The Woman Who Was Poor by Leon Bloy
Written in the 1890s, Leon Bloy's masterful novel has had an immeasurable effect on all European Catholic writing since. (Bloy was responsible for the conversion of Jacques and Räissa Maritain in 1905, and they referred to him as their godfather.) It is an extraordinary book, powerful in the manner of dos Passos, and yet spiritual in the manner of the Bible. It is the story of a woman who is abysmally poor, brutally treated and exploited by her parents, living in the gutters of Paris, yet she retains the spiritual outlook and purity of a saint. We are spared no brutality, yet there are scenes of the most tender beauty. The woman, Clotilde, becomes an artist's model, meeting all the great French writers, among them the gloomy and magnificent Marchenoir, who is Bloy himself. They are all impressed by the depth of her thoughts and feelings; she finally marries one of them. They are pitifully poor, and the pages that cover the birth and death of their child shock with horror while moving the reader in their tragic beauty and tenderness––for this is Bloy, always hovering between death and ecstasy. Left a widow, Clotilda finds her true vocation, a vocation of poverty. She is the woman who is poor, no other words describe her more accurately. The novel ends with those famous words of extraordinary optimism: "There is only one misery…not to be saints."
"The English edition of this novel of Parisian life in the eighties brings to the English-speaking world a powerful and realistic tale of the development of spiritual discernment blossoming out of poverty and degradationThe woman, Clotilde, becomes an artist's model and meets all of the great French literati and impresses them with the depth of her thoughts and emotions. There is much philosophizing along the way…. The book is saturated with Catholic thought and allusions, but it is by no means a pietistic tract in novel form, for Leon Bloy was an accomplished novelist." ––Kirkus Review
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781890318925 |
| ISBN 10 | 1890318922 |
| Title | The Woman Who Was Poor |
| Author | Leon Bloy |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | St Augustine's Press |
| Year published | 2015-10-10 |
| Number of pages | 366 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |