Joris Karl Huysmans (1848 - 1907)
Related: dandy - French literature - 1800s literature - Decadence (art movement) - Symbolism (art movement)
À Rebours/Against the Grain (1884) - Joris Karl Huysmans [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK] more ...
Works: À rebours (1884)
"Barbaric in its profusion, violent in its emphasis, wearying in its splendor, it is - especially in regard to things seen - extraordinarily expressive, with all the shades of a painter's palette. Elaborately and deliberately perverse, it is in its very perversity that Huysmans' work - so fascinating, so repellent, so instinctively artificial - comes to represent, as the work of no other writer can be said to do, the main tendencies, the chief results, of the Decadent movement in literature." (Arthur Symons quoted in "The Decadent Movement in Literature", 1893)
Photo of J.K. Huysmans via here. [Jan 2005]
Biography
Joris-Karl Huysmans (February 5, 1848 - May 12, 1907) was a French novelist.
He was born in Paris. Huysmans started his literary career as a Naturalist writer with texts such as Marthe, Histoire d'une fille (1876). His novel À rebours (Against the Grain) (1884) broke from Naturalism and became the ultimate example of "decadent" literature. À rebours gained further notoriety as an exhibit during the trials of Oscar Wilde in 1895, during which the prosecutor referred to the novel as a "sodomitical" book. In 1891, the publication of La-Bas (Down There) attracted considerable attention for its depiction of Satanism in late 1880s France. His later works En Route (1895) and La Cathédrale (1898) are influenced by Catholicism. Huysmans was also known for his art criticism: L'Art moderne (1883) and Certains (1889). He was a founding member of the Académie Goncourt.
Joris-Karl Huysmans was interred in the Cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris, France. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joris-Karl_Huysmans [Jan 2005]
La Bas (Down There) (1891) - Joris Karl Huysmans
La Bas (Down There) (1891) - Joris Karl Huysmans [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Product Description:
At the novel’s center is Durtal, a writer obsessed with the life of one of the blackest figures in history, Gilles de Rais-child murderer, sadist, necrophile and practitioner of all the black arts. The book’s authentic, extraordinarily detailed descriptions of the Black Mass have never been surpassed.
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