Les Papillons noirs [The Black Butterflies]. Edited & written by The Bibliophile Jacob. No. 1 (Jan. 1840). Sole Edition. Self-Published: Paris. Paperback 32 mo., 93 pp.
The short-lived Romanticist proto-zine The Black Butterflies was one of the first self-published periodicals to heed the call of Gustave Karr in the first issue of his seminal underground newspaper The Wasps [Les Guêpes], of which this archive holds many early copies (see tab at top of page). Indeed, not only do the magazine's title, format, and design respond to that of Karr's and the journal is cited a few times within it, but this inaugural issue begins with an open letter to Karr, acknowledging The Wasps as a partial inspiration and declaring the two journals' "holy alliance" while distinguishing the new journal from the Wasp's combative, acerbic, and political tone.
The Black Butterflies was the mouthpiece of the prolific avant-garde writer and scholar Paul Lacroix, aka Bibliophile Jacob, represented elsewhere in this archive by his edition of Rabelais, a collection of historical tales for children, one of his personal bookplates, and a letter promoting his work from his friend and future brother-in-law Jean Duseigneur. Like his mentor Charles Nodier (who he replaced after the latter's retirement as head of the prestigious Arsenal library), he played many roles in the underground community: as a novelist he was a leading proponent of both Frenetic and Medievalist Romanticism in their extreme forms; as a scholar he pioneered the study of Medieval art and daily life; as a bibliophile, he was a central node of research and resources for the Romanticist community as it developed the genre of historical fiction, contributing greatly to the research behind the novels of Hugo, Dumas, Maquet, and Balzac among others; as a journalist, activist and historian he helped to lead the restoration and anti-gentrification campaigns to save Notre-Dame and many other medieval buildings from demolition; as an editor he compiled revised and annotated editions of long-neglected books to establish the Romanticist anti-canon.
The contents are heterogeneous, most relating to contemporary events in both the political realm (where the positions staked are generally liberal, though without the acidity of Karr's magazine) and the cultural and underground communities. Most take the form of humorous satirical essays commenting on a very wide variety of subjects both trivial and important, sometimes spinning out experimentally into flights of fantasy or scripted comedy sketches. Examples include a long tirade against the National Guard ("The National Guard is a magnificent utopia, invented or the military amusement of France's majority, and for the desolation of reasonable people."), a comedy sketch set at the Comic Opera, a criticism of the emerging idea of literary property (he chides the government for ignoring literature until it found it could apply the idea of Property to it), an argument by lawyers representing God and the Devil, wry comment about the Romanticist poet Lamartine into politics, and a satirical proposal to limit the limit the verbiosity of representatives in the Chamber of Deputies.
The Black Butterflies was the mouthpiece of the prolific avant-garde writer and scholar Paul Lacroix, aka Bibliophile Jacob, represented elsewhere in this archive by his edition of Rabelais, a collection of historical tales for children, one of his personal bookplates, and a letter promoting his work from his friend and future brother-in-law Jean Duseigneur. Like his mentor Charles Nodier (who he replaced after the latter's retirement as head of the prestigious Arsenal library), he played many roles in the underground community: as a novelist he was a leading proponent of both Frenetic and Medievalist Romanticism in their extreme forms; as a scholar he pioneered the study of Medieval art and daily life; as a bibliophile, he was a central node of research and resources for the Romanticist community as it developed the genre of historical fiction, contributing greatly to the research behind the novels of Hugo, Dumas, Maquet, and Balzac among others; as a journalist, activist and historian he helped to lead the restoration and anti-gentrification campaigns to save Notre-Dame and many other medieval buildings from demolition; as an editor he compiled revised and annotated editions of long-neglected books to establish the Romanticist anti-canon.
The contents are heterogeneous, most relating to contemporary events in both the political realm (where the positions staked are generally liberal, though without the acidity of Karr's magazine) and the cultural and underground communities. Most take the form of humorous satirical essays commenting on a very wide variety of subjects both trivial and important, sometimes spinning out experimentally into flights of fantasy or scripted comedy sketches. Examples include a long tirade against the National Guard ("The National Guard is a magnificent utopia, invented or the military amusement of France's majority, and for the desolation of reasonable people."), a comedy sketch set at the Comic Opera, a criticism of the emerging idea of literary property (he chides the government for ignoring literature until it found it could apply the idea of Property to it), an argument by lawyers representing God and the Devil, wry comment about the Romanticist poet Lamartine into politics, and a satirical proposal to limit the limit the verbiosity of representatives in the Chamber of Deputies.
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(he chides the government for ignoring literature until it found it could apply the idea of Property to it) ----- Never thought of it in this way.
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Elizabeth Beckmann