PARTISAN REVIEW
really high, the incident of the teeth could have been recounted and
would have seemed credible. In Veronique, it is presented by Bloy
as a further symptom of great character, perhaps indeed as a direct
result of the influx of supernatural grace (and let us remember that
Bloy was forty years old when he wrote
Le Desespere).
But of this
extraordinary silliness in Bloy, we shall find other, though less glar–
ing, instances.
The extraction of Veronique's teeth solves none of Marchenoir's
problems. It enables
him
to rail further at the mediocrity of priests,
one of whom, Veronique's director, ticks her off severely, failing to
appreciate the sublimity of her action. But in the end Marchenoir
concludes that Veronique, without teeth and hair, is not less, but
more, beautiful. He becomes increasingly amorous of her, and yet
the two continue to inhabit the same apartment in the same odd
condition of
concubinage celeste .
Working at his book on the divine
symbolism of history one night, Marchenoir loses control of himself
and staggers, with endless
grincements
and panting, to Veronique's
door, only to find that she has been praying
all
night. This cools
him off. When Veronique does in the end go mad, Marchenoir is
run over on the .way back from the asylum. The novel concludes,
as it began, with a letter, this time to Leverdier, the constant friend,
who is in the country. Marchenoir dies without priest. He dies, like
his father, of mediocrity, but of other people's mediocrity and not
his own. He also dies of poverty, the superlative crime.
I have tried in this summary neither to simplify facetiously nor
to extenuate the naivete and clumsiness of
Le Desespere.
What cannot
be made plain in a summary is how little the quality of the book
depends upon its plot. It is the flow of metaphysical fantasy which
keeps the book going. The incidents hold it up. Unfortunately, Mar–
chenoir's
prof~ional
difficulties also hold
it
up. Part Four and Five
consist almost wholly of two episodes in the literary world, first a
party given by Properce Beauvivier
4
who wishes to give Marchenoir
a build-up for his own purposes and, second, M-archenoir's attempt
4
It is always very difficult to identify the literary figures whom Bloy intro–
duces into his novels, because he hated every big name of his day and always for
the same reasons. However, he felt a particular fury against Bourget, Huysmans,
and Louis Veuillot, and one or all three of these is probably contained in any of
the lay figures he dresses up.
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