Léon Bloy’s Books of Revelatio

• Autores: Robert Ziegler
• Localización: Studi francesi, ISSN 0039-2944, Nº. 175, 2015, págs. 108-115
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Prominent among fine-de-siècle reactionary Catholics, Léon Bloy regarded literature as an instrument of the Apocalypse. Inspired by the 1846 apparition of the Virgin Mary at La Salette, Bloy believed that unless the wicked reformed, the end of time would come soon and engulf Christendom in fire. Subscribing to the principle of Dolorism, Bloy identified with the wretched whose suffering liquidated the debt of sin accumulated over centuries. In Bloy’s eschatological fiction, he complains of a Savior slow to rescue the disinherited. Bloy sees his novels as elucidating the divine message that time has garbled. As Bloy’s hero, Caïn Marchenoir, explains: «Toute chose terrestre est ordonnée par la Douleur […] Elle n’était pas seulement le but, […] elle était la logique même de ces Écritures mystérieuses, dans lesquelles il supposait que la Volonté de Dieu devait être lue». This is the purpose of Bloy’s writing: to supersede the Gospels whose cryptogram it decodes, and turn the opaqueness of God’s book into the transparency of Bloy’s exegesis.