La-bas Down There

This novel is the classic of Satanism. It caused a sensation when it first appeared in 1891 because of its extraordinarily detailed and vivid descriptions of the Black Mass. These descriptions are also authentic, for J. K. Huysmans, who has been called the greatest of the French decadents, had firsthand knowledge of the satanic practices, witch cults, and the whole of the occult underworld thriving in late nineteenth-century Paris. At its center is Durtal, a writer obsessed with the life of one of the blackest figures in history, Gilles de Rais. The legendary crimes, trial, and confession of this grotesque fifteenth-century child murderer, sadist, necrophile, and practitioner of all the black arts unfold in episode after horrifying episode. Mystical thematic threads connect this greatest of all revelers in evil with Durtal's own passionate pursuit, the reflection of a religious quest that was to lead Huysmans from uncertain agnosticism back to Catholicism. Durtal, the mouthpiece for the strange personality of Huysmans, leads a hermit-like existence cloistered from his fashionable contemporaries. Surrounding him are others equally cut off, sharing a nostalgic longing for the Middle Ages. There is a simply religious bell-ringer, a learned astrologer, a medical doctor versed in homeopath and occult lore, and a fourth person — a sheltered, unsatisfied bourgeois by day and mysterious succubus by night. They take refuge where they can from the forces of modern times — in a bell tower, in abstruse knowledge, and in diabolism. Huysmans' ability to mesmerize his readers with torrents of sound and image is itself suspiciously akin to the magic arts. His intoxication with the abominable and the depraved is magnified by his extreme sensitivity. He combines grimly realistic detail with esoteric knowledge, and searches relentlessly for the divine in the depths of evil and in the furthest reaches of human experience. The republication of this novel, along with the previous publication of Against the Grain, will make his works accessible to the larger audience that will surely find them both important and fascinating, as have Oscar Wilde, Havelock Ellis, and many other major literary figures.

La-Bas (Down There)

Literature & Fiction

Huysmans, Joris K.

Literary

Dover Publications

Duc Jean des Esseintes, the wealthy last survivor of a once-powerful family, has retreated from his bourgeois life in Paris. Overwhelmed by the absurdities and grotesqueries of human affairs, he dwells in an isolated villa, spending his days in intellectual and aesthetic contemplation. In an environment of ascetic medievalism and hermit-like seclusion, des Esseintes reviews the compendium of human experience. Color, food and drink, literature, art, music, philosophy, and religion—all are scrutinized, sifted, and analyzed according to his delicate, highly selective tastes. 
Filled with weird images, manifestations of a bizarre imagination, and biting wit, this novel scandalized Victorian critics with its break from naturalism and embrace of fin-de-siècle decadence. It nevertheless exerted considerable influence over French and English writers and remains a classic account of the quest for enlarged experience and new sensations. This edition includes a Preface written by the author 20 years after the book's original 1884 publication.

Against Nature (Dover Thrift Editions: Classic Novels)

United States

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