The Pilgrim of the Absolute

By Leon Bloy | Edited by David Bentley Hart

The Pilgrim of the Absolute is a collection of Léon Bloy’s writings, selected and edited by Raissa Maritain. The volume shows Bloy at the heights of his implacable fury toward the rich and haughty and at the depths of his seemingly inescapable poverty. Bloy spared no one with the excoriations that poured from his pen—a fact from which the selections of Maritain do not shy away, allowing the reader to experience firsthand the frustrating paradox of the Pilgrim of the Absolute.

Léon Bloy (1846–1917) was a French poet, polemicist, and novelist. Influential as he was controversial, Bloy was central to the conversion of Jacques and Raissa Maritain to Catholicism; his writings contributed to Vatican II documents on Judaism; and Pope Francis quoted him in his first papal homily.

David Bentley Hart is at present a fellow of The Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study. He has held appointments at the University of Virginia, Duke University, Providence College, and St. Louis University, and is the author of numerous books and articles. Among his most recent publications are The Experience of God (Yale), A Splendid Wickedness and Other Essays, and The Hidden and the Manifest (both from Eerdmans). He has also just released a new translation of the New Testament (Yale).

Paperback: 336pp.

ISBN: 978-1944418472