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the initiate˝ by ˝stereotyped ecstasies˝ and ˝inanities˝ 578 of
the public or the Academy.
His admiration for Rodolphe Bresdin and Jan
Luyken stemmed from this appreciation of the unusual and
the unique personal vision. Jan Luyken, ˝an old Dutch
engraver who was almost unknown in France,˝ 579 was a
special favourite of Des Esseintes. He possessed a series of
prints called Religious Persecutions:
a collection of appalling plates displaying all
the tortures which religious fanaticism has
invented, revealing all the agonizing varieties
of human suffering–bodies roasted over
braziers, heads scalped with swords,
trepanned with nails, lacerated with saws,
bowels taken out of the belly and wound on
to bobbins, finger-nails slowly removed with
pincers, eyes put out, eyelids pinned back,
limbs dislocated and carefully broken, bones
laid bare and scraped for hours with knives.
Des Esseintes, we are informed, could examine this series
for ˝hours on end without a moment’s boredom.˝ 580 In
Certains, Huysmans also describes, with great relish, Jan
Luyken’s engravings illustrating torture and sadism. The
desire for the new rarefied sensation, the use of art as a
starting point for such reveries or indulgences, accounts in