Jules Barbey d\' Aurevilly

Biography

The roots Normans (1808-1816)

Jules-Amédée Barbey is born the November 2nd 1808, the day of Dead the, with Saint-Saver-the-Viscount, common Frenchwoman located in the department of the Manche and the area Basse-Normandie. Jules is the groin of three children: Leon (born in 1809), Edouard (born in 1810), Ernest (born in 1811). His/her father Theophilus Barbey belongs to a family whose presence with Saint-Saver is attested as of the end of. The Barbey family reaches the nobility in 1756, when Vincent Barbey, lawyer with the Bailliage of Valognes, acquires a load. His/her mother Ernestine Ango, resulting from a family of good middle-class installed in Caen in the east the girl of the last Baillif of Saint-Saver. The childhood of Barbey proceeds between Saint-Saver, Valognes and the seaside with Carteret, in an atmosphere Conservatrice and ultra: the Révolution touched the two families hard. Barbey live in waiting of the return to monarchy, in the middle of the memories and of the old habits Normans. Jules grows between a not very loving mother and an austere father. He is attentive with the accounts of corner of the fire of his old woman good Jeanne Roussel and Louise Lucas-Lablaierie, his grandmother: the more or less mythical exploits of his/her uncle the knight of Montressel, which would have been illustrated at the time of the wars of the chouannery, impress the child.

Years of training (1816-1830)

In 1816, the admission of Jules is refused with the military academy. It continues its studies with the college of Valognes. In 1818, it lives in his/her uncle the doctor Bridged-Duméril, a liberal spirit which encourages the intellectual and moral emancipation of its nephew - in the Diaboliques , Barbey will paint his/her uncle under the features of Doctor Torty. This former mayor of Valognes pokes his imagination when he entrusts the intimate and crusty details to him personalities of the city - the “lower part of charts” of the high society valognaise. His/her cousin Edelestand of Méril, a poet and philosopher scholar, communicates to him his admiration for Walter Scott, Lord Byron, Robert Burns, like his taste for the Histoire and the Métaphysique.

In 1823 Barbey composes its first work, a reduced With the heroes of Thermopyles , dedicated to Casimir Delavigne and which it publishes the year according to. He composes in the tread a collection of Towards, that in 1825 he burns spite fault of having been able to publish it. In 1827, it enters in class of Rhétorique to the college Stanislas to Paris. It meets there Maurice of Guerin with whom it ties a friendship. After its Baccalaureat in 1829, it returns to Saint-Saver the head full with political and religious ideas new, opposites with those of its family. It wishes ardently, against the will of his father, to start a military career but it yields and agrees to make its Droit to Caen. With died of his uncle Jean-François Barbey d' Aurevilly, he temporarily refuses by democratic conviction to take again the name.

The romantic dash of youth (1830-1836)

Towards 1830, Barbey meets Guillaume-Stanislas Trébutien, bookseller in Caen and essential correspondent, and fall in love with Louise from Méril, the woman of her Alfred cousin. Their connection is dubious but it is for Barbey “the time of its most unhappy life”. It then is very marked by the influence of the romantic ones. In 1831 it writes its first news the seal of onyx (new until in 1919, and of which it will re-use the outcome in a dinner of atheists ), then Lea in 1832, published in transitory the Revue of Caen which it founded with Trébutien and Edelestand of Méril.

In July 1833 Barbey supports its thesis, causes which suspend the course of the regulation then settles in Paris where it finds Maurice of Guerin. It founds in 1834 a critical Revue of philosophy, sciences and literature with Trébutien and of Méril, where it publishes during a few months of the articles of literary criticism. It goes back to Caen in December in the hope to re-examine Louise and writes over there in a night the Ring of Annibal , Prose poem of inspiration byronienne, which will find taking only in 1842. In 1835 it composes another prose poem, Amaïdée (published in 1889), and a novel, Germaine or the Pity (which will become What does not die in 1883). In 1836 it writes the two first Memoranda for Guerin and breaks with his family.

The dandy: Sardanapale d' Aurevilly (1836-1845)

Of return to Paris, Barbey lives on the heritage of his/her uncle and dreams of a political career by reading many historical works. He collaborates in the Nouvelliste , a political newspaper, meets Hugo and binds with Eugenie of Guerin - very the excessively pious woman sister of Maurice. Its fashionable ambitions lead it to compose a character of perfect Dandy: he endeavors “to froidir himself”, improves in the art of the toilet, attends Roger de Beauvoir and the Tortoni coffee, cultivates the irony, the art of the epigram and the mystery. He carries out a disordered life: he throws himself in the festivals and the pleasures, the evenings drowned in alcohol and connects the passing fancies. He consumes Laudanum to fall asleep and his/her friends call it “King of the ribauds” or “Sardanapale of Aurevilly”. Its spiritual talks are worth many conquests to him and the doors of the living rooms open to him - he greedily attends that of the Armance marchioness of the Small valley, which he undertakes to allure. This battle daily occupies it during a few months, without success: it appears more dandy than him. It inspires a long news to him, the impossible love , “tragedy of boudoir” published in 1841 and which passes unperceived. The death of Guerin in 1839 affects it deeply. He attends the living room with catholic tendency and legitimist of the baroness Amaury de Maistre, niece by alliance of the writer, and in 1842 he collaborates in the Globe , a political newspaper which publishes its Bague of Annibal altered. In 1843 it collaborates in the Moniteur of the Mode under the pseudonym of Maximilienne de Syrène and begins its study on Brummell. It maintains a connection with mysterious Vellini, the future heroin of an old mistress . Of the dandyism and George Brummell appears in 1845, published to about thirty specimen. Work is a success of living room. It begins another work on the dandyism, the Traité of the princess , handbook of seduction in the form of aphorisms, inspired of the Prince of Machiavel. It will often take it again to enrich it but the unit will remain unfinished.

The return to childhood and Catholicism (1845-1851)

After an unfruitful attempt to collaborate in the Re-examined of the Two Worlds , then to the Newspaper of DEBATEs , Barbey spends the years 1845/46 to its Vieille mistress . It composes half of it before knowing a breakdown of momentary inspiration. End 1846 it travels in the center of France in search of funds for a catholic project of Société. It spends one month in the Forez, with Borough-Argental, theater of future the Histoire without name , and reappears assagi with the end of the year: even if it does not practice yet, the reading of Joseph de Maistre and its meeting with Eugenie of Guerin started his conversion. The return to Catholicism renews the inspiration to him: the 38 year old writer who feels at the same time to re-appear the remote past and the impressions of childhood takes again his novel in new provisions. He places the second part either at Paris but to Normandy, in Carteret of his youth. The Re-examined catholic World , newspaper Ultramontane of which he is editor association, constantly occupies it in 1847. It completes its novel with the end of the year, but cannot publish it: the Révolution of 1848 disturbs the times of publication. In the confusion which follows the days of February, it tries to adapt to the new situation and goes until chairing a club of workmen during a few weeks. The review ceases appearing and Barbey, nauseated by the present, is withdrawn in loneliness to prepare very different works, but all in connection with the past. It passes the remainder of the year and part of 1849 to reading and documenting themselves. It revises an old mistress , at the same time as it prepares a great article on Jacques II Stuart and the prophets of last the - political test of philosophy on Maistre, Bonald, Chateaubriand and Lamennais - these higher men “which seeks the social laws where they are”, i.e. “in the study of the history and the contemplation of the eternal truths”. It conceives in its retirement the plan of a series of novels under unit Western - it wants to be the “Walter Scott of Normandy”. Rebounds of conversation: The lower part of charts of part of whist , the first of the Diabolic , is published in 1850.

Literary critic and the novelist (1851-1874)

In 1851 appear to simultaneously an old mistress and the Prophets of last the - very contrasted works which astonish criticism: it is understood badly that the same writer delivers at the same time a Pamphlet Catholique and Monarchiste and a social novel in the sensual and impassioned pages. The publication of an old mistress is the occasion to raise the problem of the catholic novel, of morals and of Article the same Barbey year meets at Mrs. de Maistre Francoise Emilie Sommervogel, baroness of Bouglon, widow of the baron Rufin de Bouglon. That which it calls “the white Angel” will dominate its life for the 10 years to come. It finds the talent of promised in marriage sound too wild: it moderates for the Knight of the Keys , Historical novel on a hero Chouan, begun the following year. It returns to the Pays , a newspaper Bonapartist, in 1852. At the beginning it deals to with it with literary criticism while waiting to see itself entrusting a political chronicle. There will remain 10 years with this office. Bewitched the , the history of the return to its village of a priest chouan disfigured by an suicide attempt, is published this same year in serial then in volume in 1854, but passes unperceived. Baudelaire however regards this novel as a masterpiece. The two men meet at that time. It publishes also Poésies . In 1855 Barbey turns to the religious practice. It publishes with Trébutien the Reliquiae of his friend Eugenie of Guerin (deceased in 1848) and begins a married priest , frantic novel putting in scene an impious priest and his daughter. In 1856, at the time of a voyage in Normandy and of its reconciliation with his/her parents, it writes the third Memorandum . It publishes a daring criticism against Contemplations of Victor Hugo, glory untouchable. By its articles it contributes to make discover Stendhal and to rehabilitate Balzac. It also defends the Flowers of the evil of Baudelaire and devotes to Mrs Bovary of Flaubert a favorable but severe criticism. He declares his taste for the romantic ones and does not hesitate to cut in parts realism, the naturalism and the parnassiens: Champfleury, Jules and Edmond de Goncourt, Banville, Leconte de Lisle, and later Emile Zola appears among his targets. In 1858 it founds the Alarm clock , a literary journal, catholic and gouvernamental. The articles which it publishes are worth him of the enmities: Holy-Beuve, Pontmartin, Veuillot. It still makes speak about him with an old mistress : work is republished and creates the scandal. In 1860 it settles with 25 rue Rousselet in Paris - which will be until its death its “tournebride of second lieutenant” - and publishes the 1st volume of the Oeuvres and the men , vast whole of critical collections where it intends to judge the thought, the acts and the literature of his time. In 1862 its articles against the Poor wretches create the scandal. It leaves the Country following an other article against Holy-Beuve and leaves a few months to work with its novels at Mrs. de Bouglon with Country house-in Armagnac. In 1863, a chronicle with the Barber which ridicules Buloz and the Revue of the Two Worlds is worth a lawsuit to him. He perseveres and is caught some with the Académie by publishing in the Pope Joan the Forty medallions of the Academy , lampoon against the members of the Institut. the Knight of the Keys appears the same year, a married priest appears the following year. The last Memorandum is composed in 1864, at the time of a voyage to Saint-Saver. In 1865 it definitively leaves the Country and turns over to the Pope Joan , become democratic and anticlerical. It publishes the Ridicules there time and articles of dramatic criticism. This collaboration lasts 4 years. In 1867 it meets Leon Bloy, which quickly becomes its disciple. In 1869 it enters to the Constitutionnel where it will be occupied until its death of literary criticism. The following years it alternates Parisian life and stays more or less prolonged in Normandy. In 1870 it takes service in the National guard, and at the end of the seat in 1871 it turns over to Valognes where it completes Diabolic the . It maintains the flame polemist by publishing articles anti-republicans.

The constable of the letters (1874-1889)

Diabolic the is published in November 1874. The specimens are immediately seized and the author is continued for “insult with public morals and the moralities, and complicity”. Barbey utilizes Arsène Houssaye and Gambetta to avoid the lawsuit. It agrees to withdraw the work of the sale and the Examining magistrate concludes with the Non-lieu. Work will be republished in 1883 with a foreword, added by precaution. During the years which follow it approaches the rising generation: Bloy, Vallès, Daudet, Le Bourget, Rollinat, Lorraine Jean, Richepin, Péladan, Huysmans, Coppée, Hello, Uzanne, Octave Mirbeau… as well as formerly éreintés writers: Banville, Hérédia, Taine. Edmond de Goncourt the registered voter on one of the first lists of the Academy of the Ten. In 1878 it publishes the Bas-bleus , the fifth volume of the Oeuvres and the men , devoted “to the women who write, because the women who write are not any more of the women. They are men - at least of claim - and missed”. In 1879 it meets Louise Read, her last friend and that which will be devoted to its glory. In 1880 it publishes Goethe and Diderot , a lampoon. a history without name , another catholic novel in which a monk capuchin who preaches the Hell crosses the road of an innocent young girl and sleepwalker, appears in 1882 - it is a success. He collaborates in the Gil Blas and publishes in 1883 two stories of inceste and adultery: Retour of Valognes (a page of history) and What does not die (a novel writes almost 50 years earlier). He also gives the third and fourth Memorandum . In 1884 it publishes poetries, the forgotten Rates/rhythms and its last articles of criticism - it greets in particular has wrong way expresses it fine century of Huysmans. Patient of the faith, it continues to attend the living rooms of the baroness of Poilly, Daudet and Hayem, where its talks fill with wonder. He supports the beginnings with the scene of the young person Marthe Brandès. In 1888 it publishes Lea , one of her first news, then Amaïdée in 1889, before falling sick. It dies out the April 23rd 1889. It is buried with the Cimetière Montparnasse before being transferred in 1926 to the castle from Saint-Saver-the-Viscount. It is Louise Read who will continue the publication of the Oeuvres and the men .

Influences and models

Romantic models

In its first works, Barbey often imitates the romantic ones. Its first poem With the heroes of Thermopyles in the manner of Casimir Delavigne, the cantor of is then overcome, to which it is dedicated. The models are used to him often as driving bolt, it creates by opposition: the seal of onyx is inspired by the jealousy of Othello , Julie and the theories of Madam de Staël ( Corinne ). Germaine or pity ( What does not die ) is influenced by Lélia George Sand, the ring of Annibal by Musset ( Mardoche ). an old mistress is “the complete antithesis” of Adolphe of Benjamin Constant and Leone Leoni (George Sand), from which it borrows his subject - the love of a woman for a lover of which she discovers little by little the depravity. The reading of Stendhal in 1839, while it composes the impossible love , marks it deeply: he admires the dryness and the clearness of the analysis. The patriots Scot of the Chroniques of Canongate of Walter Scott inspire to him towards 1850 the idea of a series of Norman novels on the chouannery, whose collective title was to be Western .

Lord Byron

Barbey, as of its more young age, one is impassioned of Lord Byron: “Byron and Alfieri, poisoned only too much the first ten years of my youth. They were at the same time my morphine and my emetic”. Byron dominates its imagination, no writer will not have on him such a major influence: “It is in Byron that I learned how to read literarily. ”. It has complete works and in English of the poet of Childe Harold , and knows them “with the comma near”.

The heroes of Byron, “dark figures of the Force wounded in the middle”, which have “this charm of the drop of light in the shade and only one virtue among several defects”, bewitch it and influence the characters of its novels: Jehoël of the Cross-Jugan in Bewitched the , Mr Jacques of the Knight of the Keys , Sombreval in a married priest .

The couple of Satan and the Angel, satanic topic very present at Byron, but also at Vigny ( Éloa ), is recurring at Barbey: Jehoël of the Cross-Jugan and Jeanne Hardouey ( Bewitched the ), Hermangarde and Vellini ( an old mistress ), Sombreval and his/her daughter Calixte ( a married priest ). The characters of guilty and unrepentant priest symbolize the fall of the angel and Satan. Like him, they sin against the spirit and choose the damnation: The Cross-Jugan, Sombreval, but also the father Riculf ( a history without name ) support like the Manfred of Byron a curse and the weight of a heavy fault.

Joseph de Maistre

Joseph de Maistre is one of the firmest partisans of the Contre-révolution and an enemy of the Lumières. He supports the Ultramontanisme, the Théocratie, religious intolerance and the Absolutisme. Barbey discovers the evenings of Saint-Pétersbourg towards the end 1838. It délecte of the reading of this “work which cuts the breathing through ideas and of images”, with “very powerful metaphysics”. It devotes then a series to him of important studies: Maistre appears in the forefront, with Bonald, of the Prophètes of last the (1851). It pays to him homage at the time of the publication in 1853 of the Mémoires of Mallet of the Side, then in 1858 and 1860 during the publication of the diplomatic Correspondance , finally in 1870 at the time of the publication of its new Oeuvres . Complicities of Maistre and Barbey are at the same time ethical, metaphysical and esthetic.

On the moral level, Maistre shows an extreme dogmatic rigor which leads it to legitimate the Inquisition and to defend the social role of the Bourreau. This taste of the posture provocante and polemic is found at Barbey. Maistre also fights the idea, according to him harmful with very critical, to distinguish the person from the opinions that she formulates in her writings. Barbey will be faithful to this principle in its literary criticisms.

The metaphysics of Maistre grants a broad place to the Mal, whose origin is the Chute of the man. The dogma of the reversibility, voluntary suffering of the men offered to God to call the mercy and the redemption of their brothers, is regarded by Maistre as one of the most important truths of the spiritual order. Maistre affirms the possibility for very innocent discharging by its suffering the crime of the culprits: any life being guilty by nature, any living being being soiled by the Fall, it is possible for him to answer the place of another, and even of a crime which it did not commit. This idea of reversibility finds in a married priest . The news happiness in the crime illustrates another idea maistrienne.

The two writers share certain esthetic values, opposite with literary modernity: Barbey d' Aurevilly as Joseph de Maistre affirm the superiority of traditional and the French literary tradition of on the writers of their time. Both they quote the Bible and the Pères of the Church. Critical Barbey subordinates like Maistre creation to truth and the good, ideal of Beauty traditional. Finally the style Net and energetic, strewn with irony of the Savoyard writer, likes Barbey whose style shares the same characteristics.

The contemporaries had noticed the influence of Maistre on Barbey. Pontmartin will be ironical about the paradox of this literary relationship between the two men who leads Barbey “to think like Mr. de Maistre and to write like the Marquis de Sade”.

Honore de Balzac

It is towards 1849 that Barbey d' Aurevilly discovers the human Comedy . Immediately, he states to admire their author “like the Alps”. He takes care of the edition of his Pensées and maxims , collection of aphorisms selected in his work and published in 1854. He takes his defense in 1857 in the Country , in answer to an attack of the Review of the two worlds . February 1st its widowed sends a letter of thanks to him and the medallion of her husband by David of Angers.

Works like the old maid or the réquisitionnaire will help it to find its way. The reading of Balzac teaches all to him that its own experience contains of romantic topics, in particular the painting of the provincial life, the atmosphere of the small towns and their secret dramas. Barbey inherited Balzac its esthetics of the news - what it names “the lower part of charts” or “the fantastic one of reality”: vectorization relentless towards an event (the news is like “a novel in short cut”), play of the outside and inside, plunged in the mysteries and pretenses of the conscience, revelation of the hidden side of the facts and the individuals - as many processes as one finds in Diabolic the . Orality is very present in works of the two authors. It allows effects of reverberation, pile-up, and gear down the prospects. Diabolic the was called originally Ricochets of conversation , in reference to a conversation between eleven hours and midnight .

The novel aurevillien

A Norman regionalistic writer

As of an old mistress , the accounts of Barbey proceed systematically in its native Normandy. Does that make of Barbey d' Aurevilly a Norman writer, and of its novels of the “novels of soil”?

The Normandy, its landscapes, its habits, its history hold a great place in its novels. The fishmongers in an old mistress speak there “like true fishmongers”, it be-with saying in Norman patois. In Bewitched the , its following novel, and in spite of the objections of his/her Trébutien friends and Baudelaire, the use of the patois is still accentuated more: one does not speak there “Norman about the end of the lips”. This language becomes an essential component of its esthetics: the languages are “the keyboard of the Artists”, “the mould-with-balls of the Genius in which it runs gold”. Poetry for him “exists only at the bottom of reality and reality speaks patois”.

Barbey remains faithful to its country. The evocation of the landscapes of this area give depth to its novels. The moor of Lessay in Bewitched the , the pond of Quesnoy in a married priest , Valognes is in the center of the account, and these novels could not be located elsewhere. These landscapes are not executives selected and adapted according to a history, they come from the memories of the writer, and are not always faithful to reality.

Normandy and the provincial life, strongly associated with its impressions of childhood, are a major asset of its talent: “First Medium in which the poets soaked, here is ineffaceable education, the true origin of their kind of talent, which damascenes and furbishes their steel, which decides the wire and the reflections of them. ”. As soon as it returns there, that it makes this discovery in the neighborhoods of 1850, it becomes large novelist and writes successively to the end of an old mistress , the lower part of charts of part of whist and Bewitched the .

A catholic novelist

Barbey d' Aurevilly develops itself its theory of the catholic novel in 1866 in the foreword of an old mistress then republished, work for which its Catholicisme is blamed. Barbey is defended by recalling that “Catholicism does not have anything prude, prude, pedant, of anxious”, that Catholicism is “the science of the Good and the Evil”, and that its goal was to show “not only intoxications of passion, but its slaveries”.

Barbey estimates to have painted passion “such as it is and such as he saw it”, but that by painting it, he has it “in any condemned page of his book”. It did nothing but express it. Can a catholic touch with the novel and passion? Barbey estimates that art is allowed by Catholicism, it even is encouraged and protected by him. Catholicism exonerates the process of the art which consists in “nothing decreasing by the sinned or of the crime which the purpose of one was to express. ” When him the immorality of his book is reproached, Barbey opposes that the morality of the artist is “in the force and the truth of its painting”: while being true, the artist is sufficiently moral.

Its theory of the catholic novel is found in its novels where the character of the priest is omnipresent: the abbot Jéhoël of the Cross-Jugan ( Bewitched the ), Jean Sombreval ( a married priest ), the father Riculf ( a history without name ). Diabolic the , where open out in each page the Evil, passions and sadism, is the perfect illustration of these ideas.

An art of storyteller

August 1st

An esthetics of the astonishment

August 1st

Critical work

With twenty volumes of the Works and the men , Barbey d' Aurevilly wanted to draw up the intellectual inventory of the 19th century. Its literary criticism is a great hunting for the stupidity. Unjust often, but always logical and in agreement with its principles, its judgments are legitimated by the talent and courage.

Its victims bear famous names: Victor Hugo, George Sand, Madam de Staël, Jules Michelet, Mérimée, Ernest Renan, Théophile Gautier, Flaubert, the Goncourt, Emile Zola. The Parnassiens, the bluestockings, the school naturalist made the expenses of its feather. He is also the author of several lampoons against Buloz, the French Academy, and Holy-Beuve - through Goethe and Diderot . The republications of classic authors give the opportunity to him to stigmatize philosophy with the Lumières, person in charge of the Positivisme, the Matérialisme and the dominant ideology of the Progrès, which run up against its Catholicism and its ideal.

But he just sees when it defends the Flowers of the evil (Baudelaire), Mrs Bovary (Flaubert), works of Balzac and those of Stendhal, Emaux and cameos (Gautier), has wrong way (Huysmans).

The theorist of the dandyism

Under the pseudonym of Maximilienne de Syrène, Barbey signs in 1843 the “impertinences refined” in the Moniteur of the Mode, as well as an article entitled Of elegance . Being based on a biography of George Brummell which has just appeared in London, it extracts from them some anecdotes and takes it for pretext in order to write the account of its clean Dandysme. Of the dandyism and George Brummell appears in 1845. It is republished and increased in 1861, then in 1879, enriched by a text devoted to Lauzun and entitled a dandy of before the dandies .

It develops and analyzes the principles of the dandyism to with it, more intellectuals that vestimentary, the dandy not being “a dress which works all alone”. The dandyism is a manner of being all in nuances, which results from a “state of fight without end between suitability and the trouble”. The dandy is the “futile sovereign of a futile world” and is characterized by the absence of emotion, the horror of nature, the audacity and impertinence, the passion of the luxury, the artificiality, and the need for individuality.

This Essai is one of the three principal ones on the question, with the Traité elegant life of Balzac and the Painter of the modern life of Baudelaire.

Barbey d' Aurevilly and the posterity

Reception of its contemporaries

Barbey d' Aurevilly made the object of criticism contrasted. Almost all agree to find originality to him. Holy-Beuve the judge “man of a brilliant and proud talent, a high intelligence and who goes to large”, “a feather which one can say without flattery which it often resembles a sword”. For Baudelaire, it is a “true catholic, evoking passion to overcome it, singing, crying and shouting in the middle of the storm, planted like Ajax on a rock of desolation”. Paul of Saint-Victor: “the intractable polemist is at the same time a writer of the proudest originality”. Jules Vallès finds “an odd, tormented and proud talent to him”. Maupassant finds in his works “which wonders”. Edmond de Goncourt issues reserves, but the registered voter in his first lists of the Academy in project. Flaubert in his correspondence speaks about it frankly like its enemy. He judges Diabolic the “to twist laughter” and finds that “one does not go further in the grotesque involuntary one”. Zola joined it and finds that it has “two or three centuries of delay”. He condemns his attitude at the time of the continuations against Diabolic the , when Barbey agrees to withdraw its work of the sale.

The Symbolist generation and declining

Paul Verlaine deplores the systems but cannot prevent oneself from recognizing “a style of race” and a “original manner to him”. He admires the “profusion of the often successful and always poetic images, of boldnesses sometimes happy, and never vulgar”. Jean Lorrain finds admirably it “cut” for the literary generation fine of century. For Huysmans, he was “the only artist, with the pure direction of the word, which the Catholicism of this time produced”, as well as a “large prosator” and a “admirable novelist”. In has wrong way , it makes appear its works among preferred élitiste library of Of Esseintes. For Rémy de Gourmont, Barbey d' Aurevilly is “one of the most original figures of the literature of the nineteenth century”, which “will excite curiosity a long time” and “will remain a long time one of these traditional singular and as underground which are the true life of the French literature”.

Posthumous judgments

August 1st Julien Green reads Diabolic the with “an astonished admiration”. Marcel Proust in Captive the .

Quotations

In connection with Emile Zola and of the Pole-axe:

“This Hercules soiled which stirs up the manure of Augias and which adds to it! ”

unknown Context:

“The supreme seduction is not to express its feelings, it is to make them suspect. ”

Anecdotes

A college of Rouen bears its name, with 39, boulevard de la Marne.

The 25 of the street Rousselet in Paris is decorated with a plate Jules Barbey d' Aurevilly.

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