Abstract: Barbey’s work has long lived in the shadow of his fashion sense, even though the latter reflects the complexity of the former. The dandy resembles the female intellectuals he abhors: if, by writing, these women lose the “genius of appearance” and the poetry of their gender, the dandy, through his dress, presents himself as a muse and puts his authorial legitimacy at risk. Barbey ran into the misogyny of his age. Both his person and his work illustrate this third gender to which he aspires: “The world is not split in two, but always relates to three.”
