JORIS-KARL HUYSMANS A REBOURS PDF

The infamous inspiration for the novel which slowly corrupts Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray is translated by Robert Baldick with an introduction by. : Against Nature: A Rebours (Oxford World’s Classics) ( ): Joris-Karl Huysmans, Nicholas White, Margaret Mauldon: Books. Against Nature by Joris-Karl Huysmans is a novel in which very little happens; Huysmans’ great A Rebour (perhaps better translated Against the Grain), is a.

It does not really give him pleasure, it is just a way from him to avoid the world.

I shall have contributed, to the best of my ability, to the making of a scoundrel, one enemy the more for the hideous society which is bleeding us white.

The closest you can get to an art gallery of perfume is a wander in Liberty’s fragrance hall or similar in other major world cities but things are always there for the purpose of being sold. Lists with This Book. As I scanned the pale grey italic font joris–karl this one, the names Jekyll and Hyde jumped out at me from the top of page thirty.

Retrieved from ” https: It will appeal to anyone with an appreciation for good literature, art, and music. Admittedly, the literary discussions, more removed from immediate detail, leave me a little colder. Nature had had her day I can’t fault Huysmans, though, for the superhuman patience and diligence it must have taken to write such a book in such unbelievable detail.

He then cancels his trip and returns home, convinced that only disillusion would await him if he were to follow through with his plans.

Against Nature

The unexamined life is not worth living–which is why it destroys him. The references in Dorian Gray to specific chapters are deliberately inaccurate. So I usually just spend my time thinking about des Esseintes and Huysmans, rather th If the hero of this novel had a more anglo-friendly name, it would be the byword for hyper-neurotic aesthete dandies, as Sherlock Holmes is in the world of detective. See all books by Joris-Karl Huysmans. With his sneering isolationism, extreme sureness of taste and cruel streak, never mind the home full of fascinating things, and Schopenhauer fandom the protagonist reminds me a great deal of an ex from seven years ago.

In hindsight, it is easy to see that Huysmans is on the road back to Rome. Oftentimes, he’ll box himself up in snooty prejudices and hypocritical ideologies, but occasionally one will recognize measures of contemporary thought within his reminisces and desires, one of the most surprising instances occurring when he dwells upon the issue of abortion.

Des Esseintes’ world is completely superficial, contrived. Motte, Dean De La In one of the book’s most surrealistic episodes, he has gemstones set in the shell of a tortoise.

Views Read Edit View history. At other times he will think on qualities of pieces that at his point in time had not yet been composed, accrediting his thoughts that those who concern themselves with certain ideals will not find themselves content with the current age.

But at a certain point in the book, Huysmans makes his character halt and take stock, as if the author feels he has gone too far with the experiment. Perhaps not unlike that des Esseintes experiences when confronted with the noise and bustle of Paris.

And what tends to define them when they are alive is a near-complete lack of recognition. They have an internal motivation, a philosophy which tells them what is worthwhile and what is not, and why.

Mar 04, MJ Nicholls rated it really liked it Shelves: Well worth it, especially for the plush, precise, unexpected turns of the language, multi-phrase pile-ups on the Trans-European Translation Expressway. They do not point to some grander philosophy or understanding.

Against Nature (A Rebours) by Joris-Karl Huysmans | : Books

Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. His early works had been Naturalist in style, being realistic depictions of the drudgery and squalor of working- jpris-karl lower-middle-class life in Paris.

Oct 31, Sinem A. However, DNFing gives me such deep lingering doubts and guilt that I end up putting the book back on my to-reads and starting all over again.

Although my own life and level of wealth differs greatly from Des Esseintes, I can see part of myself in his immersion in the worlds of art and literature and his absolute revulsion for much of the general run of society and its coarse values as I write this I have a mental picture of a smirking potbellied husband and his obese wife in their white pants and gold chains waddling into a Las Vegas casino.

He becomes an eccentric dandy. Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. I felt sure I had found my unique angle, oblique as it seemed at first viewing. Either this novel is to your taste or it is not. Novels by Joris-Karl Huysmans. Thus it was difficult to like this anymore than I did. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. Huysmans’s former mentor, Zola, was less impressed and gave the book a lukewarm reception.

A French example of superfluous man. Richard Ellmann describes the effect of the book in his biography of Oscar Wilde:.

The last of a Hapsburg-esque line of ancestors, he’s a misanthropic aristocrat ailing from generations of inbreeding and a life of excess and immobility, warped from being forever consumed with his own thoughts and nothing else. His attempted iconoclasm becomes mere contrarianism.