{"product_id":"on-christianity","title":"On Christianity | Rémy de Gourmont \u0026 Richard Aldington (trans.) | SA1335","description":"\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\"\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOn Christianity\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cem\u003eAn excerpt from\u003c\/em\u003e Le chemin de velours; Nouvelles dissociations d'idées \u003cem\u003e(The Velvet Path), 1911\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRémy de Gourmont\u003cbr\u003eTranslated by Richard Aldington\u003cbr\u003ePublished by Underworld Amusements for the Union of Egoists\u003cbr\u003eStand Alone SA1335\u003cbr\u003e\u003cem\u003e[8 pages, 4.25 × 5.5″, saddle-stitched. Limited to 66 copies.]\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\"\u003eIn 1911 Rémy de Gourmont surveyed a civilization that had trained itself to flinch, and pronounced it obscene. Not the cruelty — the flinch. \"You cannot say that wolves generally eat lambs and that it is their duty as wolves,\" he complained, \"without sending a shudder of horror through the crowd.\" \u003cem\u003eOn Christianity\u003c\/em\u003e, lifted from his late and unrepentant \u003cem\u003eLe chemin de velours\u003c\/em\u003e, is the Symbolist master of \"the dissociation of ideas\" laying his scalpel against the one idea no one is permitted to touch: the universal, obligatory morality of pity that even Christianity's loudest enemies, he noticed, take pains to leave intact — would sooner make heavier than lighten.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\"\u003eHis quarrel is not with faith but with sentimentality, with a \"middling happiness\" that sacrifices liberty first and calls the bargain salvation. (\"The terrestrial ideal of humanity smells of the pigsty, as its celestial ideal smelt of the stable.\") He has no patience for the patrician who kneels to the religion of slaves—\"the apostates of their caste and their race\"—and a cold admiration for the few who dare to say \u003cem\u003e\"My justice is my strength,\"\u003c\/em\u003e and who prove it. Readers of this catalog will know the phrase. Aldington's faithful rendering of «ma justice, c'est ma force» is, idiomatically, nothing other than \u003cem\u003eMight is Right\u003c\/em\u003e—the motto Max Stirner armed and Arthur Desmond made notorious. Gourmont reaches the same precipice by the velvet path: not a manifesto, but an essayist's quiet, surgical dissociation of a thing his century had glued shut.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\"\u003eThe translator is no accident. Richard Aldington—Imagist, early hand at \u003cem\u003eThe Egoist\u003c\/em\u003e under Dora Marsden—moved in exactly the milieu of intellectual independence and cheerful heresy Gourmont's prose demands, and would go on to render the Frenchman for English readers at length. (Gourmont, returning the favor across the Channel, had introduced France to Benjamin DeCasseres—no stranger to this catalog.) This edition annotates Gourmont's idiosyncratic vocabulary—his pre-biological \u003cem\u003erace\u003c\/em\u003e, his aristocratic \u003cem\u003eliberty\u003c\/em\u003e, his juridical \u003cem\u003eequity\u003c\/em\u003e—restoring the precision the polemic runs on, and that a careless century has smeared. A companion to the Stand Alone series' other smuggled French heresies, from Jules de Gaultier's \u003cem\u003eBovarysm\u003c\/em\u003e to Han Ryner's individualism, and to its anti-Christian fevers from \u003cem\u003eBanner of the Antichrist\u003c\/em\u003e to \u003cem\u003eAgainst Christmas\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote class=\"ml-2 border-l-4 border-[hsl(var(--border-300)\/0.1)] pl-4 text-text-300\"\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\"\u003e\u003cem\u003e\"Those who repeat 'Blessed are the meek' and who practise the gospel of pity are destined to become the slaves of those who dare to say 'My justice is my strength.'\"\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/blockquote\u003e","brand":"Union of Egoists","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":52401394516251,"sku":null,"price":1.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0040\/0461\/0117\/files\/OnChristianity.jpg?v=1782433700","url":"https:\/\/underworldamusements.com\/products\/on-christianity","provider":"Underworld Amusements","version":"1.0","type":"link"}