Against Nature Quotes

“The confused medley of meditations on art and literature in which he had indulged since his isolation, as a dam to bar the current of old memories, had been rudely swept away, and the onrushing, irresistible wave crashed into the present and future, submerging everything beneath the blanket of the past, filling his mind with an immensity of sorrow, on whose surface floated, like futile wreckage, absurd trifles and dull episodes of his life.”
― Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against Nature

“and, indeed, just as the most charming tune in the world becomes vulgar, intolerable, as soon as the general public is humming it, as soon as the street - organs have taken it up, the work for which charlatan art fanciers do not remain indifferent, the work which nitwits do not challenge, which is not satisfied with arousing the enthusiasm of the few, also becomes, by virtue of that very fact, corrupted, banal, almost repellent to the initiated.”
― Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against Nature

“After the aristocracy of birth had come the aristocracy of money.”
― Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against Nature

“He did not affirm the revolting conception of original sin, nor did he feel inclined to argue that it is a beneficent God who protects the worthless and wicked, rains misfortunes on children, stultifies the aged and afflicts the innocent. He did not exalt the virtues of a Providence which has invented that useless, incomprehensible, unjust and senseless abomination, physical suffering. Far from seeking to justify, as does the Church, the necessity of torments and afflictions, he cried, in his outraged pity: "If a God has made this world, I should not wish to be that God. The world's wretchedness would rend my heart.”
― Joris-Karl Huysmans, A rebours. English

“The doctors spoke of amusements and distractions; but with whom, and with what, could they possibly suppose that he might amuse or enjoy himself? Had he not outlawed himself from society? Did he know one man capable of trying to lead a life such as his own, a life entirely confined to contemplation and to dreams? Did he know one man capable of appreciating the delicacy of a phrase, the subtlety of a painting, the quintessence of an idea, one man whose soul was sufficiently finely crafted to understand Mallarmé and to love Verlaine?”
― Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against Nature

“He was searching his memory when suddenly a strange figure appeared in front of them, on horseback, trotted for a moment, then turned round in the saddle. His blood froze; he remained rooted to the spot in horror. That equivocal, sexless face was green, with terrible eyes of an icy light blue beneath purple lids; postules encircled its mouth; extraordinarily thin arms, bare from the elbows down and shaking with fever, emerged from ragged sleeves, and the fleshless thighs shivered in high boots which were far too large.
The dreadful gaze was fixed on Des Esseintes, boring into him, chilling him to the marrow, while the bulldog woman, now in even greater panic, clung to him with her head thrown back on her rigid neck, screaming blue murder. And instantly he grasped the meaning of the horrifying vision. He was looking at the figure of the Pox.”
― Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against Nature

“La nature a fait son temps ; elle a définitivement lassé.”
― Huysmans, À rebours

“He ordered oxtail soup and enjoyed it heartily. Then he glanced at the menu for the fish, ordered a haddock and, seized with a sudden pang of hunger at the sight of so many people relishing their food, he ate some roast beef and drank two pints of ale, stimulated by the flavor of a cow-shed which this fine, pale beer exhaled.

His hunger persisted. He lingered over a piece of blue Stilton cheese, made quick work of a rhubarb tart, and to vary his drinking, quenched his thirst with porter, that dark beer which smells of Spanish licorice but which does not have its sugary taste.

He breathed deeply. Not for years had he eaten and drunk so much. This change of habit, this choice of unexpected and solid food had awakened his stomach from its long sleep. He leaned back in his chair, lit a cigarette and prepared to sip his coffee into which gin had been poured.”
― J.K. Huysmans, A rebours: Édition enrichie. Exploration de l'esthétisme et de la marginalité dans la France décadente du XIXe siècle

“The waves of human mediocrity rise to the sky and they will engulf the refuge whose dams I open. Ah! courage leaves me, my heart breaks! O Lord, pity the Christian who doubts, the sceptic who would believe, the convict of life embarking alone in the night, under a sky no longer illumined by the consoling beacons of ancient faith.”
― Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against Nature

“At bottom, one might say that human wisdom consisted in the protraction of all things, in saying "no" before saying "yes," for one could manage people only by trifling with them.”
― Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against Nature

“Such an inveterate stupidity, such a scorn for literature and art, such a hatred for all the ideas he worshipped, were implanted and anchored in these merchant minds, exclusively preoccupied with the business of swindling and money-making, and accessible only to ideas of politics--that base distraction of mediocrities--that he returned enraged to his home and locked himself in with his books.”
― Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against Nature

“Now it was all over. Once it had done its job, the plebs had been bled white in the interests of public hygiene, while the jovial bourgeois lorded it over the country, putting his trust in the power of his money and the contagiousness of his stupidity.”
― Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against Nature

“Now God refused to come down to earth in the form of potato-flour; that was an undeniable, indisputable fact.”
― Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against Nature

“He found he was now incapable of understanding a single word of the volumes he consulted; his very eyes stopped reading, and it seemed as if his mind, gorged with literature and art, refused to absorb any more.”
― Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against Nature

“Wie ein Eremit war er des Lebens überdrüssig und er-
wartete nichts mehr von ihm: reif zur Einsamkeit; und
ebenso war er gleich einem Mönch unendlich matt; er
wollte sich sammeln, nichts mehr gemein haben mit den
Weltlichen, die für ihn die Utilitaristen und Dummköpfe
waren.”
― Joris-Karl Huysmans, Gegen den Strich

“در واقع، هنگامی که انسانی برخوردار از موهبت استعداد و تیزهوشی ناگزیر باشد در دوران پر ملال تنگ نظری سفیهانه زندگی کند، هنرمند، ناخواسته و بی اختیار، گرفتار وسوسه ی پناه بردن به زمانه ای دیگر می شود.”
― Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against Nature

“از آنجایی که در این زمانه دیگر عنصر اصیلی پیدا نمی شود، از آنجایی که شرابی که می نوشیم و آزادی ای که مدعی اش هستیم تقلبی و تمسخرآمیزند، از آنجایی که در نهایت نیاز به حسن نیتی یگانه و منحصر داریم تا باور بیاوریم که طبقات فرادست قابل احترام اند و طبقات فرودست سزاوار آنند که از مصایبشان بکاهیم و بر محنت هایشان دل بسوزانیم، به اعتقاد من، نظری مسخره و جنون آمیز نخواهد بود، اگر از همنوع ام بخواهم که کمی تخیل به خرج دهد- تقریبا معادل اوهامی که، در زندگی روزمره اش صرف اهداف ابلهانه می شود.”
― Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against Nature

“نیروی جادویی ایمان هرگز غافلگیرانه و به صورت آنی و یکباره عمل نمی کرد.”
― Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against Nature

“and indeed the artists in their degradation were down on their knees, showering ardent kisses on the foul-smelling feet of the high-placed chisellers and low-born despots on whose charity they lived!”
― Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against Nature

“All this activity was taking place on the waterfront, and in vast warehouses washed by the dark, scummy waters of an imaginary Thames, amid a forest of masts, a thicket of beams which pierced the sky’s leaden clouds; high up, on the skyline, trains were racing along at full speed, and down below, in the sewers, other trains were running, emitting hideous shrieks and belching forth clouds of smoke through the shaft openings, while along all the boulevards and streets—where, in an eternal twilight, blazed the monstrous, garish depravities of advertising—streams of carriages flowed between two columns of silent, preoccupied pedestrians who stared straight ahead as they walked, their elbows pressed to their sides.”
― Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against Nature

“These principles once admitted, he succeeded, after numerous experiments, in enjoying silent melodies on his tongue, mute funeral marches, in hearing, in his mouth, solos of mint, duos of ratafia and rum.”
― Joris-Karl Huysmans, A rebours. English

“It all comes down to syphilis in the end.”
― Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against Nature

“And on the whole the future was the same for every man, and neither the rich nor the poor, if he possessed any modicum of common sense, had any cause to envy his fellow.”
― Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against Nature

“It did not budge at all and he tapped it. The animal was dead. Doubtless accustomed to a sedentary existence, to a humble life spent underneath its poor shell, it had been unable to support the dazzling luxury imposed on it, the rutilant cope with which it had been covered, the jewels with which its back had been paved, like a pyx.”
― Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against The Grain

“Amid the solitude in which he lived, without new nourishment, without any fresh experiences, without any renovation of thought, without that exchange of sensations common to society, in this unnatural confinement in which he persisted, all the questionings forgotten during his stay in Paris were revived as active irritants.”
― Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against Nature

“he felt a glow of pleasure at the idea that here he would be too far out for the tidal wave of Parisian life to reach him, and yet near enough for the proximity of the capital to strengthen him in his solitude.”
― Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against Nature

“If Baudelaire had made out among the hieroglyphics of the soul the critical age of thought and feeling, it was Poe who, in the sphere of morbid psychology, had carried out the closest scrutiny of the will.”
― Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against Nature

“Yet his literary opinions had started from a very simple point of view. For him, there were no such things as schools;1 the only thing that mattered to him was the writer’s personality, and the only thing that interested him was the working of the writer’s brain, no matter what subject he was tackling. Unfortunately this criterion of appreciation, so obviously just, was practically impossible to apply, for the simple reason that, however much a reader wants to rid himself of prejudice and refrain from passion, he naturally prefers those works which correspond most intimately with his own personality, and ends by relegating all the rest to limbo.”
― Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against Nature

“Baudelaire had gone further; he had descended to the bottom of the inexhaustible mine, had picked his way along abandoned or unexplored galleries and had finally reached those districts of the soul where the monstrous vegetations of the sick mind flourish.”
― Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against Nature

“More often than not, all that would be needed to complete the cure would be for the sick man to show a little imagination.”
― Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against Nature