Jules Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly

Jules Amédée Barbey d' Aurevilly ( born November 2, 1808 in Saint- Sauveur- le -Vicomte (Manche), † April 23, 1889 in Paris ) was a French writer and moralist.

Life

Jules Barbey d' Aurevilly worked as a literary and cultural critic for various conservative newspapers and was considered in the 20th century, often as a precursor of François Mauriac and Georges Bernanos. He was a monarchist and devout Catholic. Particularly strong are his works where he characterizes driven by passions sinners. For this purpose he used a visionary, metaphorical language. Jules Barbey d' Aurevilly criticized sharply, the developments of the modern and turned repeatedly against the literary realism, although he practiced it.

Paul Bourget describes him as a dreamer with an exquisite sense of vision, who sought protection from the different type of world of those days in his work and found. Jules Lemaître, a less well-meaning critics, found in the extraordinary crimes of his heroes, his reactionary views, his Dandyism and snobbery, an exaggerated reference to Lord Byron. In 1867 he met Léon Bloy, who became his secretary.

He was buried in the Montparnasse cemetery until his remains were transferred to the cemetery of his home town in Normandy in 1926.

Barbey d' Aurevilly is an extreme example of the eccentricity at which the Romantics were capable; to read it is a way to understand the resentment that befell him. He gave himself the air of aristocracy and disguised his past, although his ancestry was good home cooking and he grew up well cared for.

Works (selection)

• Jules Barbey d' Lettres de Léon Bloy à Aurevilly. Mercure de France, Paris 1902.

• The old mistress ( "Une Vieille Maîtresse "). Matthes & Seitz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-88221-703-2 (former title An old lover).
• A woman ( " La vengeance d'une femme" ) Revenge. Scherz Verlag, Bern 1953.
• The Haunted ( " L' Ensorcelée "). Paris 1854
• Le Chevalier Des Touches. LGF, Paris, 1991, ISBN 2-253-05266-3 ( d Nachdr Ausag. Paris 1864).
• Diabolical stories ( " Les Diaboliques "). Eichborn, Frankfurt / M 1993, ISBN 3-8218-4400-0 ( short story cycle in 4 vols; former title children of the devil, The Diabolical Diabolical or stories ) Diabolical stories. Audiobook. Big & Stone, Pforzheim 2007, ISBN 978-3-86735-215-4 (4 CDs, read by Christian Rode ).

• Selected Essays in individual volumes Matthes & Seitz Berlin 2006 /08.

Adaptations

• Patrick Courtois: La vengeance d'une femme. , 2004.

• Catherine Breillat (director): The last mistress, 2007.