From Decadence in Huysmans and Barbey to Regeneration in Gide and Proust

ABSTRACT

After the Commune and the terrible defeat in the war of 1870, J.-K. Huysmans, Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly, and others created a kind of art based on hedonism, beauty, a refined style, and analogical (or metaphoric) structures. Flavoured with decay and death, their decadentism was fin-de-siècle, perhaps la fin du monde. In the midst of some posturing, J.-K. Huysmans and Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly called the importance of plot into question, while exploiting the growing controversy to introduce decadent works organized by embedded themes and images. Later writers from the same tradition, like Gide and Proust, adopted the decadents’ analogical structures and reintroduced traditional narrations, frequently opposing one to the other.

KEYWORDS:

• Decadent
• plot
• analogical structure
• image structure
• sequential structure
• Symbolists

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributor

Allan H. Pasco is the Hall Distinguished Professor of Nineteenth-Century Literature at the University of Kansas. Although he specializes in French culture, his work is always rooted in literature. His most recent of numerous books, Balzac, Literary Sociologist, was published by Palgrave Macmillan (2016). He has written many articles for highly regarded journals, from PMLA to the Modern Language Review to La Revue d’Histoire littéraire de la France.

Notes

1 This is a thought that recurs elsewhere. See, for example, Bourget’s essay on Flaubert (1893: 172).

2 And thus distinguish between what has been called ‘cultural decadence and décadence as an aesthetic term’ (Reed, 1985: 11). Calinescu summarizes, ‘The primary purpose of the Décadent was to scandalize’ (1993: 175).

3 While discussing Wilde’s masterpiece Reed states explicitly: ‘Like À rebours, Dorian Gray lacks a forceful plot line’ (1985: 38). In a passage quoted below, Huysmans said that he wished to suppress plot. Weir considers the way the ‘concept of decadence in Huysmans’s novel profoundly alters the conventional notion of character in fiction’ (1985: 84–88). Reed writes, moreover, ‘Chapter ten […] seems to dissolve the novel into a loose confederation of set pieces’ (1985: 32).

4 Émile Zola’s widely quoted judgment was expressed in his letter of 20 May 1884 to J.-K. Huysmans.

5 Pasco cites a number of related conclusions, which are far from uncommon (2009: 621–22).

6 While it seems true that Huysmans did not exploit the meanings of the individual gems, his explicit denial of having exploited the significance of flowers is, for example, erroneous. It is certainly not an accident that the lotus mentioned in the text made des Esseintes wonder whether it had ‘cette signification phallique que lui prêtent les cultes primordiaux de l’Inde […], ou représentait-il l’allégorie de la fécondité, le mythe Hindou de la vie?’ (Huysmans, 1981: 126–27). As Daniel Grojinowski points out, the ‘florescence’ and ‘scent’ of Jean Floressas des Esseintes is highly suggestive, as well (1996: 19–20). Nor is it likely that À rebours’s ‘terrible’ chapter six on sadism was written ‘sans intentions préconçues’ regarding the biblical commandment against lust. While there is no doubt that many in this period of symbolists like Gustave Moreau might have accumulated information on the lotus, few would share Huysmans’s knowledge revealed in the novel that ‘la citrouille [est] symbole de la fécondité’ (1981: 69). For a more detailed consideration of À rebours, see Pasco (2009: 621–44). Recent scholars seem less resistant to Huysmans’s symbolism. Goulet, for example, speaks of the ‘novel’s investment in the symbolic order’ (2017: 199)

7 See, also, Ziegler (2004).

8 For an example of such circumstantial evidence revealing a case of insufferable pride and blasphemy, see the consideration of ‘Le Plus Bel Amour de Don Juan’ (Pasco, 2010: 50–61).

9 J. C. Davies (1968: 40–51), Turnell (1959: 272–82), and Ullmann (1960: esp. 2–4, 24, 30), for example. See, also, the discussion of the introductory letter (Pasco, 1994: 103–06). Ullmann states that this extreme stylization, ‘whatever its advantages, is bound to affect verisimilitude’ (1960: 30). Ernst Bendz mentions the accumulation of imperfect subjunctives (1939: 561).

10 Thomas Riesen considers Ménalque in some detail in relation to such other allusions as to the Bible, to Rousseau, and to Nietzsche (2003: 467–84). Thomas Cazentre argues that Michel’s trips are an ironic rewriting of those of Aeneas (2003: 321) and that Virgil’s works are important hypotexts for L’Immoraliste (2003: 311–32). Anne-Sopie Angelo’s study poses Ménalque as Michel’s opposite, Michel being a narrator and Ménalque a reader, though she argues that Ménalque’s multiple allusions are perhaps most useful in inviting reflection on the relationship between language, morality, and action (2013).

11 The secondary literature offers many examples of the underlying analogical pattern: see, e.g. Doris Y. Kadish’s fascinating consideration of moral values (1985); Manfred Kusch’s analysis of gardens (1979); Ivy Dyckman’s initial work on onomastics (2003); Norma Halévy’s unravelling of a number of the images (1984); and Andrew Oliver’s exegesis of Gide’s allusion to Job (1979), among many others.

12 For a detailed analysis of La Symphonie pastorale, see Pasco (2002: 103–11).

13 Proust cites Barbey’s creations several times in À la recherche. Though he never explicitly mentions Huysmans, there is good reason to believe that he knew À rebours well. See Clogenson (1970) and Bélanger (2005).

14 A detailed consideration of this possibility occurs in Pasco (2010), ‘Proust’s Reader’.