“I am a dirty materialist.” The role of sensualism in the awakening of aesthetic feeling in Barbey d’Aurevilly

The audacity of Barbey d’Aurevilly’s writing has given him an afterlife—one of the characteristics of which is the heuristic function of sensualism. The Memoranda are the site where the beautiful is experienced, a melting pot of his ideas on art. This article explores the aesthetic emotions of Barbey d’Aurevilly in his youth. It shows how his relationship to beauty, that of women as works of art, fuels a sensualism that blossoms in his subsequent work.