Joris-Karl Huysmans - Against Nature (Penguin Classics)

AGAINST NATURE

JORIS-KARL HUYSMANS was born in Paris in 1848, the only son of a French mother and a Dutch father. After a childhood saddened by his fathers death and his mothers speedy remarriage, he became a junior clerk in the Ministry of the Interior, where he remained for thirty-two years. He spent the first half of the Franco-Prussian War in hospital, suffering from dysentery, and the second half under fire in the besieged capital. When peace returned he went back to the Ministry, and three years later published his first book, Le Drageoir pices (1874), a collection of prose-poems after Baudelaire. He then turned to novel-writing and published Marthe (1876), Les Surs Vatard (1879), En Mnage (1881) and A Vau-lEau (1882). A Rebours, published in 1884 and hailed by Arthur Symons as the breviary of the Decadence, marked his break with Zolas Medan Group and the beginning of an attempt to widen the scope of the novel. His other novels were En Rade (1887), L-Bas (1891), En Route (1895), La Catbdrale (1898) and LOblat (1903). He died in 1907.

ROBERT BALDICK, the late co-editor of the Penguin Classics, received his MA and D. Phil. from Oxford University, where he was a Fellow of Pembroke College. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he wrote biographies of J.-K. Huysmans, Frdrick Lamatre and Henry Murger, a study of the Goncourts, The Siege of Paris and The Duel. Authors whose work he translated from the French include the Goncourts, Montherlant, Radiguet, Restif de la Bretonne, Sartre, Simenon and Jules Verne. For the Penguin Classics he translated Flauberts Three Tales and Sentimental Education, Chateaubriands Memoirs and Huysmans Against Nature. He died in 1972.

PATRICK MCGUINNESS was born in 1968 in Tunisia. He is a fellow of St Annes College, University of Oxford, where he lectures in French. He is the author of Maurice Maeterlinck and the Making of Modern Theatre (2000), and has edited T. E. Hulmes Selected Writings (1998), Symbolism, Decadence and the Fin de sicle (2000), Anthologie de la posie Symboliste et dcadente (Paris, 2001) and Laura Riding and Robert Gravess A Survey of Modernist Poetry (2002). His translation of Stphane Mallarms For Anatoles Tomb was published in 2003. In 1998 he won an Eric Gregory Award for poetry from the Society of Authors, and his poems and translations have appeared in a variety of books and reviews. He lives in Cardiff.

JORIS KARL HUYSMANS

Translated by ROBERT BALDICK

With an Introduction and Notes by

PATRICK MCGUINNESS

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This edition first published, 2003

Translation copyright Robert Baldick, 1956
Introduction, Notes and translation of Appendices copyright Patrick McGuinness, 2003
Chronology copyright Terry Hale, 2001

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EISBN: 9780141906607

1815 Birth of Godfried Huysmans, father of the novelist, in the Dutch town of Breda. A lithographer and miniaturist by profession, he settles in Paris as a young man.

1845 June Godfried Huysmans proposes to a young French schoolmistress, Malvina Badin.

1848 5 Feb. Birth of Charles Marie Georges Huysmans at no. 11 (now no. 9) rue Suger in the 6th Arrondissement.

1848 Ordination of Joseph Antoine Boullan.

1856 24 June Death of Godfried Huysmans.

1857 Mother re-marries, to a M. Jules Og.

1858 May Mother and stepfather purchase a small bookbindery at no. 11 rue de Svres in the 7th Arrondissement.

1862 Huysmans enrols at the Lyce Saint-Louis.

1864 First sexual experiences with prostitutes.

1866 7 Mar. Huysmans passes baccalaurat.

1866 1 Apr. Following in the footsteps of other members of the family on his mothers side, Huysmans enters the Ministry of the Interior as an employ de sixime classe (employee: sixth grade) on a salary of 1,500 francs p.a.

1866 Autumn Enrols in the Faculties of Law and Letters of the University of Paris.

1867 8 Sept. Death of stepfather.

1868 15 Aug. Salary increases to 1,800 francs p.a.

1870 30 July Mobilized in the 6th Battalion of the Garde Mobile during the Franco-Prussian War. Dysentery prevents him from seeing action.

1870 15 Aug. Salary increases to 2,100 francs p.a.

1871 Feb. The Government and its staff relocate to Versailles.

1871 Summer Huysmans rents rooms in Paris.

1872 First draft of his war memoirs which will become Sac au dos.

1873 1 Feb. Salary increases to 2,400 francs p.a.

1874 10 Oct. Le Drageoir pices (tr. Dish of Spices, 1927), a collection of prose-poems, is published at the authors own expense.

1876 4 May His mother dies, leaving Huysmans responsible for his two half-sisters and the management of the bookbindery. He transfers to a post at the Sret Gnrale in Paris.

1876 12 Sept. Marthe, histoire dune fille (tr. Marthe, 1927 (US) and 1958 (UK)), a short novel dealing with the life of a prostitute in a licensed brothel, is published in Brussels.

1877 Early Enters into contact with Zola, Flaubert and Edmond de Goncourt.

1877 Aug. LArtiste serializes Sac au dos.

1878 1 Jan. Salary increases to 2,700 francs p.a.

1879 26 Feb. Les Soeurs Vatard (tr. The Vatard Sisters, 1983), a study of the lives of women working as bookbinders, is published. The work is dedicated to Zola.

1879 17 May Le Voltaire, on Zolas recommendation, publishes Huysmans first article on the Salon, the main artistic event in the Parisian calendar.

1880 1 Jan. Salary increases to 3,000 francs p.a.

1880 April Sac au dos (tr. Knapsack, 1907) appears in Les Soires de Medan, a collection of war stories, together with tales by Zola and Maupassant.