A01=I. J. Collins
A01=Leon Bloy
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Author_I. J. Collins
Author_Leon Bloy
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Category1=Fiction
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Category=FB
Category=FW
COP=United States
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
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eq_isMigrated=2
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eq_philosophy-religion
Language_English
PA=Available
Price_€20 to €50
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Product details
- ISBN 9781890318925
- Weight: 481g
- Dimensions: 140 x 216mm
- Publication Date: 10 Oct 2015
- Publisher: St Augustine's Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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Written in the 1890s, Leon Bloy's masterful novel has had an immeasurable effect on all European Catholic writing since. (Bloy was responsible for the conversion of Jacques and Räissa Maritain in 1905, and they referred to him as their godfather.) It is an extraordinary book, powerful in the manner of dos Passos, and yet spiritual in the manner of the Bible.
It is the story of a woman who is abysmally poor, brutally treated and exploited by her parents, living in the gutters of Paris, yet she retains the spiritual outlook and purity of a saint. We are spared no brutality, yet there are scenes of the most tender beauty.
The woman, Clotilde, becomes an artist's model, meeting all the great French writers, among them the gloomy and magnificent Marchenoir, who is Bloy himself. They are all impressed by the depth of her thoughts and feelings; she finally marries one of them. They are pitifully poor, and the pages that cover the birth and death of their child shock with horror while moving the reader in their tragic beauty and tenderness––for this is Bloy, always hovering between death and ecstasy. Left a widow, Clotilda finds her true vocation, a vocation of poverty. She is the woman who is poor, no other words describe her more accurately. The novel ends with those famous words of extraordinary optimism: "There is only one misery…not to be saints."
It is the story of a woman who is abysmally poor, brutally treated and exploited by her parents, living in the gutters of Paris, yet she retains the spiritual outlook and purity of a saint. We are spared no brutality, yet there are scenes of the most tender beauty.
The woman, Clotilde, becomes an artist's model, meeting all the great French writers, among them the gloomy and magnificent Marchenoir, who is Bloy himself. They are all impressed by the depth of her thoughts and feelings; she finally marries one of them. They are pitifully poor, and the pages that cover the birth and death of their child shock with horror while moving the reader in their tragic beauty and tenderness––for this is Bloy, always hovering between death and ecstasy. Left a widow, Clotilda finds her true vocation, a vocation of poverty. She is the woman who is poor, no other words describe her more accurately. The novel ends with those famous words of extraordinary optimism: "There is only one misery…not to be saints."
