Against Nature by J.K. Huysmans

How This Works

For this read along, and all read alongs, I’ll provide a roadmap with recaps and thoughts along the way. I’ll outline a rough plan/guide for reading the book, so that, if you want, you can follow it. Hopefully this will be enough encouragement/support/structure for you to make it to the finish line.

The said, here’s the plan for reading Against Nature:

• Week 1 (chapters 1-6)

• Week 2 (chapters 7-12)

• Week 3 (chapters 13-16)

Background Info

This book was first published in 1884 and marked a shift away from the naturalists (Huysmans felt that the movement wasn’t, in fact, enacting social change), creating the decadent movement. Huysmans worked for 30 years in the French civil service with his early works expressing his religious pessimism before his later-in-life conversion to Catholicism. 

The only real character in the book, Duc Jean Floressas Des Esseintes, is base on real-life dandy Robert de Montesquiou (Proust also based Charlus on him) and is “…a frail young man of thirty, nervous and anemic, with hollow cheeks, blue eyes as cold as steel, a straight nose with flaring nostrils, and papery, slender hands” (6). Both parents are dead by the time he’s 17. He’s smart but not good in school, uninterested in religion, bored of family and other young men/women, eventually gaining contempt for humanity at large (“composed of scoundrels and imbecils” (11)). He dreams of a “refined solitude” (12) and buys a small house in Fontenay-aux-Roses to burrow “into some hushed retreat where the relentless turmoil of life would be deadened.” (14)

Chapter Recaps

So far (chapters 1-3) all of Des Esseintes actions are about correcting or embellishing nature, which is, to his mind, boring and has run its course…it offers no new ideas/scenery. Humanity has to go beyond nature and is able to do so through decadence, to experience new things, to create new ways of thinking, to live in new ways beyond the limits of social class/norms. Each chapter presents a new facet of this, hyper focusing on a room or furniture or a book collection. It’s exciting to see what’s around the corner, and I’m really enjoying the ride so far…I look forward to each new indulgence (both authorial and character).

Ch1: He has a cage of small silver wire that houses a cricket. He exercises carnal desires to “avenge” his miserable childhood, has a pulpit from which he gives sermons on dandyism to his tailor and boot maker, and throws a party to mark “the demise of his virility” (21) where everything is black, even the food, before decided to retreat to solitude, staying up all night, designing the house to intensify artificial light, studying color, to sustain his nocturnal lifestyle: “…a harmony exists between the sensual nature of a truly artistic individual and the colour which his eyes perceive as most vivid and significant.” (23) He creates a study with many ecclesiastical touches and puts three poems of Baudelaire under display.

Ch2: He hires on two servants who live in the top floor of the house. He pads the floor and greases hinges so that he doesn’t have to see or hear them. He builds his dining room to be like the interior of a ship. The only window from outside has an aquarium in front of it, and he dyes the water to filter the color of light. Hallways are also padded for sound and smells. Has a copy of Poe’s only stand-alone novel. He believes imagined experience are as powerful as actual experiences: “In short, artifice seemed to Des Esseintes the distinctive mark of human genius.” (33) or “…we can state without contradiction that in his chosen sphere man has done as well as the God in whom he continues to believe.” (35) 

Ch3: Here we get a tour of a book shelf dedicated to Latin works, wherein Des Esseintes rails against Virgil and other Greek and Roman authors for being too boring and predictable, basically discounting all classic literary works as tepid and worthless, except for Petronius and the Satyricon which he loves for its acknowledgment of the everyday, the inclusion of grime and vulgarity. He admires Tertullian more for his life than works. He also likes Commodian of Gaza for his use of rude, plain language, and Claudian whose works have “a powerful breath of inspiration.” (48) He holds up pagan authors for their continued use of Latin in less formal ways all the way through the fifth century until the fall of Rome and so-called Western world (thereafter the language was confined to cloisters).

Alright, continuing the theme of humanity/artifice outpacing nature and art-as-escape-from-reality we get to the next three chapters (4-6). There’s the infamous gilded and jewel-encrusted tortoise as well as great descriptions of some artists of the day that Huysmans clearly liked, and Des Esseintes begins remembering his past, in this case his attempted moral corruption of a poor boy. Yet again we see nods to the cloistered/Christian life with Des Esseintes fairly weakly trying to bury his need for faith and belief. It seems clear to me that this is something that Huysmans was struggling with himself. I’m still really enjoying this ride…the lavish descriptions of religious torment particularly standing out.  

Ch4: A stone worker drops off a tortoise whose gilded shell has now also been inset with jewels (only obscure stones of course), made to look like a floral arrangement…all so the tortoise can provide light (through reflection/refraction) and extravagance for the room. It snows outside, and Des Esseintes drinks liquor, comparing each type of booze to the sound of an instrument, conducting liquid symphonies as he drinks. He then has a flash of remembrance of getting a tooth pulled and the terrible pain thereafter only to come back to reality and find that the jewel-laden tortoise has died.

Ch5: He hunts down paintings from Gustavo Moreau so that he can enter the world of his paintings and remove himself from contemporary life. He then describes the paintings (Salomé and the beheading of John the Baptist as well as The Apparition) in which “…the erotic excitement and terror of mankind were apparent…” (77). Of “…divine abominations consummated with abandon and without hope.” (78) He has prints of engravings from Jan Luyken in his drawing room that depict religious persecution and torture and more dark images from Bresdin and Odilon Redon “…a particular type of the fantastic, born of sickness and delirium.” (83) He has a giant sketch of Christ (done by El Greco) hung in his bedroom: “There were, in his opinion, only two ways of arranging a bed-chamber: either make it an alcove of the senses, a setting for nocturnal pleasures; or instead for sleep and solitude, a retreat for thought, an oratory of sorts.” (85) And the rest of the chapter describes his bedroom decor (saffron silk and purple rosewood on the walls, white holland on the ceiling, and red squares for carpet with prayer stool for bedside table and church pew opposite that…clearly longing for and admiring the cloistered life, trying to make sense of and escape the chaos and inanity/insanity of the outside world). 

Ch6: He sits and ruminates on memories of a friend getting married and then divorced, of meeting a young boy (Auguste) whose life story is boring, taking said boy to a whore house because he wants to habituate the boy to “…pleasures which he cannot afford” (94) so as to have contributed  “…to the creation of a scoundrel, one more enemy of this odious society that holds us all to ransom.” (95) His logic is that he’s doing nothing more than the educational system “…the more we try to polish the intelligence and refine the nervous system of the poor and unfortunate, the more we develop in them seeds of moral suffering and hatred.” (96) 

Continuing on then with chapters 7-9…what shows through here is a man who struggles with his need/belief in transgression(s) and a spiritual battle (particularly brought on by his remembrance of childhood) as it is put up against the balm of art. 

Ch7: Des Esseintes is flooded with more memories, the deluge of art and literature unable to stop his past from coming forth again, shifting now to his boyhood and time with Jesuit Fathers and their impact on him: “he felt no desire to supplicate a God whose mercy seemed to him highly problematical…” (102) Yet still he feels the pull back to the church in how it has helped saved art and language, so he wrestles with central issues of faith and corporeality “…under the influence of Gustave Moreau hanging on the walls.” (107) He waffles between Catholicism and Schopenhauer’s pessimism. He starts suffering pains all over his body, which were once under control. This makes him unable to sink into his imagination, so he sets out once more to work on the house (filling it with “hot-house flowers”).

Ch8: He talks about and ranks various flowers. Having once owned many fake flowers, he now wants real flowers that appear fake instead. So he goes to green houses and buys a bunch of random plants and has them delivered to his house and catalogues each one (including carnivorous nepenthes), noting how man now controls nature (through crossbreeding) to produce artifice “…he smooths over her half-hewn building blocks, finishes off her rude sketches…” (123) and “…the only true artists are horticulturalists.” (124) He falls asleep and dreams of an anthropomorphic syphilis that then shifts into some sort of plant-woman creature that threateningly embraces him before he wakes up, horrified. 

Ch9: He has recurring nightmares…his neurosis grows and he no longer gets joy from all the plants he bought, most of which start dying. He looks at Goya’s and Rembrandt’s art to distract himself, hating that they’ve gained popularity, revealing himself as an early elitist/hipster. He pokes fun at Dickens. He dreams of carnal sin and eats bonbons, the smell of which makes him remember a mistress, Miss Urania, an American circus performer/acrobat. He views her as male and is disappointed when she is not as masculine in interest (socially or sexually) as he’d hoped. He next remembers a ventriloquist mistress. He had made a small sphinx and chimera for her to bring to life, whose dialogue would allow him “…to pass beyond the confines of thought, to grope after certainty without ever reaching it, in the misty regions beyond the bounds of art!” (141) Finally he recalls a young man/lover who makes him long for “…raptures that were either celestial or accursed, but equally ruinous in the squandering of vital fluids they entailed.” (144) A most horny chapter. 

In chapters 10-12 we see that Des Esseintes clearly values the naturalist’s work (through his fascination and action taken from reading Dickens) but he ultimately places more value and reality on imagination which serves to supplant that of actual experience (here is the direct influence on the surrealists taking shape). 

Ch10: He immerses himself in perfumes and the world of scent, amazed at how closely the artificial scents can match their natural counterparts “…the art of the perfumer is to complete the natural odor…” (148). He begins to learn the syntax of scent, comparing this process to that of learning and appreciating language, training his sense of smell to a high degree, mixing various scents together to form a new perfume (the aromas taking him through various seasons and places). He then remembers a time back in Pantin when “…the horror of existence is riding high and the spleen reigns invincible…” (159) before fainting. 

Ch11: He reads Dickens again and is enraptured by it to the point of leaving his home indefinitely to visit England. He stops at a bookstore in Paris to pickup a guidebook. He then goes to a bar and imagines the people there as characters from a Dickens story. He sits and eats as it rains outside…mentally transporting himself to England, convinced that this imaginary version is better than even the real thing “…I must have been out of my senses even to think of renouncing all my convictions, ignoring the pliant offerings of my imagination, and believing like the vetoes simpleton in the necessity or point or advantage of a trip abroad.” (181) Having thus convinced himself, he returns home. 

Ch12: Back at home, he is refreshed by his imaginative trip and once agains looks over his books, appreciating their various materials and fonts. He expresses his admiration for Baudelaire (here, here!). His library is divided into ordinary literature and catholic literature, and he describes some of both, giving a spirited review to various catholic author’s works, noting the “…two currents of Catholicism which eventually run into one: mysticism and sadism.” (206) while comparing works of Barbey d’ Aurevilly and De Sade (even referencing the Black Mass), particularly favoring Barbey. 

In the final chapters 13-16, Des Esseintes expresses the need for art to be “…the medium for a decrepit civilization which — regardless of the period — requires new meanings to express its needs, new turns of phrase, a new mould for both words and sentences.” (236) This is the heart of what Huysmans is trying to do with this book. He struggles with the idea that society is so controlled and unbalanced by the wealthy power structure that we’ll be stuck in mediocrity, life without real meaning and tradition, questioning “Could it be that this slime would go on spreading and drowning the old world in its pestilential morass, in which nothing new grew except seeds of iniquity and harvests of shame?” (287) All too prescient for something published in 1884. 

Ch13: It’s hot, and he is nauseous because of the heat, so he drinks liquor made by monks (Abbey of Fécamp) to cool off. He observes some school children eating sandwiches and is inspired to then also have his servants make him the same sandwich (which he is unable to eat after all). He rails against having children (the world is too terrible) and military service. He then remembers his time in Paris and laments the closing of licensed brothels in favor of more commercial taverns “This imbecilic sentimentality, combined with a ferocious commercialism, clearly represented the spirit of the age…” (227)

Ch14: He drinks stewed meat juice to get better and then yet again talks about his books and how tastes change (he no longer likes Balzac) lamenting that “…when the age in which a man of talent is condemned to live is dull and stupid, the artist is haunted, perhaps unconsciously, by a nostalgic yearning for another age.” (234). La Faustin by de Goncourt is one of Des Esseintes’ favorite books. He goes on to list contemporary authors he likes (Paul Verlaine, Tristan Corbière, Théodore Hannon, and Stéphane Mallarmé). He then praises Poe and Mallarmé yet again. 

Ch15: He ruminates on church music from his youth, comparing less favorable newer forms to those of antiquity. He loves Schubert’s Lieder. He is sick with a nervous disorder and is prescribed a treatment of peptone enemas from his doctor, which Des Esseintes loves because it subverts the need to eat “…what decisive slap in the face of old Mother Nature, whose monotonous demands would be forever silenced!” (272). He regains his ability to eat food and thinks himself healed, but the doctor tells him he must move back to Paris and enjoy life like everybody else if he is to be cured of his condition.

Ch16: Facing his move back to the distractions of civilization, he debates, yet again, a life among the cloistered but can’t square up his own questions and the degradation of the church and its rituals, commenting on how ritual materials have been substituted for lesser versions wherein we get the substitution of potato starch instead of wheat for the Eucharist and the great quote “Clearly, God must refuse to come down to earth in the form of potato starch.” (283) He extols the confrontational value/necessity of art (against its then current lack of spirit) as he resigns himself, hopeless, to rejoin a world that he hates. 

Conclusion

And that’s a wrap for Against Nature. I very much enjoyed it. It was a cool window into some of what was going on in France in the last 1800s, and it remains relevant in its striving for art to break free from its current constraints and to enact social change…for it to be boundless and free. It’s easy to see how this then influenced the surrealists (and novels like Dorian Gray). 

It’s also a window into what Huysmans was grappling with, his need for religion battling against the skepticism of the day, his interest in weird, dark, esoteric things driving him away from people but wanting to connect and dive deeply into those things especially as he connects them to the darkness of Catholicism (God is vengeful). 

Mostly I feel grateful for being able to escape to the time and place and ridiculousness of the book because it shows how necessary yet insane these higher pursuits are in a world with so much strife…and maybe that’s why it has endured for so long: It’s a haven for the weird and ridiculous and ostentatious and philosophical and spiritual and earthly…a place for other outsiders to gather and warm their hands and feet.