Against Nature (a Rebour) (Penguin Classics)

AGAINST NATURE, or AGAINST THE GRAIN as it is sometimes translated from the French "A Rebours," is a seminal work in the Decadent literary movement of the last decade of the nineteenth century. This is the book that helped corrupt Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray. The main character Des Esseintes, a wealthy French dandy, grows bored of society and shuts himself up from the world. He soon bores himself, and I am sorry to say, too often bores the reader. One cannot say it is not a creative boredom, however. Artifice reigns supreme for Des Esseintes: "Nature...has had her day." Our anti-hero is exactly the type who would decide after a visit to EPCOT's international pavilion in Florida, that there was no longer any need to visit Europe: "After all, what was the good of moving, when a fellow could travel so magnificently sitting in a chair?" Des Esseintes is the prototypical couch potato--if they had had television in 1884, we wouldn't have this book.

Virtually alone in his villa, Des Esseintes tries to cultivate every possible sensation artificially--in art, liqueurs, books, interior decoration, food, perfumes--he even tries to enjoy his illnesses. Huysmans seems to show, by the nature of his game, Des Esseintes cannot succeed. His desires always surpass his capacity for enjoyment; his constitution is weak and his nerves grow frail.

Huysmans gives us an overwhemingly detailed picture of why we aren't all decadents given up to the pleasure principle today--sheer tedium. There are flashes of brilliance and insight, to be sure, but they are dulled by the intimate picture of over-satiety. No more than three random chapters will be enough for the interested aesthete to get the point.

The world of a fin de siècle aesthete (0/0 people found this helpful)

This classic of 1884 is an amazing catalogue of aesthetic sensibilities. Duc Jean des Esseintes had spent his early manhood in Paris, dredging the high and low pleasures of a man-about-town until he was jaded and disgusted by them. He had become so offended by the vulgarity of the majority of humankind that he shut himself away in a remote custom-built house above Fontenay, whose architecture and contents are minutely described. He is extremely sensitive about the colours in the house, and there is a discussion of the qualities of a range of colours (some of which most people have never heard of) in isolation, in natural and in artificial light, and in juxtaposition with each other. The same is true of materials - glass, wood, textiles. We have a description of his library, full of Latin works, about each of which he has an opinion which has little use for the classics that are commonly esteemed in that language, and judgments are pronounced on a host of totally obscure authors. Among the moderns, of course, he treasures Baudelaire. Many of the volumes he had had specially printed for him on hand-made paper, with antique fonts, and bound in precious bindings.

He has the same sensitivity for alcoholic drinks (again carefully listed), and as he has synaesthesia, he associates each drink with a particular musical instrument; in sipping them, he recreates musical compositions upon his tongue. He was also an expert on perfumes and their history, skilled at evoking the associations of each.

His favourite pictures are by the Symbolist artists Gustave Moreau (depicting the sensuous and horrific story of Salomé) and Odilon Redon (with his haunting proto-surrealist works); and he also dwells lovingly on a whole set of engravings of Goya's nightmarish scenes, and on one by Jan Luykens, a little known 17th century Dutch artist who specialized on depicting gruesomely detailed scenes of every kind of torture inflicted on martyrs in the name of religion; for Des Esseintes's taste runs not only to the sensuous, but also to the macabre and perverse.

He had himself been educated by the Jesuits, and although he had no religious belief, he was still fascinated by theological books - the 15 page long discussion of French Catholic literature will mean little to almost all English readers - and he still responded strongly to the aesthetic side of stained glass windows, vestments and the church furniture which also figured in his house: he had fitted out his bedroom austerely like a more comfortable monk's cell.

His taste in flowers is of course exotic; but whilst we might imagine that it would run to the precious and delicate, in fact, contrariwise, he collects grotesque, sinister and diseased-looking plants from all over the world (all named), which then haunt his dreams with surrealistic horrors.

But even his waking hours are now haunted. He has become used to the surroundings he had created; they no longer stimulate him; his solitude ceased to be a balm and became a boredom; and he now recalled the more unsavoury sides of his former life in Paris. He had never been in robust health; now he was more subject than ever to sickly episodes which even laudanum did not assuage, and these lead him to reflect on the pointlessness of the struggle for life.

The book also loses its initial character some time before the end. Having given such remarkable descriptions of the way in which Des Esseintes had organized his life, it becomes more and more a work of literary criticism as it discusses at great length his opinions of 19th century French literature. That may be interesting to those who are familiar with it, but it has become dry and academic. There follows a shorter treatment of the kind of music he likes and (for the most part) dislikes.

In the end, he becomes so ill that he has to consult a doctor, who tells him that the only cure for him would be to give up his solitary existence and return to normal life in Paris. With despair in his heart, Des Esseintes prepares to obey (contrary to what one might expect). He knows that there will be no place for him there. There follow a powerful last few pages in which he visualizes the decadent modern society - all former virtues of which have been replaced by commercialism, vulgarity and philistinism - into which he is about to return. It is an irony that this view of the world should be taken by the literary character who has himself been seen as the archpriest of fin de siècle decadence.

This is quite a short book; but if it is read, as it could be, in a day or two, the unrelenting sensory richness of the detail (beautifully translated and illuminatingly introduced by Robert Baldick) becomes almost indigestible, and its neurotic nature could wear one down.

Thanks to Oscar!! (3/3 people found this helpful)

I was drawn to this work after reading the introduction to the Penguin Classics edition of Dorian Grey. Although I found the `tale' less engrossing than Wilde's masterpiece it still offered a degree of entertainment which I found intriguing although challenging and at times disturbing. The tale centres on Des Esseintes, who becomes bored with the excesses of his Parisian lifestyle, fuelled by a growing hypochondria and distaste for urban mediocrity. Accompanied by a few servants he relocates to the rural outskirts of Paris and establishes, purely for his solitary delectation, a luxurious temple to the God of Taste. The narrative, at times convoluted and dense, is less of a story and more of an aesthetic journey, following Des Esseintes obsession for literature and fine art. The reader is immersed in a myriad of predominately French works that is fascinating in its esoteric eclecticism (introducing me to a rich vein of previously unknown French writers). Furthermore the episodes concerning Des Esseintes temporal obsessions with exotic flowers, perfume and precious gems is delightful and humorous. Not an easy read but an interesting one.

A Caveat to Decadence (7/7 people found this helpful)

Huysmans Against Nature is a thoroughly entertaining book. The annoyance that Des Esseintes expresses at the mundanity of everyday experience is at times hilarious. That he gets his charwoman to don a historical costume when she walks past his window to make her silhouette less tedious is one example. Another is his annoyance at the obnoxious type of people who run their prams into the legs of unwary pedestrians on the pavement without any expressions of remorse. His vision of the commonplace tedium of everyday experience is striking in that even a hundred years later we can sympathise with it.

Yet Huysmans book is more than an amusing diversion. It may be true that the book has no discernible plot, but that does not mean it has nothing to say. At the heart of the fin de siècle French Decadence movement was the idea of the primacy of experience and sensation. Huysman's novel explores a variety of sensations through the use of sumptuous language and imagery. But don't get carried away with the idea that the novel simply promotes hedonism as an escape from the tedium of the modern world. A careful reading will reveal the negative points of Des Esseintes' secluded misanthropy, as well as ideas relating to spirituality.

Glorious (13/14 people found this helpful)

Quite simply, this book is absolutely glorious. Where there is a lack of plot or character development the author more than makes up for it with unrivalled passages of descriptive prose. The book is beautifully organised into chapters each conerning a differnent aspect of the character's life, and these are all written with such detail and finesse that the pleasure one takes from reading this novel (if indeed thats what it is) is almost unprecedented in this genre of literature. Dorian Grey has similar passages in terms of style and composition, but this book is the one, the book that fans of descriptive realism must read. There are sections of this book where the very paragraphs seem to have a perfectly balanced beauty of their own, with the weighting of the words and the flow of the text being almost perfect, containing a poetic rhythm that engages the reader into the world of the main (and essentially only) character, into his world of chilling decadence and indulgance.

Overall this book is just a pleasure to read, one that can be repeatadly and regularly gone back to brighten up the base, unclean and cultureless world we now live in. Enjoy, I insist.

Against Nature (a Rebour) (Penguin Classics)

J-.K. Huysmans

Reader Reviews:

A Classic (0/0 people found this helpful)

The world of a fin de siècle aesthete (0/0 people found this helpful)

Thanks to Oscar!! (3/3 people found this helpful)

A Caveat to Decadence (7/7 people found this helpful)

Glorious (13/14 people found this helpful)

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