Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

J.-K. Huysmans's À Rebours (Against Nature) is a fictional study of a certain type of dandy in the latter part of the nineteenth century, exemplified in the character of its hero, Des Esseintes. Published in 1884, the novel recounts in exquisite detail his love of artifice, his fetishistic obsession with material objects, his often perverse pleasures, and his retreat from the hurly-burly of Paris into a private, interior reality.As Des Esseintes teeters towards nervous collapse, he turns from his usual literary taste for obscure Latin authors to—surprisingly, perhaps—the works of Charles Dickens. The English writer fails to soothe his nerves as he had hoped. Gradually, however, “an idea insinuated itself in his mind—the idea of turning dream into reality, of travelling to England in the flesh as well as in the spirit, of checking the accuracy of his visions” (p. 132). Impulsively, he packs a trunk, takes a train into central Paris and, in weather foul enough for England, hails a cab.… his mind conjured up a picture of London as an immense, sprawling, rain-drenched metropolis, stinking of soot and hot iron, and wrapped in a perpetual mantle of smoke and fog. He could see in imagination a line of dockyards stretching away into the distance, full of cranes, capstans, and bales of merchandise … Up above, trains raced by at full speed; and down in the underground sewers, others rumbled ... log in or subscribe to read full text