl , but the wedding is impossible because she notices he doesn't have a shadow. Then he meets again the man who traded the bag of gold for his shadow, and Peter asks it back. The man agrees, but in exchange he must give him his soul. Peter refuses and throws the bag to an abyss. Then he finds the seven-leagues boots, wears them and runs to the Thebaid, in Greece. This is pure fun on crazy and absurd adventures. Very pleasant reading.