Jacques Cazotte (1719-1792) note: some sources put his birth at 1720
” A brief but sparkling bon-bon from the French writer Jacques Cazotte, who was guillotined in 1792. A young captain, stationed in Naples, is tempted into summoning up Beelzebub, who appears first in the guise of a hideous camel, then as a cute spaniel, and lastly – and most dangerously – as a gorgeous, pouting nymphette who declares herself enamoured of the young man and follows him everywhere. This is an amusing study of temptation, with sinister undertones.” Anne Billson in Time Out “In Biondetta there remains no trace of the monstrous apparition conjured up by Alvaro in the ruins of Portico. The satanic seductress is hidden behind the face of the tormented and plaintive beauty until the end of the fable.” Jorges Luis Borges “The Devil in Love is famous on various counts: for its charm and the perfection of its scenes, but above all for the originality of its conception. ” Gerard de Nerval- from the blurb for the Dedalus European Classics edition of The Devil in Love.
Written in 1772, (original French title: Le Diable Amoureux), The Devil in Love was Jacques Cazotte’s crowning achievement of the fantastique which paralleled the English Gothics of the day.
Educated by Jesuits, Jacques worked for public office in Martinique, and returned to Paris with the rank of commissioner-general. In his forties, he began his foray into writing. Having little interest in the rationalism of the day, he penned a series of fantastical stories as well as translating several Arabian tales into French.
Cazotte’s belief in his ability as a seer led him to the Martinist mysticism of Martinez de Pasqually. The esoteric form of Christianity concerned itself with the fall of man, and his return to the divine source.
Declaring himself a “mystical monarchist”, Cazotte warned several men and women at a dinner party in 1788 that they would all soon die by guillotine or noose. To the theater critic Sebastian Chamfort, he declared, “You will slash your own wrists 22 times before dying a long and miserable death.”
When the French Revolution began, Chamfort supported it for humanistic reasons. However, as it became more and more bloody, he condemned the murders and was imprisoned. Wishing to escape a public execution, he slashed his wrists twenty-two times with a dull razor before dying.
Cazotte’s prediction to The Marquis de Condorcet that he would one day take poison to escape the guillotine came true in 1794.
Jacques Cazotte could not escape his own fate, either. On September 25, 1792 he was beheaded for treason.
