Christa Giles

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unconscious work. I wrote it without any
preconceived ideas or future intentions. It is a
work of the imagination, based on nothing at
all. 436
Flaubert’s La Tentation de Saint-Antoine (1874) was a
novel which both Wilde and Huysmans considered to be a
work of genius, and its influence on them is incalculable. In
A rebours Huysmans referred repeatedly to this novel, and
in a letter written to W. E. Henley in 1888 Wilde went so far
as to proclaim himself Flaubert’s disciple:
to learn how to write English prose I have
studied the prose of France. I am charmed
that you recognise it: that shows I have
succeeded…Yes! Flaubert is my master, and
when I get on with my translation of the
Tentation I shall be Flaubert II, Roi par grâce de
dieu. 437
In the light of this it is important to note Flaubert’s
description of what he had been trying to achieve in this
novel, and recognise that it reflects Huysmans’ avowed
purpose in writing A rebours:
What seems beautiful to me, what I should
like to write, is a book about nothing, a book
dependent on nothing external, which would
be held together by the internal strength of its