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Bettie's Books
A Stuga On the Cusp of the Orust Riviera, tucked away next to a hobbit hole in the woods.
Against Nature by Joris-Karl Huysmans
bookshelves: winter-20152016, jan-2016-litricher, e-book, france, books-about-books-and-book-shops, lit-crit, lit-richer, misanthropic, moral-high-ground, nihilism, satire, art-forms, beautifully-put, bellybutton-mining, cult-yah, doo-lally, feckless-procrastination, flowery-language, religion, roman-catholic, amusing, whats-it-all-about-alfie, whimsy
Read from December 27 to 31, 2015
Description: Des Esseintes is a decadent, ailing aristocrat who retreats to an isolated villa where he indulges his taste for luxury and excess. Veering between nervous excitability and debilitating ennui, he gluts his aesthetic appetites with classical literature and art, exotic jewels (with which he fatally encrusts the shell of his tortoise), rich perfumes, and a kaleidoscope of sensual experiences.
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Opening: The Floressas Des Esseintes, to judge by the various portraits preserved in the Château 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.
A French example of superfluous man. I'm thinking about that Russian protagonist who wouldn't get up out bed, the name will come back to me at some point, probably in the middle of the night.
Chapter 4 is awash with dissing the classical writers of ancient Rome:
Gustave Moreau's Salome
assafœtida
Les Pornographes sacrés/Mœchialogie
Read hereOpening: The Floressas Des Esseintes, to judge by the various portraits preserved in the Château 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.
A French example of superfluous man. I'm thinking about that Russian protagonist who wouldn't get up out bed, the name will come back to me at some point, probably in the middle of the night. Chapter 4 is awash with dissing the classical writers of ancient Rome:
'The gentle Vergil, whom instructors call the Mantuan swan, perhaps because he was not born in that city, he considered one of the most terrible pedants ever produced by antiquity. Des Esseintes was exasperated by his immaculate and bedizened shepherds, his Orpheus whom he compares to a weeping nightingale, his Aristaeus who simpers about bees, his Aeneas, that weak-willed, irresolute person who walks with wooden gestures through the length of the poem.'
Gustave Moreau's SalomeassafœtidaLes Pornographes sacrés/Mœchialogie
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