The fevered novel from Balzac to Bernanos:frenetic Catholicism in crisis, delirium and revolution

Book Review: The Fevered Novel from Balzac to Bernanos: Frenetic Catholicism in Crisis, Delirium and Revolution. By Francesco Manzini. (IGRS Books). London: Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies, 2011. 264 pp. Full text: This monograph is an important and compelling account of a novelistic tradition that stretches from Georges Bernanos back to Balzac, by way of Léon Bloy, Joris-Karl Huysmans, and Barbey d'Aurevilly. Depending on a master plot that evokes Maistrean themes of blood, sacrifice, and redemption, working in a feverish female body, this canon combines Romantic freneticism and anti-Enlightenment religion to create a compound that Francesco Manzini calls ‘frenetic Catholicism’. The theme of fever, Manzini tells us, was commented on by Huysmans in writing about Barbey d'Aurevilly. When André Gide read Bernanos's Sous le soleil de Satan, he dismissed it as a rehash of Bloy and Barbey. In this present work Manzini aims to make us aware once more of the gradually intensifying themacity of fever in writings more usually classed in theologo-literary categories. His analysis encompasses (though is not restricted to) Balzac's Ursule Mirouët, Barbey d'Aurevilly's Un prêtre marié, Huysmans's En rade, Bloy's Le Désespéré and La Femme pauvre, and Bernanos's Nouvelle histoire de Mouchette. Thus, as Manzini argues in his conclusion, between the freneticism of the Romantics and that of the surrealists this corpus represents an intermediary wave of freneticism, foregrounding fever, hyperconsciousness, dreamlike episodes, and female automatism. Manzini's knowledge of, and ease amidst, the sources is constantly impressive. Much like Richard Griffiths before him (The Reactionary Revolution: The Catholic Revival in French Literature, 1870–1914 (London: Constable, 1966)), he has read both the bad novels and the good ones. For that we are in his debt. His commentary thrives on the oddities of his subjects. He points quite rightly to the peculiar hubris of writers whose contempt for the secular excesses of scientism leads them down a cul-de-sac of primitive medical quackery. Likewise, he underlines how Zola's attempt to unwrite Barbey — exorcising the former's anti-Romantic animus, as much as scratching his anticlerical itch — leads him to recapitulate Barbey's religious authoritarianism in the secular vernacular of patriarchy. Les espèces qui se rapprochent se mangent, to paraphrase Bernanos (Les Grands Cimetières sous la lune). In spite of all Manzini's tightly organized analysis, however, this reader wonders whether the fevered novel ‘best allowed contemporaries — and now […] literary critics and historians — to imagine the issues at stake in the amorphous scientistic, religious, and political debates’ of the period (p. 17). Below the ideological clashes of nineteenth-century science and religion, the two contending dynamics of anthropocentrism and theocentrism are attested and, it can be argued, even more perfectly dramatized in other Catholic literature (Charles Péguy's poetry, for example). In these terms, what distinguishes the Catholic frenetics from their Romantic or surrealist counterparts is that their fevered subject represents an attempt to build a road out of what Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor calls ‘buffered’ individuality, and back towards the theocentric porous subject who is open to divine influence. By way of minor corrections, nuns do not take holy orders (p. 94) but make religious profession by taking vows. Also, the last Eucharistic host is not extreme unction (p. 119) but viaticum.

El valor mitográfico del "Anonymi in Statii Achilleida commentum"

El breve commentum in Statii Achilleida resulta muy interesante para el estudio de la transmisión mitográfica de la Antigüedad tardía al Medievo, pues no sólo participa de las características propias de la mitografía (narraciones de mitos, exégesis racionalista y/o alegórica, interpretaciones etimológicas, anonimato, pseudepigrafía,…), sino que también es otro eslabón en la cadena textual de transmisión, simplificación y canonización de los mitos clásicos.

Un drone marin écoresponsable vogue en Nouvelle-Calédonie

This text presents and explicits the story of a marine drone: the Wave Glider, designed and developed by Liquid Robotics, an American company of the Silicon Valley. The text specifies its functioning, directly dependent on energies that are the swell and the sun and its technical characteristics authorizing a set of measures of in situ parameters (sea temperature, salinity, currents, marine acoustics, video but also meteorological data acquisitions). A set of scientific or operational applications is also introduced. A detail is supplied on the first experience led in New Caledonia: inaugural mission of the drone Wave Glider, property of the Company Assystem, for a route between Nouméa and Lifou and return. Several perspectives of use of such a tool in New Caledonia and in the Pacific are proposed.

Nice, coucher de soleil [sur le front de mer] : [photographie de presse] / [Agence Rol]

Référence bibliographique : Rol, 57745

[Phot. de la couronne du soleil, avec lettre d'envoi par le baron N. Raulbars au prince Roland Bonaparte, Helsingfors, 28 mai 1897]

Donateur : Bonaparte, Roland (1858-1924)

Le Roy Soleil

Nuortenkirjan kansikuva.Teos kertoo Aurinkokuningas Ludvig XIV:n elämästä Versailles'n hovissa.

« Livre de l'Istoire géographique et description de toute la terre conprize en une juste emisfère sellon le cours du soleil e signes selestes. Ensemble les voyages et peregrinasions de VINCENS BLANC, Marselhés, faict au catre partie du monde, avec serteine anotassion sur les signes seleste, confrontant avec les paralele du soleil, par lesquelles il se voict viziblement la planitude de la terre que nos ansiens ont du tout ignoré, caouze qu'il ont abrevé les abitant de se siecle de leur faouce doctrine ».

Contient : « Premier voyage du Blanc, Marselhés, au portie (sic) d'Alisandrie d'Égipte. L'an 1569 partimes des îles de Marseilhes, prenant la derroute d'Alisandrie... pour vuider lur diferant » ; « Livre deuzieme de la discripsion de sete emisfere du monde. C'et chozes très serteine que la terre sur laquelle nous marchons... et la nient an public come sugeré et esclave de Satan » ; « Retour de l'aouteur de l'Orient, l'année 1576, en la ville natalle, et acueil inespéré de pere et mere », etc ; « Histoeire de notre tenps deplorable de tres aute herudission repugnant contre les procureurs de l'anfer, qu'il vont abuzant les povres veve sur la mizericorde de Dieu, come s'il n'avoet point de justisse e ne savent que s'et du peché du S. Esprit, dedié à ma seur Marguerite de Blanc » ; « De la maniere que les doctes Indiens limitent la rondeur de la terre et des catres angles d'isselles e de son estremité en une juste emisfere, sujet curius, où se put conprandre aucuns mistere ». Cette dissertation, également adressée par Vincent le Blanc à sa soeur, commence par : « Durant nos longues peregrinassions que nous s'acupions an Orient... ». Derniers mots : « ... Verras mes escrit et t'an dourrai plus enple connoisence »