TWO NOVELS BY LEON BLOY
to start a magazine (Bloy's own
Le Pal,
of which four numbers ap–
peared). How culpable are the mandarins of the day is . a matter
on which successful and unsuccessful writers differ. Certainly there
are literary vested interests, and certainly a number of writers in
any age fall foul of them, and certainly Bloy should not have been
allowed to starve as he did. Nevertheless his railing was inaccurate,
uncharitable, and a waste of his own time. The passages in
Le
Desespere
which are of unquestionable excellence are certain descrip–
tions of the Grande Chartreuse, the account of Marchenoir's (Bloy's
own) conversion, and some briefer dogmatic-exegetical rhapsodies
on Christ the Poor Man, the central figure in Bloy's general myth–
ology.
The prose at its best is magnificent. In its color and its rhetorical
weight, it is un-French. In its dependence upon epithet it is wholly
French. Bloy characterizes his own writing in that of Marchenoir
and speaks of
uza violente couleur de l'ecrivain, sa barbarie cauteleuse
et alambiquee; l'insistance giraloire, l'enroulement tetu ·de certaines
images cruelles revenant avec obstination sur elles-memes commes les
convolvulacees; l'audace inouze de cette forme, nombreuse autant
qu'une horde et si rapide, quoique pesamment armee; le tumulte
sage de ce vocabulaire panache de flammes et de cendres ainsi que
le Vbuve aux derniers jours de Pompei, balafre d'or, incruste, cre–
nete, denticufe de gemmes antiques,
a
[a fafOn d'une chasse de martyr;
mais surtout l'elargissement prodigieux qu'un pareil style confhait sou–
dain
a
la moins ambitieuse des theses, au postulat le plus infime et le
plus acclimate."
Of the writer's function he says elsewhere,
un ne reste
plus que !'Art. Un art proscrit, il est vrai,
mepri~e,
subalternise,
famelique, fugitif, guenilleux et wtacombal. M ais, quand meme,
c'est ['unique refuge pour quelques ames altissimes condamnees
a
train–
er leur souffrante carcasse dans les charogneux carrefours du monde.''
I think it was Laura Riding who clearly laid down that French is
the language of the adjective, as German of the noun, and English
of exact meaning. Certainly these passages could not be translated
into English without rendering some of the epithets by elaborate
clauses.
The Woman Who Was Poor
(1897)
IS
shorter, less purely
183
