Œuvres romanesques complètes, I: Une vieille maîtresse by Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly (review)

This scholarly edition of Barbey’s provocative novel situates the work in the context of his narrative style and fictional universe. A rigorous Introduction by Gisèle Séginger precedes the story of a disastrous love triangle embroiling Ryno, a libertine dandy, Hermangarde his pure and noble fiancée, and Vellini his sensual, combative mistress. The text is reprinted from the two-volume 1874 Lemerre edition. According to Séginger the novel merits our attention firstly because it illustrates an ideological shift in Barbey’s writing: he no longer privileged le roman psychologique as he had asserted in the Preface to Germaine in 1835. Instead, just when realism was gaining favour, ‘Barbey invente le fantastique de la réalité’ (p. 7). Séginger also calls Une vieille maîtresse a novel of ‘conversion’ that refers both to his religious conversion (Barbey formally returned to Catholicism in 1855) and to conversions in aesthetic and narrative approach. Although the work was not the resounding success Barbey had hoped for (he wrote to his friend and editor Trebutien in 1845, ‘j’espère qu’elle va faire l’effet d’une belle bombe qui crève le toit d’un palais’ (quoted p. 16)), it sparked conflicting reactions that drew further commentary. Six of these critical reviews are printed here after the novel, and reveal its predominantly positive reception. Jules Janin was impressed by ‘cette tragédie […] horrible, funeste, abominable, étincelante!’ (p. 491) and Théophile Gautier called it ‘une perle rare savamment enchâssée dans une vive intrigue’ (p. 491). Baudelaire perceived it (along with L’Ensorcelée (1854)) as an exceptional illustration of ‘ce culte de la vérité’ (p. 518) that pits the artist in a struggle against deity and fellow man alike. Conversely Champfleury penned a lengthy and detailed letter to Catholic writer Louis Veuillot criticizing Barbey and his novel. Champfleury’s commentary betrays a lively and pleasurable affinity despite accusations that Barbey as a Catholic undermined his own beliefs with its publication (p. 516) and that his ‘langage entortillé’ and ‘style si pompeux’ suggested a ‘littérature de décadence’ (p. 506). It was precisely these two latter features that inspired Huysmans in À rebours, only he referred to the effects of Barbey’s thought and style as harbingers of fin-de-siècle decadence to savour: ‘ces faisandages, ces taches morbides, ces épidermes talés et ce gout blet’ (p. 525). Readers might find the annotations throughout the narrative especially informative — these range from explanations of historical events, local superstitions, literary and artistic references, to descriptions of commonplace customs in the early nineteenth century. Such routine items include popular sayings in patois and Norman dialects, allusions to locales in Saint-Sauveur Le Vicomte and Carteret, culinary practices, and sartorial effects. Additional highlights are a brief section on the variations among editions, a bibliography of early and recent editions, and a bibliography of scholarly articles on the text in the twentieth- and twenty-first-centuries. Scholars of nineteenth-century literature in particular will find the edition of interest; but the complexity and the ‘inclassable’ (p. 93) quality of the novel suggest that Barbey’s tale might attract interests — even opposing ones — from a variety of scholars in French literature, history, and cultural studies.