The Life of Villiers de l'Isle-Adam by A.W. RaittReview by: Marilyn Gaddis RoseNineteenth-Century French Studies, Vol. 10, No. 3/4 (Spring—Summer 1982), pp. 385-386Published by: University of Nebraska PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23536483 .

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Reviews 385

In passing, Miss Oliver clears up a number of other points. "Miss Jane," an

early English governess in the Flaubert household, is the same person as the later

Mrs. Farmer, with whom Mme Flaubert and Caroline stayed in London upon occasion. And there is new material on the Colliers, Hamilton Aidé, and others.

This is a remarkable book, which all Flaubert scholars will read with delight. Can we learn even more? Miss Oliver notes sadly that Juliet's executrix may not

even have been able to read French and may, hence, have thrown away all of

Flaubert's letters to Juliet and also the inscribed copies of his works. At the very start of her book, Miss Oliver expresses the wish that its publication may alert the

heirs of Juliet to what they may possess. We all join in this desire, hut her hook was

prominently reviewed in the TLS immediately upon its publication, and much

time has now elapsed. We must now hope that Miss Oliver herself may find further

clues, or that some one equally well equipped for the task undertakes it anew. It

will not be easy for any one else to write a sequel, for Miss Oliver's book is

ingeniously and tirelessly researched and presented with clarity and sensitivity.

University of Pittsburgh

B. F. Bakt

Raitt, A.W. The Life ofVilliers de lisle-Adam. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981; New York: Oxford University Press. 452 pp.

The undisputed doyen of Villiers studies since his masterly Villiers de l'Isle

Adam et le mouvement symboliste (1965), Raitt lias given us a biography that is a

scholarly event like Bart s Flaubert or Ellmann s Joyce. Where the various Villiers

coterie members (as many as a dozen?) in the Academy had nearly managed among themselves to piece together a probable chronology of probable events, Raitt has

succeeded in establishing what Villiers was doing (a true feat with such a self

mythologizing role-player), with whom he was involved, and when it all occurred.

Revelatory for this reviewer, for example, was the documentation Raitt has pro vided for Villiers liaison with Louise Dvonnet, the demi-mondaine who was the

undoubted prototype for Villiers Grunette vampire (although in his gothic casting blondes and redheads are nearly as baleful). Every verifiable biographical datum

likely ever to be uncovered is preserved here: his atypical, quasi-matriarchal Breton rearing, his precocious prospects, his adulations (like Wagner and Poe), his

friendships (like Judith Gautier and Mallarmé), his political misadventures (like

pretending to the Greek throne, supporting then repudiating the Commune,

running for office), his truly odd jobs (like impersonating the cured patient in an

alienist's waiting room, serving as a sparring partner for professional boxers), his

monumental bad luck with his plays.

Implicit in Raitt's account is a bio/psycho-critical approach. He does not impose such an approach 011 the reader but provides data for biographical interpretations.

By providing data, he should be able to forestall far-fetched Freudian readings. It

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386 Nineteenth-Century French Studies

should be emphasized that he does not duplicate the discussion of sources, themes,

styles of his 1965 essay. Here his attention —- sympathetic but unillusioned — is on

the man himself with whom by patient scholarship he has effected a friendship across time.

As a clear-headed friend, Raitt delineates Villiers as an inveterate role-plaver, as anxious to he a writer as to write (p. 369), who has had an "incalculable impact"

(p. 376) on French and European literature. (Since Villiers has affected American, Latin American, and Australian literature, this should be extended to Western

language literature.) This impact is far more visible now than when Raitt published his 1965 study. Now it is nearly consensus that Decadence, long obscured by

Impressionism in painting and Symbolism-Modernism in literature, was, to quote

Jean Pierrot in The Decadent Imagination (1981), both the cleavage between

classic and modernist aesthetic and the continuity to the non-abstractionist natural

isms (like Surrealism and Expressionism). As Decadence as a period norm has been

rehabilitated by cultural historians — a rehabilitation for which Raitt himself can

take no small measure of credit — Villiers' stature as incarnation and articulation

has re-emerged. Aggressively ambivalent and larger-than-life, Villiers epitomized Decadence.

SUNN-Binshamton

Makilyn Caddis Rosi:

Russei.l Taylor, Elizabeth. Marcel Proust and His Contexts: A Critical

Bibliography of English-Language Scholarship. New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1981, 235 pp.

The aim of this bibliography is to present to the scholar, teacher, student, and

general reader works on Proust's life and work written in or translated into English. The author has found a great many references (there are almost 1400 entries), but

the work has flaws in what it includes, how it is organized, and how the entries are

described. First, there is no indication of the date through which the bibliography

may be taken to be inclusive. Whereas there is a reference to J.K. Risers Proust

and the Art of Love, published in 1980 (and mistakenly listed here as 1981), there

do not seem to be entries of other works after 1978. Important more recently translated studies, like Genette's Narrative Discourse (1980) and de Man's "Read

ing" (in Allegories of Reading. 1979) are missing, as is Shirley King's Dining ivitli

Marcel Proust (1979), of interest to the general reader. Also lacking are the original

publication dates for those works which have been translated from French.

There are further problems regarding the works chosen to be included. Cheek

ing this book against the M LA International Bibliography reveals several missing

articles, including René Girard s essay on "Narcissism: The Freudian Myth Dé

mythifiée] by Proust" (in Alan Roland, ed.. Psychoanalysis, Creativity, and Litera

ture). On the other hand, there are many entries of works in which Proust is merely mentioned in passing; and there are long sections entitled "Further Reading" at

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