Knowing that I had access to the FRANTEXT textual database, Jean-Pierre Lassalle, signing with an anagrammatic pseudonym, asked me to provide him with the occurrences of this turn of phrase that he thought was introduced into literature by Isidore Ducasse. Going for the simplest, I used the Discotext CD-Rom, which had just been produced by the FRANTEXT organizers and distributed to researchers linked to this national laboratory. It is clear that today any student, any researcher can himself proceed to a similar interrogation with this database, from his university library, via the Internet, subject to his identification. He will obtain as many desired answers in the duration he indicates, starting with this sentence by J.-J. Rousseau: "I feel my heart ungrateful by that alone that gratitude is a duty." Cf. the contents 1987-2010 of the Cahiers Lautréamont

But don't look for the mention of my article: it was not noted, doubtless considered as a simple grammatical datum! Here it is therefore in full:

BY THAT ALONE THAT

The latest and double issue of the Cahiers Lautréamont, No. XV-XVI, launches, through the voice of Ariel-Pelléas Serain, a search notice for the syntagm "by that alone that", used by Isidore Ducasse at the beginning of Poésies I. According to the method stated previously, I proceeded to a rapid consultation of DISCOTEXT (1). It contains about five hundred titles of works of all genres, essentially literary, published between 1827 and 1923. This is a corpus sufficiently representative of the state of the French language at the time of Ducasse. My interrogation focused on the only turn intriguing the reader, and brought me twenty-five examples, among fourteen authors writing or publishing between 1837 and 1912.

It will be noted that the starting example: By that alone that a second-year professor says to himself: "When one would give me all the treasures of the universe, I would not want to have made novels like those of Balzac and Alexandre Dumas", by that alone, he is more intelligent than Alexandre Dumas and Balzac. By that alone that a third-year student has penetrated that one must not sing physical and intellectual deformities, by that alone, he is stronger, more capable, more intelligent than Victor Hugo, if he had only made novels, dramas and letters. ... is not found there, for the excellent reason that Poésies does not figure in the database. On the other hand, The Songs of Maldoror are well referenced there, and they provide no use of the sought syntactic turn, which will not fail to provide matter for reflection for many readers of the present Cahiers. Given the number of indicated occurrences, it did not seem necessary to me to extend the interrogation upstream or downstream, by calling on the FRANTEXT textual database, which is at the origin of this compact disc and which contains, for its part, two thousand five hundred "texts" from Rabelais to René Char.

Here therefore, presented in chronological order of publication, the works containing the incriminated turn (here put in italics) reproduced with a minimum context of one to three sentences.

1. SOULIÉ (F.), The Devil's Memoirs, Paris, A. Dupont, 1837, vol. 1, p. 280: He loved me too, and I knew it myself. This adventure of Jean-Pierre had been explained to me by that alone that no one had been able to understand it. Félix had questioned this poor man, and this poor man had told him […]
2. LEROUX (P.), On Humanity, its Principle and its Future..., Paris, Perrotin, 1840, p. 567: But it is no less certain that the Mosaic myth has a more direct and precise meaning, that of the duality that emerges from this single word pronounced by Eve: I possess. By that alone that Cain possesses in an exclusive and jealous way, Cain kills his brother Abel.
3. LEROUX (P.), ibid., p. 998: […] to distinguish, being and its manifestations; not to understand that life is always present, and consequently eternal; that consequently we live eternally by that alone that we live.
4. PROUDHON (P.-J.), What is Property? [1840], in: Complete Works, Paris, Rivière, 1926, vol.4, p. 176: It is not enough to say, indeed: "the right of property is demonstrated by that alone that property exists; in this regard civil law is purely declaratory"; it is to admit that one has nothing to answer […]
5. PROUDHON (P.-J.), ibid., p. 236: Will the vase say to the potter: I am what I am, and I owe you nothing? The artist, the scientist, the poet receive their just reward by that alone that society allows them to devote themselves exclusively to science and art […]
6. SENANCOUR (E.-P. de), Obermann [1840], Paris, Hachette, 1912-1913, p. 23: […] sad mixture of universal affection, and indifference for all objects of positive life. Does imagination carry me to seek, in a bizarre order, preferred objects by that alone that their chimerical existence, being able to modify itself arbitrarily, clothes itself in my eyes with […]
7. COURNOT (A.), Essay on the Foundations of Our Knowledge [1851], Paris, Hachette, 1912, p. 131: […] possible that it should arise in the human mind independently of any manifestation of an external order, it could not hold before the perpetual manifestation of disorder. By that alone that we have the faculty of reason, and that this faculty is not condemned to impotence […]
8. COURNOT (A.), ibid, p. 265: […] original distinctions, under the same physical influences, go on consolidating and becoming more and more pronounced? By that alone that the system of moral ideas would tend to uniformity, among peoples whose social culture goes on perfecting itself […]
9. COURNOT (A.), ibid., p. 484: […] criterion of experience, when one finds in the writings of geometers discussions relating to questions of theory that experience could not decide, one is warned by that alone that these questions do not belong to positive science; that they are not, properly speaking, mathematical […]
10. BERNARD (C.), Notebook [1860], Paris, Gallimard, 1965, p. 155: The brain, that is to say the cerebro-spinal system, is the nervous brake. For the submaxillary gland does not secrete by that alone that the blood brake is cut, it is necessary that the nervous brake be cut and that it be paralyzed by curare […]
11. FUSTEL DE COULANGES, The Ancient City, Paris, Durand, 1864, p. 285: The State did not only have, as in our modern societies, a right of justice towards citizens. It could strike without one being guilty and by that alone that its interest was at stake.
12. FUSTEL DE COULANGES, ibid., p. 522: […] religion, but work; acquisition was made easier, and the formalities of old law were definitively set aside. Thus by that alone that the family no longer had its domestic religion, its constitution and its law were transformed;
13. FUSTEL DE COULANGES, ibid., p. 522: Thus by that alone that the family no longer had its domestic religion, its constitution and its law were transformed; as well as, by that alone that the state no longer had its official religion, the rules of the government of men were changed […]
14. GOBINEAU (J.-A. de), The Pleiades [1874], Monaco, Le Rocher, 1946, p. 58: […] nothing above what we cherish; perhaps we are wrong to thus transform the creature into a God whose all thoughts are good and acts just, by that alone that thoughts and acts emanate from him; but agree also that such a bias […]
15. BERNARD (C.), Principles of Experimental Medicine [1878], Paris, PUF, p. 52: This essential role of science, as we will see later, is to explain phenomena. Therefore, by that alone that we note facts for themselves without wanting to understand or interpret them […]
16. BOURGET (P.), New Essays in Contemporary Psychology, Paris, Lemerre, 1885, p. 20: But this imagination of dialogue supposes a second one. By that alone that two persons find themselves in presence and that they speak to each other […]
17. BOURGET (P.), ibid., p. 28: […] he is sometimes a dramatic author; this is the case of Mr. Dumas, and he perceives in love the most fruitful cause that is in acute crises where all the secret energy of characters is revealed. By that alone that love brings persons so closely together, more closely than any other […]
18. GONCOURT (E. and J.), Journal, Paris, Flammarion, 1959, vol. 3 [1890], p. 1261: […] smaller taste for art, surrounds himself with paintings, sculptures, ceramics, aesthetic knick-knacks, which bore his eyes of a schoolmaster and bookish man, by that alone that it's chic! Can one be original, when one has so much in oneself the domesticity of imitation?
19. RENAN (E.), The Future of Science [1890], Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1910, p. 522: […] it is hardly a more considerable fact in the whole of things than when the spring of a watch breaks, and even this last fact can have more serious consequences, by that alone that the watch in question fixes the thought and excites the activity of civilized men.
20. DURKHEIM (É.), On the Division of Social Labor [1893], Paris, Alcan, 1911, p. 63: […] that it be composed, that it include all the people or only an elite, that it follow or not a regular procedure both in the instruction of the case and in the application of the penalty, by that alone that the offense, instead of being judged by each one, […]
21. DURKHEIM (É.), ibid., p. 64: […] by that alone that the offense, instead of being judged by each one, is submitted to the appreciation of a constituted body, by that alone that the collective reaction has as intermediary a defined organ, it ceases to be diffuse: it is organized.
22. DURKHEIM (É.), ibid., p. 177: […] social harmony essentially derives from the division of labor. What characterizes it is that it consists in a cooperation that is produced automatically, by that alone that each pursues his own interests. It suffices that each individual […]
23. DURKHEIM (É.), ibid., p. 333: […] only the total aggregate, but also each of the elementary aggregates of which it would be formed preserved the same dimensions. But such uniformity is impossible, by that alone that these partial groups do not all have the same extent nor the same vitality.
24. HUYSMANS (J.-K.), En Route [1895], Paris, Crès, 1930, p. 246: You finally claim that you do not have the love of God, I will answer you again: what do you know about it? — you have this love, by that alone that you desire to have it, that you regret not having it; you love Our Lord by this single fact […]
25. BARRÈS (M.), My Notebooks [1912], Paris, Plon, 1929-1957, vol.9, p. 60: A healthy star looked at, loved by a sick mind. "The mind that has put this ray of infinite in us exists by that alone that we aspire to the infinite: no being has a faculty without purpose, aspiration without employment.

Thus, all the cited examples belong to prose, whether it be novels, essays or treatises, notebook notes or intimate journal. On two occasions, in Fustel de Coulanges and Durkheim, the syntagm is repeated in the same sentence, as in Ducasse's text. One can posit a general rule, according to which this syntagm always has a causal value, which well answers the question of your reader.

In conclusion, it is assured that the turn "by that alone that", even doubled in a single sentence, does not belong properly to Isidore Ducasse. He may have heard it from his masters, and read it in at least two novels: The Devil's Memoirs by Frédéric Soulié and Obermann by Senancour; or again in the political treatises of Pierre Leroux, On Humanity, and of Proudhon, What is Property; or in Antoine Cournot's essay; or again in The Ancient City by Fustel de Coulanges. As for Claude Bernard's Notebook, a posthumous work published for the first time in 1942 under the title The Red Notebook, it was not possible for him to know of its existence. But the attested example proves that the formula was in use in the scientific discourse of the 1860s.

Here are the informations that a well-tempered use of computer science can deliver to us (1).

Text reprinted in extenso in: Henri Béhar, Literature and its Golem, Paris, Champion, 1996, p. 143-147.

1. Another reader of the Cahiers Lautréamont has indicated an immediate source, in The Perfumes of the Soul, a collective collection by Évariste Carrance, to which Lautréamont collaborated in 1869 by publishing the first of the Songs of Maldoror (cf. issue 29-30, 1st semester 1994, p. 97).