Les farfadets ou Tous les démons ne sont pas de l’autre monde (The Goblins; or, Not All Demons are From the Other World) is a fascinating artifact. This is a safe statement, opinions about its contents vary. It is the three-volume autobiographical memoir of Alexis-Vincent-Charles Berbiguier de Terre-Neuve du Thym (Henceforth, “Berbs”).  There are some famous diaries that give us an insight into history and open up worlds for us: Samuel Pepys narrates the Great Fire of London, Marco Polo describes his journey through Asia, Anne Frank’s “The Diary of a Young Girl” is a first-person recollection of the Holocaust. Farfadets is a different sort of book: the bulk of it is the self-involved monolog of a middle-aged, bourgeois French countryman, likely delusional, in a personal world influenced by years of occult and religious reading and assorted sexual issues. He has appointed himself as a holy crusader against the encroaching powers of darkness that infiltrate every level of government, infecting every person Berbs comes in conflict with, with an impressive lack of self-awareness. And even this could be an interesting read, save that the books spend hundreds of pages on his relationship with the kids next door, young French hipsters toying with the madman across the hall, endlessly venting his frustrations that they haven’t yet broken their occult spell over him, haven’t yet listened to his wisdom, and won’t stop interrupting his sleep with their astral-plane visits. 

At 850 pages, it really is a bit much. 

But it may be a more important text than it appears. It was widely read [note, cite sources here], the sort of book that you must have read to be anyone in French society. Clearly, ironic appreciation is not a 21st century invention. And its importance as an occult text looms large: it was written in a sort of conversation with the very important Dictionarre Infernal, a best-selling treasure trove of occult lore from the mid-1800s, a snapshot of myth and legend that reshaped demonology by capturing it and serving it in illustrated bites. The Dictionnaire‘s author, Jacques Collin de Plancy, was an occultist and historical researcher, publishing in France, who later became a catholic and wrote extensively on heaven, hell, and religion, and Berbs’ ideas of hell’s hierarchy clearly influence the Dictionnaire…who knows how many conversations the two writers had? Later, A.E. White attributed the Dictionnaire hierarchy to Johann Weyer, a 16th century writer who arguably invented both psychiatry and the Goetia. Some unknowable amount of Berbs’ delusions and the world he co-created with the hipsters next door, became demonological cannon. 

Publication

Les farfadets was written from 1818-1821, published in a three-volume set in 1822. According to Massimo Introvigne François-Vincent Raspail (publisher) and  J.-B.-Pascal Brunel (lawyer) had a hand in shaping the manuscript into a publishable book, though Introvigne says there’s some doubt as to how much they contributed. Opinions range from “not very much” to “the books contain M.B.’s ideas but are a literary fabrication.”

Writing Les farfadets was a religious act, his most powerful weapon in his personal quest to expose the festering influence of hell to the cleansing light of public view. According to [cite sources], each day Berbs would be at his publisher’s door with his latest addition to his magnum opus. While [insert names here] claim to have made an effort to add some narrative structure to the text, and Berbs himself claims to have deliberately shuffled the dates and written things out of order to liven things up a bit, the repetition, confusing timeline, and the basic lack of new material after the hipster kids across the hall move on, really shows: in an era long before MS Word and Kinko’s Copies, Berbs wrote this book one day at a time, likely without reference to the past and likely without a clear idea of tomorrow. 

Much of his personal fortune went into producing this book [cite sources]: X and Y provided the art at likely no small cost, and leatherbound copies of the text with gold-edged pages were produced at no small expense, and indeed, sent to world leaders, also at no small cost. [name] adds that his holy crusade involved hiring assistants to act out his apotropaic instructions. And litigation seemed to be something of a holy act for him as well. Fighting the goblins was an expensive proposition. 

Reception

[“required reading that no one admitted to reading,” follow-up literary influence, inclusion in the Dictionary]

Endings

[nursing home, death, first-hand reflections of the old man, a life of terrified tedium  and Quixotic grandeur.]