BLOY (Léon). - Lot 116

BLOY (Léon). The Resurrection of Villiers de L'Isle-Adam. Paris: Librairie E. Lecampion, A. Blaizot, 1906. - Booklet in-8, black half-maroquin with stripes, smooth spine, gilt head, untrimmed, cover preserved (René Kieffer). First edition of this booklet, intended to encourage contributions for the erection of a monument by sculptor Frédéric Brou to the memory of Auguste Villiers de L'Isle-Adam. "La Résurrection" is a glowing, eulogistic article about Villiers, but at the same time, Bloy persists in recording everything he hated about Villiers' ideas (fifteen years after his death!). In our opinion, the most heartfelt words in the text are those he dedicates to Villiers' feminine ideal. Both men had had an affair with a common woman and a very similar way of life: they were able to recreate the illusion of a being gifted with extraordinary intelligence and unheard-of beauty (a woman who would be God, or the Holy Spirit for Bloy). The passages from Villiers' works that Bloy quotes clearly show that the creator of La Femme pauvre understood Villiers' dreams and obsessions" (Marta Giné Janer, Bloy et Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, in: "Léon Bloy au tournant du siècle", 1992, p. 40). The edition is illustrated on the frontispiece with a heliogravure of the model of the monument sculpted by Frédéric Brou (1862-1926) (a nude beauty tearing off the planks of Villiers' coffin). Copy on unnumbered laid paper, very well bound in the workshops of René Kieffer. Provenance: Librairie Pierre Berès, with a note in Pierre Berès' hand on the verso of the first endpaper. Also by the same author and in the same binding: - BELLUAIRES ET PORCHERS. Paris: P.-V. Stock, 1905. - In-18, black half-maroquin with stripes, smooth spine, gilt head, untrimmed, cover and spine preserved (René Kieffer). Partly original edition, illustrated with a frontispiece portrait of the author, an out-of-text portrait of Ernest Hello and a full-page facsimile of Hello's autograph. Copy on publisher's paper, very well preserved.