verbes aux sucs épurés, de substantifs sentant l’encens, d’adjectifs bizarres, taillés grossièrement dans l’or, avec le goût barbare et charmant des bijoux goths…. Huneker, James (1909). "The Pessimists' Progress: J.–K. Huysmans." In: Egoists. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, pp.167–207. Açıklamalar bölümünde görürüz ki Des Esseintes soylu bir ailenin çöküş döneminin son ferdidir. Soylu sınıfın çöküşünün miladı kapitalist üretim ilişkileri olsa da bu çöküş “ erkeklerin dişileşimi gittikçe daha bir belirginleşmişti” ile açıklanır. Konumuzun dışında olmakla birlikte bu dişileşim ya da efemine karakteri Tanzimat ve türk edebiyatının ilk döneminde de sık görürüz. Demek ki elimizde Dekadan bir karakter var, soylu kan bozulmuş buna toplumsal çürüme, yozlaşma da dahil olmuştur. Bu yoz ortamın bağrında iş tutan soylumuzun eh yeter dediği yerde kitabımız içe yani eve kapanır ve biz yaklaşık 200 sayfa boyunca evi ve evin olanaklarının el verdiği bir anlatıya maruz kalırız ki Tersine bu dekandanlığın kült metnidir, doğalcı gelenek sembolizme öncülük edecek bu esere ve yazarına bu payeyi hakkıyla vermiştir. Twenty-three-year-old Schopenhauer, who had a great influence on Huysmans, told Wieland: "Life is an unpleasant business. I have resolved to spend it reflecting on it. (Das Leben ist eine mißliche Sache. Ich habe mir vorgesetzt, es damit hinzubringen, über dasselbe nachzudenken.)" (Rüdiger Safranski, Schopenhauer and the Wild Years of Philosophy, Chapter 7).

Actually, I’m not sure if that point is intentional and the character ironic, or if Huysmans pretends it’s ironic to deflect personal criticism when actually he secretly wrote himself into the novel. Des Esseintes isn’t an unbelievable character. I know someone exactly like him. I’m betting Huysmans lied when he swore to his disapproving mentor, Zola (according to Wikipedia) that des Esseintes wasn’t really himself. On the flowers, what "blue cinder" means is not particularly clear, but occidental turquoise, also known as bone or fossil turquoise, does consist of bones buried near iron deposits which develop a blue hue. nowadays, nothing genuine exists, since the wine one drinks and the liberty one boldly proclaims are laughable and a sham...For what could [I] hope, if not new disillusionments...? This is just one of those books that should have been the author’s private journal, not to be read by anyone but himself in twenty years. Mentre tutti pronunceremmo questa frase nell’ordine temporale inverso, Des Esseintes/Huysmans da qui letteralmente voce all’altro senso con cui intendere il titolo del romanzo, “al contrario, “a rovescio”, non solo “controcorrente”Chapter 1. [Ancestry, youth, and education of Duc Jean Des Esseintes; he sells the family chateau and moves to Fontenay-aux-Roses ] Huysmans was made a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur in 1892, for his work with the civil service. In 1905, his admirers persuaded the French government to promote him to Officier de la Légion d'honneur for his literary achievements. Yazar kitaba Açıklamalar bölümüyle başlar; biz bu bölümde Des Esseintes karakterinin soylu aile geçmişi, yaptıkları, ettikleri, sıkılması, topluma yabancılaşıp genç yaşta bir eve kapanmasını görürüz. Romanda burada, bu evde başlar. Açıklamalar bölümü “ Edindiği eve duvarcılar getirdi, sonra bir gün, birdenbire, tasarılarından hiç kimseye söz etmeden, eski eşyalarını elden çıkardı, uşaklarına yol verdi ve, kapıcıya hiçbir adres bırakmadan,ortadan kayboldu” ile biter. Bu aslında Zola!cı bir sondur, bir eski soylunun çöküşü olarak okunup, boşluklara olay, karakter, kurgu, dram eklendiğinde 19. Yüzyıl romancılığının başyapıtı olarak ayakta bile alkışlanabilir. Ancak Huysmans bu girizgahla eski okuluna son bir selam verip yeni bir romana geçis yapar. Doğalcılığın ipi ile ineceğiniz kuyu buraya kadardır der gibidir. La storia di un solitario che disgustato dal trambusto dell’era moderna vive “lontano dal secolo”, dedica il suo tempo a rievocare epoche trascorse, per lui più cordiali, meno vili.

Chapter 16. [Des Esseintes reflects on religion, the decline of the aristocracy in a capitalist age, and prepares to return to Paris] Directions Thurstan, Frederic (1928). "Huysmans' Excursion into Occultism," Occult Review, Vol. XLVIII, pp. 227–236. I finished this book more than two months ago and it’s been lying unreviewed since, partly because I hadn’t time to review it and partly because I didn’t know how to review it. I could have just written a short account of how much I enjoyed reading the book, especially the art and literature sections, but I always like to find a unique angle on the books I review, I like to find something to say, or at least a way to say it, that may not have been thought of before, impossible as that may seem. So this book has lingered on the edges of my consciousness for the last two months, not terribly present but not forgotten either. After such a book, it only remains for the author to choose between the muzzle of a pistol [and] the foot of the cross.'Another French text mentioned in Dorian Gray is Theophile Gautier's collection of poems 'Emaux et Camees' (Enamels and Cameos), and it was in Gautier's prefatory 'note' to the 1868 edition of Fleurs du mal that the phrase 'Decadence' was used to describe this literature of the later nineteenth century (it had been used earlier in the century by Desiré Nisard to describe, pejoratively, Latin poets of the late Roman Empire). Gautier described Decadence as a mode which 'endeavours to express the most inexpressible thoughts, the vaguest and most fleeting contours of form, that listens, with a view to rendering them, to the subtle confidences of neurosity, to the confessions of aging lust turning to depravity, and to the odd hallucinations of fixed ideas passing into mania.' He used the name Joris-Karl Huysmans when he published his writing, as a way of honoring his father's ancestry. His first major publication was a collection of prose poems, Le drageoir aux épices (1874), which were strongly influenced by Baudelaire. They attracted little attention but revealed flashes of the author's distinctive style. In the 1903 preface, Huysmans writes that he would have included Rimbaud and Laforgue had he known their work at the time. Kahramanımızı kapandığı evde eylemden uzak salt düşünür ve düşlerken buluruz. Madem ki çöküş kesin ve toplum bir irin ve ruhun Baudelarie’cı cevabı any where out of the world ise yapılacak tek şey devinimden imgeleme sığınmaktır. “Söylediği gibi doğa gününü doldurmuştu artık, görünümlerinin ve göklerinin tiksindirici tekbiçimliği nedeniyle incelmiş dikkatli sabrını kesinlikle tüketmişti.” İmgelemde gerçek olandan yapaya geçişin ya da gerçekliğe müdahalenin bir çok örneğini görürüz. Yapay çiçekler, kokular ve kaplumbağaya yapılan müdahale gibi. Sanat da bu gerçeklikten kaçışın bir parçası olur, Latin yazını,Goya resimleri ve Fransız edebiyatı tartışmaları kitabın derdini açık eden ve aynı zamanda en yorucu,sıkıcı bitse de gitsek bölümlerini oluşturur. Lakin kitapta her şey dönemin tersine işlemektedir, kitabı yazarken inançsız olan Huysmann’ın karakteri bıraktığı dini ikilemler aydınlanmacı, pozitivist aklın dönemdeki hakimiyetine karşı yaptığı reddiye olarak görülmelidir. Paris’den ve Paris yaşamından kaçtıkça sığınağı çok da adlandıramadığı din ve din refaranslı eserlerden bulmaya başlar, Salome’a ilgisi kösnül bel kıvırmalarının felaketleriyle ilgilidir. Kendini gerçekliğin dışına atmasında bir keşisin mağarasına çekilmesinin belirtilerini görür. Ama şu da var, sadece yaşamdan değil anılarından da kaçan bir karakterimiz var ve ne zaman mağarasının sınırından dışarı taşsa düşünmeleri, Latin incelemeleri ile pozisyonunu tekrar kurar. Des Esseintes conducts a survey of French and Latin literature, rejecting the works approved by the mainstream critics of his day. He rejects the academically respectable Latin authors of the " Golden Age" such as Virgil and Cicero, preferring later " Silver Age" writers such as Petronius (Des Esseintes praises the decadent Satyricon) and Apuleius ( Metamorphoses, commonly known as The Golden Ass) as well as works of early Christian literature, whose style was usually dismissed as the "barbarous" product of the Dark Ages. Among French authors, he shows nothing but contempt for the Romantics but adores the poetry of Baudelaire. [1]

Huysmans's novel, Against the Grain, has more discussions of sound, smell and taste than any other work of literature we know of. For example, one chapter consists entirely of smell hallucinations so vivid that they exhaust the book's central character, Des Esseintes, a bizarre, depraved aristocrat. A student of the perfumer's art, Esseintes has developed several devices for titillating his jaded senses. Besides special instruments for re-creating any conceivable odour, he has constructed a special "mouth organ", designed to stimulate his palate rather than his ears. The organ's regular pipes have been replaced by rows of little barrels, each containing a different liqueur. In Esseintes's mind, the taste of each liqueur corresponded with the sound of a particular instrument. That’s how culture gets to you: it surrounds you all the time, trying to make you into a copy of itself, and you and everyone in that culture are a part of that system. We shame other people, we guilt them, we tease them, we make suggestions, we tell them little infectious phrases that are supposed to be helpful. Look over the comments on Goodreads some time and you’ll see it at work: people trying to shut up dissent, repeating mantras and plugging their ears, and who clearly think that insulting and belittling people is the same as discussion. But why shouldn’t they? It’s how they were socialized. He is the prototype for the man who sits and plays Warcraft alone all day, every day, until he loses his job, his friends, and his family. Des Esseintes harps again and again on a desire to live in an artificial world of his own making--a virtual world. It does not really give him pleasure, it is just a way from him to avoid the world. It is a life without risk, a life where he does not have to confront anything uncomfortable or challenging, which will never hazard upsetting or drawing judgment from anyone--a pointless life of perfect safety which he romantically paints as fraught and challenging, because it allows him to imagine himself as the noble struggler against hardship--but solely on his own terms.Des Esseintes in his study, by Arthur Zaidenberg ( Against the Grain, New York, Illustrated Editions, 1931) Were you possessed by the Good lord or by Satan while writing this book? Your preface suggests it was the Good lord. Though I am not so sure. While I am comforted by the fact that there were people like you who shared a similar disgust for humanity in more idyllic times, there is a part of me that feels that some doors are best left shut. E quindi, si ritira, “via dalla pazza folla”, va a vivere in una magione agreste che diventa il suo eremo (compagnia della servitù a parte), e che man mano trasforma secondo i suoi canoni estetici. Laver, James (1954). The First Decadent: Being the Strange Life of J.K. Huysmans. London: Faber & Faber.

of the novel documents Des E's taste. We learn exactly what he likes and what he dislikes. From a literary point of view, you could assemble from the details of his library a reading list more erudite and filled with "the consoling beacons of ancient faith" than anything compiled by den Grossenlistengenerator Steven Moore (it's telling that it could be said, even then, as now, that the compilers of such lists (like the work of one of Des E's idols, Ernest Hello) have often "affected inordinate pretensions of profundity. There were some fawning and complacent people who pretended to consider him a great man, the reservoir of learning, the encyclopedic giant of the age. Perhaps he was a well, but one at whose bottom one often could not find a drop of water.") Huysmans, Joris-Karl. (2008). Against Nature, trans. Brendan King. Dedalus Books. ISBN 9781903517659. Includes translated selections from original manuscript. And here is the reaction of Des Esseintes when forced to encounter others on the street, “The very sight of certain faces made him suffer. He considered the crabbed expressions of some, insulting. He felt a desire to slap the fellow who walked, eyes closed, with such a learned air; the one who minced along, smiling at his image in the window panes; and the one who seemed stimulated by a whole world of thought while devouring with contracted brow, the tedious contents of a newspaper.” On the branches, almandine is a very dark garnet, while uvarovite (almost certainly misspelled as ouwarovite) is a bright green kind of garnet named for a Russian Count. As someone who lives in these decadent times, at the end of the century myself (have you seen those kids with their colored hair and Billie Eilish?? By golly, we are doomed! Doomed!), I sympathize. In any case, he did it better than Ottessa.Huneker, James (1917). "The Opinions of J.–K. Huysmans." In: Unicorns. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, pp.111–120. Houellebecq appeared alongside Hell at a literary event several years ago, and another punk icon, Iggy Pop, recorded an album inspired by his novel “The Possibility of an Island.” A nebulous-yet-discernible continuity links “Submission” to the escapism of Hell’s punk anthem “The Blank Generation” (“I was saying let me out of here before I was even born / It’s such a gamble when you get a face”) and both of them to the delusional mysticism of Huysmans. “It’s a feeling of dissatisfaction with things as they are,” Hell explained. “It’s wanting life to be more than it can be—wanting the impossible from life.” Commemorative plaque in 31 rue Saint-Placide, Paris, 6e A caricature of Huysmans, by Félix Vallotton, c. 1898 Lavrin, Janko (1929). "Huysmans and Strindberg." In: Studies in European Literature. London: Constable & Co., pp.118–130.