''What Never Dies'' () is an 1884 novel by the French writer

Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly Jules-Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly (2 November 1808 – 23 April 1889) was a French novelist, poet, short story writer, and literary critic. He specialised in mystery tales that explored hidden motivation and hinted at evil without being explicitl ...

. It tells the story of the orphan Allan who falls in love with his protectress, Mme de Scudemot, who has become indifferent due to erotic excesses in her youth; Allan eventually marries his lover's daughter Camille, but has been smitten by the older woman's indifference. The book is divided into two parts, where the first focuses on Allan and Mme de Scudemot and the second on Allan and Camille. The narrative uses techniques from the

Gothic novel Gothic fiction, sometimes referred to as Gothic horror (primarily in the 20th century), is a literary aesthetic of fear and haunting. The name of the genre is derived from the Renaissance era use of the word "gothic", as a pejorative to mean ...

and its French counterpart, the "roman frénétique". The novel was written between 1833 and 1836, originally under the title ''Germaine ou La Pitié''. It was the first full-length novel to be written by Barbey d'Aurevilly, although for a long time it was left unpublished. It was revised and published in 1884. An English translation was published in 1902, falsely attributed to

Oscar Wilde Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish author, poet, and playwright. After writing in different literary styles throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular and influential playwright ...

under his pseudonym Sebastian Melmoth.

Reception

In his 1967 monograph ''The Novels and Stories of Barbey D'Aurevilly'', Brian G. Rogers wrote about ''What Never Dies'': "Though liberally sprinkled with youthful errors, the novel is the first full-length work to reflect Barbey's enthusiasm for a world completely dominated by passion, and already his treatment of incipient attraction, passionate love and cold disillusion takes on a characteristic flavour. Here, not a single note rings false."

References

Notes Literature * *

External links

''What Never Dies''
at the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...

1884 French novels 1880s Gothic novels Novels by Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly French Gothic novels {{Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly