Against the Grain

Mar 28, 2013 Manny rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Manny by: Sabrina Crews

Shelves: french, too-sexy-for-maiden-aunts, why-not-call-it-poetry, pooh-dante

It must have been so exciting to be a novelist in the second half of the nineteenth century. You weren't limited to just creating a novel; if you were talented, you could create a whole new kind of novel. Here, Huysmans has written the first example known to me of the novel where nothing happens. Frail, sickly des Esseintes has dissipated a good part of his inheritance on various kinds of vice (there is a memorable passage early on about the mirrors in his bedroom). Now he's tired of it. He reso...more

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Jun 02, 2013 Aubrey rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: on-hand, french, translated, 1001-06-12, 4-star, rage-against-the-sexuality, reviewed

If Proust composed his In Search of Lost Time without having read this book, I'll eat my hat. Of course, the similarities may have been unavoidable when considering that both authors concern themselves with the period of haute couture and Faubourg Saint-Germain culture, and even chose the same aristocrat to model their own wildly eccentric characters on, the Comte de Montesquiou-Fezensac inspiring both Huysmans' Des Esseintes and Proust's Charlus. And it could have been sheer coincidence that Hu...more If Proust composed his In Search of Lost Time without having read this book, I'll eat my hat. Of course, the similarities may have been unavoidable when considering that both authors concern themselves with the period of haute couture and Faubourg Saint-Germain culture, and even chose the same aristocrat to model their own wildly eccentric characters on, the Comte de Montesquiou-Fezensac inspiring both Huysmans' Des Esseintes and Proust's Charlus. And it could have been sheer coincidence that Huysmans' delving into the cyclic throes of obsession and boredom seem almost a basic structure for Proust's cathedrals of thought and memory. Still, the semblances are striking, although the differences forbid any possible thoughts of one author relying too heavily on the other. For while Proust is gorgeous and light and understanding of almost every nuance of the human condition, Huysmans is, well.

Looking on the bright side of things, I hope that, one fine day, he'll kill the gentlemen who turns up unexpectedly just as he's breaking open his desk. On that day my object will be achieved: I shall have contributed, to the best of my ability, to the making of a scoundrel, one enemy the more for the hideous society which is bleeding us white.

That's Des Esseintes for you, speaking of a boy-child he had granted three months of bi-weekly brothel visits to, for no other reason but a sudden whim to conduct a viciously abhorrent sort of social experiment. He doesn't get any better through the course of the book; he is as capable of dwelling on the most beautiful of conjectures in full possession of his educated faculties, as he is of condemning the smallest aspect of life with all the spite and bigotry a human could possibly muster.

So what can redeem this spoiled and sickly creature, fully equipped with a substantial fortune, disgust with the whole of the human race, and access to the whole range of what culture, from the loftiest of heights to the most depraved (in his day, at least) of lows and everything that mixes that two, has to offer? For one, the fact that this contrary soul is indeed human despite the weirdly grotesque passions that power it, and through all the oddities Des Esseintes surrounds himself one can still see the insolvable human condition that plagues every one of us. He may be as easy to hate and be disgusted with as easily as he hates and is disgusted with everything beyond his luxuriously painted and perfumed bower, but he does have some measure of taste that one cannot help but take note of, and perhaps even sympathize with.

He wanted, in short, a work of art both for what it was in itself and for what it allowed him to bestow on it; he wanted to go along with it and on it, as if supported by a friend or carried by a vehicle, into a sphere where sublimated sensations would arouse within him an unexpected commotion, the causes of which he would strive to patiently and even vainly to analyse.

He'll pursue this ideal through sight in painting and horticulture, through taste in mouth organs and strenuous dilutions, through smell in perfumes and twisted senses, from the most ancient annals of religion to the newest source of physical debauchery that only those with a sensibility honed by years of monetary excess can hope to afford. That unwholesome mix of artificiality posing as the real thing is fully expressed in the prose itself, metaphors that don't bother to limit themselves to one side of the equation and fully immerse themselves in delight and disgust.

…and the Cypripedium, with its complex, incoherent contours devised by some demented draughtsman. It looked rather like a clog or a tidy, and on top was a human tongue bent back with the string stretched tight, just as you may see it depicted in the plates of medical works dealing with diseases of the throat and mouth; two little wings, of a jujube red, which might almost have been borrowed from a child’s toy windmill, completed this baroque combination of the underside of a tongue, the colour of wine lees and slate, and a glossy pocket-case with a lining that oozed drops of viscous paste.

Oftentimes, he'll box himself up in snooty prejudices and hypocritical ideologies, but occasionally one will recognize measures of contemporary thought within his reminisces and desires, one of the most surprising instances occurring when he dwells upon the issue of abortion. At other times he will think on qualities of pieces that at his point in time had not yet been composed, accrediting his thoughts that those who concern themselves with certain ideals will not find themselves content with the current age.
Sensitive to the remotest affinities, he would often use a term that by analogy suggested at once form, scent, colour, quality, and brilliance, to indicate a creature or thing to which he would have had to attach a host of different epithets in order to bring out all its various aspects and qualities, if it had merely been referred to by its technical name. By this means he managed to do away with the formal statement of a comparison that the reader’s mind made by itself as soon as it had understood the symbol, and he avoided dispersing the reader’s attention over all the several qualities that a row of adjectives would have presented one by one, concentrated it instead on a single word, a single entity, producing, as in the case of a picture, a unique and comprehensive impression, an overall view.
He may have enjoyed the works of Faulkner, whose The Sound and the Fury accomplishes just that. Or he may have spurned the work that occupies itself with trivial mundanities and contains not the slightest hint of elevated passions or feverish splendor. The world will never know.(less)

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Jan 28, 2011 Also, Safety Math rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, french-lit

Well, I can honestly say I've never read anything like it, nor have I encountered a character as oddly loveable and annoying as Des Esseintes. The last of a Hapsburg-esque line of ancestors, he's a misanthropic aristocrat ailing from generations of inbreeding and a life of excess and immobility, warped from being forever consumed with his own thoughts and nothing else. He builds a new home for himself with the intent of isolation, and pretty much exists within his own material possessions, compl...more Well, I can honestly say I've never read anything like it, nor have I encountered a character as oddly loveable and annoying as Des Esseintes. The last of a Hapsburg-esque line of ancestors, he's a misanthropic aristocrat ailing from generations of inbreeding and a life of excess and immobility, warped from being forever consumed with his own thoughts and nothing else. He builds a new home for himself with the intent of isolation, and pretty much exists within his own material possessions, complete with padded walls so he can't hear his servants walking around; that being said, the book often digresses into long, tedious explanations of all of the books Des Esseintes owns and why he likes/dislikes them and describes in detail his considerable collection of art, etc. Another chapter goes on, and on, and on about how Des Esseintes is going to decorate his new home, going methodically through the entire color spectrum in order to find the perfect one for his walls. But it's obvious that the book's tedium was no accident; it forces the reader to live in Des Esseintes' head, and try to understand the extent to which excess and ennui have both crippled and completed him. It was necessary for Huysmans to force the reader in this way to relate to his character, because who could do it voluntarily?

Des Esseintes' world is completely superficial, contrived. Even sex is described like a piece of art from his collection, something predetermined by its artist, void of any animal passion or instinct: flawless, immaculate. He keeps his favorite books under glass. He reminds me of a sinister, less naive Evgeny Onegin, or a sickly Pechorin. He feels no need to venture into the world when there are exotic sea salt baths available in Paris, a fountain can sound like a flowing spring, and foreign wines age fashionably in his cellar. well, this passage sums it up better than I can, as does the Moreau painting of Salome holding a lotus flower on the cover:

"There is not one single invention of (Nature's), however subtle or impressive it may be thought to be, that the human spirit cannot create; no forest of Fontainebleu or moonlit scene that cannot be produced with a floodlit stage set; no waterfall that hydraulics cannot imitate so perfectly as to be indistinguishable from the original; no rock that papier-mâché cannot copy; no flower that specious taffetas and delicately painted papers cannot rival! There is no doubt whatever that this eternally self-replicating old fool has now exhausted the good-natured admiration of all true artists, and the moment has come to replace her, as far as that can be achieved, with artiface."

And you know what? He might be right. I don't see anything inherently unhealthy about the way he lives or with the tenets of aestheticism or decadence in general. The problem is that he isn't willing to admit that as a human being, not a robot, he must inevitably deal with nature in some way because he IS a part of nature, and that fact kind of puts a sad glaze on all of his ramblings on how beautiful "things" are. You get the sense that he's aware of it somewhere in the back of his mind, yet consistently tries to ignore it, and it's heartbreaking when he's finally forced to recognize his own humanity. It's a sad book, gorgeously written, one of my favorites. (less)

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Feb 11, 2010 Tyler rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Anyone; Aesthetes

Recommended to Tyler by: Goodreads Reviews

Shelves: 19th-century

Dostoevsky mentioned in Notes From Underground that new technology brought with it merely a capacity for ever more refined sensations. Against Nature completes the idea of a century exhausted by progress. Here the protagonist searches like an addict for new experiences to relieve the boredom and disappointment of modern life.

The originality of this novel is its attraction. Only one character, Des Esseintes, makes up the story, and the action takes place mostly in his mind. His search for novelt...more Dostoevsky mentioned in Notes From Underground that new technology brought with it merely a capacity for ever more refined sensations. Against Nature completes the idea of a century exhausted by progress. Here the protagonist searches like an addict for new experiences to relieve the boredom and disappointment of modern life.

The originality of this novel is its attraction. Only one character, Des Esseintes, makes up the story, and the action takes place mostly in his mind. His search for novelty exposes us to aspects of the modern personality that wouldn’t have been suspected in previous ages. The story is a kind of psychological study.

Huysmans writes of an era in which the man-made has become more pleasing than the natural. In fact, Des Esseintes selects flowers for their dissimilarity to the natural world – after all, who today hasn’t beheld a flower whose sheen resembles soft plastic, or whose shape resembles a mechanical fixture? Or even a lesion? It all comes down to syphilis in the end he muses, decorating his house with flowers that resemble diseases, contemplating the charms of the great venereal flower, grown in a bed of sacrilege, reared in a hot-house of impiety.

Such comical affectation drives Des Esseintes's preferences of literature, gems, paintings, and so on. With perfumes, this Dorian Gray progenitor, while contriving ever more fake aromas, passes out over a window sill. Des Esseintes’s weak, nervous constitution cannot stand excitation and symbolizes modernity: lives made viable by technology and steadily increasing refinement; artificial people who can survive only in greenhouses.

And, I'll add, people who despise the world – misanthropic anti-aesthetes. Fragility, degradation and over-simulation define the new man. Where will it all lead? The compelling final pages leave a clue, and the path actually taken by H-J. Huysmans and Oscar Wilde indicate that what’s old is new again. But I anticipate too much. As it goes, the strength of this story is to identify an odd outcome to modern life.

I read the Penguin Classics edition (with the yellow painting on the cover), which translates the title Against Nature. But this implies taboos that aren’t in the book. I'd suggest Toward Artifice myself, but Against the Grain is a much more accurate rendering.

Even so, the Penguin Classics edition has much to its credit. Unlike the French edition, it puts Huysmans’s belated preface in the back – and for good reason. It adds an excellent introduction that covers matters relevant to the book, plus a sampling of contemporary reviews at the end. The text is footnoted to explain references that moderns and English-speakers might not understand.

All of this was useful to me and improved my reading experience, so I specifically recommend this edition of Huysmans’s unusual and exotic book.
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Mar 05, 2012 Lee rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Difficult to do this one justice. Took forever to read its 200+ dense pages. Well worth it, especially for the plush, precise, unexpected turns of the language, multi-phrase pile-ups on the Trans-European Translation Expressway. Mostly a catalogue of art, books, and music the main dude likes. The main dude, also, is extraneurotic, extraordinarily rich, aestheticized to the extreme, and willfully isolated from the world. He has a garden of semi-pornographically described carnivorous plants. He pa...more Difficult to do this one justice. Took forever to read its 200+ dense pages. Well worth it, especially for the plush, precise, unexpected turns of the language, multi-phrase pile-ups on the Trans-European Translation Expressway. Mostly a catalogue of art, books, and music the main dude likes. The main dude, also, is extraneurotic, extraordinarily rich, aestheticized to the extreme, and willfully isolated from the world. He has a garden of semi-pornographically described carnivorous plants. He paints his pet tortoise gold and studs its shell with precious stones. Inspired by Dickens, he sets off for London to experience its rainy misty derelict nights but instead gets wasted on lagers and porters at an English restaurant in Paris, traveling to London in his imagination, returning home fully exhausted from his "journey." The tortoise bit and the imaginary travel bit were the most vivid bits here, the pages most closely seeming like scenes. The rest, really, was essayistic, sort of like the chapters in American Psycho about Huey Lewis, Whitney Houston, Genesis, etc, but this takes place in the 19th Century so it's all about Zola, Baudelaire, Poe, lots of Catholic art and really too many artists and artworks to even begin to list, thereby adding to the list of things I've never heard of but wouldn't mind hunting down, like Ernest Hello or Barbey d'Aurevilly? Read this because someone included Huysmans on a list of frustrated idealists that included Bernhard. Occasionally a few general over-the-top swipes at humanity in this one, but mostly it's an appreciation of the artistic excrescences of human existence.

Two representative passages:

"Literature, in fact, had been concerned with virtues and vices of a perfectly healthy sort, the regular functioning of brains of a normal conformation, the practical reality of current ideas, with never a thought for morbid depravities and other-worldly aspirations; in short, the discoveries of these analysts of human nature stopped short at the speculations, good or bad, classified by the Church; their efforts amounted to no more than the humdrum research of a botanist who watches closely the expected development of ordinary flora planted in common or garden soil . . . Baudelaire had gone further; he had descended to the bottom of the inexhaustible mine, had picked his way along abandoned or unexplored galleries and had finally reached those districts of the soul where the monstruous vegetations of the sick mind flourish."

"In Zola the longing for some other existence took a different form. In him, there was no desire to migrate to vanished civilizations, to worlds lost in the darkness of time; his sturdy, powerful temperament, enamoured of the luxuriance of life, of full-blooded vigour, of moral stamina, alienated him from the artificial graces and the painted pallors of the eighteenth century, as also from the hieratic pomp, the brutal ferocity and the effeminate, ambiguous dreams of the ancient East. On the day when he too had been afflicted with this longing, this craving which in fact is poetry itself, to fly far away from contemporary society he was studying, he had fled to an idyllic region where the sap boiled in the sunshine; he had dreamed of fantastic heavenly copulations, of long earthly ecstasies, of fertiziling showers of pollen falling from the palpitating genitals of flowers; he had arrived at a gigantic pantheism, and with the Garden of Eden in which he placed his Adam and Eve he had created, perhaps unconsciously, a prodigious Hindu poem, singing the glories of the flesh, extolling, in a style whose broad patches of crude colour had something of the weird brilliance of Indian paintings, living animate matter, which by its own frenzied procreation revealed to man and woman the forbidden fruit of love, its suffocating spasms, its instinctive caresses, its natural postures."

(The second half of that second passage really gets going, huh?)

Anyway, I enjoyed reading this, and although I found it dull through many spots, these duller bits were consistently blown away by the superexceptional gems that stud the slow and plotless turtle shell of this "story."

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May 23, 2013 Antonomasia rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Antonomasia by: many people, over many years; some friends, some famous

Shelves: decadents-aesthetes-and-romantics, france, oscar-wilde, european-classics, 2012, nineteenth-century, 2013, favourites, s, lgbtq

Oxford World's Classics edition translated by Margaret Mauldon

I finally read this properly in one go... Though when I say in one go, that was over a few days: I found it like the richest, most gorgeous cake imaginable. I could hardly imagine anything more wonderful whilst I was reading it, but every now and again I paused, and the pause turned into hours or a day or two as I realised retrospectively a feeling of sensory overload. Perhaps not unlike that des Esseintes experiences when confronted...more

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Apr 19, 2007 David rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

To go along with my increasing interest in decadence and dandyism of fin de siècle France, I've added this gem of a novel about an aesthete who isolates himself from the world. There are way too many references to things that I don't know about for me to have a complete appreciation of the novel's many intricacies, but the parts I do understand were often hilarious and interestingly written.

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Jun 04, 2007 Geoffrey rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The ideal novel for people who hate novels. And other people.

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Mar 23, 2008 Isabelle rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Of course, I read this book in French, the original text. This has been one of the crucial books of my life, an incredibly strong influence on me (I am in good company as "A Rebours" is said to have influenced Oscar Wilde immensely). Des Esseintes is an incredible protagonist, rich of all of Huysmans's pent up invention and creativity, yet there is something touching and fragile about this horrific hedonist. This is really the manifesto of Decadence, with an incredibly sharp look at pleasure tak...more

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Aug 17, 2010 Nate D rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fin-de-siecle, france, favorites

Des Essientes, a debauched noble at the end of his line, in rebellion against the modern world, humanity, and nature itself (the title is variably translated as "Aganist the Grain" or "Against Nature"), sells the family manor and retreats to a country house in order to languish in exquisite hypochondria and nervous affectation. What strength is left to him he expends obsessing over art, literature, design, and even gardening, in dissertations on artificiality and garish morbid splendor that comp...more Des Essientes, a debauched noble at the end of his line, in rebellion against the modern world, humanity, and nature itself (the title is variably translated as "Aganist the Grain" or "Against Nature"), sells the family manor and retreats to a country house in order to languish in exquisite hypochondria and nervous affectation. What strength is left to him he expends obsessing over art, literature, design, and even gardening, in dissertations on artificiality and garish morbid splendor that compose most of the book. It is clear that, much as Huysmans seems to mock Des Essientes' finicky, maladapted nature at times, protagonist and author share the book's aesthetic inclinations* and these are what makes this 1884 "novel" a defining work of Decadence, of the entire fin-de-siecle era.

As such, it's a terribly useful record of cultural context, but fortunately the book's pleasures extend beyond the academic and into sheer voluptuous descriptive prose. Unsurprisingly, Des Essientes expends much enthusiasm on a few writers whose incidental prose exceeds their overall literary vision, and this may be the case here. The narrative seems to exists mainly (and is indeed sufficient to) entirely submerge the reader in Des Essientes' overwrought decorating daliances, symphonies of liquour and perfume, orchid gardens, and faux ship-cabin dining chambers. And these sections are as absolutely splendid as they should be. Admittedly, the literary discussions, more removed from immediate detail, leave me a little colder. Especially when he veers into Latin Catholic theological manuscripts, a subject of which I have next to no knowledge or interest in. Yet they exert a strange magnetism for both protagonist and author. Of course, as they observe, blasphemy (reading "against nature" as "against god") only has real meaning from one who is at root a believer.

*Aesthetic inclinations which, all too often, I also share to some extent. My own interest in Decadence begins with the fantastic proto-surrealist work of Symbolist painters like Odilon Redon and Gustave Moreau, both of whose paintings are of special importance to Des Essientes. Specifically, he hangs two Moreau renderings of Salome (who danced before Herod to procure the head of John the Baptist for her mother) in his sanctuary. Moreau painted many versions of this scene and story, but I believe this is one of the (amazing) paintings specifically referred to in the text:

I've collected all of the art referenced in this novel that I could find here.(less)

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Jul 24, 2012 Bruce rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I started reading this out of curiosity after finishing The Picture of Dorian Gray. One long chapter of Wilde's novel inventories quite exhaustively various esoteric pursuits of the protagonist, including gems, perfumes, and spiritual practices. I found it the most tedious part of the book, and so was surprised to find similar inventories (the model for Wilde's) in Against Nature far more riveting (and more numerous, with a different subject for almost every chapter). The difference is the panac...more

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Dec 18, 2010 Neelroop rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

NOTE: There are no real spoilers in this review, but I do refer to some specific aspects of the work.

After reading The Picture of Dorian Gray I was led on to this book, which is apparently alluded to by Oscar Wilde as the book that contributes to the education (and miseducation) of Dorian and his transformation from an innocent naif to a worldly profligate.

Des Esseintes is contemporary-society-induced intellectual disenchantment incarnate. A refined aristocrat who has experienced all the typical...more

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Feb 13, 2011 Evan rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2009-reads, evans-alternative-100

Highly recommended for the adventurous!
This is one of those books that you will either love or hate, and whatever reason you would have for either reaction I would completely understand and accept as valid. The book is not unlike a laundry list: if your laundry list happened to divide the clothes into type and color of fabric, dimensions, history of the development of the materials used, the sensation of folding each item and ad infinitum. The protagonist of the book reminds me of those saints w...more Highly recommended for the adventurous!
This is one of those books that you will either love or hate, and whatever reason you would have for either reaction I would completely understand and accept as valid. The book is not unlike a laundry list: if your laundry list happened to divide the clothes into type and color of fabric, dimensions, history of the development of the materials used, the sensation of folding each item and ad infinitum. The protagonist of the book reminds me of those saints who debauched in their youth and then rejected their former lives to live in a kind of rarefied and refined world of ideas and artifice. The main character, Des Esseintes, is a former libertine who in his approaching dotage has rejected his unstructured hedonism and become an epicurean par excellence. He withdraws into a solitary world of extreme artifice in an isolated country mansion, cut off from all humanity and life, with the idea of creating a perfect fantasy world of his own making. He believes he can create a world better than nature; indeed, "against nature" as the title suggests. His pursuit of idealized artistic perfection is almost fetishistic in its insistence on completeness. He is not content on just having a nice copy of a novel, but having it bound in a very particular and very expensive manner that complements his understanding of its philosophical aesthetic. He is an incredible aesthete, thoroughly well-read and schooled in the arts and fashion. He knows as much about the ecclesiastic writers of the Church as he knows about the vagaries of wines and perfumes.
There is one telling and disturbing episode in the book in which the aesthete literally tries to improve on nature, a living thing, specifically a large turtle, by encrusting its shell will precious jewels. The act of doing this kills the creature, and Des Esseintes, for all his supposed poetic intelligence utterly fails to be moved by this or see the irony in his actions other than to be miffed that his plan was dashed. Over time, he fails to see that this existence is driving him mad along with compounding physical ailments that various artificial means fail to cure.
The novel goes into exhaustive detail about his pursuits of exceedingly refined, and ultimately cold, aesthetic interests. I found most of this fascinating but also, to be honest, wearing. I can't fault Huysmans, though, for the superhuman patience and diligence it must have taken to write such a book in such unbelievable detail. This was not nearly as much fun as his barn-burning and sexy Satan-worshippers' novel, "The Damned," which I read earlier this year - but this book, in its own way was just as good.(less)

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Jul 20, 2008 Chris rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: fans of some strange stuff

Flabbergastingly weird. This can either be the best reason to give this book a chance, and also the greatest grounds for avoiding it like the plague. Just as a quick ‘heads-up’ for anyone fishing for a better review than my own, this book is titled “A Rebours” in its native French, and I’ve seen this title translated into English as both “Against Nature” and “Against the Grain”, (and while I’m partial to “Against Nature”, I’m sure the Bad Religion fans of the world can better appreciate the latt...more Flabbergastingly weird. This can either be the best reason to give this book a chance, and also the greatest grounds for avoiding it like the plague. Just as a quick ‘heads-up’ for anyone fishing for a better review than my own, this book is titled “A Rebours” in its native French, and I’ve seen this title translated into English as both “Against Nature” and “Against the Grain”, (and while I’m partial to “Against Nature”, I’m sure the Bad Religion fans of the world can better appreciate the latter). I’m sure there are reviews out there under all three titles should this one leave you yawning, scratching your head at whatever I’m attempting to convey, or both.

I was lucky enough to come across this book by chance at a used bookstore, and after reading the brief description offered by Penguin on the back of the book, I was sold (at the reasonable rate of fifty cents). This compelling blurb by the publisher clued me in to several interesting things which may or may not have any bearing on the book. Firstly, Against Nature” is referenced (though not by title) by Oscar Wilde through the strange tastes of his impeccably debauched ‘dandy’ Dorian Gray. Next, the summary also states that the story concerns the ‘exotic practices and perverse pleasures of Duc Jean Floressas des Esseintes, a wealthy aesthete in search of an elusive ideal’, and while that is ridiculously vague, it seemed pretty alluring at the time. Lastly, they swear that translator Robert Baldick managed to preserve the richness and complexity of author Joris-Karl Huysmans’s style, and we all know that Robert Baldick has never failed to deliver. Yea right, as if I can tell the difference between the translating talents of Robert Baldick vs. Anyone Else, as if there is any chance that I myself would be able to ascertain what Huysmans intended to say compared to the translation. Mr. Baldick managed to work this tale into English, so for what it’s worth, I’m giving his translation a perfect score, although I’d have preferred an edition in my native tongue of Gibberish (though I assume there wouldn’t be many changes).

Since I was already committed to reading another book at the time of purchase, I simply checked around online to see what I was in store for when I finally tackled “Against Nature”, and walked away disheartened. (Note: These were the dark days before I knew about GoodReads, so my reviews were largely from Amazon.) Reviews tended to describe the book as unreadable, ridiculous, solipsistic to the extreme, piss-poor, and there were innumerable references to this being the quintessential ‘fin de siecle’ literary work. Fin de siecle, eh? Step 1: Find out what the hell that means. Obviously, as I need the sturdy Robert Baldick to hold my hand through the reading and my peer group isn’t renown for our cultural effrontery, this term means absolutely nothing to me, although I’ve spent enough time bellying up to the bar to know that La Fin Du Monde means something along the lines of ‘the end of the world’. As it turned out, this expression (fin de siecle) basically summed up the book, the opulent excesses and steady atrophy of one era giving way to a new era, replete with newfound hope and firmly rooted in reality and practicability.

In “Against Nature”, this changing of cultural guards is placed under the microscope, individualized, and analyzed through the actions of des Esseintes, the last scion of a once-noble family which is nearing extinction. This whole concept of a new, promising era spawning from the decay of a previous one is personified in the struggles of des Esseintes, who has grown tired of contemporary society and retreats into seclusion, where he attempts to create the aesthetic ideal the people at Penguin promised me. This ideal, as I interpreted it, was twofold: his distaste for all naturally-occurring beauty and perfection, in favor of sterile and gaudy reproductions, and his dissatisfaction with prevailing tastes in art and literature, his own preferences generally run contrariwise to current opinions. Ignore the nay-sayers; contrary to the indictments that this book does not contain a story and is completely senseless and unstructured, I found “Against Nature” to be both a very understandable story (if a trifle odd) and a decent experiment in decadent allegory. I also thought it was interesting that the conflict can be described as Man Versus Everything; des Esseintes has a bone to pick with just about anything, society, nature, himself, you name it, the only thing which he doesn’t have unresolved issues with is the ‘ideal’ which he attempts to create, although, as the story unfolds, it becomes obvious that this lifestyle is incompatible with his own human nature, which made me feel like there was also an element of dark satire involved.

The story begins with a brief run-down on des Esseintes’s upbringing and his eventual discontent with the decadent, bourgeois Parisian life he’s been living thus far; beginning with page one our main man is already at the end of his proverbial rope, disgusted with the snobbish idlers that make up his elders, and sickened by the numbskullduggery of his peers. While carrying on his disgusting charade of assimilating to this culture, des Esseintes is secretly relocating, he’s purchased a new residence outside of bustling Paris in Fontenay-Aux-Roses, where he plans to make a clean break from all humanity, including his own, and pursue some meaningful and intellectual introspection. This is where the book gets weird, and continues being weird basically until the end.

When I call this weird, I’m not trying to advocate that this book is unreadable or senseless; the style employed is just remarkably unusual, in that every assessment des Esseintes makes in the construction of his ideal setting is elaborated upon in painstaking detail and depth. A veteran interior designer would open a vein if subjected to d.E.’s thought processes and reasoning when selecting a color scheme for the various rooms in his property at Fontenay, much less his unique decisions concerning furnishing each of these rooms, each a study in one absurdity or another. The common bibliophile would sit, astounded, as he outfitted each bookcase with his custom-made editions, which he spares no expense either printing or describing. Gallery owners would fall short for a suitable description of his art collection and remain perplexed by his choices of arrangement and lighting upon each piece.

I initially found myself amazed at what I was reading, as I’d never come across anything written like this, with even the minutest aspects considered and pondered for what seems like eternity. This grew into complete fascination when d.E. begins to experiment and test the limits of the fraudulent existence he has begun weaving, and the analysis of the contents of his new environment. As he pores over his library, commenting on each volume and giving his insight, I could draw a parallel to the nature of des Esseintes to some of the ‘indie-rockers’ I’ve met in my day, who are capable of ruminating on 500 cds by 500 bands I’ve never heard of and making references to their stylistic roots, membership, and live-performance idiosyncrasies. I’d personally like to see a modern-day version of this book told from this angle, and I think it would be fitting (and easy) since, with the advent of the internet, withdrawal from the ‘real’ world isn’t particularly difficult, and a think a full desertion would be possible for one as wealthy as des Esseintes. I can imagine it now: ‘He considered the lyrical post-punk sensibilities which Ben Deily took with him from his multi-instrumentalist days with the Lemonheads before dissolving into obscurity with Varsity Drag, and how the resurrection of that unadulterated and raw wholesomeness was now being practiced and perfected by acts inspired by his efforts, such as Breaking Pangaea on their heartfelt e.p. “Take Apart the Words”, only to be painfully mangled by former collaborators posing as artistes in screaming nightmares such as Straylight Run’. On second thought, not only should someone else write that story, I might not want to read it after all…

His assessment of his Latin and French works is stymieing, but his experimentation takes all this to a new level. In an effort to make everything as false and unnatural as possible, he sets up aquariums with fake fish, orders untold quantities of rare flowers in order to have them flawlessly reproduced, dabbles with bizarre perfumes, and as a sort of crowning masterpiece (in what becomes a parable for himself) he has a turtle encrusted with jewels, which dies under these ersatz conditions. In a move brilliant and ridiculous, he also reconstructs symphonies with liquors, taking sips of gin to emulate the reedy note of a clarinet, a hefty shot of Jager to represent the double-bassoon, a jigger of sweet, sweet rum to relate the fantastic notes of a picolo, and downs half a bottle of flavorless polish vodka to simulate the punch of the timpani. Wrong notes on the xylophone are indicated by a punishing swig of Malort.

Of course, with all this genuine strangeness, lack of human contact, and the completely unnatural living conditions, there’s a price to pay; the question is whether or not des Esseintes is ready to abandon his ideal and return to the norm, embracing the comparative innocence he once possessed; can he willingly abscond from this counterfeit existence he’s created?

I recommend this for anyone looking for something new; I’ve personally never read anything like it before or since. And I've really only touched upon the first half of the book.

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Mar 08, 2008 Baiocco added it · review of another edition Recommends it for: Solipsists

Shelves: fiction

Sadly, there is little to steal from this novel. "Stealing" ideas is usually my main motivation for reading. I bought this book when I had an overwhelming artistic instinct towards/in solipsism and I was gauranteed by a friend that Against Nature would embolden my inclinations. Unfortunately, I read it only recently when I am currently teaching high school and managing a wine store--two practices that encourage societal interactions and extrovertism. My bad.

Against Nature is essentially the cr...more Sadly, there is little to steal from this novel. "Stealing" ideas is usually my main motivation for reading. I bought this book when I had an overwhelming artistic instinct towards/in solipsism and I was gauranteed by a friend that Against Nature would embolden my inclinations. Unfortunately, I read it only recently when I am currently teaching high school and managing a wine store--two practices that encourage societal interactions and extrovertism. My bad.

Against Nature is essentially the creation of an aesthetic, through the character of a the misanthropic social misfit Des Essientes, who decides to close himself off from the French society which he despises and live out his days in his own universe (his house) which he strives to make as artificial as possible. He buys flowers that specifically look fake, and bear no smell, he paints his walls orange to encourage his malaise; he is amazed towards the end of the novel when he is sick and visited by a doctor that he can be given nutrients via an enema, so he doesn't have to go through the trouble of preparing food, chewing, tasting...that whole thing. He becomes turned on by the effieciency of artificiality. Imagine how Huysman would react to the internet and the world of Virtual Reality. His ideas, however radical they seemed at the time of the publication of Against Nature (and this book was considered highly controversial and shocking) would basically be obsolete with the advent of the internet, or...online Dungeon and Dragons or the Simms.

As Des Essientes delves further into his solipsistic universe, and interacts with fewer and fewer people, he becomes interested in less and less (food, art, his own home with his specialized "artificial" colors and furniture) he becomes more of an Essentialist, weeding through his favorite books in his library, dismissing the verbose and societally revered (Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel) for the short, toxic and passionate (Baudelaire and Mallarme). Basically he discovers the power of symbollism, the technique wherein a finite and artificial (symbol) can efficiently substitute the emotions and suggestions of the infinite. This part, spread over 20 or so pages, was pretty good. He also includes good analyses of Edgar Allen Poe.

The most interesting part of Against Nature in this probably unintersting review is towards the end when he realizes that religious Plainsong (bland drone, noise, avant freak folk) is the constant pure musical strand through Catholocism's hipocritical reign, siting that even the Church imported bits of Italian opera to make masses more appealing to church going, but Plainsong is like the meek church mouse, the constant observer of every nook and cranny of the Church's history.

I just reread this review and it really sucks. I tried to write it while watching American Hardcore, and I kept getting distracted. Two things: Can the Bad Brains come off as bigger baddasses? I think not. 2) Hardcore music sucks. I mean, there is an attractive quality to the scene because of it's aggression and brevity, and DIY is the way to go, but the songs are fucking terrible! Unless you were at those shows, then maybe it was cool, but even then...those songs are the most repetitive whinefest suckfactory. Minutemen were cool though.(less)

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Jun 06, 2012 Mike Lester rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

The very bible of the Decadent movement, A Rebours has influenced countless writers (and painters, and interior decorators, and dandies of all stripes.) This is not so much a novel as it is a sort of journal of Des Essientes quest for perfection in his surroundings. There was a period of my life (mid 20's) when my friends called me Des Essientes (though I was never as snazzy a dresser and have never owned a bejeweled tortoise. Come to think of it, those who called me by that name had never read...more

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Jan 25, 2009 Lea rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is a novel of depravity, the story of a jaded asthete in ill health, who seeks refuge from his overindulgences and a world that has outgrown him in his own intoverted world of extravagant artificialities. This is the little yellow volume referred to by Oscar Wilde in The Picture of Dorian Gray, that was Dorian's downfall. Written at the time of the Surrealists, this was recommended to me by my lecturer in the subject. This book is the charting of a journey, a period of the disolute duc's li...more

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Nov 24, 2007 Nick rated it 4 of 5 stars

If I were rating books based on how much I like them, or their coolness factor, this would easily get a five, or even a six. Though I wouldn't speak for it's broad appeal or great literary value, it's definitely the most entertaining book ever written about nothing but decorating a house; and how can you not love a book with all it's chapters devoted to things like the comparative merits of "decadent" late-antique latin literature and 19th-century French devotional catholic books, how it's gauch...more

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Feb 27, 2013 Thom Swennes rated it 2 of 5 stars

This book is written in the third person narrative form which is not my preference as it tends to keep the reader at a distance. The story is about an eccentric French nobleman that has foresworn society and lives a recluse life in a quiet chateau. He is proclaimed highly intelligent but I am brought in doubt by many of his thoughts and comparisons. I can’t imagine women would be particularly charmed with this book as he makes a very unique comparison between the form of a woman and a locomotive...more

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Sep 24, 2012 Martin rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literary, fiction, magical, realism

In English the title was translated as either 'Against Nature' or 'Against the Grain', which to me are two very different titles. It occurred to me that this tension within the meaning of the title itself is a good indication of the contents of the novel. We are introduced to a French aristocrat by the name of Des Esseintes who is of feeble stamina and who might be called a dandy in British terms. We follow the young man as he slowly retreats out of everyday life into a decadent seclusion of his...more In English the title was translated as either 'Against Nature' or 'Against the Grain', which to me are two very different titles. It occurred to me that this tension within the meaning of the title itself is a good indication of the contents of the novel. We are introduced to a French aristocrat by the name of Des Esseintes who is of feeble stamina and who might be called a dandy in British terms. We follow the young man as he slowly retreats out of everyday life into a decadent seclusion of his own design. At times opulent in its descriptions of Des Esseintes' mansion, at times excruciatingly detailed and accurate in Des Esseintes' analysis of his tastes, desires and repulsions, the novel lures the reader into an artificial world of what seems to be luxury. Page after page Des Esseintes delves deeper into his own mind. He collects rare specimens of everything and if there does not exist a rarity he believes he should have, he has it created from his own detailed drawings and directions. As a side note, most of the objects and interiors the young man envisions were based on actual examples of dandyish extravaganza.

The reader is slowly included into the artificial world of Des Esseintes and slowly the alternative reality appears more and more sold. Instead the young man's health deteriorates and his mind attempts to grapple with his own choices. Inevitably he wavers between stepping back into Beau Monde or forever lock himself away into an imaginary world. He goes back and forth and makes several attempts to take either extreme leaps. In one famous scene Des Esseintes is well on his way to visit London when after thinking over the plan in his mind he decides that in his mind he has already read and imagined so much of Britain's capital that he can only be disappointed by traveling there. Instead he returns to his mansion. Ultimately his private physician offers him the choice: go back into the world and regain your physical health, or retreat into your own mind and suffer.

The author, Joris-Karl Huysmans, wrote the novel in a time when literature's standard was realism devoid of symbolism or misplaced fantasy. Huysmans received both high acclaim from writers such as Oscar Wilde, but also derision from esteemed authors like Zola, who was Huysmans' mentor and inspiration. Perhaps this book can be seen as the ultimate anti-novel in the sense that it does not feature any trappings of a book designed to entertain. If you want to convey a point or principle then you either write it with great entertainment value but your meaningful message might not be remembered, or you write the work in a serious tone, in which case it will be remembered but not widely read. Huysmans took the extreme side of those polar opposites and goes beyond somber writing and confronts the reader head on by presenting the world of Des Esseintes from a solipsistic standpoint in which as a reader you have no other safety net than your own experiences and opinions. Instead of taking the Disney approach of embedding a clear takeaway moral message, the novel's aim is to have the reader make decisions on how to travel through life and in that sense it is the paragon of letting the reader take away whatever usefulness can be derived, even if this means rejecting the novel.(less)

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Aug 06, 2012 Clayton rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, taking it's cue from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, gives its hero three books to read in order to shape and to define his personality. The most fascinatingly bleak of Dorian's reads is this strange little book about a jaded perfumer with too much money, trying to fill up his boring, pleasure-sated days. It's a sensualist romp through, well, very little, actually, and it adequately depicts the life of a man who has everything in life and nothing to live fo...more

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May 31, 2012 Howard rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is an erudite depiction of a shortish period in the life of the fictional Des Esseintes a twenty something aristocrat written by Huysmans in 1884. We learn in the first chapter that Esseintes was a sickly child and educated in a Jesuit school. He has a girlfriend or two and indulges a little too much on his inheritance in Paris – ultimately discovering disillusionment with life and human society; he gets a retreat in out-of-town Fontenay. From then on he basically makes himself lonelier and...more This is an erudite depiction of a shortish period in the life of the fictional Des Esseintes a twenty something aristocrat written by Huysmans in 1884. We learn in the first chapter that Esseintes was a sickly child and educated in a Jesuit school. He has a girlfriend or two and indulges a little too much on his inheritance in Paris – ultimately discovering disillusionment with life and human society; he gets a retreat in out-of-town Fontenay. From then on he basically makes himself lonelier and ultimately iller whilst indulging, this time, in the luxury of study, erudition and aesthetic activities. Most chapters have a focus such as Latin, literature, art, poetry, perfumes, people, religious writing; where Huysmans name drops like there’s no tomorrow; in this way you learn (via the books references) a lot of the late 1800s famous, mainly French, scholars.

Des Esseintes tries to produce a narrative from scents and it all goes wrong, considers the best Latin authors and where it all went wrong, veneration and fear of Catholicism and where they’re and he are all getting it wrong, his love affair remembered from a bon-bon and where it all went wrong, love of gems and how it all goes wrong for a tortoise. I could go on. Esseintes makes himself ill seemingly either because his suffers the condition to quote Celine “He had the intellectual's vice: he was futile” or because basically with all his learning he’s an idiot.

Huysmans mentions many of his contemporary authors some I’ve read (Zola, Be Balzac, Flaubert) and many others new to me. He quotes in depth his understanding of Latin, religious etc and all the time I worry the book is an excuse for him to be smart and play up. It is a classic and probably ‘cult’ but of its period – today it isn’t shocking like perhaps some natural realism of the period still is, nor is it challenging in a perverse way like Moldoror by Ducasse (1868).

Some quotes:
“he found that he was utterly alone, completely disillusioned, abominably tired; and he longed to make a end of it all, prevented only by the cowardice of his flesh”

“Des Essentes lost nothing of his interest in the Latin language now that it was rotten through and through and hung like a decaying carcase, losing its limbs, oozing pus, barely keeping, in the general corruption of its body, a few sound parts, which the Christians removed in order to preserve them in the pickling brine of their idiom”

This book reminds me a little of “The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge” by Rainer Maria Rilke which I described as “Good to try but probably an acquired taste” (1910) and Flaubert’s “Bouvard and Pecuchet” (1881) which I thought brilliant and a ‘lost classic’. I’m going to score this book highly not because I really enjoyed it as a story but because I recognize it as a true work of art (if being honest really beyond me) and there’s every chance you will appreciate it too.
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May 08, 2012 Brian rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

J.K. Huysmans's Against Nature is a "classic" only via its legacy. It's the founding document of "Decadence," a minor literary movement from the 1880s that still ripples a bit in the present -- what kids these days call "Goth" (if any in fact still do) would more properly be called "Decadent" if we were more culturally literate. Watch a Tim Burton movie with the sound off and The Cure's Disintegration album playing the background, and you've pretty much got the experience of reading Against Natu...more J.K. Huysmans's Against Nature is a "classic" only via its legacy. It's the founding document of "Decadence," a minor literary movement from the 1880s that still ripples a bit in the present -- what kids these days call "Goth" (if any in fact still do) would more properly be called "Decadent" if we were more culturally literate. Watch a Tim Burton movie with the sound off and The Cure's Disintegration album playing the background, and you've pretty much got the experience of reading Against Nature.

With the Decadents, style was everything. There's no discernible plot to Against Nature; it's just the nightly goings-on of a neurasthenic French aesthete (read: weirdo) who fetishizes his notion of "authenticity" above all things. In the second chapter, for instance, he takes a trip into the local village and beholds the bourgeoisie:

He could detect such inveterate stupidity, such hatred of his own ideas, such contempt for literature and art and everything he held dear, implanted and rooted in these mean mercenary minds, exclusively preoccupied with thoughts of swindling and money-grubbing and accessible only to that ignoble distraction of mediocre intellects, politics, that he would go home in a fury and shut himself up with his books.

That sounds a lot like.... well, like me, actually, circa 1991, but it's more or less the universal voice of every bright, socially-awkward teenager who considers himself too "sensitive" to endure whatever jerkwater burg cruel fate has forced him to grow up in. In 2012 we have MySpace for this kind of thing, but in 1884 Huysmans could legitimately claim to be speaking for an entire disaffected subculture.

Fortunately, this means you can read Against Nature grad school style -- skim it 'til you get it, then put it away. Precisely how many pages this will take depends on your tolerance for a style that, in the words of one of Huysmans's contemporaries, is "continually dragging Mother Image by the hair or the feet down the worm-eaten staircase of terrified Syntax." The translator, who supplies us with that quote, calls it "one of the strangest literary idioms in existence," and no less a headcase than Oscar Wilde called it "the strangest book that [I] had ever read." I actually rather enjoy that, so I'm up to page 70, but I imagine a dozen or so will do it for most folks. I'm honestly curious about how others react to this one, though, so if you give it a go (there's a free version online; Goodreads leads you right to it), post a comment, would you? (less)

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Apr 13, 2012 Marsha rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: classic, literature-fiction

The protagonist is wealthy and quite disinclined to leave the mansion in which he lives. Why should he, when he can get anything he wants simply by ringing the servants? Because of that he rarely leaves his home, a set-up that gives the whole novel a slight claustrophobic feel, as if you’re lodged behind musty drapes that could use a good cleaning.

Jean is the last of a powerful race of men. But the blood of his fathers has been so diluted that he no longer resembles his muscular, stalwart ances...more

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Feb 18, 2011 Douglas Dalrymple rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

One doesn’t “enjoy” A Rebours in the same sense one enjoys most novels. There isn’t much in the way of plot, only one meaningful character, and almost no dialogue at all. But the character of des Esseintes will claim permanent space in some corner of your mind as Symbol of Decadence, and you’re not going to get rid of him easily. If you’re the kind of person I am, you’ll squirm a bit and admit that you resemble him in ways you may not like.

The basic concept of the novel – a vaguely aristocratic...more One doesn’t “enjoy” A Rebours in the same sense one enjoys most novels. There isn’t much in the way of plot, only one meaningful character, and almost no dialogue at all. But the character of des Esseintes will claim permanent space in some corner of your mind as Symbol of Decadence, and you’re not going to get rid of him easily. If you’re the kind of person I am, you’ll squirm a bit and admit that you resemble him in ways you may not like.

The basic concept of the novel – a vaguely aristocratic bachelor retiring from the world in order to take up the life of the mind, tackling each of the arts in turn – is borrowed from Flaubert’s Bouvard and Pecuchet. But rather than exhibiting genuine interest in the arts in their healthiest and more robust states, des Esseintes is interested only in that stage when they wilt and turn back onto themselves and away from the world. In the truly incredible “exotic plants” chapter, des Esseintes turns his villa into a phantasmagoric hothouse full of strange growths picked precisely because they look unreal and impossible, caricatures of their kind – and clearly there’s a kinship between him and his weird, unsettling flowers.

Other highlights of the book include the death of a tortoise whose shell has been covered in gold leaf and semi-precious stones, an imaginary trip to London, and erotic adventures with a former mistress who is a professional ventriloquist. The chapter arguing that sadism is essentially a religious instinct is incisive too, I think. It was said by one of Huysmans’ contemporaries that, like Baudelaire, the author of A Rebours only had two paths open to him: suicide or the Church. Several years later, Huysmans converted to Catholicism, under the influence of Leon Bloy. You’ll find strange roots of that in the novel.

I can’t read French, but I read the Robert Baldick translation (Penguin) and was as pleased with it as I had been with Steegmuller’s translation of Madame Bovary, which is pretty high praise from me.

I'm going back and forth on the star ratings for this one. Damn those star ratings. For what it is, Huysman's book is perfectly successful - but it's one of those books I can't really recommend to most people and it certainly didn't give me as much pleasure as most of the books I've given a four-star rating. Three-and-a-half would be about right, I suppose.(less)

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Mar 05, 2012 MJ Nicholls rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novels, pernod-and-gauloises, pre-1900s, penguin-classics

Some top reviews on here already, let me point you towards Manny, Lee, and Nate for excerpts and analysis. I feel no need to review this one, so I shan’t trouble you for likes (Mike—I mean it!) In short, I loved the ornate, glissading descriptions of art, music, perfume, theological texts, peptone enemas, and the fabulous namedropping of French writers such as the Goncourt Brothers, Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, Charles Cros, Verlaine, Mallarmé, Ernest Hello, Léon Bloy, Barbey d’Aurevilly, and Franço...more

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Dec 16, 2011 Stephanie Ricker rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: classics

I read Against Nature by Joris-Karl Huysmans, a copy of which I swiped years ago from a professor’s free-book shelf. Oscar Wilde was evidently fascinated by the book, and in The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dorian reads this “poisonous French novel” and is obsessed by it. What sort of book would Dorian Gray enjoy, you ask? Mainly a very long catalogue of the likes and dislikes of an effete, high-strung , overly intellectual wuss possessing far too much time and money and lacking all common sense. The...more

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Dec 17, 2010 Joselito Honestly and Brilliantly rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

An aging Parisian aristocrat, fed up with the usual, decides to withdraw from the world and live a solitary life. No plot, one character: just this guy, Des Esseintes (he has servants, but they're non-characters, he doesn't even talk to them). He ensconces himself in an isolated villa determined to give himself only the best--or what he thinks are the best. He extols them and rants against what he hates. Here is where some readers are appalled because some of the choices he makes appear to be do...more

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Apr 08, 2013 AC rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: modernism, novels-french-writers, fascism, fascist-modernism

This is a brilliant book. Not only is it interesting in and of itself, containing some magnificent writing, but it presents an original and fundamental analysis of the entire movement away from Naturalism (Huysmans began as a disciple of Zola) and into Symbolism (Mallarmé), Decadence, and (hence) into Modernism (including even the strand that issues in the likes of a Julius Evola *). I have learned an enormous amount from reading it.

(* p. 146: "In these comparatively healthy volumes Barbey d'Aur...more

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Dec 25, 2011 Paul rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I was lead to À rebours (the English translation I read was titled Against the Grain as opposed to the more traditional Against Nature) through my recent reading of Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. À rebours is purportedly the “Yellow Book” that enthralled Dorian.

The focus of the story is Jean Des Esseintes, a nervous and sickly man in his 30s. He held humanity in contempt, referring to people as scoundrels and imbeciles, so he sought refuge and isolation on top of Fontenay-aux-Roses. During...more I was lead to À rebours (the English translation I read was titled Against the Grain as opposed to the more traditional Against Nature) through my recent reading of Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. À rebours is purportedly the “Yellow Book” that enthralled Dorian.

The focus of the story is Jean Des Esseintes, a nervous and sickly man in his 30s. He held humanity in contempt, referring to people as scoundrels and imbeciles, so he sought refuge and isolation on top of Fontenay-aux-Roses. During his isolation, he rambles on with is opinions about art, literature, food, music and just about anything related to the senses.

The text is incredibly sensual and layered with descriptions typical of decadent writings. As an example, he described his bedroom’s décor with the phrase “women loved to immerse their nudity in this bath of warm carnation [light], made fragrant with the odor of mint emanating from the exotic wood of the furniture.” The book contains luxurious details to the point where you can feel brocade, smell incense and see light reflected from polished and jeweled surfaces. Another example in describing his library: “Between two gilded copper monstrances of Byzantine style, originally brought from old Abbaye-au-Bois de Bièvre, stood a marvelous church canon.”

The book presented frequent anti-naturalist themes and attitudes. (Hence the Against Nature title.) In one chapter, the author described Des Esseintes’ ornate decoration of a tortoise’s shell with gold guilt and jewels and minerals. The motif and materials used for the design are painstakingly described. The fact that this decoration resulted in the death of the animal was only conveyed in one short sentence at the end of the chapter. In another part of the book, Des Esseintes describes how nature’s rendition of flowers is lacking so he recreates them using wire, paper and fabric to a more glorious effect. He then duplicates their fragrances through the art of perfumery. Again, the descriptions are provided in minutiae and the final product is believed to be far better than what can be found in nature. His attitude is best summed up in the line “There can be no doubt about it: this eternal, driveling, old woman is no longer admired by true artists, and the moment has come to replace her by artifice.”

The most difficult chapters were those dedicated to literature. One provides an in-depth comparison of classical Latin writings to which I’ve had little to no exposure. Another provided reviews and critiques of French authors of the day (mid-1880). This chapter did lead me to read some works of Baudelaire with whom Des Esseintes had a strong obsession believing that “the prose poem represented the concrete juice of literature, the essential oil of art.”

There really is no plot to À rebours. Instead, it’s merely a collection of observations presented with beautiful language. Through the story, Des Esseintes’ health continues to decline. His doctor’s advice is to “get a life” and the book ends abruptly with Jean’s return to Paris.(less)

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