History Literature / ARebours

A 19th century novel by a French writer of Dutch descent, Joris-Karl Huysmans (real name Charles-Marie-Georges Huysmans), ''A Rebours'' was first published in 1884. It has been translated into English as ''Against the Grain'' and, more recently, as ''Against Nature''. The novel focuses on the young dandy and aesthete, Duc Jean Floressas des Esseintes, who becomes disgusted with the society of his day and tries to escape from it by constructing a "refined [[Literature/TheThebaid Thebaid]]" - a house where he lives completely alone, surrounded by the artistic objects and books that obsess him and living out his aesthetic daydreams. It is largely plotless, and largely chronicles his aesthetic tastes, musings on literature, religion, paintings, and hyperaesthetic sensory experiences.

* EuropeansAreKinky: Apart from some major-league womanising in his younger days, which ultimately bored him and turned him towards an aesthetic lifestyle, des Esseintes at one point seduces a female circus acrobat and also a woman who turns him on by using her skills as a professional ventriloquist to pretend that her husband is about to break in on them. And that's before even considering the HoYay stuff mentioned above...

* NotSoDifferentRemark: Des Esseintes is an atheist who was influenced by Schopenhauer. He notes that Schopenhauer and the Catholic faith both agree on the sufferings of the world and the wretchedness of life, but [[EvilStoleMyFaith he rejects belief in God on that basis]]. Huysmans, who was also an atheist when he wrote ''A Rebours'', would later return to the Catholic faith and write a preface on the book, reflecting on its contents twenty years after its publication. He also affirms that this is common ground that Schopenhauer and the Catholic faith share, but he points out that unlike Schopenhauer, the Catholic faith shows the causes, consequences, and remedies. He concludes that Schopenhauer's remarks on the world's sufferings can also be found in Ecclesiastes, the Book of Job, and the Imitation of Christ, the last one which sums up his philosophy in a single sentence: "In truth it is a wretched thing to live on this earth."

* NotSoDifferentRemark: Huysmans was an atheist who was immensely influenced by Schopenhauer when he wrote ''A Rebours''. He would later return to the Catholic faith and write a preface on the book, reflecting on its contents twenty years after its publication. One of his comments is that everything that Schopenhauer said about the sufferings of the world and the wretchedness of life can be found in Ecclesiastes, the Book of Job, and the Imitation of Christ, the last one which sums up his philosophy in a single sentence: "In truth it is a wretched thing to live on this earth."

''A Rebours'' was hugely influential on the writers of the Decadent movement in France and Britain, during the late 1800s, with the British writer and critic Arthur Symons, who was a contemporary, describing it as "the breviary of the Decadence". The Decadent movement, so called because the word literally means a process of ‘falling away’ or decline, signalled a set of interlinked qualities. These included the notion of intense refinement; the valuing of artificiality over nature; a position of ennui or boredom rather than of moral earnestness or the valuing of hard work; an interest in perversity and paradox, and in transgressive modes of sexuality. It essentially aspired to separate literature and art from the materialistic preoccupations of industrialized society, and morals being of secondary concern, if at all, led to the depiction of such depravities. One of the writers closely associated with the movement is Creator/OscarWilde, who was heavily influenced by ''A Rebours'' in writing ''Literature/{{The Picture of Dorian Gray}}'', including in his description of the "novel without a plot" that helps lead Dorian astray.

* AuthorTract: Much of the novel is made up of des Esseintes' thoughts and opinions about art, culture, religion and life, many of which are also Huysmans'. It's no coincidence; he had a strong tendency to do this in all of his novels.

* NotSoDifferentRemark: Huysmans was an atheist who immensely influenced by Schopenhauer when he wrote ''A Rebours''. He would later return to the Catholic faith and write a preface on the book, reflecting on its contents twenty years after its publication. One of his comments is that everything that Schopenhauer said about the sufferings of the world and the wretchedness of life can be found in Ecclesiastes, the Book of Job, and the Imitation of Christ, the last one which sums up his philosophy in a single sentence: "In truth it is a wretched thing to live on this earth."

* CulturallyReligious: des Esseintes had a Catholic upbringing and was instructed by the Jesuits, but at some point he abandoned the faith and turned to the philosophical ideas of the German pessimist Arthur Schopenhauer. In spite of this, des Esseintes still owns some Latin works by the early Catholic authors, and he could not help but connect Schopenhauer's pessimistic outlook with the resignation from the Imitation of Christ.

[[caption-width-right:350: Defecting to decadence.]] 19th century novel by a French writer with a Dutch name, Joris-Karl Huysmans, ''A Rebours'' was first published in 1884. It has been translated into English as ''Against the Grain'' and, more recently, as ''Against Nature''. The novel tells the story of the young dandy and aesthete, Jean, Duc des Esseintes, who becomes disgusted with the society of his day and tries to escape from it by constructing a "refined [[Literature/TheThebaid Thebaid]]" - a house where he lives completely alone, surrounded by the artistic objects and books that obsess him and living out his aesthetic daydreams. "Story" is perhaps pushing it a bit; this is one of the more plotless novels of its age and duels, love affairs, court cases over wills and characters who turn out to be each other's long lost relatives are pretty much absent. The real conflict is psychological, between des Esseintes and his own society, and the real question is whether he will succeed in making the life he wants independent of it. He's more or less the sole character of the book. Everyone else is seen through his eyes.

''A Rebours'' was hugely influential on the so-called "Decadent" writers of the 1890s in France and Britain, with the critic Arthur Symons describing it as "the breviary of the Decadence". The Decadents reacted against Victorian sexual repression, rationalism and naturalistic fiction in the direction of excess, romanticism and writing exploring "forbidden" themes. Perhaps its most famous fan was Oscar Wilde, who was heavily influenced by ''A Rebours'' in writing ''Literature/{{The Picture of Dorian Gray}}'', including in his description of the "novel without a plot" that helps lead Dorian astray.

* TheHermit - Des Esseintes goes to great lengths to avoid human contact where possible. For example, his two servants (of ''course'' he has servants) live and work on a separate floor of the house to him and he usually communicates with them by ringing bells. He even has the woman wear a nun-style coif to avoid being put off by her silhouette seen through his windows.

* RaisedCatholic: Des Esseintes was educated by Jesuits and is strongly drawn towards Catholicism as the solution to all that he despises in modern life. He surrounds himself with ecclesiastical regalia and obsesses over obscure religious writers, but is ultimately unable to bring himself to believe. In this he strongly resembles Huysmans, who eventually converted to Catholicism and spent time as a monk.

* AristocratsAreEvil: The novel begins with a description of portraits of some of des Esseintes' ancestors, one of whom inhabited a DeadlyDecadentCourt and sounds very much like this. Des Esseintes himself is something of an aversion.

* BiTheWay: Although des Esseintes is generally heterosexual, there is an incident in the novel where he forms a brief relationship with a young man that is apparently homosexual in nature, to judge by the mention of des Esseintes' soul being pre-conditioned "by a hereditary tendency dating from the reign of Henri III," a French king notorious for his male lovers.

Fun fact: In real life, Huysmans was a civil servant and worked for the French Interior Ministry, on whose stationery he wrote his novels.

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!!Tropes include

* AristocratsAreEvil - The novel begins with a description of portraits of some of des Esseintes' ancestors, one of whom inhabited a DeadlyDecadentCourt and sounds very much like this. Des Esseintes himself is something of an aversion.
* AuthorTract - Much of the novel is made up of des Esseintes' thoughts and opinions about art, culture, religion and life, many of which are also Huysmans'. It's no coincidence; he had a strong tendency to do this in all of his novels.
* BiTheWay - Although des Esseintes is generally heterosexual, there is an incident in the novel where he forms a brief relationship with a young man that is apparently homosexual in nature, to judge by the mention of des Esseintes' soul being pre-conditioned "by a hereditary tendency dating from the reign of Henri III," a French king notorious for his male lovers.
* TheDandy - Who do you think? To be fair to des Esseintes, he falls at the aesthetic, "surround myself with gorgeous objects" end of the spectrum. He's not just a clothes horse. However, he certainly likes them fancy duds, to judge by some of the descriptions - "suits of white velvet with gold-laced waistcoasts," for example.
* DeathByOriginStory - By the time the main action of ''A Rebours'' has started, both his parents have died. To judge by what's said of them, they played little role in his life whilst alive.
* EuropeansAreKinky - Apart from some major-league womanising in his younger days, which ultimately bored him and turned him towards an aesthetic lifestyle, des Esseintes at one point seduces a female circus acrobat and also a woman who turns him on by using her skills as a professional ventriloquist to pretend that her husband is about to break in on them. And that's before even considering the HoYay stuff mentioned above...
* GoMadFromTheIsolation - Whilst he's not all worried about this happening, des Esseintes' doctor clearly is.

* JerkAss - Des Esseintes' misanthropy can lead him into this territory, notably when he meets a young boy whom he corrupts with visits to the best brothel in Paris, the plan being that in order to be able to afford this, the boy will inevitably become a criminal and hopefully murder someone. Des Esseintes sees this as his revenge on society. It's also unlikely PETA would be overly impressed when he buys a tortoise and has its shell gilded to set it off against his carpet.[[spoiler: The animal dies as a result, albeit this was not the intention]]. And yes, there is a lengthy and clearly heavily researched part about exactly what jewels Des Esseintes will buy to encrust the shell with (see below).
* IntelligenceEqualsIsolation - Des Esseintes' basic problem. He considers himself to be alienated from a materialistic modern society by his preference for intellectual and aesthetic activities.
* LonelyRichKid - Des Esseintes' childhood was like this, with few friends, an invalid mother and a father who largely ignored him.
* MundaneMadeAwesome - Des Esseintes' "hobbies" (the word seems inadequate) are described by Huysmans in lavish style and as if they are of epic importance, which to the central character, they are. He spends three pages choosing the colour of his walls, an entire chapter contemplating Latin literature of the post-Augustan and early mediaeval period and another chapter making perfume. This aspect is one of those followed by Wilde in ''Literature/{{The Picture of Dorian Gray}}''

* PurpleProse - Huysmans really lays this on with a trowel. It's the feature of his style he tends to be most remembered for in French literature, and given that there's a lot of description of lavish furnishings, art works, antique objects and so on, he gets plenty of opportunity to use it.
* RaisedCatholic - Des Esseintes was educated by Jesuits and is strongly drawn towards Catholicism as the solution to all that he despises in modern life. He surrounds himself with ecclesiastical regalia and obsesses over obscure religious writers, but is ultimately unable to bring himself to believe. In this he strongly resembles Huysmans, who eventually converted to Catholicism and spent time as a monk.

[[caption-width-right:350: Defecting to decadence.]] 19th century novel by a French writer with a Dutch name, Joris-Karl Huysmans, ''A Rebours'' was first published in 1884. It has been translated into English as ''Against the Grain'' and, more recently, as ''Against Nature''. The novel tells the story of the young dandy and aesthete, Jean, Duc des Esseintes, who becomes disgusted with the society of his day and tries to escape from it by constructing a "refined Thebaid" - a house where he lives completely alone, surrounded by the artistic objects and books that obsess him and living out his aesthetic daydreams. "Story" is perhaps pushing it a bit; this is one of the more plotless novels of its age and duels, love affairs, court cases over wills and characters who turn out to be each other's long lost relatives are pretty much absent. The real conflict is psychological, between des Esseintes and his own society, and the real question is whether he will succeed in making the life he wants independent of it. He's more or less the sole character of the book. Everyone else is seen through his eyes.

19th century novel by a French writer with a Dutch name, Joris-Karl Huysmans, ''A Rebours'' was first published in 1884. It has been translated into English as ''Against the Grain'' and, more recently, as ''Against Nature''. The novel tells the story of the young dandy and aesthete, Jean, Duc des Esseintes, who becomes disgusted with the society of his day and tries to escape from it by constructing a "refined Thebaid" - a house where he lives completely alone, surrounded by the artistic objects and books that obsess him and living out his aesthetic daydreams. "Story" is perhaps pushing it a bit; this is one of the more plotless novels of its age and duels, love affairs, court cases over wills and characters who turn out to be each other's long lost relatives are pretty much absent. The real conflict is psychological, between des Esseintes and his own society, and the real question is whether he will succeed in making the life he wants independent of it. He's more or less the sole character of the book. Everyone else is seen through his eyes.

* AuthorTract - Much of the novel is made up of des Esseintes' thoughts and opinions about art, culture, religion and life, many of which are also Huysmans'. It's no coincidence; he had a stong tendency to do this in all of his novels.

* MundaneMadeAwesome - Des Esseintes' "hobbies" (the word seems inadequate) are described by Huysmans in lavish style and as if they are of epic importance, which to the central character, they are. He spends three pages choosing the colour of his walls, an entire chapter contemplating Latin literature of the post-Augustan and early mediaeval period and another chapter making perfume. This aspect is one of those followed by Wilde in ''{{The Picture of Dorian Gray}}''

''A Rebours'' was hugely influential on the so-called "Decadent" writers of the 1890s in France and Britain, with the critic Arthur Symons describing it as "the breviary of the Decadence". The Decadents reacted against Victorian sexual repression, rationalism and naturalistic fiction in the direction of excess, romanticism and writing exploring "forbidden" themes. Perhaps its most famous fan was Oscar Wilde, who was heavily influenced by ''A Rebours'' in writing ''{{The Picture of Dorian Gray}}'', including in his description of the "novel without a plot" that helps lead Dorian astray.

* RaisedCatholic - Des Esseintes was educated by Jesuits and is strongly drawn towards Catholicism as the solution to all that he despises in modern life. He surrounds himself with ecclesiastical regalia and obsesses over obscure religious writers, but is ultimately unable to bring himself to believe. In this he strongly resembles Huysmans, who eventually converted to Catholicism and spent time as a monk.

* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotAwesome - Des Esseintes' "hobbies" (the word seems inadequate) are described by Huysmans in lavish style and as if they are of epic importance, which to the central character, they are. He spends three pages choosing the colour of his walls, an entire chapter contemplating Latin literature of the post-Augustan and early mediaeval period and another chapter making perfume. This aspect is one of those followed by Wilde in ''{{The Picture of Dorian Gray}}''