Christa Giles

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wrote in a letter (to Mrs. Allhusen, 1890), ˝my people sit in
chairs and chatter.˝ 433 Language serves to describe the
psychology of a character but it also becomes its own
subject. It functions to create a world through:
un vocabulaire original, une nouvelle langue;
de même, pour exprimer la vision des êtres et
des choses dans l’atmosphère qui leur est
propre… 434
This obsession with language is evident in chapter
three of A rebours, which is devoted to the contents of Des
Esseintes’ library. Des Esseintes, in his assessment of his
novels, confines himself to an analysis of the language
utilized by the authors. He appreciates Petronius’ Satyricon
precisely because it is a ˝story with no plot or action in it,
simply relating the erotic adventures of certain sons of
Sodom…in a splendidly wrought style.˝ 435 This concern with
style also dictates the structure of the novels. In his preface
to A rebours, Huysmans was to say that when he wrote the
novel he wanted to leave the naturalistic mode behind:
I had a vague desire to move away from this
suffocating blind alley, but I had no particular
plan; and A rebours, which freed me from that
deadening literature is a completely