A wealthy Parisian aristocrat retreats from society to create an artificial paradise of art, literature, and sensory experiences in this influential 19th-century decadent novel. Huysmans' fiction explores the extremes of aesthetic obsession and the rejection of natural life in favor of cultivated artifice.
The Floressas Des Esseintes, to judge by the various portraits preserved in the Chateau de Lourps, had originally been a family of stalwart troopers and stern cavalry men. Closely arrayed, side by side, in the old frames which their broad shoulders filled, they startled one with the fixed gaze of their eyes, their fierce moustaches and the chests whose deep curves filled the enormous shells of their cuirasses. These were the ancestors. There were no portraits of their descendants and a wide breach existed in the series of the faces of this race. Only one painting served as a link to connect the past and present--a crafty, mysterious head with haggard and gaunt features, cheekbones punctuated with a comma of paint, the hair overspread with pearls, a painted neck rising stiffly from the fluted ruff. In this representation of one of the most intimate friends of the Duc d'Epernon and the Mar…Continue reading →
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