J.-K. Huysmans

En Ménage

Against the Grain is a novel by Joris-Karl Huysmans. Jean des Esseintes is an eccentric, reclusive, ailing aesthete. The last heir of an aristocratic family, he loathes the bourgeois society and tries to retreat into an ideal artistic world of his own creation.

Against the Grain

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "The Cathedral" by J.-K. Huysmans. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

The Cathedral

In ‘Tegen de keer’ van J.-K. Huysmans komt slechts één personage aan bod. De neurotische edelman Jean des Esseintes (deels gebaseerd op een tijdgenoot van Huysmans: Robert de Montesquiou) ontvlucht het drukke leven van Parijs in een afgelegen villa waar hij een eigen paradijs creëert met zijn luxe leefstijl. Hij geeft zich over aan zijn esthetische verlangens met klassieke literatuur, kunst, exotische juwelen en sensuele ervaringen. ‘Tegen de keer’ sloeg bij verschijning in als een bom, heeft tot vandaag de dag een cultstatus onder lezers, en is het ultieme voorbeeld van wat de decadente literatuur wordt genoemd.

Tegen de keer

"The Cathedral" by J.-K. Huysmans (translated by Clara Bell). Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.

"En ménage", de J.-K. Huysmans. Publié par Good Press. Good Press publie un large éventail d'ouvrages, où sont inclus tous les genres littéraires. Les choix éditoriaux des éditions Good Press ne se limitent pas aux grands classiques, à la fiction et à la non-fiction littéraire. Ils englobent également les trésors, oubliés ou à découvrir, de la littérature mondiale. Nous publions les livres qu'il faut avoir lu. Chaque ouvrage publié par Good Press a été édité et mis en forme avec soin, afin d'optimiser le confort de lecture, sur liseuse ou tablette. Notre mission est d'élaborer des e-books faciles à utiliser, accessibles au plus grand nombre, dans un format numérique de qualité supérieure.

En ménage

J.-K. Huysmans (1848-1907), com o romance Às avessas (À rebours, 1884), tornou-se o escritor máximo do decadentismo francês, o movimento de reação ao naturalismo e à sociedade tecnológica de massas que se anunciava no final do século XIX. Em seu romance posterior, Nas profundezas (Là-bas, 1891), o escritor voltou-se para um assunto que desafiava a racionalidade científica e vinha despertando interesse entre alguns setores da sociedade francesa: o satanismo. "Que época estranha!", observa um personagem. "Justamente no momento em que o positivismo atinge seu auge, o misticismo desperta e têm início as loucuras do oculto!" Em um dos capítulos, Nas profundezas traz a descrição de uma missa negra (satânica), feita, segundo o autor, de acordo com uma experiência verídica. Foi um dos motivos da notoriedade do livro. A par de suas qualidades como literatura e documento, Nas profundezas provocou escândalo pela descrição das atrocidades cometidas por um padre satanista da Idade Média e pela dubiedade moral de seus personagens contemporâneos. Leitores pressionaram para que fosse suspensa sua publicação serializada no jornal L'Écho de Paris, o que não aconteceu. Ao ser lançado em livro, a venda do romance chegou a ser proibida nas livrarias de estações ferroviárias. O escândalo não era estranho a Huysmans desde a publicação de Às avessas, cujo personagem principal, Jean Floressas Des Esseintes, é um dândi excêntrico que, entediado com a realidade de seu tempo, se cerca de objetos de arte, livros raros e produz experiências sensoriais bizarras. Livro e personagem teriam provocado grande impacto em Oscar Wilde, inspirando a criação de O retrato de Dorian Gray. O romance foi levado ao tribunal pelo promotor do julgamento de Wilde por homossexualismo, como suposta prova de perversão do réu. Do campo literário, a reprovação veio do ex-padrinho artístico de Huysmans, Émile Zola, que reconheceu no romance a intenção do autor de romper com a escola naturalista. No entanto, um procedimento típico do naturalismo, o embasamento quase científico dos fatos narrados ficcionalmente, é uma das razões do vigor de Nas profundezas. Nele, Durtal, um escritor individualista, alter ego do próprio Huysmans, se encontra em meio a pesquisas para uma biografia do satanista medieval Gilles de Rais, acusado de estuprar e degolar centenas de crianças. O romance é feito em boa parte de conversas sobre cristianismo, ocultismo, alquimia e práticas de magia. Entre os interlocutores, estão um médico desiludido com o estado da ciência em sua época, o devoto sineiro da igreja de Saint Sulpice, em Paris, um astrólogo e um historiador, cuja mulher se torna amante de Durtal e o conduz até a missa negra ministrada pelo cônego Docre, que tem uma cruz tatuada na sola do pé para pisar o tempo todo no símbolo principal do cristianismo. A inspiração para esse personagem seria um religioso belga. O abade Joseph Boullan, amigo de Huysmans e também acusado por alguns de satanismo, inspirou o personagem dr. Johannès, retratado como um padre que pratica a magia para derrotar Satã.

Nas profundezas

Les Soeurs Vatard, described by its author as a "lewd but exact" slice of life, was J.-K. Huysmans' second novel. Huysmans abandoned poetry and turned to the novel at a time when the works of Emile Zola were intensely controversial; Les Soeurs Vatard is dedicated to Zola by "his fervent admirer and devoted friend."In it, Huysmans vividly depicts the scene that for his generation of French writers stood for the contemporary world: the brutal, teeming life of the industrial quarters of Paris in the 1870s. Huysmans' Vatard sisters are "Désirée, an urchin of fifteen, a brunette with large, pale eyes that were somewhat crossed, plump without being fat, attractive and clean; and Céline, the carouser, a big girl with clear eyes and hair the color of straw, a solid, vigorous girl whose blood raced and danced in her veins." The two are part of that "bizarre race of young women" who work as bookbinders, whose lives revolve around the gaslighted bindery works, the gaudy shop windows, and cheap wineshops that Huysmans describes with minute and colorful detail. His precisely observed sketches show that Naturalism as practiced by Buysmans had none of Zola' s emphasis on "scientific" determinism, but centered primarily on the faithful rendering of what he described as "living persons in real milieus." The Vatard Sisters is the first English translation of Les Soeurs Vatard.

The Vatard Sisters

Against Nature is Huysmans's great fin-de-siècle novel anticipating many of the strains of modernism in its appreciation of Baudelaire, Moreau, Redon, MallarmÃ© and Poe. 'It will be the biggest fiasco of the year - but I don't care a damn! It will be something nobody has ever done before, and I shall have said what I had to say.' As J -K Huysmans announced in 1884, Against Nature was fated to be a novel like no other. The hero, des Esseintes, is a neurasthenic aristocrat who has turned his back on the vulgarity of modern life and retreated to an isolated country villa. Here, accompanied only by a couple of silent servants, he pursues his obsessions with exotic flowers, rare gems, and complex perfumes and embarks on a series of increasingly strange aesthetic experiments, starting with the decision to give his giant pet tortoise a jewel-encrusted shell... "Huysmans' study of obsession and aesthetics got up no end of reviewers' noses on its 1884 publication. It�s not hard to see why: decadent aristocrat Jean Floressas des Esseintes, afflicted by nerves so grievous they cause his spine to freeze when he sees a servant wringing out washing, takes turns kicking out at classical poets, modern novelists and the church. The poor are grotesque, the rich are decaying and the bourgeoisie simply insufferable. Only Dickens, Baudelaire and the odd enema provide respite. Cloistered in an opulent house in the suburbs of Paris, Des Esseintes undertakes a series of experiments in living which prove to be an absolute hoot. He decorates an unfortunate tortoise with precious stones, tries to go to England, but only makes it as far as a nearby pub, and attempts to turn an urchin into a killer by buying him credit at a brothel. This largely plotless mix of bilious satire, broad comedy and literary criticism may have lost some of its immediacy, but it remains a captivating, contradictory work of art." James Smart in The Guardian

Against Nature

First published in 1883, but never before translated into English, this collection of J.-K. Huysmans’ art criticism reveals the author of Against Nature to be as combative in his aesthetic opinions as he was in his literary ones. At a time when the Impressionists were still being ridiculed, or worse still ignored, Huysmans defiantly proclaimed Degas to be the best painter in France. He filled his pages with analyses of the works of artists whose genius and popularity have been confirmed by time: Gustave Caillebotte, Paul Gauguin, Mary Cassatt, Edouard Manet, Berthe Morisot, Odilon Redon and Gustave Moreau. Huysmans intersperses his reviews of these independent artists with those of the annual Official Salon, whose conventional and dryly academic works he lambasts with his customary gusto and invective. This is the first complete translation of L’Art moderne, and includes 200 black and white illustrations, notes and a glossary of artists. ‘Huysmans reviewed the Salons of 1879-82 and the Independent Exhibitions of 1880-82 at considerable length. His articles, collected as L’Art moderne (1883), have never before been translated into English, probably because he is the least known of the writer-critics, and his French is often not straightforward. Robert Baldick, biographer of Huysmans (1955) described his style as ‘one of the strangest literary idioms in existence’. Brendan King, who has already translated most of Huysmans’s fiction, has produced an excellent version. Rarely can it have been such fun to read translated denunciations of so many forgotten French pictures. The edition also includes scores of small black and white illustrations, which can easily be Googled into colour.’ Julian Barnes in The London Review of Books

Modern Art

" Huysmans novel, though it is clearly rooted in the preoccupations of the late 19th century, is remarkably prophetic about the concerns of our own recent fin de siecle. With its allusions to, amongst other things, Satanic child abuse, alternative medicine, New Age philosophy and female sexuality, the novel has clearly a lot to say to a contemporary audience. As with most of Huysmans' books, the pleasure in reading is not necessarily from its overarching plot-line, but in set pieces, such as the extraordinary sequences in which Gilles de Rais wanders through a wood that suddenly metamorphoses into a series of copulating organic forms, the justly famous word-painting of Matthias Grunewald's Crucifixion altar-piece, or the brutally erotic scenes, crackling with sexual tension, between Durtal and Madame Chantelouve. If it is about anything, La-Bas is about Good and Evil. This enlightening new translation will be especially useful to students of literature. Not only does it contain an introduction that puts Huysmans in context for those who are new to his work, it also includes extensive notes to unlock the mass of obscure words that litter the text, and references to a vast array of scientists, false messiahs and misfits whose ideas went into the concoction of this strangely fascinating book." Beryl Bainbridge in The Spectator �This novel is one of the key texts of the Decadent movement of the 1890s and writhes with satanists, occultists, incubi (male demons), succubi (female demons) and intellectuals.” Sophia Martelli in The Observer "This Gothic shocker is not for the faint hearted..." Jerome Boyd Maunsell in The Times "The classic tale of satanism and sexual obsession in nineteenth-century Paris, in an attractive new edition. The novel's enervated anti-hero, Durtal, is writing a book about Gilles de Rais, child-murderer and comrade in arms of Joan of Arc. When he's not swotting up on alchemy, visiting Rais' ruined castle and fantasising about a mystery woman, he is pondering Catholicism with his friends. But his sexual adventures and historical studies mesh when he's invited to witness a black mass. Strong meat for diseased imaginations." Time Out

J.-K. Huysmans

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