Against Nature: Joris-Karl Huysmans (Penguin Classics)

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Against Nature, in the words of the author, exploded 'like a meteorite' and has enjoyed a cult following to this day. the universal admiration (Goya’s) works had won had…put him off slightly, and he had refrained from framing them for some years, for fear that by putting them on show, the first idiot who caught sight of them would deem it necessary to relieve himself of his banal opinions and to go into raptures in front of them, in a completely conventional fashion. Then he had kept mistresses already famed for their depravity, and helped to swell the funds of those agencies which supply dubious pleasures for a consideration. The book's plot is said to have dominated the action of Dorian, causing him to live an amoral life of sin and hedonism. They were, for the most part, unintelligent, slavish dandies, successful dunces…who had nevertheless fulfilled the…stated aim of populating society with docile, pious creatures.

In this chapter, des Esseintes encourages a young man to marry his materialistic and flighty beau, which eventually winds up in destitution and divorce (just as des Esseintes had forseen). Did he know a single person trying to lead an existence such as his own, one consigned to contemplation, one given up to daydreams…of appreciating the delicacy of a phrase, the subtlety of a painting, the quintessence of an idea…? Lonely Rich Kid: Des Esseintes' childhood was like this, with few friends, an invalid mother and a father who largely ignored him.By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions. The novel contains waxing descriptions of a multitude of surrealist experiences, including the death of a tortoise and the blooming of a garden. Des Esseintes is a decadent, ailing aristocrat who retreats to an isolated villa where her indulges his taste for luxury and excess. He exhaustively details how he chooses the colours of his rooms by comparing pigments under candlelight (orange is best), the furnishings, the pictures he hangs up, the music he enjoys (or rather, doesn’t enjoy).

As the first and most prominent group of authors to subscribe to the tenets, principles and stylistic aesthetic of the genre, it could even be put forth therefore that this book is the rock upon which the abandoned and deconsecrated church of Decadence has been built. Wilde does not name the book but at his trial he conceded that it was, or almost, Huysmans's À rebours. Des Esseintes develops a love for perfumes, and the scents evoke memories of his former lovers, including an androgynous female acrobat, and an adolescent boy. As well as engendering a supra-human ideal in his soul…religion had also stirred up the illegitimate ideal of sensual pleasure.To understand and appreciate this book, which by its very nature seems to reject the reader, or perhaps to withdraw from the reader any semblance of the forms of contact and intimacy that are the usual business of one person writing and another person reading the words, is to accept that the process by which we come together in this case is ultimately bizarre. Landow created the HTML design and formatted the text, adding French accents, which the Gutenberg text omits, and both ilustrations and links to materials on this site. Il capolavoro di Huysmans (1884) fu tradotto molto tardi in Italia, nonostante altre opere minori dell autore fossero già arrivate all epoca.