OCTOBER UPDATE!

I've been updating the site over the past week or two with new texts and research; here's what's new, to spare you searching through everything:

BIOGRAPHIES

• A new, huge biography of Petrus Borel, one of the group's principal organisers and theorists. Borel had as great if not greater influence than anyone on the direction the group took; AND there is a book-length biography available in English (Enid Starkie's 'Petrus Borel, Lycanthrope'). So this bio could serve as a pretty good general introduction of the group's activities and trajectory.

• Additionally, due to the tiny typeface on the blog, I've made it possible to download PDF versions of the three bios that are up so far (Borel, Bouchardy, and DuSeigneur). The Borel bio is fairly thoroughly cited with hyperlinks to the online sources. There are also a few tune-ups to the other bios; while all three cover almost the same historical ground between 1830 and '34, I don't think that they're redundant as I've been careful to present in each a different perspective on what the group was doing and the different reasons each member had for being involved, the unique approach that each added to the collective whole. So that in Borel the focus is on militant politics, the group's relationships with other Romantic-affiliated utopian communes and micro-utopias in Paris, and the influence of Gothic / Frenetic subculture on the group; in Bouchardy it is on their relationships to the visual arts and their opposition to Classicism; in DuSeigneur it is their early formation and engagement with History and Historiography. The next biography will be organiser/theorist/writer Philothée O'Neddy, for whom a short portrait or 'stub' as they would say on wikipedia is already posted.
  

RESEARCH

• Needless to say, research continues; the main sources I'm working through presently are Bénichou's brilliantly textured, perceptive, and researched study of the gradual gestation and then birth of French Romanticism, Consecration of the Artist, 1750-1830; Mario Praz's passive-aggressive and frustratingly half-translated but still extremely valuable The Romantic Agony; and 'Romantic' and Its Cognates: European History of the Word', which is pedantic and flawed but still quite helpful in helping to establish the dynamic that Romanticism represented in Germany, England, France, and when I get to it Italy etc. Next things to start looking at a bit down the road will be scattered translations of more French Romantics, bio of Charles Nodier, and more background on radical politics in the 1820s-40s.

• Unexpected connections keep popping up: Having found more information on the elusive Evadamiste sect, a micro-Utopia founded simultaneously with the Jeunes'France's own that was a strange conglomeration of Saint-Simonian Socialism, Romanticism, Mystical Occultism, and Feminism, I found that Alexandre Dumas, who was involved with the Petit-Cénacle and possible the early Jeunes-France, was a member of the Evadamistes simultaneously, along with a couple other of their acquaintances; a few years later, the sect would be joined by no less than Eliphas Lévi, largely responsible for the Occult revival of the 19th Century and endlessly referenced in Huysmans Là-Bas. This group and its connection to the Bouzingo is treated at some length in the Borel biography that I've posted.
  

• A few people have been doing some independent research and keeping me informed of the results--many thanks, I'd love it to happen more! Warren Fry has been helping for awhile looking into the Devéria brothers and other visual artists, satirists, and eroticists associated with the group and their wider circle and continues to do so (see his earlier post); Tomislav Butkovic has recently been looking into Charles Nodier. This blog is a great place to post this kind of research when you come upon it, making it available to everyone. (contact me if you need an invite to post!)
  

• I am compiling an amazon list of books helpful for carrying out this research or getting a more thorough handle on the Jeunes-France. I am only adding books in English that I've been able to look at and evaluate, so there ARE more things out there. The list is available here.

• Additionally, some discussion regarding the research that is being done, and its contemporary applicability, is beginning to occur through conversations with various people including Jim Leftwich, Warren Fry, Michael Peters, Tomislav Butkovic, Rebecca Weeks, Tim Gaze, and Gleb Kolomiets. Hopefully, as above, this discussion will grow and find its way to the blog where it can be engaged in amongst everyone concerned.
  

TRANSLATIONS

• Translation is slowing down again temporarily as most of our translators are returning to school and have less time available. Gautier's 'A Line From Wordsworth' which seems to be from around 1830, has been added, translated by Olchar Lindsann with advice from Joseph Carter, along with an exhaustive unfolding of the complex poetic of quotation, allusion, and subtextual tradition going on in the poem. I have also added several notes to the translation of Borel's Rhapsodies Preface (both blog & PDF versions) relating to subtext dealing with the internal politics of the Romantic community which I have just been able to identify thanks to Bénichou's Consecration of the Writer. It may be awhile before we can make more available.

• I have, however, found another Jeunes-France translation available. Last year, Jonah Durning-Hammond translated the only five extant chapters of Sodom and Zion, an unfinished novel by Théophile Dondey, aka Philothée O'Neddy. These three chapters were published as self-contained short stories in journals in 1839, several years after the Bouzingo ceased operating. Chapter 1 is a military story in which an aristocratic officer's egotism is repaid, and reminds me, oddly enough, of Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe books. Chapters 17-20 are essentially Gothic-Decadent. The 18th Century occultist Cagliostro, imprisoned in the Bastille, inspires the (apparently?) main character, the proudly blasphemous Regina, to attempt the seduction of an acclaimed priest during confession. This backfires and after a terrifying vision of death and the gates of Hell, rendered in verse, she (perhaps temporarily) recants. These chapters feel midway between Matthew Lewis' gothic novel The Monk of 1796 and Huysmans' depiction of Decadent Satanism in Là-Bas of 1891. In addition, there are a couple exchanges that touch quite interestingly on issues of gender, in ways reminiscent of George Sand (a friend of the Jeunes-France) and, a bit later, Rachilde. Throughout there is a noticable anti-aristocratic current. Durning-Hammond's translation is quite good; the long verse passage is, as it ought to be, rendered into metered and rhymed verse and, as is not often enough the case, it is well-handled and does not feel forced or inanely sing-song despite the rhyme being in couplets, which tend to invite such problems. This is a chapbook of 45 pages and available through lulu, which means it was a labour of love. It is available HERE for $10.

TIMELINE

• Along with various minor shufflings, updatings, and corrections, the main additions to the timeline have related to the development of the French Romanticist community between 1813 and 1828, and to the development of Romanticism in Germany between 1798 and 1820.

• As always, the key period from 1830-35 is a mess of conflicting evidence, unnamed sources, and undated, anecdotal reminiscences, and the guesses on the timeline are still a bit outaded compared to my better guesses as reflected in the Borel bio, which in turn I am already beginning to question in light of some new information concerning dates of residence for Borel on various properties, the authority of which I need to look into...