Enter the house of obsessions
AgainstNature
The world was unbearable.
So he built his own.
Disgusted with Paris, Des Esseintes withdraws to a house arranged entirely around his tastes: rare books, perfumes, paintings and increasingly elaborate experiments in pleasure.
Huysmans’s novel of retreat and excess
Inside the retreat
of Des Esseintes.
In Joris-Karl Huysmans’s Against Nature (1884), an aristocrat gives up Parisian society and devotes himself to furnishing a secluded house. He has the money to indulge almost any preference. What follows is an intimate account of his enthusiasms, prejudices and failing health, often funniest when he is most convinced of his own good taste.
The cabinet of obsessions
Three objects from the novel
The things he
chooses to live with.
In Joris-Karl Huysmans’s Against Nature (1884), furnishing a house extends to decorating a tortoise, arranging liqueurs as an orchestra and composing landscapes from perfume. These episodes give a sense of the novel’s extraordinary detail. Choose an object below to read about the scene it comes from.
Artwork inspired by Chapter IV
01 / The jewelled tortoise · Chapter IV
A tortoise to suit the carpet.
Des Esseintes buys a tortoise because he thinks its dark shell will bring out the colours of an Oriental carpet. Dissatisfied with the effect, he has the shell gilded and encrusted with gemstones. Huysmans describes the selection of the stones at length, while the creature carrying them barely enters its owner’s calculations.
From the room to the page
A taste of the translation
An orchestra
of liqueurs.
In Chapter IV of Joris-Karl Huysmans’s Against Nature (1884), Des Esseintes matches the flavours of liqueurs to the sounds of musical instruments. Dry curaçao suggests a clarinet; kirsch, a trumpet. The selections below quote Aurélie Chambord’s translation, alongside the edition’s note on his invention.
Inside the Time Warp Edition
The mouth organ
“He called this assembly of liqueur barrels his mouth organ.”
Open the note · Chapter IV, note 9
“Des Esseintes’ device — a rack of liqueur barrels with interconnected taps, each assigned the ‘voice’ of a musical instrument — is one of the novel’s most famous conceits. It exemplifies the Decadent fascination with synesthesia, the blending of senses: here, taste becomes music.”
Explore the paperback edition and sample pages.
The Time Warp Edition
The complete novel,
with notes and context.
The Time Warp Edition of Joris-Karl Huysmans’s Against Nature (1884) includes the whole of Chapter VI and the passages from Chapter IX omitted in John Howard’s 1922 translation. Aurélie Chambord’s translation is accompanied by Lee Raymond’s introduction, chapter endnotes and material on Huysmans and the Decadent movement.
ISBN 9781967573141.
Against Nature · À rebours
Spend some time
in his company.
Read the restored and unabridged novel in Aurélie Chambord’s translation, with an introduction and notes from Time Warp Editions.