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On the Threshold of the Apocalypse: 1913-1915
Extrait:
Quelle bonne journée nous avons eue ensemble! Tu ne sais pas quelle Impression claire' ai eue de vos âmes qui me sont apparues belles, fortes et brûlantes! Comme je les aime, ces chères âmes! Celle de ton mari est d' une simplicité héroïque. C'est vraiment le monstre qui, de sa vision surnaturelle, voit et juge toutes choses et ren verse l'ordre apparent du pauvre monde. Comme il m'ap paraît grand et cher à Dieu!
Quelle bonne journée nous avons eue ensemble! Tu ne sais pas quelle Impression claire' ai eue de vos âmes qui me sont apparues belles, fortes et brûlantes! Comme je les aime, ces chères âmes! Celle de ton mari est d' une simplicité héroïque. C'est vraiment le monstre qui, de sa vision surnaturelle, voit et juge toutes choses et ren verse l'ordre apparent du pauvre monde. Comme il m'ap paraît grand et cher à Dieu!
450 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1916
12 people want to read
About the author
Léon Bloy
176 books120 followersBloy was born in Notre-Dame-de-Sanilhac, in the arondissement of Périgueux, Dordogne. He was the second of six sons of Voltairean freethinker and stern disciplinarian Jean Baptiste Bloy and his wife Anne-Marie Carreau, pious Spanish-Catholic daughter of a Napoleonic soldier. After an agnostic and unhappy youth in which he cultivated an intense hatred for the Roman Catholic Church and its teaching, his father found him a job in Paris, where he went in 1864. In December 1868, he met the aging Catholic author Barbey d'Aurevilly, who lived opposite him in rue Rousselet and became his mentor. Shortly afterwards, he underwent a dramatic religious conversion.
Bloy's works reflect a deepening devotion to the Catholic Church and most generally a tremendous craving for the Absolute. His devotion to religion resulted in a complete dependence on charity; he acquired his nickname ("the ungrateful beggar") as a result of the many letters requesting financial aid from friends, acquaintances, and complete strangers, all the while carrying on with his literary work, in which his eight-volume Diary takes an important place.
Bloy was a friend of the author Joris-Karl Huysmans, the painter Georges Rouault, and the philosopher Jacques Maritain, and was instrumental in reconciling these intellectuals with Roman Catholicism. However, he acquired a reputation for bigotry because of his frequent outbursts of temper; and his first novel, Le Désespéré, a fierce attack on rationalism and those he believed to be in league with it, made him fall out with the literary community of his time and even many of his old friends. Soon, Bloy could count such prestigious authors as Emile Zola, Guy de Maupassant, Ernest Renan, Alphonse Daudet, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Paul Bourget and Anatole France as his enemies.
In addition to his published works, he left a large body of correspondence with public and literary figures. He died in Bourg-la-Reine.
Bloy's works reflect a deepening devotion to the Catholic Church and most generally a tremendous craving for the Absolute. His devotion to religion resulted in a complete dependence on charity; he acquired his nickname ("the ungrateful beggar") as a result of the many letters requesting financial aid from friends, acquaintances, and complete strangers, all the while carrying on with his literary work, in which his eight-volume Diary takes an important place.
Bloy was a friend of the author Joris-Karl Huysmans, the painter Georges Rouault, and the philosopher Jacques Maritain, and was instrumental in reconciling these intellectuals with Roman Catholicism. However, he acquired a reputation for bigotry because of his frequent outbursts of temper; and his first novel, Le Désespéré, a fierce attack on rationalism and those he believed to be in league with it, made him fall out with the literary community of his time and even many of his old friends. Soon, Bloy could count such prestigious authors as Emile Zola, Guy de Maupassant, Ernest Renan, Alphonse Daudet, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Paul Bourget and Anatole France as his enemies.
In addition to his published works, he left a large body of correspondence with public and literary figures. He died in Bourg-la-Reine.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 2, 2021
I don't generally read people's (famous or not) diaries or journals, -- cannot remember the last time I have or did. Maybe some extracts from Samuel Pepys' diary when I was back in college.
So to be reading Leon Bloy's journals is a real exception for me. But what a treat. It is obvious however, and the man says as much, that he is writing them for publication, which makes me wonder what the "real" journals look like. Probably messier. Nevertheless, it sure feels real.
Here's an entry from January 3, 1915, when the trench warfare between Germany and France is already 1 year in full swing, during World War I. Who would have guessed it would last for another 3 years or so. Bloy certainly didn't.
January 13, 1915: "Horrible story. One receives a letter from a prisoner saying that he is treated by the Germans with gentleness and kindness. The letter is dictated, of course. But the prisoner inserted a postal stamp for the so-called collection of the recipient, and behold what is found on the reverse of that stamp: 'I tried to escape, and they cut off both my feet!!!'”
People just can't make that stuff up.
January 22, 1915: "As for me, very humble participant in this operation of extermination, in this apocalyptic war, I have the impression that nobody understands anything about what is going on."
Dreary times for anyone, and esp. for a person of faith. Or maybe, just maybe, less dreary because one had faith. Always surprising, Bloy says this about it:
"My conception of things is such that I am forced to rejoice over the worst misfortunes whose spectacle or anticipation tortures me, because I know them to be necessary, that is to say, wanted by God and, by consequence, adorable; because it is a thousand times clear to me that the announced cataclysms are the indispensable prodromes of the Kingdom of God in terra that we have the duty to ask for unceasingly..."
It's an engaging read, all 450 pages of it.
In all transparency, IATT.
So to be reading Leon Bloy's journals is a real exception for me. But what a treat. It is obvious however, and the man says as much, that he is writing them for publication, which makes me wonder what the "real" journals look like. Probably messier. Nevertheless, it sure feels real.
Here's an entry from January 3, 1915, when the trench warfare between Germany and France is already 1 year in full swing, during World War I. Who would have guessed it would last for another 3 years or so. Bloy certainly didn't.
January 13, 1915: "Horrible story. One receives a letter from a prisoner saying that he is treated by the Germans with gentleness and kindness. The letter is dictated, of course. But the prisoner inserted a postal stamp for the so-called collection of the recipient, and behold what is found on the reverse of that stamp: 'I tried to escape, and they cut off both my feet!!!'”
People just can't make that stuff up.
January 22, 1915: "As for me, very humble participant in this operation of extermination, in this apocalyptic war, I have the impression that nobody understands anything about what is going on."
Dreary times for anyone, and esp. for a person of faith. Or maybe, just maybe, less dreary because one had faith. Always surprising, Bloy says this about it:
"My conception of things is such that I am forced to rejoice over the worst misfortunes whose spectacle or anticipation tortures me, because I know them to be necessary, that is to say, wanted by God and, by consequence, adorable; because it is a thousand times clear to me that the announced cataclysms are the indispensable prodromes of the Kingdom of God in terra that we have the duty to ask for unceasingly..."
It's an engaging read, all 450 pages of it.
In all transparency, IATT.
September 7, 2021
This book is now available in English translation. See https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...
See also my review there.
See also my review there.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews