Quotes About Huysmans

For Zola, as for Huysmans, nature itself is uncanny because it is the domain of the feminine, a domain that is constitutionally defective, lacking, even pathological.

Remind me to show you something on "Decadence" from Havelock Ellis' Introduction to [J. K. Huysmans']Against the Grain. You will like it.

In the matter of animals I love only cats, but I love them unreasonably for their qualities and in spite of their numerous faults. I have only one, but I could not live without a cat.

For Zola, as for Huysmans, nature itself is uncanny because it is the domain of the feminine, a domain that is constitutionally defective, lacking, even pathological.

Huysmans takes the old trope of moon-as-woman and replaces its romantic connotations with decadent ones: the moon here is woman as clamorous lunatic, as convulsive epileptic.

Through all the years of my sad youth Huysmans remained a companion, a faithful friend; never once did I doubt him

the characters aren't the only ones stranded in their country retreat: Huysmans is stranded there, too. It would almost seem that he was trying to go back to Naturalism—the sordid Naturalism of the countryside, where the peasants turn out to be more abject and greedy even than Parisians—if not for the dream sequences, which interrupt and ultimately hobble the story, and make it so impossible to classify.