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    Sorcery In Poitou: Two Satanic Essays: Gilles de Rais and Felicen Rops
    Sorcery In Poitou: Two Satanic Essays: Gilles de Rais and Felicen Rops
    Sorcery In Poitou: Two Satanic Essays: Gilles de Rais and Felicen Rops
    Ebook61 pages1 hour

    Sorcery In Poitou: Two Satanic Essays: Gilles de Rais and Felicen Rops

    By Joris-Karl Huysmans

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    The first notable literary advocate of the Satanist, alchemist and child-killer Gilles de Rais remains J-K Huysmans, famous for his novel A Rebours and its quintessential decadent, Des Esseintes. Huysmans' later novel La-Bas (1891), a virtual apology for Satanism, is threaded by a version of the de Rais story as narrated by the book's protagonist, Durtal. Punctuated by the author's own poetic interventions, this account depicts de Rais as an arch-decadent beset by demonic visions and ravening sexual manias - "the 15th century Des Esseintes'. A most intriguing "sequel-to this examination of evil is now provided by the first ever English translation of Huysmans' pamphlet SORCERY IN POITOU (La Sorcellerie En Poitou, also known as La Magie En Poitou), published in 1897 in a limited edition for private circulation only. Described by Huysmans as a reductionist, non-fiction version of La-Bas, it demonstrates the ongoing fascination exerted by de Rais over the author. This special ebook edition of SORCERY IN POITOU also includes Instrumentum Diaboli, Huysmans' notorious essay on the Satanic artist Felicien Rops, whose work The Sacrifice is featured on the front cover.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherElektron Ebooks
    Release dateMar 4, 2015
    ISBN9781908694416
    Sorcery In Poitou: Two Satanic Essays: Gilles de Rais and Felicen Rops
    Author

    Joris-Karl Huysmans

    Joris-Karl Huysmans (Charles Marie Georges Huysmans), geboren am 5. Februar 1848 in Paris als Sohn des Druckers Godfried Huysmans und der Lehrerin Malvina Badin; gestorben am 12. Mai 1907, ebenda. Französischer Schriftsteller. Hauptwerke: Gegen den Strich (À rebours, 1884); Tief unten (Là-bas, 1891). Ausführliche Lebensbeschreibung auf Seite 4.

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      Book preview

      Sorcery In Poitou - Joris-Karl Huysmans

      credits

      SORCERY IN POITOU

      BY JORIS-KARL HUYSMANS

      AN EBOOK

      ISBN 978-1-908694-41-6

      PUBLISHED BY ELEKTRON EBOOKS

      COPYRIGHT 2012 ELEKTRON EBOOKS

      www.elektron-ebooks.com

      No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a database or retrieval system, posted on any internet site, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright holders. Any such copyright infringement of this publication may result in civil prosecution

      SORCERY IN POITOU

      Gilles de Rais And Black Magic

      Gilles de Rais, about whose childhood little is known, was born about 1404, on the border of Brittany and Anjou, in the château de Machecoul in Bas-Poitou. His father died at the end of October, 1415. His mother remarried almost immediately to Siegneur d’Estouville and abandoned him and his brother, Rene de Rais. He came under the tutelage of his grandfather, Jean de Craon, Lord of Champtocé-sur-Loire, ‘a man old, ancient and of immense great age,’ according to some texts. Gilles was neither properly watched over nor guided by that wry and distracted old man, who attempted to get rid of Gilles by marrying him to Catherine de Thouars, on 30 November, 1420.

      Five years later, he is a significant presence at the court of the Dauphin. His contemporaries describe him as a rugged and robust man, one who was very handsome and in possession of a refined elegance. Information is lacking regarding the role he plays at court, but one can easily imagine how the destitude king greeted the arrival of Gilles, who was one the richest barons of France.

      At that time, indeed, Charles VII was in extremis. He was penniless, devoid of prestige and without any real authority. The situation in France, exhausted by the massacres, and ravaged some years before by the plague, was deplorable. The country’s resources were gone; it was drained to the marrow by England, which France was terrified of, for the English, like that fabulous sea monster, the Kraken, emerged from the sea and terrorized the strait of Brittany, Normandy, part of Picardy, the Ile-de-france, the entire Northern coast and the interior, as far as Orleans, razing towns and devastating cities, and in the aftermath of many battles, leaving many dead.

      All of Charles’s tactics: claiming subsidies, inventing excuses for exacting funds, and raising taxes, were useless. Ransacked cities and abandoned fields were ravaged by wolves. He was a king whose legitimacy was questionable. He was like a blind beggar, shuffling around, rattling a tin cup, begging for coins. His court in Chinon was a web of intrigue and sporadic murders.

      Tired of being hunted, Charles and his supporters eventually hid out of the way in lodgings behind the Loire, where they took comfort in exuberant debaucheries, opulent dining and the wild drunkenness. The drink, food and prostitutes were paid for by constant raiding, borrowing and stealing, and they immersed themselves in hedonistic distractions, forgetting momentarily that disaster dogged the kingdom daily.

      However, when the English armies united, quickly inundated the country, and then, after a concerted push forward, invaded the interior. The King considered retreating to the South coast, and then relinquishing France: it was at this time that Jeanne d’Arc appeared. Gilles de Rais, who was then at court, was entrusted by Charles to provide ‘guard and defence’ of the Maid. He followed her everywhere, fought at her side, assisted in the battle under the walls of Paris, and was with her in Rheims on the day of the coronation, where, as a reward for his valour, so Monstrelet tells us, the King appointed him – at the tender age of twenty-five – Marshal of France.

      What was Gilles de Rais’s attitude towards Jeanne d’Arc? Again information is scarce. M. Vallet Viriville (without any evidence) accuses him of treachery. The Abbé Bossard, on the contrary, says he was loyally devoted and watched over her, and he supports his opinion with plausible reasons. Anyway, after the capture and death of Jeanne, we lose track of Gilles, who we find cloistered, aged twenty-six, in the château de Tiffauges.

      The iron warrior, the roughneck soldier who was an integral part of him, had disappeared. At the same time – just as the misdeeds were about to begin – the artist and the scholar develop in Gilles and completely possess him, inciting him, under the impulse of a perverse mysticism, to the most sophisticated of cruelties, the most delicate of crimes.

      He was almost alone in his time, this Baron de Rais!

      In an era when his peers were merely simple brutes, but he wanted the delicate delerium of art and he dreamed of literature that was profound and contemplative; he even composed a treatise on

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