Barbey dAurevilly - Les Diaboliques The She-Devils: She Devils (Empire of the Senses)

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Publishing History

First published in France in 1874

First published by Dedalus in 1986 reprinted 1996 and 2011

First e-book edition 2011

Introduction and chronology c Robert Irwin 1986

Printed in Finland by Bookwell Ltd

Typeset by Refine Catch Ltd, Bungay, Suffolk

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CHRONOLOGY

It is the function of a preface to patronise the reader and to tell him what to think of what follows. Barbey dAurevilly who despised his public, (while yet constantly seeking to shock and impress that public) thoughtfully provided his own preface to Les Diaboliques when it was first published in 1874. In it he claimed that he wrote as a Christian to demonstrate how good and evil are at war in the world. This is disingenuous apologetics. Barbeys tales are really much closer to the black cinematographic fables of Luis Bunuel, and Barbey does himself a disservice by attempting to foist such a pious purpose on to the stories. The metaphysics, ethics and aesthetics of his writing are all, alike, more subtle than that.

To dress oneself should be the main business of life. This is the preposterous manifesto of the dandy. Barbey dressed to draw attention to himself. He waged a single handed style war against the citizens of Paris, shocking others, but never allowing himself to be shocked. So it is with the stories. They offer us a metaphysics of appearance, of the mask, of the dandy even. If evil is present in the world, it is present only in signs and objects, in appearances. As the narrator of Prousts Remembrance of Things Past observes, speaking of the key motifs and underlying unity in the novels and short stories of Barbey dAurevilly, in them we find a hidden reality revealed by a physical sign, the physiological blush of the Bewitched, of Aimee de Spens, of old Clotte, the hand in the Rideau cramoisi, the old manners and customs, the old words, the ancient and peculiar trades behind which there is a Past, the oral history compiled by the peasants of the region, the noble Norman cities redolent of England and charming as a Scottish village, the cause of curses against which we can do nothing

In the twilight vision of Barbeys France, all is washed in the Devils bath of melancholy. It is a world of quiet streets, stifled desires, covert vices and unfinished stories. The melancholy vision is shaped by boredom and boredom will drive Barbey first to the sartorial excesses of dandyism and then to the literary outrages of The She Devils. The subtle charm which is the hallmark of most of Barbeys fiction is surely generated by the tension between boredom and passion within the man. In fiction (though not, it is to be feared, in Barbeys actual life), passion always triumphs. As Barbey observed in Une vieille maitresse, Passions do less harm than boredom, for the passions tend always to decline, while boredom tends always to increase. In his stories he beautifully evokes the boredom of dull provincial towns and the endless games of whist, but passion, perverted and all consuming, suffuses this quiet world of appearances. The everyday world is lit from within by the black light of passion. The mysteries of passion are revealed in sign, gesture and posture. It is not by chance that references to the science of physiognomy feature so frequently in these stories that they must be accounted among the key leitmotifs of the work. Barbeys Satan is not absent from the world, but immanent in human flesh, and the grammar of his diabolism is made manifest in the postures of the human body. And, as the title of the anthology underlines, evil is most strongly present in the flesh of women. It is women who are the most skilled at concealing their lust, behind proud or impassive exteriors. Their lusts may be deduced, yet the precise workings of womens motivation remains forever mysterious. The most powerful embodiment of this obsession of Barbeys is to be found in the figure of Hauteclaire de Stassin in the story Happiness in Crime.