Léon Bloy

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Léon Bloy (Périgueux, July 11, 1846 - Bourg-la-Reine, November 3, 1917) was a French novelist, essayist, pamphleteer and poet. Beginning as a member of the Symbolist school, his later works reflect a deepening devotion to the Roman Catholic Church and most generally a tremendous craving for the Absolute. His devotion to religion resulted in a complete dependence on charity; he acquired his nickname ("the ungrateful beggar") as a result of the many letters requesting financial aid from friends, acquaintances, and complete strangers, all the while carrying on with his literary work, in which his eight-volume Diary takes an important place. He was a friend of the author Joris-Karl Huysmans, the painter Georges Rouault, and the philosopher Jacques Maritain, and was instrumental in reconciling these intellectuals with Roman Catholicism. However, he acquired a reputation for bigotry because of his frequent outbursts of temper; and his first novel, "Le Désespéré", a fierce attack on Rationalism and those he believed to be in league with it, made him fall out with the literary community of his time and even many of his old friends. Soon he could count such prestigious authors as Emile Zola, Guy de Maupassant, Ernest Renan, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Alphonse Daudet and Anatole France as his enemies. In addition to his published works, he left a large body of correspondence with public and literary figures.

His works include :

Novels :

• Le Désespéré (1887) ("The hopeless one")
• La Femme pauvre (1897) ("The poor woman")

Essays :

• Propos d'un entrepreneur de démolitions (1884) ("The Munition Merchant's Plan")
• Le Salut par les Juifs (1892) ("Salvation with Jews")
• Je m'accuse (1900) ("I accuse myself")
• Exégèse des lieux communs (1902-1912) ("Exegesis of the Commonplaces")
• Belluaires et porchers (1905) ("Gladiators and swineherds")
• Celle qui pleure (1908) ("The crying one")
• Le Sang du Pauvre (1909) ("Blood of the Poor")
• L'Ame de Napoléon (1912) ("Napoleon's Soul")
• Jeanne d'Arc et l'Allemagne (1915) ("Joan of Arc and Germany")

Short stories :

• Sueur de sang (1893) ("Sweating blood")
• Histoires désobligeantes (1894) ("Disagreeable tales")

Diaries :

• Le Mendiant ingrat (1898) ("The Ungrateful Beggar")
• Mon Journal (1904) ("My diary")
• Quatre ans de captivité à Cochons-sur-Marne (1905) ("Four years of captivity in Cochons-sur-Marne")
• L'Invendable (1909) ("The Unsaleable")
• Le Vieux de la montagne (1911) ("The Old Man from the Mountain")
• Le Pèlerin de l'Absolu (1914) ("The Pilgrim of the Absolute")
• Au seuil de l'Apocalypse (1916) ("On the Threshold of the Apocalypse")
• La Porte des humbles (posth., 1920) ("The Door of the Lowly")

He is quoted at the beginning of Graham Greene's "The End of the Affair". Le Désespéré was republished in 2005 by Editions Underbahn with a preface by Maurice G. Dantec.