Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam

For the town in France, see L'Isle-Adam, Val-d'Oise.

Villiers de l'Isle-Adam
Villiers de l'Isle-Adam in 1886
Born	Jean-Marie-Mathias-Philippe-Auguste de Villiers de L'Isle-Adam (1838-11-07)7 November 1838 Saint-Brieuc, Brittany
Died	Paris, France
Occupation	Novelist, essayist, poet
Notable work	L'Ève Future (1886)
Parent(s)	Joseph-Toussaint-Charles Marie-Françoise Le Nepvou de Carfort-Daniel de Kérinou
Signature

Jean-Marie-Mathias-Philippe-Auguste, comte de Villiers de l'Isle-Adam (7 November 1838 – 19 August 1889) was a French symbolist writer.

Life

Villiers de l'Isle-Adam was born in Saint-Brieuc, Brittany, to a distinguished aristocratic family. His parents, Marquis Joseph-Toussaint and Marie-Francoise (née Le Nepvou de Carfort) were not financially secure and were supported by Marie's aunt, Mademoiselle de Kerinou. In attempt to gain wealth, Villers de l'Isle-Adam's father began an obsessive search for the lost treasure of the Knights of Malta, formerly known as the Knights Hospitaller, of which (Philippe Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, a family ancestor, was the 16th-century Grand Master of the order. The treasure had reputedly been buried near Quintin during the French Revolution. Consequently, Marquis Joseph-Toussaint spent large sums of money buying and excavating land before selling unsuccessful sites at a loss.

The young Villiers' education was troubled, attending over half a dozen different schools, but from an early age his family were convinced he was an artistic genius and as a child he composed poetry and music. A significant event in his childhood years was the death of a young girl with whom Villiers was in love, an event which would deeply influence his literary imagination.

Villiers made several trips to Paris in the late 1850s, where he became enamoured of artistic and theatrical life. In 1860, his aunt offered him enough money to allow him to live in the capital permanently. He had already acquired a reputation in literary circles for his inspired, alcohol-fuelled monologues. He frequented the Brasserie des Martyrs, where he met his idol Baudelaire, who encouraged him to read the works of Edgar Allan Poe. Poe and Baudelaire would become the biggest influences on Villiers' mature style, but his first publication (at his own expense), was a book of verse, Premières Poésies (1859). It made little impression outside Villiers' own small band of admirers. Around this time, Villiers began living with Louise Dyonnet. The relationship and Dyonnet's reputation scandalised his family, and they forced him to undergo a retreat at Solesmes Abbey. Villiers would remain a devout, if highly unorthodox, Catholic for the rest of his life.

Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, by Nadar

Villiers broke his relationship with Dyonnet in 1864. He made several further attempts at securing a suitable bride for himself, but all ended in failure. In 1867, he asked Théophile Gautier for the hand of his daughter Estelle, but Gautier — who had turned his back on the bohemian world of his youth and would not let his child marry a writer with few prospects — turned him down. Villiers' own family also strongly disapproved of the match. His plans for marriage to an English heiress, Anna Eyre Powell, were equally unsuccessful. Villiers finally took to living with Marie Dantine, the illiterate widow of a Belgian coachman. In 1881, she gave birth to Villiers' son, Victor (nicknamed "Totor").

An important event in Villiers' life was his meeting with Richard Wagner at Triebschen in 1869. Villiers read from the manuscript of his play La Révolte and the composer declared that the Frenchman was a "true poet". Another trip to see Wagner the next year was cut short by the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, during which Villiers became a commander in the Garde Nationale. At first he was impressed by the patriotic spirit of the Commune and wrote articles in support of it in the Tribun du peuple under the pseudonym "Marius", but he soon became disillusioned with its revolutionary violence.

Villiers' aunt died in 1871, ending his financial support. Though Villiers had many admirers in literary circles (the most important being his close friend Stéphane Mallarmé), mainstream newspapers found his fiction too eccentric to be saleable and few theatres would run his plays. Villiers was forced to take odd jobs to support his family: he gave boxing lessons and worked in a funeral parlour and was employed as a mountebank's assistant. Another money-making scheme Villiers considered was reciting his poetry to a paying public in a cage full of tigers, but he executed the idea. According to his friend Léon Bloy, Villiers was so poor he had to write most of his novel L'Ève future lying on his belly on bare floorboards because the bailiffs had taken all his furniture. His poverty only increased his sense of aristocratic pride.

Caricature of Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, by Coll-Toc, 1885

In 1875, he attempted to sue a playwright he believed had insulted one of his ancestors, Maréchal Jean de Villiers de l'Isle-Adam. In 1881, Villiers stood unsuccessfully for parliament as a candidate for the Legitimist party. By the 1880s Villiers' fame began to grow, but not his finances. The publishers Calmann-Lévy accepted his Contes cruels, but the sum they offered Villiers was negligible. The volume did, however, come to the attention of Joris-Karl Huysmans, who praised Villiers' work in his highly influential novel À rebours. By this time, Villiers was dying of stomach cancer. On his deathbed, he finally married Marie Dantine, thus legitimising his beloved son "Totor". He is buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery.

Writings

Caricature by Félix Vallotton

Villiers' works, in the Romantic style are often fantastic in plot and filled with mystery and horror. Important among them are the drama Axël (1890), the novel The Future Eve (1886), and the short-story collection Contes cruels (1883, tr. Sardonic Tales, 1927). Contes cruels is regarded as an important collection of horror stories, and where the short story genre conte cruel got its name. The Future Eve greatly helped to popularize the term "android" (Androïde in French, the character is named "Andréide").

Villiers believed the imagination has within it much more beauty than reality itself, existing at a level in which nothing real could compare.

Villiers considered Axël to be his masterpiece, although critics preferred his fiction. Villiers began work on the piece around 1869 and had still not completed it when he died. It was first published posthumously in 1890. The play is heavily influenced by the Romantic theatre of Victor Hugo, as well as Goethe's Faust and the music dramas of Richard Wagner. The scene is set in Germany in 1828 and opens on Christmas Eve in the convent of Saint Apollodora, where the rich heiress Sara de Maupers is preparing to take the veil. When the archdeacon asks Sara whether she is ready to accept "light, hope and life", she replies "no" and the religious authorities attempt to imprison Sara, but she manages to flee.

The rest of the drama takes place in the castle of Axël d'Auersperg, a young nobleman distantly related to Sara. Axël's cousin Kaspar has learnt that a vast treasure is buried near the castle and he tries to persuade Axël to help him look for it but he refuses. The two quarrel and Axël kills Kaspar in a duel. In the third act, Axël's Rosicrucian tutor, Master Janus, prepares to initiate Axël into the occult, in which he repeated de Mauper's refusal when his tutor asks his pupil whether he is ready to accept "light, hope and life", and Axël replies "no". In Act Four, Axël decides to leave the castle and visits the crypt to say farewell to the tombs of his ancestors. Here he surprises Sara, who has been led to the castle by an old manuscript which tells of the location of the buried treasure.

Once they have discovered the treasure, Axël and Sara initially argue, though later fall in love. They dream of the glorious future the treasure will bring them, but then declare their dreams are far too magnificent to be fulfilled in everyday, unimaginative reality. They decide to kill themselves and die as the sun rises. The play's most famous line is Axël's "Vivre? les serviteurs feront cela pour nous" ("Living? Our servants will do that for us"). Edmund Wilson used the title Axel's Castle for his study of early Modernist literature.

Works

• Premières Poésies (early verse, 1859)
• Isis (novel, uncompleted, 1862)
• Elën (drama in three acts in prose, 1865)
• Morgane (drama in five acts in prose, 1866)
• La Révolte (drama in one act, 1870)
  • Translated into English by Theresa Barclay in 1901.
• Le Nouveau Monde (drama, 1880)
• Contes Cruels (stories, 1883)
  • Partially translated into English by Arthur Symons in 1925, then as Sardonic Tales by Hamish Miles in 1927, and as Cruel Tales by Robert Baldick in 1963.
• L'Ève future (novel, 1886)
  • Translated into English as Eve of the Future Eden, by Marilyn Gaddis Rose in 1981, and as Tomorrow's Eve by Robert Martin Adams in 1982.
• L'Amour supreme (stories, 1886)
  • Partially translated into English by Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke in 1897 as Clever Tales, and by Brian Stableford as The Scaffold and The Vampire Soul.
• Tribulat Bonhomet (fiction including "Claire Lenoir", 1887)
  • Translations of "Claire Lenoir" by Arthur Symons in 1925, and by Brian Stableford as The Vampire Soul in 2014 ISBN 1-932983-02-3.
• L'Evasion (drama in one act, 1887)
  • Translated into English by Theresa Barclay in 1901.
• Histoires insolites (stories, 1888)
  • Partially translated into English by Brian Stableford as The Scaffold and The Vampire Soul.
• Nouveaux Contes cruels (stories, 1888)
  • Partially translated into English by Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke in 1897 as Clever Tales, and by Brian Stableford as The Scaffold and The Vampire Soul.
• Chez les passants (stories, miscellaneous journalism, 1890)
• Axël (published posthumously 1890)
  • Translated into English by M. Gaddis Rose in 1986, and by June Guicharnaud.

External links

• Works by Auguste Villiers de L'Isle-Adam at Hathi Trust
• Works by Auguste Villiers de L'Isle-Adam at Project Gutenberg
• Works by Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Black Coat Press, publisher of American translations of Villiers de l'Isle-Adam.