Le Révélateur du Globe

Léon Bloy, thirty-eight years old at the time of publication, had five years earlier published an initial version of this text in the Revue du monde catholique (15 and 30 March 1879) under the title “De la béatification de Christophe Colomb,” of which 7 of the 13 chapters of the book edition can be found forming the first part of the Révélateur, “Exposé et Historique de la Cause”; “Obstacles à l’introduction de la Cause” (15 July 1879), of which 4 of the 10 chapters of the book edition can be found.

Our manuscript contains the titles of the book’s three parts and the chapters of each of them, albeit abridged or truncated, as well as a mention of part of the appendices.

The very composition of this manuscript notebook is a fascinating testimony to Bloy’s method of writing and to the successive stages of composition to which he remained faithful throughout his career. Bloy never departed from a highly structured method of drafting: “[…] first, an initial draft on loose sheets, then a first copy, in cardboard-covered school notebooks (this second state is still heavily corrected and in the same extraordinarily fine hand as the first draft), and finally the copy for printing” (Joseph Bollery, Léon Bloy: essai de biographie). The very presentation of our black notebook attests to the first and second phases — by far, of course, the most instructive on the genesis of his text.

Thus the 11 leaves mounted at the front (of a smaller format than those of the notebook), probably by Bloy himself, belong to an initial working state and bear a title that never reappears in later versions: “Christophe Colomb par M. le Comte Roselly de Lorgues.” They were margined by Bloy himself, allowing him to make additions and corrections.

As for the 12 leaves of the notebook itself (ruled paper with a left-hand margin), they show, through the cuts as well as the cross-references made in the text, that Bloy had already reached the second state of his manuscript; the additions, second thoughts and countless corrections attest to the writing in progress and anticipate a further fair copy (unless an intermediate third version existed).

Certain passages truncated in the “Cahier noir,” the full text of which is found in the leaves mounted at the front, testify to the unity and coherence of this ensemble, the sole witness to the future Révélateur du globe. For instance, chapter II of the second part, “Celui qui ne croit pas au surnaturel…,” is indicated by its opening words in the notebook (p. 13) followed by “etc.”: the full text is found in the first-draft manuscript (pp. 3–4). The same is true for the beginning of chapter III, “La colombe portant le Christ…,” which can be read in full on pp. 4–5 of the first-draft manuscript.

Five years earlier, Léon Bloy had published an initial version of this text in the Revue du monde catholique (15 and 30 March 1879): “De la béatification de Christophe Colomb,” of which 7 of the 13 chapters of the book edition can be found forming the first part of the Révélateur, “Exposé et Historique de la Cause,” followed on 15 July of the same year by “Obstacles à l’introduction de la Cause”; our manuscript, under its final title, does contain these chapters, though still in a working state and at times truncated. These texts, which would find their place in the future Révélateur du globe (35 chapters), are already organized into three parts, whose definitive titles are found in the black notebook: “Exposé et Historique de la Cause,” “Le Serviteur de Dieu” and “Obstacles à l’introduction de la Cause.” The title Le Révélateur du globe, which would become the title of the published volume, does not, however, appear in the “Cahier noir.”

A precious manuscript, the only one known to date, of Bloy’s first book, at a time when he was still an unknown author whose future glory and powerful originality Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly foretold in his preface. To our knowledge, no other manuscript of the Révélateur du globe exists; it is absent from the collections of the BnF and from the BLJD.

Provenance: Daniel Sickles library (XI, no. 4190); Philippe Zoummeroff (15 March 1995, no. 282).