Préface pour le Révélateur du globe de Léon Bloy

Extensively corrected, this first draft differs considerably from the printed text. The published preface comprises fourteen paragraphs; the present manuscript relates to five of them, offering fragmentary states, abandoned formulations, and several passages that remained unpublished.

Devoted to Christopher Columbus and the cause of his beatification, Le Révélateur du globe was published by A. Sauton in February 1884. Bloy presents the discovery of America as a providential event: Columbus is not merely the explorer of a continent, but the chosen instrument for carrying Christianity across the Ocean.

To introduce this difficult book, Bloy naturally turned to Barbey. The two men had known each other since the late 1860s. The young Bloy, then in his twenties, had come to introduce himself to the illustrious writer of the rue Rousselet. Barbey quickly recognized his gifts, guided his reading, encouraged him to learn Latin, and introduced him to the Bible, the Church Fathers, and the great mystics. Bloy became his secretary for a time, alongside Georges Landry, but above all his disciple and soon his friend.

The 1884 preface is one of the finest testimonies to this literary filiation. Barbey does not withhold his support. He presents Bloy as a “spirit of fire, composed of faith and enthusiasm,” still unknown, but unlikely to remain so after such a book. Beneath the master’s endorsement lies genuine recognition: Barbey sees in Bloy not so much an imitator as an heir capable of extending, with new violence, the tradition of intransigent Catholicism and Romantic polemic.

Bloy wished the preface to be published separately in Le Gaulois, on the eve of the book’s release. Barbey himself supported this request with the newspaper, stating that he was asking nothing for himself, but for a man whose talent had not yet earned him recognition or access to the public. The relationship between the two writers did not end with this preface. Bloy remained loyal to the man he considered his master and belonged to the small circle gathered around Barbey during his final illness.

On 23 April 1889, Bloy wrote to Maurice de Fleury: “M. d’Aurevilly died this morning in my arms.”