As an object of literary reception the Swede Emanuel Swedenborg emerges less in his character as a natural scientist. Swedenborg attracted the interest of literary figures – such as August Strindberg, Charles Baudelaire or Jorge Luis Borges, for example – rather in his character as a visionary and expert on the transcendent. This is also true for his reception by Honoré de Balzac. In Balzac’s case Swedenborg’s double qualification as such seems to no small extent to have motivated his reception in the first place: science on the one hand and the relations of humans with the spiritual sphere on the other hand are also in Balzac’s artistic social analysis (La Comédie humaine) not antithetic. To explore the relationship of these two poles with each other in the medium of art is rather a fundamental component of Balzac’s literary program.