My Journal

My Journal: 1896-1900 by Léon Bloy (AD 1846-1917) is the second diary in the Ungrateful Beggar series.

Edited for publication, the diary chronicles four and a half years in the tortured, perpetually destitute, but "perfectly adorable" life of the intransigeant Catholic writer and his family. It also recounts seventeen months in voluntary exile in the northern climes of Protestant Denmark where, despite his hopes for a new beginning, misfortune and misery followed him and his circumstances went quickly from bad to worse.

"[January 11, 1899] Journey to Kolding, small neighboring village where we will live as best we can. There is a minuscule Catholic church here, too vast for its parishioners. Emotion to see a humble crèche of the Epiphany with the German magi and camels waiting for us. We are now so far removed from France that it is only here, within these few square meters, on this Catholic islet lost in the middle of Lutherʼs ice floes, that God can speak to us and we can speak to God."

Despite everything - and perhaps because of it - the writer was able to produce in this time period Je MʼAccuse... and The Son of Louis XVI, while gathering material for what would later become Exegesis of Commonplaces and Blood of the Poor.