On Decadence

Ok, hands up who’s heard of Joris-Karl Huysmans? Hmmm, well pretty good; I always knew you book bloggers were a highly cultured bunch. For anybody who isn’t sure, Huysmans was a late-nineteenth century French writer who has gained (and retained) quite a cult following for his sinister tales of depraved aesthetes. He made a name for himself as one of the major proponents of the artistic movement we know as decadence. Now decadent art always sounds pretty jolly to me, like a dodgy party that you might call at, but would probably not care to remain in until the bitter end. However, it’s a bit more depressing than that, being concerned with the decay of society, it’s fall from a position of strength and prosperity to a state of weakness and ruin. The 19^th century version was (as one might expect in the developing cult of the individual) a more personalised and stylised affair. Decadence was explored as a lifestyle choice for those of an immoral, excessive and idle persuasion. It featured dissipated, cynical anti-heroes, whose highly-strung natures, coupled with too much debauchery, had led them to feeble, hypersensitised and atrophied states. It’s often seen as the last gasp of romanticism, or rather, Romantics on Acid.

Huysmans was probably the most celebrated hothouse flower in the literary specimen tank. His work is experimental and encyclopaedic, famed for its esoteric vocabulary and its fearless descent into tortured states of mind. The writer Léon Blum, one of Huysmans peers, described his prose style as: ‘Continually dragging Mother image by the hair or the feet down the wormeaten staircase of Syntax.’ Huysmans was one of the few authors of that era to hold down a proper day job; for 32 years he worked as a civil servant for the French ministry of the Interior, in what might nowadays be understood as the administrative side of the vice squad. He found the work immensely tedious (where it didn’t serve his research purposes) but the hours were great. He didn’t have to turn up at his desk before 11, he was out at 5 and he spent the majority of the day drafting his novels at his desk.

The novel of his that I’ve recently finished reading is entitled Down Below and it caused quite a stir at the time of its publication for its portrayal of Satanism in late 1880s Paris. The narrative follows the fate of Durtal, a middle-aged, faintly surly bachelor, who is writing a biography of that great French villain, Gilles de Rais. Now Gilles de Rais has fascinated many a French theorist hoping to staple together a genealogy of evil. De Rais fought bravely alongside Joan of Arc until such time as he was released from his army service. At that point he retired to his ancestral seat, Chateau Tiffauges and started dabbling in alchemy and, eventually, the dark arts. In his obsessive pursuit for the philosopher’s stone, de Rais began to experiment with Satanic rituals, for which he needed the blood of children. There then began one of the most horrific local reigns of terror in French history, as over a 10 year period, de Rais and his consorts depleted every single town and hamlet in the vicinity of its children. The Catholic church and the state caught up with him eventually and he was tried and condemned to an ugly death. But the legend of Bluebeard was passed down alongside the myth of Joan of Arc as an extraordinary and baffling encounter of opposing morality tales.

So, Durtal is writing his biography, and at the same time, his literary pals are insisting that the Satanic rituals he is reading about are still taking place in the present day. Durtal is disinclined to agree, but then the mysterious Mme Chantelouve starts to write love letters to him, and their brief affair leads Durtal into a Parisian underworld whose existence he had never guessed at. This is on some levels a fascinating book, in a disturbing kind of way. But I won’t pretend to you that it’s an easy read or a satisfying one. Huysmans’s novels are for the connoisseur; like caviar and truffles they are queasily rich and best consumed in small doses. I was quite glad to come to the end of it, but equally I was very intrigued by it, and on reflection I realised that despite the potential emotional punch of his material, its very much a spiritual, intellectual book, rather than a narrative that appeals to the heart. One last thought: this might strike you as an anti-religious book, a profane and depraved text of horror. Well, it’s actually considered to be one of the significant books of the Catholic revival in France at that time. In its concern with salvation and damnation, its lurid content is understood as part of a profound Catholic concern with what Evelyn Waugh’s termed the Four Last Things: death, judgement, heaven and hell. All I can say is that it made me realise that if it’s a party I’m looking for, I’d be much better off picking up something by the Surrealists next time.