BARBEY D’AUREVILLY: A DANDY AGAINST THE TIME TRIAL
BARBEY D’AUREVILLY: A DANDY AGAINST THE TIME TRIAL

Summary/Abstract: The article investigates the singular destiny of Jules-Amédée Barbey d’Aurevilly, configured as a ”dandy against the tide”. His artistic and existential identity crystallized in perpetual opposition to the spirit of his era: he adopted royalism and ultramontane Catholicism at a time when his age was turning toward socialism and liberalism. For d’Aurevilly, dandyism transcended vestimentary aesthetics, becoming a form of ”social defense” and a manifestation of useless heroism in a world left without illusions.  From a literary perspective, his work oscillates between critical rigor and a prose imbued with the Baudelairean ”double postulation”. The author utilizes satanism as an instrument to explore the supernatural, integrating it into a Jansenist vision where passions acquire tragic dimensions. His style, characterized by ”arborescence” and cumulative phrasing, aims to surpass conventional morality through the depth of psychological depiction. In volumes such as ”Les diaboliques”, the narrative becomes an onirological space where heroines, marked by a ”satanic supernatural”, provoke the reader's reverie. By refusing conformism and seeking a metaphysical ”elsewhere”, Barbey d’Aurevilly foreshadows symbolism, remaining an ”iconoclast” of the 19th-century idols.

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