A review by corvidquest
The Damned (La Bas) by Joris-Karl Huysmans

dark reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix

2.75

That's what I need, a haven of peace and tranquility. Here, alone with the clouds, one might mend one's life and work for years on a book. How fabulous it would be to live out of the reach of time and sit up here, leafing through ancient tomes by the shaded light of a lamp, while the waves of human folly break against the foot of the tower.

The protagonist of The Damned, Durtal, living in fin-de-siècle Paris, finds himself in an age he so loathes that he takes refuge in the halcyon days of... the Middle Ages. Posivitism and rationalism is fine for the sciences, but art, like religion, should be concerned with the soul. Since literature is mired in the death throes of Naturalism, what's a decadent intellectual to do but seek aesthetic fulfillment sniffing the aromatic incense of Catholicism?

Somehow this leads Durtal to write a biography of Gilles de Rais, the comrade of Joan of Arc who ended up a Satanist child serial killer. The novel oscillates between Durtal's composing of the biography, with many lurid details of de Rais's truly horrific crimes; discussions with friends concerning the baseness of their times; and his comical trysts with the wife of an acquaintance, which seem like sly commentary on how even sin is a shadow of its former self. Indeed, even late 19th Century Satanists are found lacking!

Durtal, and by extension Huysmans, gives the occult too much credence; it's as if he is seeking a boogeyman to make Catholicism more palatable. He even makes Gilles de Rais into a strange avant-garde saint. If even de Rais could be redeemed, why not a decadent unbeliever such as himself? It's all a bit fascinating but it pales in comparison to Huysman's masterpiece, Against Nature.