Huysmans, Joris-Karl

(1848-1907) (Charles-Marie-Georges Huysmans)

   writer

   Of Dutch origin, Charles-Marie-Georges Huysmans, whose pen name is Joris-Karl Huysmans, was born in Paris, where, after a "youth filled with humiliation and trouble," he spent 30 years as a minor government official. Huysmans passed most of his free time writing, however, and after a collection of prose poems, Le Drageoir aux épices (1874), he published an article, "L'Assommoir," and a novel, Les Soeurs Vatard (1879), which brought him to the attention of émile zola, with whom he then became good friends. Huysmans worked on a collection, Les Soirées de Médan (1880), and then in En ménage (1881) and À vau-l'eau (1882), he describes with derision a daily life filled with dull existences. His pessimism is apparent in À rebours (Against the Grain; 1884), in which his hero, Des Esseintes, vainly seeks salvation in art and literature. À Rebours is considered the best example of decadence, with Huysmans as one of its leading exponents. The decadent writers had a desire to shock, to cultivate artifice and the abnormal, and sought inspiration in aestheticism (art for art's sake), independent of moral and social concerns. Durtal, a hero of his other novels (Là-Bas, 1891; En route, 1894; La Cathédrale, 1898; L'Oblat, 1903), is based on Huysmans's own conversion from the occult to Catholicism. Huysmans's championing of the impressionists (edgar degas, claude monet, camille pissarro, odilon redon), along with naturalism and symbolism in L'Art moderne (1883), had a strong influence at the time. He was elected to the Académie Goncourt in 1897.