Tomorrow we look at another flat.
We are fed up with the attitude of The Owner Squared. The Prime Owner is the Dominatrix of our school, but the owner of our flat runs her a close second in the dislikability stakes.
We miss a garden and our own parking space - one which does not require a practical knowledge of n-dimensional Boolean algebra to negotiate. I also want space for the rest of my books.
The places that we can afford which we are likely to get offered with extra space are back from the beach. This is a real dilemma. We enjoy looking at the sea and being so close to the beach, we also have a 20 m swimming pool. It’s unheated, but it’s there! We may find it difficult to give up some of the facilities we have with the flat in exchange for a house with a garden.
Everything will be further away and the beach will be a car ride away, rather than a short stroll.
It may well end up with our seeing how well off we are where we are and remaining put.
It will at least be interesting to see what else is on offer and it may stimulate us to look further a-field for something different.
I have now finished re-reading ‘Against Nature’ by Huysmans. I certainly did not enjoy it as much as I remember the first time. Yes, there are descriptions which are just as astonishing now as they were the first time that I read them: drink and perfume – what wonderful conceptions Des Esseintes had to enjoy them. They still read well. As a picture of self indulgence it is surely unsurpassed. Except of course that is not the right word for him.
It is emphasised in the Prologue that Des Esseintes comes of ‘an impoverished stock’ and his almost inevitable decline into exclusive personal sensuality is a function of his family and his families’ money.
It is not just the concepts that he is able to make reality for himself that fascinate the reader; it is also the detail in which Huysmans is able to imagine them for his reader. As with some of the work of Borges, I don’t question the reality of the more obscure authors that Des Esseintes dismisses: his reality becomes my reality and I accept a sort of truth which informs the whole of this extraordinary work.
To call it a novel seems to be out of place, yet it is surely a work of fiction created by Huysmans the junior clerk in the Ministry of the Interior, not an autobiography of Huysmans the moneyed aesthete.
Perhaps the work is now of interest chiefly for its seminal portrayal of man alone against the universe and for the occasional bon mot. Take, for example a passage which describes his reaction to reading Sidonius Apollinaris (who?) “ . . . he had to admit a weakness for the conceits and innuendoes in these poem, turned out by an ingenious mechanic who takes good care of his machine, keeps its component parts well oiled, and if need be can invent new parts which are both intricate and useless.”
“Intricate and useless” would seem to describe the life that Des Esseintes had and is living. But such a phrase also gives a clue to the reason that ‘Against Nature’ also has a commendation by Lord HenryWotton in
We are fed up with the attitude of The Owner Squared. The Prime Owner is the Dominatrix of our school, but the owner of our flat runs her a close second in the dislikability stakes.
We miss a garden and our own parking space - one which does not require a practical knowledge of n-dimensional Boolean algebra to negotiate. I also want space for the rest of my books.
The places that we can afford which we are likely to get offered with extra space are back from the beach. This is a real dilemma. We enjoy looking at the sea and being so close to the beach, we also have a 20 m swimming pool. It’s unheated, but it’s there! We may find it difficult to give up some of the facilities we have with the flat in exchange for a house with a garden.
Everything will be further away and the beach will be a car ride away, rather than a short stroll.
It may well end up with our seeing how well off we are where we are and remaining put.
It will at least be interesting to see what else is on offer and it may stimulate us to look further a-field for something different.
I have now finished re-reading ‘Against Nature’ by Huysmans. I certainly did not enjoy it as much as I remember the first time. Yes, there are descriptions which are just as astonishing now as they were the first time that I read them: drink and perfume – what wonderful conceptions Des Esseintes had to enjoy them. They still read well. As a picture of self indulgence it is surely unsurpassed. Except of course that is not the right word for him.
It is emphasised in the Prologue that Des Esseintes comes of ‘an impoverished stock’ and his almost inevitable decline into exclusive personal sensuality is a function of his family and his families’ money.
It is not just the concepts that he is able to make reality for himself that fascinate the reader; it is also the detail in which Huysmans is able to imagine them for his reader. As with some of the work of Borges, I don’t question the reality of the more obscure authors that Des Esseintes dismisses: his reality becomes my reality and I accept a sort of truth which informs the whole of this extraordinary work.
To call it a novel seems to be out of place, yet it is surely a work of fiction created by Huysmans the junior clerk in the Ministry of the Interior, not an autobiography of Huysmans the moneyed aesthete.
Perhaps the work is now of interest chiefly for its seminal portrayal of man alone against the universe and for the occasional bon mot. Take, for example a passage which describes his reaction to reading Sidonius Apollinaris (who?) “ . . . he had to admit a weakness for the conceits and innuendoes in these poem, turned out by an ingenious mechanic who takes good care of his machine, keeps its component parts well oiled, and if need be can invent new parts which are both intricate and useless.”
“Intricate and useless” would seem to describe the life that Des Esseintes had and is living. But such a phrase also gives a clue to the reason that ‘Against Nature’ also has a commendation by Lord HenryWotton in
'The Portrait of Dorian Gray’!However repulsive Des Esseintes appears in the work, it would be hard not to sympathise with his howl of anguish at the end of ‘Against Nature’ when he cries, “Like a tide-race, the waves of human mediocrity are rising to the heavens and will engulf this refugee, for I am opening the flood-gates myself, against my will.” Any casual reading of any edition of ¡Hola! magazine might encourage one to subscribe fully to Des Esseintes depression!
But this is Sunday. Holiday under the meaning of the act.
Loosen up!
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