Jules Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly
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Jules Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly |
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Barbey d'Aurevilly is buried alongside the castle of Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte |
Jules Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly (
November 2,
1808 –
April 23,
1889), was a
French novelist.
He was born at
Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte (
Manche) in
Normandy. In the
1850s, d'Aurevilly became literary critic of
Le Pays.
Paul Bourget describes him as a dreamer with an exquisite sense of vision, who sought and found in his work a refuge from the uncongenial world of every day.
Jules Lemaître, a less sympathetic critic, finds in the extraordinary crimes of his heroes and heroines, his reactionary views, his
dandyism and snobbery, an exaggerated
Byronism.
Barbey d'Aurevilly is an extreme example of the eccentricities of which the
Romanticists were capable, and to read him is to understand the discredit that fell upon the manner. He held extreme
Catholic views and wrote on the most risqué subjects; he gave himself aristocratic airs and hinted at a mysterious past, though his parentage was entirely bourgeois and his youth very hum-drum and innocent.
Inspired by the glamorous past of
Valognes, he set his works against the social pattern of aristocracy and peasantry of Normandy. Although he himself did not write in
Norman, he encouraged the revival of
vernacular literature in Normandy.
Jules Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly died in Paris and was interred in the
Cimetière du Montparnasse. In 1926 his remains were transferred to Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte's cemetery.
Une Vieille Maîtresse (
An Old Mistress) (
1851), attacked at the time of its publication on the charge of immorality
L'Ensorcelée (
The Bewitched) (
1854), an episode of the royalist rising among the Norman peasants against the first republic
Chevalier Destouches (
1864)
Les Diaboliques (
The She-Devils) (
1874), a collection of
short stories, each of which relates a tale of a woman who commits acts of violence, crime, or revenge.
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Free ebook of Jules Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly at
Project Gutenberg
