With wrong way

With wrong way is a Romance of Joris-Karl Huysmans published in 1884. The characteristic of this novel is that it occurs there almost nothing; the narration focuses almost entirely on the main character, Of Esseintes, an anti-hero esthète and eccentric, and constitutes with few things close a catalog of its tastes and dislikes.

Introduction

One regards today this work as a proclamation of the declining spirit which appears in the last years of the 19th century. Of Esseintes itself prefers the works of late Antiquity to the classic authors; Verlaine, Baudelaire, Corbière, Mallarmé (that the work contributed to launching in the literary world) is its favorite poets. In the novelists, it speaks in praise of Poe, the Flaubert of Salammbô, and especially of Villiers of Isle Adam.

With wrong way mark also rupture of Huysmans of with the naturalism of Zola: the majority of the topics present in work are or will be associated with esthetics Symbolist. Of Esseintes seems the prototype of the European young man reaches " badly siècle" : one can say that the author sees in the decline a going beyond at the same time romanticism and naturalism.

Integral summary of work

The intrigue is reduced to its more simple expression. The anti-hero, Of Esseintes, after an agitated life where it made the experiment of all that could to him offer the company of his time, withdraws in a house, in Fontenay, in which it joins together the most invaluable works in his eyes, the rarest objects, to devote itself to idleness and the study. Of the whole of the French and Latin literature, it retains only one small number of authors who satisfy it. It is interested in the tables of Gustave Moreau, creates refined perfumes, a garden of poisonous flowers… The anecdote of the tortoise constitutes in many connections a metaphor of the destiny of the main character: it makes encrust in the carapace with a tortoise with the invaluable stones, but this one dies under the weight of the jewels.

Finally, Of Esseintes does not manage to come to end from sound taedium vitae , and must give up at the end of some time with this life and return to Paris.

Posterity

With wrong way inspired the novel of Oscar Wilde the Portrait of Dorian Gray . Indeed, Dorian reads there a book with yellow binding, which one does not know the title, which influences its vision of the world deeply. Wilde wrote in addition that the idea to write the Portrait had come to him from To wrong way . With wrong way was the bible of Serge Gainsbourg, his model, its secret reference, it could recite whole passages of them. All carries out has to think that it was inspired some for the writing by its single literary work " Evguénie Sokolov" , published at Gallimard.

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