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Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam Biography

Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam

(Jean-Marie Mathias Philippe Auguste, Count of Villiers de l'Isle-Adam; Saint-Brieuc, 1838-Paris, 1889) French writer.Author of stories considered masterpieces of the genre, which present a novel synthesis of philosophical tale, horror story, science fiction and esotericism, his first works ( Two poetry essays, 1858; First poems, 1859) do not allow us to deduce what was his later production, once he had met Charles Baudelaire (1859) and Stéphane Mallarmé (1864), and discovered Hegel's philosophy.In 1866 he collaborated in the Parnasse Contemporain .In 1867 he founded the Revue des Lettres et des Arts and wrote The Intersign , his first "cruel tale." In 1870 he sided with the commune; In 1883, the publication of his Cruel Tales earned him some notoriety, but his living conditions remained precarious until his death.His other works include the novels Isis (1862) and The Future Eva (1886), the short novel Claire Lenoir (1867) and the drama Axël (1890).

Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam

Auguste Villiers was the son of a family very old and proud of its nobility, despite being already decayed then.With the agreement of his own, he arrived in the capital at the age of twenty to consume the last family resources in pursuit of glory.In his first poems there is a mixture of Alfred de Musset and Charles Baudelaire.Soon, however, his traditional faith and the spirit of early romanticism initiated him into Christian symbolism and the occult, and he was influenced by Edgar Allan Poe and the diabolical Catholicism of Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly.The relationship and friendship with Richard Wagner acted as a ferment.

His lavish, arrogant and singular character, and the curiosity of his philosophical novel Isis (1862, reduced to the first volume) and of the two symbolist dramas, otherwise very weak , Elën (1865) and Morgane (1866), earned him, in avant-garde literary circles prior to 1870, a fame to which his love relationships also contributed (to despite her investment tendencies) with Nina de Callias, the beautiful worldly intellectual.After the performance, with little success, of the drama La révolte in 1870, he began to write another drama in four acts entitled Axël , much better, and of which he would publish the first version in 1872, remaining more and more openly in the mystical, idealistic and individualistic reaction to the then triumphant positivism.

After 1870 he fell into misery, and experienced very hard years, which, however, did not discourage him.His first stories were unsuccessful: he composed others, and eventually became famous thanks to the Cruel Tales (1883).This collection of short stories is the best known and most characteristic production of the author; original to the extravagance, uneven and often vigorous, it manifests its multiple inspiration.Absolute idealism is reflected in "Vera", the woman who after death continues to live in the memory of her loved one, until the day when he, imagining her dead, makes her truly die.In "Unknown" he presents a very delicate figure of a woman who, despite being deaf, listens to the words of the soul, and renounces impossible love so as not to spoil it with her misfortune; in "El Intersigno" the premonitory signs of death parade.

Another source of inspiration is horror, as in the story entitled "Invited of the last parties", in which a great man appears who, fond of capital executions, feels happy when he can replace the executioner.The crudest irony prevails in "Les senoritas de Bienfilâtre", one of whom fails to do her duty and dies because of it, after having sincerely loved a young man instead of continuing in her nocturnal profession, thanks to which, in Union with his sister, supported his elderly parents.In part of the stories cited, the influence of Edgar Allan Poe is undeniable; but the lyrical, exuberant, often intense tone is personal to the writer.

The multiplicity of inspiration would continue in the New stories cruel (1888): idealism reappears in "Sublime love", love of souls that he is not subject to reality, not even to the jealousy of a vulgar husband; the horror is extraordinary in "The torture of hope": the hope of the impossible escape is the last torment given to a Jew in the court of the Inquisition of Zaragoza; and the irony of "Les senoritas de Bienfilâtre" is repeated in "Les amigas de pension".

In 1883, the same year he published his first Cruel Tales , Villiers de l'Isle-Adam had had another drama performed with little luck, Le monde nouveau .Encouraged by the collaboration in Le Figaro and the admiration of distinguished young friends, he published Troubled Bonhomet (1887), a compilation of five stories of which the short novel stands out.Claire Lenoir , a cruel satire of scientific philistinism in the sinister character of the "doctor" (as opposed to the widow Claire Lenoir, symbol of delicate and magical spiritual purity), and the audacious novel Future Eve (1886), crude and disconcerting story of the love of a young man for a mechanical woman who mysteriously acquires a soul and loses it through a mystery no less.After a series of lectures in Belgium, Auguste Villiers died, exhausted, in a hospital, lovingly assisted by Joris-Karl Huysmans.The Théâtre Libre had staged the mediocre drama Évasion , later printed posthumously along with other works by the author.

Only a few narrations, of ambiguous and delicate beauty, stand out intensely from the rest of his production, animated but also affected by a fiery and decomposed lyricism, although not lacking in nuances, and by the excessive tension of the style, lavish, musical and interrupted by scathing ironies, and sometimes with results of disconcerting purity.Like so many other precursors, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam failed to clearly understand his own intentions; hence the incoherence of his spiritual world appears reflected in his works. Axël , the first truly Symbolist drama, nevertheless set a date.Stéphane Mallarmé's "Master of Idealism", Villiers also influenced Joris-Karl Huysmans and Leon Bloy, and Paul Claudel would also learn a lot from his theater.

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