Au carrefour des vanités

At the crossroads of vanities The present paper concisely outlines the concept of vanity in Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly’s essay Dandyism and George Brummell (1845), while, at the same time, offering a reflection on two of the most important figures of dandyism in the 19th century. The analysis focuses on the lymphatic vanity of George Brummell, the first British dandy and famous arbiter elegantiarum who assumed an exalted position in the High Society of London, and the nervo-sanguine vanity of Robert de Montesquiou, a French aesthete, Symbolist poet, art collector, and one of the most influential dandys of the fin-de-siècle generation. All these qualities made him deserve Proust’s title of the ‘The Professor of Beauty’.