Barbe d'Oreville, Jules Amede

Born and raised in Normandy . On the father's side, he belonged to a peasant family, who bought the nobility in 1765, and on the maternal side, to the old Norman aristocracy. He studied law. In 1827, he met Maurice de Guerin at a Paris lyceum, with whom he maintained friendly relations until the latter's death, and published the works of his sister Eugenie de Guerin .

Barbe d'Oreville Photograph of the work of Nadar , 1860-1865

Since 1833, he finally settled in Paris, led the life of a dandy , and abused alcohol and drugs . In 1846 he survived a religious crisis, returned to Catholicism , the values ​​of the clan and the land. He collaborated in the Constitucionnel daily, published political feuilletons, expressed monarchist views, and devoted a large essay to Joseph de Mestre . At the same time he was leading a fashion chronicle, he wrote a lot about fashion in general. In 1857, Barbe d'Oreville actively supported Baudelaire when he was threatened by a court on charges of insulting public morality; in 1874, after the publication of the collection of short stories “Those from the Devil”, the same process threatened him himself. During the siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian war, enlisted in the national guard . He spent the last years of his life in solitude, in a narrow circle of people close to him: Leon Blois , Paul Bourget , Huysmans , Rashild .

The figure and fate of Barbe d'Oreville is marked by flashy contradictions: Mikhail Kuzmin saw in his work the transition “from romanticism to naturalism and again romantic decadence and symbolism ” (preface to the Russian edition of the book “On Dendism” 1912). Barbe’s short stories, novels, and novels are often connected with the recent historical past — primarily, with the events of the French Revolution and the revolt of the Shuans in the north-west of the country (Chevalier de Touche, 1864, and others). The characteristic motives of his prose, deeply critical in his view of the world, are the collapse of old values, the impossibility of love, the mysterious fascination with evil. The traditionalist Barbe was repeatedly accused of immoralism (as was the case with his novel “The Old Mistress”, 1851), a number of books by this Catholic and royalist (“Married Priest”, 1865; “Those from the Devil”, 1874) provoked clerical circles: No wonder Anatole France called Barbe d'Oreville an implacable Catholic who professes his faith exclusively in blasphemy. Numerous essays by the writer on the heroes of the past and the present were combined in four series and composed the multi-volume “Works and People”, mostly published after the author’s death. His small treatise on Dendism and the illustrious British dandy George Brammel (1861) is also known.

The works of Barbe d'Oreville are reprinted in France to this day and have far from academic interest. Many of them have made television films. In 2007, the novel “The Old Mistress” became the basis of the film by Catherine Braya (in 1921, the novel “Women's Revenge” was filmed by the famous German expressionist Robert Vinet , and in 1970, the novel “Don Juan” - a famous Italian actor, film and theater director Carmelo Bene ) . In Russia, symbolists , Maximilian Voloshin , Mikhail Kuzmin, Osip Mandelstam addressed the prose and figure of Barbe d'Oreville.

• Le Cachet d'onyx (1831)
• Madame de Gesvres ou l'amour impossible (1836)
• Une vieille maîtresse (1851)
• L'ensorcelée (1854)
• Les Œuvres et les Hommes (1860-1909)
• Du Dandysme et de G. Brummell (1861)
• Chevalier Des Touches (1864)
• Un prêtre marié (1865)
• Diaboliques (1874)
• Une histoire sans nom (1882)

• Œuvres romanesques complètes. 2 vols. Paris: Gallimard, 1964-1966
• Correspondance générale. Paris: Belles-lettres, 1980-1989

• Faces of the devil. St. Petersburg: Pantheon, 1908.
• Dandyism and George Brammel. M .: Alcyone, 1912.
• Devilish tales. - St. Petersburg: Lenizdat, 1993 .-- 509 p. ISBN 5-289-01318-0
• Dendism and George Bremmel: Essays. M .: Nezavisimaya Gazeta, 2000.
• No Name: Selected Works. M .: Enigma, 2006 (Collection "Grimoire") [1] .

• Quéru H., Le Dernier grand seigneur: Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly , Paris: Éditions de Flore, 1946
• Bésus R., Barbey d'Aurevilly , Paris: Éditions universitaires, 1957
• Colla P., L'univers tragique de Barbey d'Aurevilly , Bruxelles: Renaissance du livre, 1965
• Hofer H., Barbey d'Aurevilly romancier , Bern: Francke, 1974
• Juin H., Barbey d'Aurevilly , Paris: Seghers, 1975
• Berthier Ph., L'ensorcelée - Les diaboliques de Barbey d'Aurevilly: une écriture du désir , Paris: H. Champion, 1987.
• Tranouez P., “Fascination et narration dans l'œuvre romanesque de Barbey d'Aurevilly: la scène capitale”, in Revue des Lettres modernes (Paris), 1987
• Toumayan A., La littérature et la hantise du mal: lectures de Barbey d'Aurevilly, Huysmans et Baudelaire , Lexington: French Forum, 1987
• Voloshin M., Barbe d'Oreville // He. Faces of creativity , L.: Science, 1988, p. 34-53
• Boschian-Campaner C., Barbey d'Aurevilly , Paris: Seguier, 1989
• Eygun F.-X., Barbey d'Aurevilly et le fantastique , New York: Peter Lang, 1996
• Jeanton-Lamarche J.-M., Pour un portrait de Jules-Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly , Paris: L'Harmattan, 2000
• Rossbach S., Des Dandys Wort als Waffe: Dandyismus, narrative Vertextungsstrategien und Geschlechterdifferenz im Werk Jules Barbey d'Aurevillys , Mimesis: Untersuchungen zu den romanischen Literaturen der Neuzeit, Tübingen: Berlin, Niemeyer, 2002.
• Thiollet J.-P., Barbey d'Aurevilly ou le triomphe de l'écriture , Milon-la-Chapelle (Paris): H & D, 2006; Carré d'Art: Barbey d'Aurevilly, Lord Byron, Salvador Dali, Jean-Edern Hallier , Paris, Anagramme, 2008

• Barbe d'Orville // Small Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron : in 4 volumes - St. Petersburg. 1907-1909.
• (Russian)
• (fr.)
• Page on IMDB website
• (Russian)