Books › À rebours
À rebours
First published 1972 · 483 pages
A plotless, suffocatingly lush descent into the ultimate aesthetic obsession and aristocratic decay.
What it feels like
Reading this novel feels less like following a narrative and more like being locked inside a velvet-lined jewel box that is slowly running out of oxygen. It is a meandering, plotless catalog of sensory extremes, where every page drips with hyper-detailed, ornate prose describing perfumes, exotic flowers, and obscure literature. The mood is intensely claustrophobic yet undeniably opulent, capturing the spiritual exhaustion and neurotic obsession of a mind retreating entirely from the natural world into artificial perfection. It is a deeply decadent experience, demanding patience and a love for lush, almost suffocating aesthetics. Readers who crave atmosphere over action, and who are fascinated by the psychology of absolute alienation and sensory overload, will find themselves mesmerized by this strange, glittering monument to ennui.
- Mood
- claustrophobic
- opulent
- languid
- artificial
- decaying
- Tone
- erudite
- misanthropic
- obsessive
- cynical
- neurotic
- Pace
- meandering
- Themes
- sensory overload · aestheticism · aristocratic decay · isolation and alienation · the artificial vs. the natural · spiritual ennui
- The writing
- Lush, jeweled, and hyper-detailed, dripping with exotic vocabulary and suffocatingly ornate sensory descriptions.
- The arc
- A retreat into absolute aesthetic isolation that slowly curdles into physical and spiritual exhaustion, forcing a desperate return to reality.
- Who it's for
- Readers who crave atmosphere over action and are fascinated by decadent aesthetics, sensory excess, and the psychology of the ultimate misanthropic antihero.
Content notes
- animal cruelty
- mental illness
- misanthropy
- period-typical misogyny
About the book
À rebours (French pronunciation: [a ʁ(ə).buʁ]; translated Against Nature or Against the Grain) is an 1884 novel by the French writer Joris-Karl Huysmans. The narrative centers on a single character: Jean des Esseintes, an eccentric, reclusive, ailing aesthete. The last scion of an aristocratic family, Des Esseintes loathes nineteenth-century bourgeois society and tries to retreat into an ideal artistic world of his own creation. The narrative is almost entirely a catalogue of the neurotic Des Esseintes's aesthetic tastes, musings on literature, painting, and religion, and hyperaesthetic sensory experiences.
À rebours contains many themes that became associated with the Symbolist aesthetic. In doing so, it broke from Naturalism and became the ultimate example of "Decadent" literature, inspiring works such as Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). In his preface for the 1903 publication of the novel, Huysmans wrote that he had the idea to portray a man "soaring upwards into dream, seeking refuge in illusions of extravagant fantasy, living alone, far from his century, among memories of more congenial times, of less base surroundings... each chapter became the sublimate of a specialism, the refinement of a different art; it became condensed into an essence of jewellery, perfumes, religious and secular literature, of profane music and plain-chant." (Wikipedia)
Description from Open Library.
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La nauséeSartre, Jean-Paul; Translated by Robert BaldickA visceral, diary-style descent into the overwhelming, suffocating realization that existence is entirely without inherent meaning.
NanaZola, EmileA glittering, feverish descent into the opulent rot of a society consuming itself through desire.
Chef-d'oeuvre inconnuBalzac, Honore deA philosophical and tragic exploration of the fine line between transcendental genius and absolute failure in the pursuit of art.
L'immoralisteAndré GideA sun-drenched, feverish confession of a man shedding his moral constraints in pursuit of absolute, destructive freedom.