Against Nature: A New Translation of 'a Rebours' (Penguin Classics)

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A Rebour is indeed the poisonous/liberating guide book that Dorian Gray has bound in various colours to suit his moods; the book that Symons described as “the breviary of the decadence. It is the misanthropy of the problem child who does things he knows he mustn't do--not because he enjoys them, but out of a desire to betray the image of authority he has created in his mind. However it is important to recognise Huysmans's debt to Baudelaire, as many of the themes and motifs of his book - the egotism, perversity, artificial sensations, finding beauty in 'le mal', the sense of ennui and fatigue - were formulated by Baudelaire in Les fleurs du mal and Spleen de Paris. He is not pursuing his own desires, he is not following his own thoughts and needs, and so he is never satisfied. This cerebral clinic where, vivisecting in a stifling atmosphere, that spiritual surgeon became, as soon as his attention flagged, a prey to an imagination which evoked, like delicious miasmas, somnambulistic and angelic apparitions, was to Des Esseintes a source of unwearying conjecture.

Là-bas (1891), En route (1895) and La cathédrale (1898) are a trilogy that feature Durtal, a character on a spiritual journey who eventually converts to Catholicism. That's why they don’t want to look like other people, or listen to their music, they don’t want to be advertised to or pandered to. The commercial success of this book enabled Huysmans to retire from the civil service and live on his royalties. But there’s something about this cult-favorite of decadent prose that is so intriguing and fascinating.Illustrating his preference for artifice over nature (a characteristic Decadent theme), Des Esseintes chooses real flowers that apparently imitate artificial ones. He wanted, in short, a work of art both for what it was in itself and for what it allowed him to bestow on it; he wanted to go along with it and on it, as if supported by a friend or carried by a vehicle, into a sphere where sublimated sensations would arouse within him an unexpected commotion, the causes of which he would strive to patiently and even vainly to analyse.

Being stuck with Des Esseintes for the whole duration of the book made a change from having so characters that you forget who's who. He decides to collect exotic flowers, which resemble diseased organs, alien entities, and strange sculpture. His work expressed his deep pessimism, [2] which had led him to the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer. Huysman--just as effectively as the Goncourts or Dreiser--knows how to accumulate a wealth of detail to convey the physical reality of the situation he wishes to describe. Gautier described Decadence as a mode which 'endeavours to express the most inexpressible thoughts, the vaguest and most fleeting contours of form, that listens, with a view to rendering them, to the subtle confidences of neurosity, to the confessions of aging lust turning to depravity, and to the odd hallucinations of fixed ideas passing into mania.

Most purchases from business sellers are protected by the Consumer Contract Regulations 2013 which give you the right to cancel the purchase within 14 days after the day you receive the item. Dopo un libro come questo al suo autore non resta altro che scegliere tra la bocca di una pistola e i piedi della croce. At the very moment that Wilde was falling in with social patterns, he was confronted with a book which even in its title defied them.