Léon Henri Marie Bloy (pronounced "Blwah") (11 July 1846 — 3 Novel 1917) was a French novelist, essayist, and satirist. He was a staunch Catholic and was very influential within French Catholic circles, and yet he also had a penchant for ruining his friendships for his unrelenting and uncompromising polemics.
Bloy was born in Périgueux to Jean-Baptiste Bloy, a civil servant at the Ponts et Chaussées and Freemason, and Anne-Marie Carreau, a devout Catholic and the daughter of a French soldier who met a Spanish woman during the Napoleonic wars; he was the second of six sons.
Bloy had a miserable upbringing, being routinely whipped by his father and constantly fantasising about freedom; his mother's religious piety was his only consolation. He was also a middling student at the lycée de Périgueux, to the point where he was kicked out for "academic intransigence" in 1862. His exasperated father eventually took education into his own hands and tried to direct him towards architecture; during this time, Bloy developed an intense hatred for the Catholic Church and its doctrines. Jean-Baptiste found him a job in Paris in 1864, and Bloy worked as a clerk in the office of the principal architect of Orléans Railway Company, though he daydreamed of escaping. He also frequented socialist and anticlerical circles.
In December 1868, Bloy met Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly, the Catholic novelist and dandy, who lived opposite him in rue Rousselet and became his mentor. Barbey d'Aurevily introduced him to the philosopher Antoine Blanc de Saint-Bonnet and the writer Ernest Hello. These Catholic authors profoundly impacted Bloy, who eventually underwent a drastic religious conversion.
Bloy enlisted in the Mobiles de la Dordogne regiment in the Armée de la Loire in 1870, at the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, during which he served as a sniper (he went on to draw from his experiences in the war to write the short story collection Sweating Blood in 1893). He was commended for his bravery and returned to Périgueux the following year, forsaking his career as an office clerk for the life of a bohemian. When he returned to Paris in 1873, Bloy, at the recommendation of Barbey d'Aurevilly, took up a job as an editor of L'Univers, the major Catholic newspaper run by Louis Veuillot. However, he quickly ruined his career with his severe, uncompromising criticisms. He went on to have a love affair with Anne-Marie Roule, an occasional prostitute who became his mistress; Bloy and Roule shared a number of profound mystical experiences, and Roule converted in 1878.
When his parents died in 1877, Bloy went to a Trappist monastery and met Abbé Tardif de Moidrey, who introduced him to symbolic exegesis during a stay at La Salette. Bloy took the idea of a "universal symbolism", which he applied to history, contemporary events, and his own life. He went on to return to writing, vociferously attacking the likes of Léon Gambetta, Émile Zola, and Victor Hugo, whom Bloy attacked for being an atheist. At the start of 1882, Anne-Marie began showing signs of madness; she was eventually interred in the Sainte-Anne Hospital in Paris, which she never left. Bloy, inconsolable over the fate of his mistress, went on a retreat to the Grande Chartreuse in November, seeking aid from the Carthusians in helping him write a book about Christopher Columbus. This book, the first he has ever published, became known as The Revealer of the Globe: Christopher Columbus and His Future Beatification (1884). During this time, he became friends with Joris Karl Huysmans and Auguste de Villiers de l'Isle-Adam.
Bloy moved to Vaugirard for six years in 1886. During this time, he began writing his first novel: a semi-autobiographical novel called The Desperate Man (1887), mirroring his relationship with Anne-Marie. He published this work on January 1887 but to little fanfare. Nevertheless, he went on to write The Desperate Woman, the first draft of what would become The Woman Who Was Poor, but he wrote a series of articles for the Gil Blas mazagine to earn a living.
In 1889, Barbey d'Aurevilly died on 23 April, with Villiers dying on 19 August, profoundly saddening Bloy. The circumstances of Barbey d'Aurevilly's death earned Bloy violent attacks from Joséphin Peladan, a former friend who published these attacks under the name "Sâr"; nearly all of the press welcomed the condemnations of Bloy. His friendship with Huysmans ended before the publication of Là-bas, where Bloy was caricatured. On the other hand, Bloy met Johanne Charlotte Molbech, daughter of the Danish poet Christian Frederik Molbech, at the end of the year. Johanne converted to the Catholic faith and married Bloy, finding in him a strange charisma despite his perpetual destitution.
Bloy entered a phase of prolific creativity, writing Sweating Blood (1893) and Disagreeable Tales (1894). At the same time, however, he was sacked from Gil Blas following yet another controversy, further worsening his destitution. The couple's sons, André and Pierre, died of malnutrition, and Johanne fell ill. Bloy wrote The Woman Who Was Poor (1897), once again to little fanfare.
In 1898, Bloy published The Thankless Beggar, yet again to little fanfare. However, the work was enthusiastically received by Jacques Maritain and his wife Raïssa, who converted to the Catholic faith under his influence and became his steadfast friends and torchbearers. Bloy continued to write, but over time, the world finally came to recognise his genius. On the other hand, upon the outbreak of World War I on 28 July 1914, Bloy wrote his most pessimistic works, including Joan of Arc and Germany (1915), On the Threshold of the Apocalypse (1916), and Meditations of a Solitary in 1916 (1916), feeling that all his rage and bilious attacks on man have been vindicated.
On 3 November 1917, Bloy died peacefully, shortly after receiving last communion on All Saints' Day, surrounded by family and friends, in the house that once belonged to Charles Peguy. He was buried in the Bourg-la-Reine Cemetery.
Bloy was nicknamed "the thankless beggar" for relying entirely on the charity of his friends to support him and his family. He was also called "the pilgrim of the absolute" because of his attacks that are as unrelenting as his fidelity to the Catholic Church. Émile Zola was one of his literary enemies, and he wrote Je M'Accuse... (1900), a very scathing attack on Zola's novels Lourdes and Fecundity. He even despised the wealthy, gleefully exulting the sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912 and two different fires: one at the Opéra-Comique in 1887 and another in 1896 at the Bazar de la Charité, an annual Catholic charity event. In The Woman Who Was Poor, Bloy once jubilated at the thought of a wealthy woman burning to death.
Major Works:
- The Revealer of the Globe: Christopher Columbus and His Future Beatification (1884): A biography on the life of the Genoese explorer Christopher Columbus, written in an attempt to renew the cause for his canonization.
- The Desperate Man (1887): A semi-autobiographical novel about Caïn Marchenoir, a Catholic writer who wrestles with two pairs of clashing forces. The first pair is his love for God and striving to be faithful to the teachings of the Catholic Church despite having an extramarital affair with a prostitute (granted, she left her occupation and converted, but still), who ended up getting institutionalised. The second pair is a need to find a stable income despite his hatred for the press and the literary world of the time.
- Salvation Through the Jews (1892): A work examining the "Jewish problem" of Bloy's times and, in the strongest possible terms, condemns anti-semitism. Bloy considered it the "only one of my books I would dare to present to God".
- Sweating Blood (1893): A collection of thirty short stories set in the Franco-Prussian war, depicting the horrors of war and inhumanity. Bloy drew from his experiences in the war to write these stories.
- Disagreeable Tales (1894): A collection of thirty short stories portraying incest, murder, theft, masturbation, and all sorts of depravities, all rooted in this underlying theme: the root of religion is crime against man, nature and God, and that in this hell on earth, even the worst among us has a soul. It is considered to be a high mark in the French Decadent movement.
- The Woman Who Was Poor (1897): Bloy's second novel and probably his most famous work. It follows Clotilde, a woman who becomes involved with the Paris art and literary scene in the 1880s.
- The Thankless Beggar (1898): A diary that Bloy kept. It is also the nickname given to him as he relied entirely on the charity of his friends to support him and his family.
- Je M'Accuse... (1900): One of Bloy's polemical writings, in which he ridicules Zola, his open letter J'Accuse...!, and his two novels: Lourdes and Fecundity.
- The Resurrection of Villiers de l'Isle-Adam (1906): A work written as a tribute to his friend Auguste de Villiers de l'Isle-Adam while also doubling as a plea to Thomas Edison to help subscribe monetarily to the statue, sculpted in marble, by Frédéric Brou.
- She Who Weeps (1908): Bloy's work on the visions of Our Lady of La Salette as reported by two shepherds, Maximin Giraud and Mélanie Calvat. Bloy wrote this to warn people to repent lest the end of time come. He also resented how the visions of Our Lady of Lourdes, reported by St. Bernadette Soubirous, distracted everyone from what he saw was the less sentimental message of La Salette.
- Joan of Arc and Germany (1915): A study on the life and deeds of St. Joan of Arc, especially how she brought an end to the Hundred Years War. Bloy then used her life as a springboard to compare France's war with the Germans of World War I to its war with the English then. It also lays bare his anti-German prejudice.
- On the Threshold of the Apocalypse (1916): A volume in Bloy's personal journal, beginning one year before the start of World War I, but ending before the end of said war. Bloy felt that the start of the war vindicated him and confirmed the warnings of Our Lady of La Salette.
- Meditations of a Solitary in 1916 (1917): Published the same year Bloy died. It is a collection of sustained meditations on the Christian soul and the lack thereof of Wilhelm II, the emperor of Germany.
