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la sangre del pobre
Sans aucun doute le livre le plus personnel de Léon Bloy, Le Sang du Pauvre est aussi celui dont la maturation fut la plus longue et la plus sourde.Ce sang du pauvre dont il est ici question n'est autre que l'argent, transfiguration audacieuse du sang versé par le Rédempteur : « Il est exécrable et adorable, symbole flagrant et ruisselant du Christ Sauveur.La force de Bloy est de nous happer dans son imaginaire intuitif, pour offrir une vision à charge du monde industriel. Mais un siècle après - Sueur de Sang a paru en 1908 - ce discours violent contre le matérialisme reste d'une lucide actualité : l'argent est la nouvelle foi des hommes, encline aux mêmes excès, au même fanatisme et au même dévoiement.Bloy se livre à une diatribe contre cette civilisation inhumaine régie par les seules lois de l'économie. En somme, Bloy est, dans sa dénonciation de la société matérialiste, un précurseur de l'altermondialisme qui aurait les emportements oratoires des prophètes de l'Ancien Testament.
202 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1909
About the author
Léon Bloy
166 books132 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 - 8 of 8 reviews
April 24, 2021
For those who cannot read it in French, there is now an English translation of Blood of the Poor. From the back cover of this book in English:
Blood of the Poor (originally Le Sang du pauvre), by Catholic writer Léon Bloy, is perhaps the hardest to read of Léon Bloyʼs writings, as it goes straight to the heart of the matter of what is wrong in the world. It is hard to read, emotively, because it gives the honest reader no room for cover, no space for shelter, no shadow of a tree to hide under. With avarice as its subject, it is a dark poem in prose, a sermon in the style of Savonarola, with the biting satire of a Jonathan Swift.
“The Blood and the Flesh of the Poor are the only aliments that can nourish, the substance of the rich being a poison and a putrefaction. It is therefore a necessity of hygiene that the poor be devoured by the rich who find that very good, and who ask for it again. Rich children are fortified by the juice of the poorsʼ flesh, and the rich manʼs cuisine is endowed with concentrate of the poor.”
“You believe yourselves to be innocent because you have not slit somebodyʼs throat, as yet, I want to believe; because you have not forced open somebodyʼs door nor scaled his wall in order to despoil him of his possessions; because finally you have not transgressed human laws too visibly. You are so gross, so carnal, for you do not conceive of a crime that cannot be seen. But I say to you, my very dear brother, that you are a plant, and that that assassin is your flower.”
“It is true that there are refuges: drunkenness, prostitution of the body, suicide, or madness. Why would the dance not continue?”
Blood of the Poor (originally Le Sang du pauvre), by Catholic writer Léon Bloy, is perhaps the hardest to read of Léon Bloyʼs writings, as it goes straight to the heart of the matter of what is wrong in the world. It is hard to read, emotively, because it gives the honest reader no room for cover, no space for shelter, no shadow of a tree to hide under. With avarice as its subject, it is a dark poem in prose, a sermon in the style of Savonarola, with the biting satire of a Jonathan Swift.
“The Blood and the Flesh of the Poor are the only aliments that can nourish, the substance of the rich being a poison and a putrefaction. It is therefore a necessity of hygiene that the poor be devoured by the rich who find that very good, and who ask for it again. Rich children are fortified by the juice of the poorsʼ flesh, and the rich manʼs cuisine is endowed with concentrate of the poor.”
“You believe yourselves to be innocent because you have not slit somebodyʼs throat, as yet, I want to believe; because you have not forced open somebodyʼs door nor scaled his wall in order to despoil him of his possessions; because finally you have not transgressed human laws too visibly. You are so gross, so carnal, for you do not conceive of a crime that cannot be seen. But I say to you, my very dear brother, that you are a plant, and that that assassin is your flower.”
“It is true that there are refuges: drunkenness, prostitution of the body, suicide, or madness. Why would the dance not continue?”
November 8, 2024
C'est fou ce que Malthus et le Marxisme ont fait comme dégâts sur les esprits et même sur les catholiques. Non l'argent des uns n'est pas nécessairement le vol de celui des autres. C'est dommage, la forme est très belle.
August 29, 2025
Es como si Marx fuese muy cristiano y escribiese puesto de ketamina.
March 3, 2026
inclasificable
July 22, 2016
4 *, ale s výhradami. Nevím do jaké míry se jedná o autorovu sebestylizaci (kdo z nejchudších si mohl vydržovat služku jako v rodině Bloy?)
Přestože za více než 100 let od napsání knihy v našich krajích bídy ubylo, je naprostá většina vykreslených neřádů bohužel stále aktuální - minimálně v chudších částech světa.
Jste milionářem, máte ten hnusný vůz, nad kterým se mi vnitřnosti obracejí, a nepojezdujete s ním, byste od rána do večera spěchal jen na pomoc chudým! Rozumíte mi dobře, na pomoc chudým, kteří vám byli svěřeni k svému neštěstí, a kteří vás očekávají plačíce. Ale pak jste mrzký padouch, okradatel chudých!
...
Opakuju, jste potvora, zbabělý a sviňský padouch, neskonale pod vražedníky, vloupávajícími se pod zámky, kteří aspoň vydávají v nebezpečí svou kůži a svou svobodu.
...
Peníze jsou k Slávě Boha, vězte to dobře, a Sláva Boha jest v lůně chudých. Každé jiné užití, ať jakékoliv, jest prostitucí a modloslužbou. Ale přede vším jest krádeží. Jest jen jediná možnost, jak neolupovati ostatních, a sice obrati sama sebe. Taková mluva jest vám nová, není-liž pravda? Nemluví se takto u vás blbců a povalečů. Nechť si! lahodí mi, mohu-li říkati tyto věci a přiměti vás, byste je slyšel. K vašemu prospěchu přeju vám zkázy a bídy. Zvěděl byste pak, co to jsou peníze. Až do té doby zůstanete hovadem.
Přestože za více než 100 let od napsání knihy v našich krajích bídy ubylo, je naprostá většina vykreslených neřádů bohužel stále aktuální - minimálně v chudších částech světa.
Jste milionářem, máte ten hnusný vůz, nad kterým se mi vnitřnosti obracejí, a nepojezdujete s ním, byste od rána do večera spěchal jen na pomoc chudým! Rozumíte mi dobře, na pomoc chudým, kteří vám byli svěřeni k svému neštěstí, a kteří vás očekávají plačíce. Ale pak jste mrzký padouch, okradatel chudých!
...
Opakuju, jste potvora, zbabělý a sviňský padouch, neskonale pod vražedníky, vloupávajícími se pod zámky, kteří aspoň vydávají v nebezpečí svou kůži a svou svobodu.
...
Peníze jsou k Slávě Boha, vězte to dobře, a Sláva Boha jest v lůně chudých. Každé jiné užití, ať jakékoliv, jest prostitucí a modloslužbou. Ale přede vším jest krádeží. Jest jen jediná možnost, jak neolupovati ostatních, a sice obrati sama sebe. Taková mluva jest vám nová, není-liž pravda? Nemluví se takto u vás blbců a povalečů. Nechť si! lahodí mi, mohu-li říkati tyto věci a přiměti vás, byste je slyšel. K vašemu prospěchu přeju vám zkázy a bídy. Zvěděl byste pak, co to jsou peníze. Až do té doby zůstanete hovadem.
April 21, 2021
It does not get any better, or harder to hear, than this. If you like the Old Testament, its poetry (Song of Songs for instance) and its poetry in prose, as well as Lamentations for instance; if you find Jonathan Swift's writings, particularly Gulliver's Travels (and I don't mean the "action" sequences), to be very good -- if you like Baudelaire's Fleur-du-malian honesty according to his lights -- then you will find Léon Bloy's Blood of the Poor to be very good fodder for your grief and indignation mill.
If you liked his Salvation Through the Jews, and if you like the apocalyptic chapters of The Desperate Man, if you liked the biting satire of Je m'accuse, -- you will find Blood of the Poor to very good, but hard sometimes, oats to chew on. In all transparency, I translated it.
If you liked his Salvation Through the Jews, and if you like the apocalyptic chapters of The Desperate Man, if you liked the biting satire of Je m'accuse, -- you will find Blood of the Poor to very good, but hard sometimes, oats to chew on. In all transparency, I translated it.
April 17, 2023
"No pienso que el desprecio a los pobres haya sido jamás limpia e insolemnemente declarado. ¿Es esto un efecto de la idolatría demoníaca o de una imbecilidad trascendental?"
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews