Léon Bloy

Great Men Are Slain Here by L on Bloy is a biography of sorts on Ernest Hello. Originally published in AD 1895 (under the French title of Ici on assassine les grands hommes), it was meant to provide a necessary corrective to the "official" biography commissioned by Mme. Hello, after her husbandʼs passing. L on Bloy was not a fan of Mme. Hello (nor she of him), and he was even less a fan of her husbandʼs biography, in which she had a heavy hand. Great Men Are Slain Here is part biography (to set the record straight), part criticism (of how Mme. Hello treated her husband, his friend, in life and death), and part satire. To tell the virtues of the family, of multiple families, the first phrases of the sublime child, the memorable expressions of papas and mamas, the angelic passions of the young man, his marriage plans, the ineffable purity of soul of the fianc s and their union under the watching eyes of seraphim; - things that should have remained in proud obscurity; - to go on and on, finally, about Madame Hello, the divine Mama Zo , in so many pages, great God ... And all that, from beginning to end, in that rheumy form, runny and cold like scrofula, which characterizes the prospectuses of shirtmakers for clergymen or the sacrilegious instructions of propagation excogitated by some libidinous soutanes.... The biographer] strikes a dithyrambic match across his backside and declares to us, among other things, that "Hello, if read and understood, would illuminate the modern mind," that "his glory, which is that of God, would have been the good fortune of a century." In passing, he compares him to the Sun...

The Ungrateful Beggar (The Authorʼs Journal, 1892-1895), published in 1898, is the first in the Ungrateful Beggar series (or "The Journal") by L on Bloy. Edited for publication by the author, it is a day-by-day account of interactions with friends, artists, wife, children, publishers, landlords, and such events as his hiring on with (and getting sacked from) the Gil Blas, his writing for the Mercure de France, the death of his two boys...; it includes his innermost thoughts, fears, torments, joys, - always in the context of a miserable poverty, and a never-dying Catholic faith, where "all that happens in life is adorable." Artists interacted with in this period include Henry de Groux, mile Zola, Fran ois Copp e, Remy de Gourmont, Laurent Tailhade, Auguste Rodin, Paul Bourget, Charles Buet, Georges dʼEsparb s. Works that the author wrote and published during this period include: Salvation Through the Jews, Sueur de Sang Sweating Blood], Histoires d sobligeantes Disagreeable Tales], L on Bloy devant les cochons L on Bloy Before the Swine], Ici on assassine les grands hommes Great Men Are Slain Here].

On the Threshold of the Apocalypse: 1913-1915 is the seventh volume from L on Bloyʼs personal journal begun in 1892. This volume begins one year before World War I began, but ends, like the author (who passed in 1917), before the great war ended. Often prescient when it comes to the European stage, and particularly the imminent threat posed by Prussian Germany, with respect to France, "the Eldest Daughter of the Church," - Bloy had been predicting a terrible cataclysm as far back as the early 1870s. In fact, Our Lady of Salette, whom Bloy was familiar with, provided the religious explanation for the war, if purely human reasons were not enough. In this journal, the bloody writing on the wall is seen as early as January, 1913: "When one wants to change a banknote, one is bombarded with one-hundred sous pieces. The Bank has returned all the gold coin to its vaults, in prevision for some dreadful war." In late July, 1914, he writes, "Universal disquietude caused by the menacing attitude of Austria toward Serbia takes shape all of a sudden. That war being able to have a European conflagration for effect... Are the announced cataclysms close finally?" On July 31, 1914, he writes: "Austria has just begun its war with Serbia which will infallibly unleash everything." What follows is a nearly daily account of the war as seen from Paris, Chartres, Rennes. But with all the cataclysm and apocalyptic gloom that one would expect, from a man like L on Bloy, there is also the optimism, and good faith, in a good God: "All that happens in life is perfectly adorable, because nothing happens that is outside the divine plan."

On Huysmansʼ Tomb (Sur la tombe de Huysmans originally) is a collection of critical essays written by L on Bloy about his erstwhile friend, Joris-Karl Huysmans. Written between 1884 and 1893, and published in book form in 1913, six years after Huysmansʼ death, it is an appraisal of Huysmans himself and his most important work at that time: Rebours, En Rade, L -Bas, - as nobody other than L on Bloy could have written, with keen psychological insight into Huysmansʼ mind and personality, and providing first-hand information about the inception of those works, particularly L -Bas, that satanic masterpiece of Huysmansʼ that originally was intended to look up (L -Haut), rather than down." The intensity of a writer like Huysmans is, principally, in his contempt... The well-known author of Rebours has not at all the ignivomitous allures of an imprecator, and the torrential flux of green bile is, in him, merely the literary illusion of some prickly vanity... Huysmans had finally divested himself of the pedagogic reminiscences of his art education, in order to enter upon certain originality, ... The synoptic pessimism of des Esseintes appeared to many as a stopping place or as a refuge, and the agonizing future of that anchorite of analysis excited the emulation of a large group of dreamers...""En Rade does not appear to be a work fated to modify the destiny of that reprobate des Esseintes]. The pessimism of Rebours has merely been strengthened and consolidated... No counterweight, from now on, to the deep despondency of souls. No pale brightness, no wan glimmer of the skies... Never has hope been so positively dismissed..." The appendix includes a review by Jules Barbey dʼAurevilly on Rebours.

Written and published in 1884, L on Bloyʼs The Revealer of the Globe: Christopher Columbus and His Future Beatification is an attempt by the author to renew the Cause for Canonization of Christopher Columbus. This is part one of that work. It includes a preface by Jules Barbey dʼAurevilly. To read this book today feels sometimes like reading a book written only yesterday. Christopher Columbus represents the West and Western Civilization as no other person before him can or ever will. And everyone else, intra or extra muros, those who do not subscribe to that civilization but inherit all its benefits - they are the angry, ingrateful hordes some of whom, quite clearly, do not know what they do, nor what their actions imply. L on Bloy says it best when he says: "The prejudice against Christopher Columbus is so tenacious and so strong that the greatest poet in the world, supposing him inspired by the most magnificent of all indignations, would never succeed in overcoming it.""Doubtless also, he had to believe that that captive world would not be handed over to him without a fight and his heroic soul counted on the God of the oppressed to decide his fortune. But the extraordinary injustice, the unprecedented ingratitude, the indefatigable persistence of misfortunes as he had never seen before and, above all, the supernatural, absolute, implacable insuccess of all his efforts - with the exception of the Discovery, - that there must have strangely astonished his soul, which was unique among the unique "

Joan of Arc and Germany (originally Jeanne dʼArc et lʼAllemagne), by L on Bloy, was published in 1915. It is an account of the marvelous and miraculous prodigy, her overnight transformation from simple country girl of Lorraine to master military tactician and strategist, from virgin to general, from nobody to savior of France, putting an abrupt end to the Hundred Years War with England. It is based on historical documents, trial documents, eye witness accounts, modern historical interpretations, as well as generously peppered with the authorʼs own loving enthusiasm for, and unique vision of, the beatified and subsequently canonized Saint Joan of Arc. With ever an eye on historical symbolism, the author compares Franceʼs war with the Germans of World War I to its war with the English during the Hundred Years War. L on Bloy says it best when he says: "The world never stops, it always keeps going. Immemorial, secular progression of the strong and the oppressed, of the iniquitous and the innocent whom they crush down, towards the communal grave of Eternity. History is merely a cry of grief throughout the centuries. It is as if there had not been a Redemption. One would be tempted to believe it if, every now and then, marvelous creatures did not appear who seem to say that the All Powerful is captive for an indeterminate period of time, that Supreme Justice is provisionally enchained, and that men of goodwill must trust in their God. Prefigurative creatures of consolation and hope, by their actions, of an unimaginable magnificence that the Scriptures announced."

The Soul of Napoleon (Lʼ me de Napol on, originally), by L on Bloy, is a poem in prose on the great generalʼs achievements and greatness, but it is more than that, it is a re-assessment of his significance from a Catholic and a Catholic eschatological point of view, as perhaps no other writer than L on Bloy could have put down on paper. Written in 1912, it is also, like many of L on Bloyʼs writings, prophetic in an eerie way of near-term events to come, a prefiguration of both WWI and beyond." The history of Napoleon is quite certainly the most unknown of all histories. Books that claim to recount it are innumerable, and there is no end to documents of every sort. In reality, Napoleon is perhaps less known to us than Alexander and Sennacherib. The more one studies, the more one discovers that he is the man whom nothing resembles and thatʼs all there is. Itʼs the unfathomable gulf. One knows the dates, one knows the deeds, victories or disasters, one knows, a bit or quite a bit, of the famous negotiations that are, today, merely dust. His name alone remains, his prodigious Name, and when it is pronounced by the poorest of all children, it is enough to make a great man blush, no matter whom. Napoleon is the Face of God in darkness.""There is, in the humblest churches of France, a poor lamp lit night and day, before the Holy Sacrament of the Altar. The thought crossed my mind, absurd perhaps, that that lamp is something like Napoleonʼs confidence."

Blood of the Poor (originally Le Sang du pauvre), by Catholic writer L on Bloy, is perhaps the hardest to read of L on 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?"

Je M'Accuse... (I Accuse Myself...), written by L on Bloy and published in 1900, is a blistering, unforgiving, and often hilarious attack on Emile Zola, the founder of the Naturalist movement of French literature, famous internationally for his participation in the Dreyfus Affair through an open letter, "J'Accuse... ", which he addressed to F lix Faure, then President of the French Third Republic, and which was published (in 1898) on the front page of Aurore magazine. Je M'Accuse... is also a scathing attack on, and criticism of, two of Zola's (then) recent novels, Lourdes and Fecundity. Lovers of Zola will find little to appreciate here, but admirers of Bloy will be rolling on the floor laughing. Staunch, satirical, atrabilious, and intransigent Catholic writer, L on Bloy, -- always ready for a good (literary) fight, -- enters into the ring punching, against Zola and for Catholicism.

"In these unprecedented times" (ugh) we need a prophet. But prophets are hard to come by in the flesh and blood, unless we unearth one from the modern or post-modern past, from our own graveyards preferably. If fusty, fetid, fecal, and fiery L on Bloy cannot fit the bill, we donʼt know who can. Salvation Through the Jews picks up where certain apocalyptic, poetic, eschatological, and prophesying chapters in The Desperate Man left some readers panting for more. It was published 6 years after the latter novel, and one can see in it the sprouting sequel of a germ planted in 1886, if not earlier. L on Bloy was a great artist and a genius. Nobody can deny that. And there is artistry in this book; he uses it deftly to make a compelling point. But like all arguments, one needs to hear the major and minor premises first before arriving at the synthesis or conclusion. This work NEEDS to be read even if one is not a Christian or a Jew because although it is about the Passion and although it is about the so-called "Jewish problem," on another level it is something else, and one can take the Jews and Christians out of the equation altogether, strip them naked, bleach them white, remove their particulars from this book, and replace them rather easily by more modern equivalent cardboard cutouts in the theater of now.

She Who Weeps (Our Lady of La Salette) by L on Bloy (Celle qui pleure, in French) was originally published in 1908. This is an English translation of a work that is arguably a keystone of religious thought in Bloyʼs canon, given the authorʼs strong belief in, and promotion of, not only Mariology but also Millenarianism, both which beliefs permeate his work. Originally begun in 1879, before his articles written as a scatalogical demolitionary pamphleteer for the Chat Noir journal, before his ground-breaking first novel, The Desperate Man, which was, by the authorʼs own admission, the beginning of the "conspiration of silence" against him - She Who Weeps was surprisingly abandoned at first. It was only later when Pierre Termier, a lay "ambassador of Mary," and close friend of the author in his later years, approached Bloy about the work, that the latter, encouraged, and with rekindled interest, picked it up again and brought it to completion. It discusses the story of M lanie Calvat, and also Maximin Giraud, two children-shepherds in the French Alps, witnesses to the Apparition of the Very Holy Virgin Mary on September 19, 1846, - twelve years before the more famous Marian Apparition at Lourdes - and the consequences that the event had on the lives of the two children - particularly M lanie, who devoted her life to promoting the message." Pass it on to all my My People, the Mother of God had said to the Shepherds, having announced to them the Great News..."

The Desperate Man (first published in 1887) is arguably the French decadent novel par excellence of the 19th century. It is also L on Bloyʼs first novel and a seminal work which, as such, planted the seeds of just about every other important theme or topic that the author would later develop in subsequent works throughout his life and career. Life is rain water for talented writers; and habitual poverty for Bloy acted as the mulch. There is in The Desperate Man the seed of satire, which was actually a small tree by the time The Desperate Man came out, the seed having been sprouted earlier in his career, in the articles for newspapers, predominantly the Chat Noir journal, - such satire as to rival Jonathan Swiftʼs; there is also the seed of apocalyptic Catholicism in The Desperate Man, and the nuts of the exegeses of commonplaces, not to mention the germs of the blood of the poor; there is the kernel of the constant attack on contemporaneous clergy and Bloyʼs self-professed fondness for cenobitism. There is the spore of the eulogy for sainthood, and the embryo of the denunciation of the proxenetism of the press, Parisian high-society and the bourgeoisie. There are the negative grains of anti-Republicanism, and anti-German sentiment. There are the positive grains of pro-conservativism, pro-Medievalism, pro-Monarchy, and pro-Merovingian French Dynasty.