L'art d'aimer: ou conseils à un jeune homme qui se destine à l'amour by Mendès
"L'art d'aimer: ou conseils à un jeune homme qui se destine à l'amour" by Mendès is a didactic treatise written in the late 19th century. It offers audacious guidance to a young man who aims to become a consummate lover, elevating illusion, self-fashioning, beauty, and restraint while warning against vanity and the futility of fully understanding women. Framed as urgent counsel and illustrated by parables and vignettes, it presents love as an
art that demands total devotion, tact, and carefully sustained deception. The opening of this treatise confronts the novice with a daunting creed: being a true lover is an all-consuming vocation. First comes “the divine lie,” urging perpetual self‑invention to match each woman’s imagined ideal and honoring women’s own artifice (exemplified by the lover who insists his dead mistress’s hair remain “blonde”). Next is “the divine illusion,” a plea to see through Eros’s bandage and transfigure harsh reality, culminating in a fable of a blind man whom a great doctor refuses to cure lest reality ruin his dream. The author then demands beauty—or abstention—supported by a tale of a homely man who nobly refuses a beautiful girl, and he scolds the pride of “conquerors,” showing through Aimée Henriot’s fall that circumstance, not merit, often decides consent. He declares women’s inner life unknowable and inexpressible, counsels a renewed “virginity” of soul and manner at each new love (as an artist faces each work anew), and condemns sordid male initiations, proposing utopian “Initiatrices” to ennoble first experiences—failing which, he implores generous women to spare youths from degradation. The section closes by announcing a perilous moment “after the kiss,” signaling the need for method rather than chance in what follows. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
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About this eBook
| Author | Mendès, Catulle, 1841-1909 |
|---|---|
| Title | L'art d'aimer: ou conseils à un jeune homme qui se destine à l'amour |
| Original Publication | Paris: Flammarion, 1894. |
| Credits | Laurent Vogel, Robin Tremblay and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF/Gallica)) |
| Language | French |
| LoC Class | HQ: Social sciences: The family, Marriage, Sex and Gender |
| Subject | Love |
| Category | Text |
| EBook-No. | 78098 |
| Release Date | Mar 2, 2026 |
| Copyright Status | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 4956 downloads in the last 30 days. |
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