One of the hors commerce copies reserved for Léon Bloy's friends, this copy no. I on Japanese paper — in addition to the deluxe issue of 10 copies on the same paper.
Léon Bloy devoted many years to this text, which remained unfinished and was published only after his death. The work originates in the great Marian apparitions of the nineteenth century — La Salette (1846), Lourdes (1858) and Pontmain (1871) — which, for Bloy, represented successive manifestations of a mysterious and persistent divine intervention in History. The first of these apparitions, that of La Salette, occurring the very year of his birth, occupies a central place in his thought: brought to his attention around 1877, it powerfully contributed to his conversion to Catholicism, while lending an almost sacred dimension to his literary calling. From this arose the visionary, incandescent style that characterizes Bloy’s work, saturated with images and flashes of insight meant to awaken the “sleepwalkers” and restore in them a taste for eternity.
A fine copy.