In English the title was translated as either 'Against Nature' or 'Against the Grain', which to me are two very different titles. It occurred to me that this tension within the meaning of the title itself is a good indication of the contents of the novel. We are introduced to a French aristocrat by the name of Des Esseintes who is of feeble stamina and who might be called a dandy in British terms. We follow the young man as he slowly retreats out of everyday life into a decadent seclusion of his own design. At times opulent in its descriptions of Des Esseintes' mansion, at times excruciatingly detailed and accurate in Des Esseintes' analysis of his tastes, desires and repulsions, the novel lures the reader into an artificial world of what seems to be luxury. Page after page Des Esseintes delves deeper into his own mind. He collects rare specimens of everything and if there does not exist a rarity he believes he should have, he has it created from his own detailed drawings and directions. As a side note, most of the objects and interiors the young man envisions were based on actual examples of dandyish extravaganza.

The reader is slowly included into the artificial world of Des Esseintes and slowly the alternative reality appears more and more sold. Instead the young man's health deteriorates and his mind attempts to grapple with his own choices. Inevitably he wavers between stepping back into Beau Monde or forever lock himself away into an imaginary world. He goes back and forth and makes several attempts to take either extreme leaps. In one famous scene Des Esseintes is well on his way to visit London when after thinking over the plan in his mind he decides that in his mind he has already read and imagined so much of Britain's capital that he can only be disappointed by traveling there. Instead he returns to his mansion. Ultimately his private physician offers him the choice: go back into the world and regain your physical health, or retreat into your own mind and suffer.

The author, Joris-Karl Huysmans, wrote the novel in a time when literature's standard was realism devoid of symbolism or misplaced fantasy. Huysmans received both high acclaim from writers such as Oscar Wilde, but also derision from esteemed authors like Zola, who was Huysmans' mentor and inspiration. Perhaps this book can be seen as the ultimate anti-novel in the sense that it does not feature any trappings of a book designed to entertain. If you want to convey a point or principle then you either write it with great entertainment value but your meaningful message might not be remembered, or you write the work in a serious tone, in which case it will be remembered but not widely read. Huysmans took the extreme side of those polar opposites and goes beyond somber writing and confronts the reader head on by presenting the world of Des Esseintes from a solipsistic standpoint in which as a reader you have no other safety net than your own experiences and opinions. Instead of taking the Disney approach of embedding a clear takeaway moral message, the novel's aim is to have the reader make decisions on how to travel through life and in that sense it is the paragon of letting the reader take away whatever usefulness can be derived, even if this means rejecting the novel. ( )

Joris-Karl Huysmans’ book, ‘Against Nature,’ is a strange book where nothing happens. The book follows the life of a jaded aristocratic gentleman, Des Esseintes, who withdraws from society to create and lead a solitary life. People and life bore him, and nothing interested him for long. The book opens with a few pages about his parents, who exist in the shadows, as do their long-suffering, silent servants. Our hero experimented with different fields of study, socialized with various groups of people, had sex with many women and then rejected everyone and everything, sold his estates to live off the interest income, and withdrew into a solitary life.
Des Esseintes gave himself up to a decadent life of studied boredom, flitting from subject to subject, art object to art object, sensation to sensation, not allowing his servants to disturb him. He lived a nocturnal life, with strict meal routines and habits, not allowing a change unless the fancy took him. Once, he went on a trip but cut it short because the unfamiliar and forgotten interaction with people troubled him.
In the end, his morbid fancies overtook him, called a doctor, ignored his advice, and treated himself with an enema.
The book ends with no definite end, with Des Esseinte’s life as before, we must assume, until his Death.
Joris-Karl Huysmans published this book in 1884 when society produced several young people pursuing a decadent life, aimless, wandering, stumbling until Death finds them. Nothing defines them because nothing about them or their life sticks out. When I look around me and consider how people bury their noses in their mobile phones today and submerse their souls in the doubtful pleasure of social media, I wonder if he was prescient.
The book is strange, moving along slowly, hypnotizing the reader as they wait for the drama or a dramatic finish. “Against Nature” (I read it is almost impossible to translate the French title) is a book about people who live lives against humanity’s social instinct. It is a book about someone living in a private Hell while imagining living in a private Heaven. ( )

It took me a while to get into 'A Rebours', which was recommended by a friend for whom it is a bible. At first, it seemed like a hagiographic magazine piece such as you find in Vogue and Country Living, obsessively chronicling the lifestyle of some figure, treating them as a function of their possessions. I became much less dismissive when it occurred to me that I was being vastly hypocritical. 'A Rebours' is a practically plotless novel in which the main character is the elaborately furnished house of Des Esseintes, a sickly and decadent aristocrat. My hypocrisy lies in the fact that I've spent quite a bit of time mentally designing and furnishing just such a house to fit my own taste. Like that of Des Esseintes, this perfect building would be a solitary, entirely selfish residence. Of course, in this novel he actually furnishes the place and retires to it alone, seeking an ideal lifestyle which turns out not to suit him after all. That would probably also be the case if I ever had the money and time to do the same with my imagined house.

Lest it seem like I'm unjustifiably making this novel all about me, that is in fact how Des Esseintes characterises his enjoyment of literature. He seeks authors who think in the same manner he does and express his own feelings and perspectives on the world. Thus, I identified with Des Esseintes digestive troubles (the nausea of hunger being too often succeeded by the slightly different nausea of having eaten something, for instance, although thank goodness I am not so afflicted as him) and with his preference for travelling abroad through reading rather than by actually leaving the house. On the other hand, his misogyny, religious fixation, pervasive ennui, and fascination with London chimed with me much less.

Most of the book is devoted to detailed description and analysis of the volumes making up his library, in addition to descriptions of perfumes, plants, and furniture. Once I became used to this catalogue, I came to appreciate it. The edition I read helped me to appreciate the context of these lists of items, as it includes an interesting introduction, helpful notes, and, best of all, some contemporary reviews of 'A Rebours'. As I know little of the decadence movement, these reviews were a fascinating insight into the shocked and violent response the book produced. The introduction also included the amusing fact that the author, Huysmans, was a lifelong civil servant. Whilst he was writing this and other ground-breaking, controversial fiction, he was also a devoted bureaucrat. This delights me, especially as a contrast to the chaotic lives of other decadent writers, such as Baudelaire and Rimbaud. Moreover, it lends an ironic cast to the protagonist of 'A Rebours' as a mouthpiece of the author, given that Des Esseintes is utterly useless to society and evidently would not know work if it punched him in the face and stole his perfume collection.

These days, 'A Rebours' doesn't seem intrinsically shocking so much as eccentric and bizarre. The messages it conveys remain oblique and complicated, too difficult for me to analyse properly. Nonetheless, I read within it an indictment of the emptiness of materialism. In the 21st century, it is all too tempting to believe advertising that tells us that possessions are the route to happiness. Indeed, possessions seem increasingly to be equated with personality and identity. Whilst this is an enormous oversimplification of the perspective given to Des Esseintes, the novel still seems to me to have relevance to the intense consumerism of today. On the other hand, it also reminded me of the desire (perhaps peculiar to certain introverts) to create a perfect retreat from the world, not just for aesthetic satisfaction but in pursuit of the illusion that your mind can be truly unencumbered in such a place.

Finally, I took particular pleasure from the extracts from Des Esseintes favourite poetry in chapter 14. Perhaps everything just sounds more beautiful to me in French, but that chapter has inspired me to seek out more of Mallarmé's poems. 'A Rebours' also has the rare distinction of not reminding me of any other novels whilst I read it. It still seems unique 130 years after it was written. ( )

‘Do unto others as you would not have them do unto you.’

A gloriously decadent piece of literature that spreads its rancour across all five senses. However, it certainly isn’t as evil as Wilde made it out to be - Des Esseintes is just a feeble misanthrope clinging onto antiquity. This work kind of struck me as a 19th century version of Ellis’ American Psycho to the extent that there are pages upon pages of vacuous minutiae concerning exotic plants, meticulous lighting, various perfumes etc. - I will be the first to admit that that is a crude analogy, but it works.

The exaggerated advocacy for the artificial over Nature found in here was also appreciated, serving as a spit in the face against the exsanguinated prose of Naturalism that was all the rage at the time of the book’s inception. It’s difficult to know whether to take it as Huysman’s own bitter condemnation of the Naturalist school of thought he had just left or as a fully fledged, detached satire. Either way it’s worth the price of admission just for the literary criticism of Baudelaire, Mallarmé and Poe that is strewn throughout. On top of these three figures there are also a whole litany of forgotten Christian and secular authors, giving ample material to the prospective reader to create a reading list that’s well off of the beaten path. ( )

"Infatti, quando il tempo in cui l'uomo di talento si trova forzato a vivere è stupido e piatto, l'artista, anche a propria insaputa, è assillato dalla nostalgia di un altro secolo".

Ci sono libri che giungono come meteore nel percorso di un lettore e così è per me ora con À rebours, di fatto ignorato fino a ora e arrivato quasi per caso. Non solo decadentismo: un viaggio che potrebbe essere senza fine (in fondo il libro è breve, purtroppo) dalla superficie alla profondità delle cose, in cerca dell'essenza, guidati dalla mania, dal dettaglio. Quanto diavolo in questo libro! Un caleidoscopio di parole, una continua sorpresa. Un libro assolutamente fuori moda, che ricorda quanto manca un po' di Des Esseintes alla nostra vita quotidiana. ( )