Joris Karl Huysmans' Manual for Aesthetes, A Rebours
commentary by Steve Wise
A Rebours (Against the Grain, 1884) is (among other things) the story of a young man's attempt to withdraw from the world of stupid, foolish people (who are basically everyone except himself) into a private world of select art & literature. The man's name is "Des Esseintes," possibly alluding to his attempt to shield himself from the world (essentes are shingles). The remoteness of both his parents during his earliest years has left him an emotional cripple. Since his feeling of disgust at the people around him actually stems from a lack of self-acceptance, he eventually comes to feel the same disgust at much of the literature & art that he was initially able to enjoy.
For the benefit of those denizens who have not read A Rebours, I should mention that it is not a ghost story, not a supernatural story, & perhaps not even a horror story (although one can certainly find horror most anywhere if one goes looking for it). I don't see it as a horror story because the misfortune that Des Esseintes experiences is not really an inevitable part of the human condition. In spite of the deficiencies of his childhood, he could have found a measure of happiness under the influence of happy, accepting companions with strong personalities; he just didn't search for people like that long enough before he gave up & retreated into a shell.
Although personally I tend to focus on the psychological aspects of a story, & although there is a psychological story here & the book's effective delineation of a particular type of neurotic personality may have been a factor in its popularity, I think it is important to emphasize that this is not primarily a psychological novel. It seems to be more a portrait of Decadence in theory & practice.
The edition I have read is from 1922, with a readable introduction by Havelock Ellis, in which he explains decadence as the opposite of classicism: classicism subordinates the parts to the whole, requiring that the parts harmonize to form a pleasing unity, while decadence values each part independently & perhaps regards the whole as merely a vehicle for delivering the parts. (I wonder whether this concept can illuminate the distinction between modernism & post-modernism, since post-modern architecture is more decorative & eclectic.) Des Esseintes is portrayed as a model Decadent, pursuing exotic artificial sensations & rejecting most experience of the pedestrian natural world.
If you haven't read the book, I'm going to save you the trouble: it only has one good passage, when Des Esseintes stages a funeral for his late virility:
In the dining room, hung in black & opening on the transformed garden with its ash-powdered walks, its little pool now bordered with basalt & filled with ink, its clumps of cypresses & pines, the dinner had been served on a table draped in black, adorned with baskets of violets & scabiouses, lit by a candelabra from which green flames blazed, & by chandeliers from which wax tapers flared.
To the sound of funeral marches played by a concelaed orchestra, nude negresses, wearing slippers & stocking of silver cloth with patterns of tears, served the guests.
Out of black-edged plates they had drunk turtle soup & eaten Russion rye bread, ripe Turkish olives, caviar, smoked Frankfort black pudding, game with sauces that were the color of licorice & blacking, truffle gravy, chocolate cream, puddings, nectarines, grape preserves, mulberries & black-heart cherries; they had sipped, out of dark glasses, wines from Limagnes, Roussillon, Tenedos, Val de Penas & Porto, & after the coffee & walnut brandy had partaken of kvas & porter & stout.
Now you might be thinking, "Hey, that's pretty neat, I wouldn't mind reading a book filled with that sort of thing." But guess again. Here's a sample of the rest of the book:
Ah! it was hardly worth mentioning, but the Catholic party was not at all particular in the choice of its proteges & not at all artistic. Without exception, all these writers wrote in the pallid white prose of pensioners of a monastery, in a flowing movement of phrase which no astringent could counterbalance.
So Des Esseintes, horror-stricken at such insipidities, entirely forsook this literature. But neither did he find atonement for his disappointments among the modern masters of the clergy. These latter were one-sided divines or impeccably correct controversialists, but the Christian language in their orations & books had ended by becoming impersonal & congealing into a rhetoric whose every movement & pause was anticipated, in a sequence of periods constructed after a single model. And, in fact, Des Esseintes discovered that all the ecclesiastics wrote in the same manner, with a little more or a little less abandon or emphasis, & there was seldom any variation between the bodiless patterns traded by Dupanloup or Landriot, La Bouillerie or Gaume, by Dom Gueranger or Ratisbonne, by Freppel or Perraud, by Ravignan or Gratry, by Olivan or Dosithee, by Didon or Chocarne.
There is about 250 pages of stuff like that. Not only about literature, but about gemstones, paintings, perfumes, poetry, & flowers. I felt proud of myself just for wading through it. Most of the book seems to be a kind of political-correctness manual for the aspiring Decadent, treating at length exactly which authors, artists & composers are to be venerated & which disparaged, if one does not wish to appear hopelessly gauche before one's fellow self-styled Decadents. The only writers & artists Des Esseintes can enjoy are those he can perceive as sharing his jaundiced view of life. He loves the poetry of Beaudelaire & Mallarme, & he worships Edgar Allen Poe (his one saving grace). As an aesthete, he prefers art that is so subtle that the uncouth masses could never fathom it, so that in appreciating it he can imagine himself as superior to them.
The book does have a story line: Des Esseintes' digestion gives him some trouble. Then it gets better. Then it gets worse. He tries various cures. Updates on his digestion are supplied about every 50 pages.
Personally, I like to read stories that are entertaining or instructive, or both, rather than books that are primarily of historical significance. This book, I'm sorry to say, is not very entertaining. It is a story that could be told entertainingly in about 30 pages, but at 300 pages most of it is a dry discussion of various artists & writers. If this story were written today, it would most likely be told tongue-in-cheek, which would make it more entertaining, but I don't recognize any irony in it, any distance between the narrator & the author.
It is interesting that the author seems to leave open the question of what will happen to Des Esseintes once he returns to the grubby world of ordinary people. I think there is an implication that he will regain his former degree of physical health, but no hint whether he will find a way to be happy in that world. However I suspect Huysmans is saying that Decadence is all very well as a source of entertainment, but that it is foolish to ask it to be anything more than that.