Barbey d'Aurevilly et la modernité. Colloque du Bicentenaire (1808-2008) (review)

Philippe Berthier commemorated the centennial of Barbey d'Aurevilly's death with Barbey d'Aurevilly cent ans après (1889-1989), a collection of scholarly articles he edited and had published by Droz in 1990. Now, twenty years later, Berthier marks the bicentennial of Barbey's birth with a new collection, Barbey d'Aurevilly et la modernité. Unlike the earlier volume, this recent publication has a common, unifying theme—Barbey's relationship with modernity—and assembles the proceedings of a conference held December 1-3, 2008, at the Université Paris III Sorbonne-Nouvelle. Berthier does not provide the reader with a preface or introduction to the overarching theme of his new collection. Instead, a humorous and witty quotation by Michel Leiris serves as an epigraph that alerts us both to the complex nature of the concept of "modernité" and to the ambivalent relationship the writer and intellectual often maintains with it. "Moderne en vient à désigner ce qui vous mord et non ce à quoi on souhaite mordre," writes Leiris.

The nineteen articles that make up Berthier's volume eloquently attest to the relevance of Leiris's remarks quoted in the epigraph. Indeed, more than one contributor to Barbey d'Aurevilly et la modernité grapples with the term "modern" or "modernité," feeling the need first to analyze and define it. Méké Meité, for example, describes the term as "nébuleux, difficile à cerner" (31), even as haunting, since every historical period may be perceived as modern in opposition to the one that preceded it. Laurence Claude-Phalippou, citing Hans Robert Jauss, underlines the subjectivity and "irréductible relativité" (10) of the concept. "Moderne" according to her describes not the nature of what is labeled as such but more precisely the relationship one maintains with it or the perception one has of it. What is modern turns out to be different for every writer, "une donnée [. . .] que l'écriture investit et façonne à son gré" (11). This brings us to the central topic of the collection, Barbey's complex and personal relationship with modernity, the main and in some respects quite provocative question the volume poses: in which way does Barbey, this staunch monarchist and Catholic, this uncompromising "homme du passé," represent a figure of modernity? The answers the volume puts forth are multifaceted, nuanced, and often paradoxical. They paint the fascinating picture of a writer and critic who used narration in a modern (i.e. innovative) way to oppose the modern (i.e. mediocre and uninspiring) times he lived in and abhorred. Myriam Watthee-Delmotte underlines the performative quality of Barbey's narrative act in this context. She shows that Barbey, unable to make a direct impact on his century, sets out to revive a "heroic" past and renew a "declining" literature with discursive practices that are ahead of his time. Like Méké Meité, Watthee-Delmotte anchors Barbey's modernity in his innovative understanding of history as an unverifiable and subjective construct and in the narrative strategies that help translate this understanding: an aesthetic of opacity and doubt brought about by an unusual multiplication of points of view. It is precisely this aesthetic of uncertainty that attracts the modern reader and generates pleasure, desire, and "jouissance." "Tant qu'il se verra désiré, le récit [de Barbey] sera moderne" (19), writes also Laurence Claude-Phalippou. Marie-Christine Natta discusses the figure of the dandy—highly pertinent for Barbey's relationship with modernity—when she compares Barbey's and Baudelaire's sartorial preferences. In addition to Natta's excellent article, Berthier's collection would have profited from a detailed analysis of the important role dandyism played in shaping Barbey's discursive practices and narrative techniques.

Barbey's morality and the moral ambiguity that characterizes his works are the focus of several articles in the volume. Whereas Christophe Chaguinian reads Les Diaboliques as the work of a Christian moralist affirming Catholic dogma and faults the evolution...