Christa Giles

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direct translation or interpretation–that all meanings must
be fused on a preter-logical level. Thus in the novel, Jacques
and Louise travel from the city to the countryside. Jacques’
wife is suffering from a nervous condition, and they are
both in need of rest and relaxation so they move, penniless,
into the ruined castle of Lourps. The external voyage or
˝road˝ becomes an internal one into the unconscious – a
voyage full of dreams and nightmares. It rapidly becomes
clear that the physical travel (leaving the city for the
country) is an attempted flight from the self, a flight which
is doomed to failure. A tension is generated between
Jacques’ desire to explore these dark regions and his desire
to escape or ignore them (the tension between the ˝road˝
and the ˝breakdown˝ or ˝blockage˝ implicit in the title).
Huysmans makes no overt attempt to interpret the ˝real˝
landscape with which he presents us. But it becomes
apparent that there are close links between the dream and
˝real life,˝ although Huysmans prefers to leave such
connection ambiguous. In this novel the burden of
interpretation lies upon the reader; Jacques only attempts
to interpret his first dream. Later he seems to avoid the
possibility of self-exploration.
This initial dream which Jacques focusses on
anticipates Freud’s dream analysis. Given the decadent