TWO NOVELS BY LEON BLOY
story as it is told in the novel is dramatically inferior to the episode
as it in fact took place.
The Veronique of real life was called Anne-Marie Roulet. Like
the Veronique of the novel (though with less domestic and financial
excuse), she was a prostitute. Under the influence of Bloy, she began
to exhibit symptoms of sanctity and illumination and recounted to
Bloy visions and prophecies which underlie a great deal of his work.
In the end, she went mad. She was Bloy's mistress for a time. The
most heroic moral feat of Bloy's life was the breaking of sexual rela–
tionship with Anne-Marie Roulet while maintaining the closest reli–
gious and spiritual (or psychological) intimacy with her. In the novel,
Marchenoir contrives to redeem Veronique without sleeping with her.
It is too easy. Veronique falls in love with Marchenoir. He converts
by denying her. This is reminiscent of the cut-and-dried psychology
of Paul Bourget, of which Bloy was frequently contemptuous. The
truth was in
this
case more interesting. In Part One of
Le Desespere,
there is no sufficient conflict.
Part Two covers the period of religious retreat at the Grande
Chartreuse. Letters are exchanged between Marchenoir and Veron–
ique which indicate that Marchenoir, having established his lack of a
vocation for the religious life,
is
falling in love with Veronique, but
that the process torments him.
Upon his return to Paris, in Part Three, M.archenoir is con–
fronted with one of the most ludicrous and shocking situations in
world fiction. Leverdier relates to his friend how Veronique, in order
to prevent Marchenoir falling in love with her, has cut off her hair
(which hung to her knees), has sold the hair (to a taxidermist?)
and, with the proceeds, has gone to a Jew of doubtful occupation and
paid him to pull out all her teeth.
((A cet enonce inou'i, M archenoir
tourna sur lui-meme et, s'eloignant obliquement,
a
la
fa~on
d'un
ali·ene, les deux bras croises sur sa tete, se mit
a
exhaler des rauque–
ments horribles."
And well he might. Bloy's refusal to present his
sainted harlot as she was has involved him in the most dreadful
plight, coupled as
it
is with a serious lack of humor. Veronique in
the novel
iJ
not mad (she becomes so quite unexpectedly in the last
few pages), yet she does what could only not
be
ludicrous in a mad
woman. Of the real Anne-Marie Roulet, just before she became
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