PARTISAN REVIEW
violent and improvident ways. "I am writing to you," says Marche–
noir, "because a soul given over to its own nothingness is without
other recourse than to the futile literary gymnastic feat of formu–
lating that nothingness." What did Marchenoir
pere
represent? Med–
iocrity. Is Dulaurier the constant friend of Marchenoir's misery?
No. Marchenoir despises him. His reason for writing to Dulauri'tr
is that Dulaurier has a lot of money which he does not deserve.
Marchenoir-Bloy characterized himself elsewhere (it is the title of
one of
his
eight diaries) as "the ungrateful beggar." Part One of
Le Desespere
proceeds to the narration of Dulaurier's successful but
unedifying literary career and
his
condescending ill-treatment of
Marchenoir. Follows a retrospective .account of Marchenoir's early
life, his sudden conversion
udurant l'oisive chaufferie de pieds d'une
nuit de grand'garde, en 1870,"
his
struggles to gain a footing in the
post-war literary world, a series of extremely unattractive love-affairs,
and the discovery of Veronique. Marchenoir
pere
dies and is buried
at Perigueux. His son receives money from a devoted friend, an
engraver, Leverdier, and goes to the Grande Chartreuse to make
a retreat.
This narrative follows Bloy's own life-story closely. Born in 1846
and a pauper for the greater part of his life, Bloy was in fact the
recipient of SOII).e form of mystical illumination
in
the night watches
during the war of 1870. He was, in fact, born at Perigueux, and his
inability to force a living out of journalism was not entirely due to
his own intransigence, though Barbey d'Aurevilly and Ernest Hello
befriended him. Bloy had his period of debauchery.
ull avait ete
chaste
a
la maniere des prisonniers et des matelots, lesquels ne voient
ordinairement dans l'amour qu'une desiderable friction malpropre,
en l'obscurite de couteux repaires."
He subsequently
ufit de l'amour
extatique dans des Zits de boue, avec une conscience dilaceree."
Upon the death of his father, Bloy made a retreat at the Trappist
monastery of Soligny and entertained the monastic life as a possibility
for himself. He did not like the Trappists and substituted for Soligny,
in his novel, the Grande Chartreuse, where he later made a happier
retreat. But the chief divergence from autobiographical fact in Part
One is found when we come to Veronique. And here, dealing with the
most lacerating episode of his own life, Bloy fails conspicuously. The
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