Status
Available
Call number
Series
Collection
Publication
Flammarion (1978), Broché, 310 pages
Description
Published in 1891, "La-bas" is Huysmans' best-selling novel; its success was due, in part, to its sensational contents (descriptions of Satanism in late 1880 France.) It is in this novel that Huysmans' character, Durtal, is introduced for the first time. This character is thought to be a semi-autobiographical depiction of the author and is used in his next three books which chart Durtal's (and Huysmans') search for religious truths and his ultimate conversion to Roman Catholicism. The journey begins with the viewing of an extremely realistic painting: "In Germany, before a Crucifixion by Matthus Grnewald, he had found what he was seeking."
User reviews
LibraryThing member slickdpdx
A learned paranoid Catholic and Satanic adventure novel with a longing for the good old days - as in, the dark ages. It is apparent to me that Huysmans decided to end this just as it was nearing its climax. The night I finished the book, I dreamt of a small black volume that contained the missing
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ending, written, but also suppressed, by Huysmans. If you should happen to run across it, please let me know. Show Less
LibraryThing member paradoxosalpha
When Joris-Karl Huysmans wrote Là-Bas (published in 1891), he was already notorious for his seminal novel of decadence Au Rebours. Là-Bas introduces Huysmans’ autobiographical protagonist Durtal as a medievalist antiquarian. In the course of his researches into the fifteenth-century diabolist
The arch-Satanist of the book, Canon Docre, was based by Huysmans on an actual clergyman from Bruges, while an opposed character, the mystic Doctor Johannes, was modeled on the heretic priest Joseph-Antoine Boullan. When Huysmans met him, Boullan had recently assumed the governance of a neo-Gnostic sect first organized by Eugene Vintras.
Huysmans had networked among the occultists of his day, including Gerard Encausse and his neo-Martinist set and others associated with the Kabbalistic Rose-Croix of Peladan. But he alienated himself from all of these when he unwittingly chose sides in an ongoing feud between Boullan and the neo-Rosicrucians, with the latter chiefly represented by Stanislas de Gauita and Oswald Wirth. Involving himself in this scene, Huysmans experienced a delicious paranoia that the novel communicates beautifully.
Boullan died in 1893 and Huysmans’ friend Jules Bois accused the Paris Rosicrucians of having magically assassinated him. So the conflict persisted.
Five years after the publication of Là-Bas Arthur Edward Waite wrote that Monsieur Huysmans “has given currency to the Question of Lucifer, has promoted it from obscurity to into prominence, and has made it the vogue of the moment.” That moment, of course, was the acme of the Palladist conspiracy theory of Leo Taxil, postulating an elite of satanic sex-fiends at the heart of global freemasonry.
A generation later, when Aleister Crowley issued a reading list for his students, he called Là-Bas “An account of the extravagances caused by the Sin-complex.” In addition, it is valuable to latter-day Thelemites for its sardonic humor, its intuitions about certain features of Eucharistic magick, and its veiled references to historical antecedents of the EGC rite.
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Gilles de Rais, Durtal becomes aware of and then infiltrates a modern Satanist sect. This book was a literary success, and its sale was banned in French railway stations.The arch-Satanist of the book, Canon Docre, was based by Huysmans on an actual clergyman from Bruges, while an opposed character, the mystic Doctor Johannes, was modeled on the heretic priest Joseph-Antoine Boullan. When Huysmans met him, Boullan had recently assumed the governance of a neo-Gnostic sect first organized by Eugene Vintras.
Huysmans had networked among the occultists of his day, including Gerard Encausse and his neo-Martinist set and others associated with the Kabbalistic Rose-Croix of Peladan. But he alienated himself from all of these when he unwittingly chose sides in an ongoing feud between Boullan and the neo-Rosicrucians, with the latter chiefly represented by Stanislas de Gauita and Oswald Wirth. Involving himself in this scene, Huysmans experienced a delicious paranoia that the novel communicates beautifully.
Boullan died in 1893 and Huysmans’ friend Jules Bois accused the Paris Rosicrucians of having magically assassinated him. So the conflict persisted.
Five years after the publication of Là-Bas Arthur Edward Waite wrote that Monsieur Huysmans “has given currency to the Question of Lucifer, has promoted it from obscurity to into prominence, and has made it the vogue of the moment.” That moment, of course, was the acme of the Palladist conspiracy theory of Leo Taxil, postulating an elite of satanic sex-fiends at the heart of global freemasonry.
A generation later, when Aleister Crowley issued a reading list for his students, he called Là-Bas “An account of the extravagances caused by the Sin-complex.” In addition, it is valuable to latter-day Thelemites for its sardonic humor, its intuitions about certain features of Eucharistic magick, and its veiled references to historical antecedents of the EGC rite.
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LibraryThing member KayDekker
One thing to remember when considering this novel is that it is only the first, if now the most famous, of a sequence of four about the protagonist Durtal: Là-Bas (1891); En route (1895); La cathédrale (1898); and L'Oblat (1903). The sequence develops Durtal's relationship with Catholicism, and I
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think presents him as a more complete character, something which may seem to be lacking if one has read only this first novel of the sequence. Show Less
LibraryThing member bcquinnsmom
Okay, another Victorian gothic. What can I say? I love the stuff! This one is really weird. The premise is that a writer who is totally obsessed with Bluebeard (Gilles de Rais in reality) gets hooked on his satanic leanings. He tells himself that to really understand this guy, he will himself have
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to witness a Black Mass. The book is about his journey down the path to an invitation to a Black Mass and all the creepy goings on in between. You truly must like Victorian gothic and stick with the story, because it is a slow unfolder. Show Less
LibraryThing member jonfaith
The best one can do is point to Dostoevsky . . . as providing the closest approximation to such an ideal. Yet even that amenable Russian is more an evangelical socialist than an enraptured realist. In France, now that the purely physical recipe has fallen into such discredit, two clans have
The Damned is a curious novel. It is not necessarily one of extremes, but, rather of alarm. There is a concern for traditions gone awry and hopes for salvation. Both are obscured by the mechanized din of existence. This strikes me as rather Marxist, but then who am I?
I braced myself for the horrific but felt more disturbed by hope professed. Huysmans reminds me of the Serbian director Dušan Makavejev displaying a poetics of detail, a departure away from explication in the form of procedure. A spectre is haunting Paris, democratic sheep are rejecting the Republic and the church has abandoned heraldry. Huysmans instead allows the reader to ponder the preperation of a soup and the nature of a liqueur, all the while the dining table discussions argue the timetable of Christ's thousand year reign. The term surreal is bandied about too often today. The contrasts between this and the descriptions of Gilles de Rais' atrocities provides a calm, one I fashion to be of despair. I found the idea that Rais repented and was, however obliquely, regarded as martyr to be an all-too-human eventuality.
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emerged: the liberals, who, by emasculating it of anything contentious, whether social or linguistic, have made Naturalism a subject fit for drawing room chitter-chatter; and, even more extreme, the decadents who reject plot, description, even character, and rave on unintelligibly in a telegraphic gibberish intended to represent the language of the soul.The Damned is a curious novel. It is not necessarily one of extremes, but, rather of alarm. There is a concern for traditions gone awry and hopes for salvation. Both are obscured by the mechanized din of existence. This strikes me as rather Marxist, but then who am I?
I braced myself for the horrific but felt more disturbed by hope professed. Huysmans reminds me of the Serbian director Dušan Makavejev displaying a poetics of detail, a departure away from explication in the form of procedure. A spectre is haunting Paris, democratic sheep are rejecting the Republic and the church has abandoned heraldry. Huysmans instead allows the reader to ponder the preperation of a soup and the nature of a liqueur, all the while the dining table discussions argue the timetable of Christ's thousand year reign. The term surreal is bandied about too often today. The contrasts between this and the descriptions of Gilles de Rais' atrocities provides a calm, one I fashion to be of despair. I found the idea that Rais repented and was, however obliquely, regarded as martyr to be an all-too-human eventuality.
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LibraryThing member RandyStafford
While I’m told Huysmans’ À rebours (Against Nature) is considered a jewel of Decadent literature, it’s not clear if this novel is a work of Decadent fiction.
If I’m understanding its definition, Decadent literature, in its English and French varieties, portrays the present as decaying and
This novel votes yes on the decaying society part and no on the pursuit of strange aesthetic pleasures. Rather, it postulates that decay brings mysticism to the fore, and here that mysticism takes on two strains: Catholicism and Satanism.
"It is just at the moment when positivism is at its zenith that mysticism rises again and the follies of the occult begin."
After À rebours was published, that Huysmans was going to have to eventually chose between “the muzzle of a pistol and the foot of the Cross”. Huysmans would eventually choose the latter, ending up as a Benedictine monk. This considered one of the great novels of “literary Satanism”, but Catholics of a conservative bent (it was one who recommended this book to me) also admire the Durtal trilogy.
Durtal’s progression from Decadent to monk is paralleled by three Huysmann novels featuring the writer Durtal, generally considered to be Huysman’s alter ego. Là-Bas is the first of that trilogy.
Durtal’s newest project is a biography of the infamous Gilles de Rais, French noblemen, defender and champion of Joan of Arc, Marshal of France – and raper, torturer, and killer of hundreds of children. The puzzle Durtal seeks to answer is why Rais, “a brave captain and a good Christian, all of a sudden became a sacrilegious sadist and a coward”. The novel will present the story of Rais throughout and conclude with Durtal’s ideas on the Marshal’s motivations.
Durtal’s friend, Dr. Des Hermies, is a man of amazing learning and equally broad cynicism. He doesn’t have a lot of faith in modern medicine or “alienists”. It’s not his peers he likes to hang out with but “astrologers, cabbalists, demonologists, alchemists, theologians, or inventors”.
Durtal is similar.
“I learned long ago that there are no people interesting to know except saints, scoundrels, and cranks. They are the only persons whose conversation amounts to anything. Persons of good sense are necessarily dull, because they revolve over and over again the tedious topics of everyday life. They are the crowd, more or less intelligent, but they are the crowd, and they give me a pain.
”
As for their conversations, well, both men believe “Conversations which do not treat of religion or art are so base and vain”.
And there is a lot of talk about art and religion in this book including the art of bellringing and the symbols of church bells (material supplied by Hermies’ friend Carhaix, a devout Catholic and poor bellringer who also just happens to be an expert in heraldry), demon possessions, “alienist” explanations of said possessions, medicine, Paracelsus, a Third Kingdom of God proposed by a Catholic mystic, miraculous healing, and poisons. I have no idea how many things presented are real and how many are Huysmans’ inventions.
And there is a
If I’m understanding its definition, Decadent literature, in its English and French varieties, portrays the present as decaying and
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advocates for enjoying the long fall of civilization with sex and drugs and outré experiences.This novel votes yes on the decaying society part and no on the pursuit of strange aesthetic pleasures. Rather, it postulates that decay brings mysticism to the fore, and here that mysticism takes on two strains: Catholicism and Satanism.
"It is just at the moment when positivism is at its zenith that mysticism rises again and the follies of the occult begin."
After À rebours was published, that Huysmans was going to have to eventually chose between “the muzzle of a pistol and the foot of the Cross”. Huysmans would eventually choose the latter, ending up as a Benedictine monk. This considered one of the great novels of “literary Satanism”, but Catholics of a conservative bent (it was one who recommended this book to me) also admire the Durtal trilogy.
Durtal’s progression from Decadent to monk is paralleled by three Huysmann novels featuring the writer Durtal, generally considered to be Huysman’s alter ego. Là-Bas is the first of that trilogy.
Durtal’s newest project is a biography of the infamous Gilles de Rais, French noblemen, defender and champion of Joan of Arc, Marshal of France – and raper, torturer, and killer of hundreds of children. The puzzle Durtal seeks to answer is why Rais, “a brave captain and a good Christian, all of a sudden became a sacrilegious sadist and a coward”. The novel will present the story of Rais throughout and conclude with Durtal’s ideas on the Marshal’s motivations.
Durtal’s friend, Dr. Des Hermies, is a man of amazing learning and equally broad cynicism. He doesn’t have a lot of faith in modern medicine or “alienists”. It’s not his peers he likes to hang out with but “astrologers, cabbalists, demonologists, alchemists, theologians, or inventors”.
Durtal is similar.
“I learned long ago that there are no people interesting to know except saints, scoundrels, and cranks. They are the only persons whose conversation amounts to anything. Persons of good sense are necessarily dull, because they revolve over and over again the tedious topics of everyday life. They are the crowd, more or less intelligent, but they are the crowd, and they give me a pain.
”
As for their conversations, well, both men believe “Conversations which do not treat of religion or art are so base and vain”.
And there is a lot of talk about art and religion in this book including the art of bellringing and the symbols of church bells (material supplied by Hermies’ friend Carhaix, a devout Catholic and poor bellringer who also just happens to be an expert in heraldry), demon possessions, “alienist” explanations of said possessions, medicine, Paracelsus, a Third Kingdom of God proposed by a Catholic mystic, miraculous healing, and poisons. I have no idea how many things presented are real and how many are Huysmans’ inventions.
And there is a
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LibraryThing member georgematt
A disjointed and discursive 19th Century 'decadent' novel that reads more like non-fiction at times. Did not relate to the main character's Catholic torment about sex which was another hindrance to a full appreciation. Worth reading though for the story of the real life Medieval Satanist and serial
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killer, Gilles de Rais, although not for the faint hearted. Show Less
LibraryThing member Eustrabirbeonne
Each star stands for one favourite fragment : the description of Grünewald 's Crucifixion (the memory of this passage caused me to take the 7-hour train trip from Paris to Colmar, mostly to see the Unterlinden version) and the delightful dinner with the Carhaix couple (chapter V). Otherwise the
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narrative is loose and clumsy, the black mass is more laughable than terrifying (except perhaps for stern or particularly naive Catholics), and the portrayal of Madame Chantelouve is really silly. How can an admirer of Barbey d'Aurevilly and Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, a follower of Flaubert, a fellow-writer of Zola and Maupassant portray women in such a ridiculous way? This novel is hardly a match for "A Rebours". Show Less
LibraryThing member judithrs
La Bas (Down There or The Damned). J.K. Huysman. 1891. This is a book I wish I hadn’t read. It is the first title in a series, and I saw a reference to the second title, En Route, on a Catholic site about conversion. I was intrigued because it was set in France. As I downloaded En Route, I saw
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that is was a trilogy so I downloaded all three volumes since they were free because they were so old. Durtal, the narrator is tired of life in fin de siècle Paris. He is a writer and longs for what he considers a better age, the Middle Ages (a French Miniver Cheevy?), so he decides to write a book on Giles De Rais known to us as Bluebeard (Barbebleu). Giles de Rais was a compatriot of Joan of Arc. He accompanies her on all her battles and was named a Marshal of France because of his bravery. He returned home and later descended into utter depravity. The records are unclear as to how many children he abused and later killed. He also became involved in Satanism. The more Durtal read about Satanism the more interested he became. Through a friend Durtal met a woman who took him to a black mass. He was so disgusted and sickened that he never saw the woman again and completely lost his interest in Satanism. Huysman reminds me of Umberto Eco. His erudition is astonishing. His description of Grunewald, “Crucifixion” makes you feel as if you are looking at the horror with him: “…this coarse, tear-compelling Calvary was at the opposite pole from those debonair Golgothas adopted by the Church ever since the Renaissance….the Christ of the apostolic church, the vulgar Christ, ugly with the assumption of the whole burden of our sins and clothed, through humility, in the most abject of forms…He had willed to suffer the Passion with all the suffering permitted to the human senses.” There are numerous references and comments on the church and suggestions that he will eventually convert. “Durtal was attracted to the Church by its intimate and ecstatic art, the splendor of its legends, and the radiant naivete of the histories of its saints Show Less
LibraryThing member NekoApocalypse
Absolutely fuck this stupid book. Not because it's too graphic or something. No. I actually was looking at the reviews of this thing before I read it thinking, hah! cowards, pussies! I am the sort of person who wants to find the most offensively devious thing I can possibly read. But no, that
Now, I will say that this book wasn't 100% terrible. It did piss me off and I didn't enjoy it, but none the less I will say huysmans is a good writer, in terms of his prose. He can write a very mean sentence, his style is good. It had a tiny little bit of some of the nasty stuff I was expecting, but it's few and far between. Most of it is about that stuff I mentioned earlier, only a tiny bit of it is actually about the hideous satanic rituals of Gilles De Rais. That wasn't bad, but honestly I thought the book would have more of that. Most of the time it's just Des Hermes talking with Dertal about superstitious nonsense, and their friend Carhaix the church bell ringer. Dertal Soliloquizes his thoughts a lot too.
So, this book was a big disappointment, and it took me a long time to read! The writing style is pretty firmly ye olde writing style. To be honest I only made it to page 200, I couldn't even finish it. I had a lot better luck reading through it when I got a different translation. At first I tried the Keene Wallace translation and found it horrible to try to get through. Then I tried the Brendan King translation, and that was a lot plainer to read. And one last note, there's also some really cringeworthy stuff that happens in the book which I won't even allude to, in case there's someone reading this who actually gets it in their head that they actually want to read this thing. I don't wanna spoil it for you.
So this is a horrible book, the characters just bore the crap out of me, listening to them talk is like listening to some talk show host that you hate everything that comes out of his mouth. Everything they talk about in this book is a fucking waste of time, but at least it's written elegantly. And don't think that means it's worth it just because of that, because it's not.
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wasn't even what I found in this book. What I found in this book is a few morons who are obsessed with religion, talk non stop about supernatural bullshit like alchemy, astrology, religious ceremonies for practicing magic, talking with the dead. It's a litany of utter bullshit, which really doesn't enlighten you in any way. It's actually just annoying.Now, I will say that this book wasn't 100% terrible. It did piss me off and I didn't enjoy it, but none the less I will say huysmans is a good writer, in terms of his prose. He can write a very mean sentence, his style is good. It had a tiny little bit of some of the nasty stuff I was expecting, but it's few and far between. Most of it is about that stuff I mentioned earlier, only a tiny bit of it is actually about the hideous satanic rituals of Gilles De Rais. That wasn't bad, but honestly I thought the book would have more of that. Most of the time it's just Des Hermes talking with Dertal about superstitious nonsense, and their friend Carhaix the church bell ringer. Dertal Soliloquizes his thoughts a lot too.
So, this book was a big disappointment, and it took me a long time to read! The writing style is pretty firmly ye olde writing style. To be honest I only made it to page 200, I couldn't even finish it. I had a lot better luck reading through it when I got a different translation. At first I tried the Keene Wallace translation and found it horrible to try to get through. Then I tried the Brendan King translation, and that was a lot plainer to read. And one last note, there's also some really cringeworthy stuff that happens in the book which I won't even allude to, in case there's someone reading this who actually gets it in their head that they actually want to read this thing. I don't wanna spoil it for you.
So this is a horrible book, the characters just bore the crap out of me, listening to them talk is like listening to some talk show host that you hate everything that comes out of his mouth. Everything they talk about in this book is a fucking waste of time, but at least it's written elegantly. And don't think that means it's worth it just because of that, because it's not.
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LibraryThing member NekoApocalypse
Absolutely fuck this stupid book. Not because it's too graphic or something. No. I actually was looking at the reviews of this thing before I read it thinking, hah! cowards, pussies! I am the sort of person who wants to find the most offensively devious thing I can possibly read. But no, that
Now, I will say that this book wasn't 100% terrible. It did piss me off and I didn't enjoy it, but none the less I will say huysmans is a good writer, in terms of his prose. He can write a very mean sentence, his style is good. It had a tiny little bit of some of the nasty stuff I was expecting, but it's few and far between. Most of it is about that stuff I mentioned earlier, only a tiny bit of it is actually about the hideous satanic rituals of Gilles De Rais. That wasn't bad, but honestly I thought the book would have more of that. Most of the time it's just Des Hermes talking with Dertal about superstitious nonsense, and their friend Carhaix the church bell ringer. Dertal Soliloquizes his thoughts a lot too.
So, this book was a big disappointment, and it took me a long time to read! The writing style is pretty firmly ye olde writing style. To be honest I only made it to page 200, I couldn't even finish it. I had a lot better luck reading through it when I got a different translation. At first I tried the Keene Wallace translation and found it horrible to try to get through. Then I tried the Brendan King translation, and that was a lot plainer to read. And one last note, there's also some really cringeworthy stuff that happens in the book which I won't even allude to, in case there's someone reading this who actually gets it in their head that they actually want to read this thing. I don't wanna spoil it for you.
So this is a horrible book, the characters just bore the crap out of me, listening to them talk is like listening to some talk show host that you hate everything that comes out of his mouth. Everything they talk about in this book is a fucking waste of time, but at least it's written elegantly. And don't think that means it's worth it just because of that, because it's not.
Show More
wasn't even what I found in this book. What I found in this book is a few morons who are obsessed with religion, talk non stop about supernatural bullshit like alchemy, astrology, religious ceremonies for practicing magic, talking with the dead. It's a litany of utter bullshit, which really doesn't enlighten you in any way. It's actually just annoying.Now, I will say that this book wasn't 100% terrible. It did piss me off and I didn't enjoy it, but none the less I will say huysmans is a good writer, in terms of his prose. He can write a very mean sentence, his style is good. It had a tiny little bit of some of the nasty stuff I was expecting, but it's few and far between. Most of it is about that stuff I mentioned earlier, only a tiny bit of it is actually about the hideous satanic rituals of Gilles De Rais. That wasn't bad, but honestly I thought the book would have more of that. Most of the time it's just Des Hermes talking with Dertal about superstitious nonsense, and their friend Carhaix the church bell ringer. Dertal Soliloquizes his thoughts a lot too.
So, this book was a big disappointment, and it took me a long time to read! The writing style is pretty firmly ye olde writing style. To be honest I only made it to page 200, I couldn't even finish it. I had a lot better luck reading through it when I got a different translation. At first I tried the Keene Wallace translation and found it horrible to try to get through. Then I tried the Brendan King translation, and that was a lot plainer to read. And one last note, there's also some really cringeworthy stuff that happens in the book which I won't even allude to, in case there's someone reading this who actually gets it in their head that they actually want to read this thing. I don't wanna spoil it for you.
So this is a horrible book, the characters just bore the crap out of me, listening to them talk is like listening to some talk show host that you hate everything that comes out of his mouth. Everything they talk about in this book is a fucking waste of time, but at least it's written elegantly. And don't think that means it's worth it just because of that, because it's not.
Show Less
LibraryThing member colligan
La-Bas was, for me at least, a great disappointment. The writing was competent but not noteworthy. The plot was predictable and the characters little more than caricatures. The books primary value is probably as popular history. The "depraved" events described have little impact on modern readers
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in our secular and over-stimulaed culture. Show Less
LibraryThing member 064
Straight off, I should mention that the prose reminds me of Oscar Wilde - featuring a lot of intellectual conversations between the main characters that deal with themes of materialism and scientism, occultism and Satanism, history and religion.
The main character is disappointed with the modern
The moral of the story, from my point of view, is how a century of materialism, scientism, and atheism has turned away society from mysticism, religion, and theology in general. All these immaterial notions and focusing purely on rationalism and science has ended up losing the valuable things in life but has retained plenty of the perversions so the author is coming back into the Christian fold with his assessment of the late 19th century.
I would recommend this book if you are interested in the occult or Satanism, as well as late 19th-century literature.
The main character is disappointed with the modern
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world and is engaged in writing a biography medieval character called Gilles de Rais (known as Bluebeard), who is an infamous murderer and child molester. He mentions to his friends that he is interested in finding living people like the aforementioned Satanist to help him understand what's going on in the period so that he could write the biography more effectively. Fortunately for him, his friends let him know that there are in fact people like this in the modern age. He just needs to learn how to find them. He naturally goes and takes diligence with a married woman and ends up finding his way into a saint in society. This whole thing culminates in the description of the Black mass, which is a largely fictional ceremony celebrated by Satanic groups.The moral of the story, from my point of view, is how a century of materialism, scientism, and atheism has turned away society from mysticism, religion, and theology in general. All these immaterial notions and focusing purely on rationalism and science has ended up losing the valuable things in life but has retained plenty of the perversions so the author is coming back into the Christian fold with his assessment of the late 19th century.
I would recommend this book if you are interested in the occult or Satanism, as well as late 19th-century literature.
Show Less
LibraryThing member 064
Straight off, I should mention that the prose reminds me of Oscar Wilde - featuring a lot of intellectual conversations between the main characters that deal with themes of materialism and scientism, occultism and Satanism, history and religion.
The main character is disappointed with the modern
The moral of the story, from my point of view, is how a century of materialism, scientism, and atheism has turned away society from mysticism, religion, and theology in general. All these immaterial notions and focusing purely on rationalism and science has ended up losing the valuable things in life but has retained plenty of the perversions so the author is coming back into the Christian fold with his assessment of the late 19th century.
I would recommend this book if you are interested in the occult or Satanism, as well as late 19th-century literature.
The main character is disappointed with the modern
Show More
world and is engaged in writing a biography medieval character called Gilles de Rais (known as Bluebeard), who is an infamous murderer and child molester. He mentions to his friends that he is interested in finding living people like the aforementioned Satanist to help him understand what's going on in the period so that he could write the biography more effectively. Fortunately for him, his friends let him know that there are in fact people like this in the modern age. He just needs to learn how to find them. He naturally goes and takes diligence with a married woman and ends up finding his way into a saint in society. This whole thing culminates in the description of the Black mass, which is a largely fictional ceremony celebrated by Satanic groups.The moral of the story, from my point of view, is how a century of materialism, scientism, and atheism has turned away society from mysticism, religion, and theology in general. All these immaterial notions and focusing purely on rationalism and science has ended up losing the valuable things in life but has retained plenty of the perversions so the author is coming back into the Christian fold with his assessment of the late 19th century.
I would recommend this book if you are interested in the occult or Satanism, as well as late 19th-century literature.
Show Less
Subjects
Language
Original language
French
Original publication date
1891
Other editions
La-Bas (Decadence from Dedalus S.) by Joris-Karl Huysmans (Paperback)