Christa Giles

145
The manifestation of an unconscious life in dreams
was of such great interest to Huysmans that he devoted an
entire novel, En rade, to the subject. His interpretation of
Redon in L’Art Moderne and A rebours foreshadowed the
appearance of En rade, as did his interest in psychology.
Further, the decadent assertion of the supremacy of the
imagination served to blur the line between reality and
illusion, life and art, so that the two occasionally
interpenetrate. In En rade, it is what is symbolic (such as the
uncontrolled natural world) that becomes concretized on a
different plane in the central character Jacques’ dream life.
As Freud was to articulate, dreams accommodate
abstractions, transferring ideas or thoughts into concrete
visual terms, which are difficult but possible to decipher –
often possessing a multiplicity of meanings. Thus the very
title of the novel En rade suggests several possible
interpretations For instance, ˝une rade˝ means the part of
the ocean isolated by the curve of the shore – a kind of
harbour (as opposed to a port) offering the opportunity to
drift or exist in a state of limbo. ˝Etre en rade˝ also signifies
to be trapped, or blocked. And finally, the most common
meaning, which is of course road or roadstead. The title of
the novel, then, manages to encapsulate this necessity of
translation, and yet forces us to recognise that there is no