Editing Joris-Karl Huysmans (section)

==Biography==

===Early life===
Huysmans was born in Paris, France, in 1848. "His young mother, Élisabeth-Malvina Badin Huysmans, had been a schoolteacher before she married, and his father, Victor-Godfried-Jan Huysmans [Dutch: Huijsmans], was a Dutch immigrant who worked in Paris as a commercial artist."<ref>Antosh, Ruth (2024). ''J.-K. Huysmans''. London: Reaktion Books, p. 8.</ref><ref>[https://www.openarchieven.nl/brd:62af531a-59bd-17e4-91e4-87df888836a1 Information in the Dutch Archives of the birth on 8 July 1815 in Breda of Victor Godefridus Johannes.]</ref> Huysmans's father (1815-1856) died when Huysmans was eight years old. [[Constant Cornelis Huijsmans]], the Dutch painter and art teacher (including of [[Vincent van Gogh]]), was his uncle.<ref>[https://www.geheugenvantilburg.nl/page/12250/constant-huijsmans Constant Huijsmans]</ref><ref>[https://www.dbnl.org/tekst/niss004zach01_01/niss004zach01_01_0002.php "Uncle and nephew", in ''A gentle touch of his soul's life. On 'true' and 'false' mysticism around 1900'' (2008), Peter J. A. Nissen, p. 9.]</ref> Huysmans mother quickly remarried, and Huysmans resented his stepfather, Jules Og, a Protestant who, with Huysmans's mother, purchased a bookbindery on the ground floor of the building where they lived.<ref>Antosh, Ruth (2024). ''J.-K. Huysmans'', p. 10.</ref> 

During his childhood, Huysmans turned away from the Roman Catholic Church. He was unhappy at school but completed his coursework and earned a {{lang|fr|[[baccalauréat]]}}.
[[File:Joris-Karl Huysmans.jpg|thumb|Portray of Huysmans by Louis Félix Beschere (1886)]]

===Civil service career===
For 32 years, Huysmans worked as a civil servant for the French Ministry of the Interior, a job he found tedious. The young Huysmans was called up to fight in the [[Franco-Prussian War]], but was invalided out with [[dysentery]]. He used this experience in an early story, "''Sac au dos''" (Backpack) (later included in his collection, ''[[Les Soirées de Médan]]'').

After his retirement from the Ministry in 1898, made possible by the commercial success of his novel, ''La cathédrale'', Huysmans planned to leave Paris and move to [[Ligugé]]. He intended to set up a community of Catholic artists, including [[Charles-Marie Dulac]] (1862-1898). He had praised the young painter in ''[[The Cathedral (Huysmans novel)|La cathédrale]]''. Dulac died a few months before Huysmans completed his arrangements for the move to Ligugé, and he decided to stay in Paris.

In 1905 Huysmans was diagnosed with cancer of the mouth. He died in 1907 and was interred in the [[Montparnasse Cemetery|cimetière du Montparnasse]], Paris.[[Image:JkHuysmans.grave.jpg|thumb|right|Huysmans's grave]]

[[Image:JK Huysmans.jpg|thumb|right|A portrait of Huysmans, by [[Jean-Louis Forain]], {{circa|1878}} ([[Musée d'Orsay]])]]

===Writing career===
He used the name Joris-Karl Huysmans when he published his writing, as a way of honoring his father's ancestry. His first major publication was a collection of prose poems, ''Le drageoir aux épices'' (1874), which were strongly influenced by [[Baudelaire]]. They attracted little attention but revealed flashes of the author's distinctive style.

Huysmans followed it with the novel, ''[[Marthe (novel)|Marthe, Histoire d'une fille]]'' (1876). The story of a young prostitute, it was closer to [[Naturalism (literature)|Naturalism]] and brought him to the attention of [[Émile Zola]]. His next works were similar: sombre, realistic and filled with detailed evocations of Paris, a city Huysmans knew intimately. ''[[Les Sœurs Vatard]]'' (1879), dedicated to Zola, deals with the lives of women in a bookbindery. ''[[En ménage]]'' (1881) is an account of a writer's failed marriage. The climax of his early work is the novella ''[[À vau-l'eau]]'' (1882) (translated as ''With the Flow'', ''Downstream'', and ''Drifting''), the story of a downtrodden clerk, Monsieur Folantin, and his quest for a decent meal.

[[Image:Huysmans hommes aujourdhui.jpg|thumb|left|A caricature showing Huysmans as a somewhat eccentric sort of literary [[dandy]], by [[Coll-Toc]], 1885]]

Huysmans's 1884 novel {{lang|fr|[[À rebours]]}} (''Against the Grain'' or ''Against Nature'' or ''Wrong Way'') became his most famous, or notorious. It featured the character of an [[Aesthetics|aesthete]], des Esseintes, and decisively broke from Naturalism. It was seen as an example of "[[decadent movement|decadent]]" literature. The description of des Esseintes's "[[homosexuality|alluring liaison]]" with a "cherry-lipped youth" was believed to have influenced other writers of the decadent movement, including [[Oscar Wilde]].<ref name="glbtq">{{cite web |url=http://www.glbtq.com/literature/huysmans_jk.html |title=Huysmans, Joris-Karl (1848–1907) |year=2002 |last=McClanahan |first=Clarence |access-date=2007-08-11}}</ref>

Huysmans began to drift away from the Naturalists and found new friends among the [[Symbolism (movement)|Symbolist]] and Catholic writers whose work he had praised in ''À rebours.'' They included [[Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly]], [[Villiers de L'Isle Adam]], and [[Léon Bloy]]. [[Stéphane Mallarmé]] was so pleased with the publicity his verse had received from the novel that he dedicated one of his most famous poems, "Prose pour des Esseintes", to its hero. Barbey d'Aurevilly told Huysmans that after writing ''À rebours,'' he would have to choose between "the muzzle of a pistol and the foot of the Cross."<ref name="Barbey">Aurevilly, Jules Barbey d' (1884). ''Le Constitutionnel'', "Á rebours", 28 July 1884.</ref> Huysmans, who had received a secular education and abandoned his Catholic religion in childhood, returned to the Catholic Church eight years later.<ref name="Baldick">Baldick, Robert (1959). Introduction to ''Against Nature'', his translation of Huysmans's ''Á rebours''. Harmondsworth: Penguin, p. 12.</ref>

Huysmans's next book after ''Á rebours'' was the novella ''Un dilemme'', which tells "the story of a poor working-class woman who gives birth out of wedlock. When her bourgeois lover, the father of the baby, dies, his heartless family members refuse to help, leaving the mother and her child destitute."<ref>Antosh, Ruth (2024). ''J.-K. Huysmans'', p. 50.</ref> Huysmans's next novel, ''[[En rade]]'', an unromantic account of a summer spent in the country, did not sell as well as its predecessor. "The novel's originality lies in its abrupt juxtaposition of real life and dreams."<ref>Antosh, Ruth (2024). ''J.-K. Huysmans'', p. 56.</ref>

His ''[[Là-bas (novel)|Là-bas]]'' (1891) attracted considerable attention for its portrayal of [[Satanism]] in France in the late 1880s.<ref>Rudwin, Maxmilian J. (1920). [http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101064304957;view=1up;seq=262 "The Satanism of Huysmans,"] ''The Open Court,'' Vol. XXXIV, pp. 240–251.</ref><ref>Thurstan, Frederic (1928). "Huysmans' Excursion into Occultism," ''Occult Review'', Vol. XLVIII, pp. 227–236.</ref> He introduced the character Durtal, a thinly disguised self-portrait, who is writing a biography of the notorious 15th-century child-murderer and torturer [[Gilles de Rais]].<ref>Antosh, Ruth (2024). ''J.-K. Huysmans'', pp. 65-66.</ref> The later Durtal novels, ''[[En route (novel)|En route]]'' (1895), ''[[The Cathedral (Huysmans novel)|La cathédrale]]'' (1898) and ''[[L'oblat]]'' (1903), explore Durtal/Huysmans's conversion to [[Roman Catholic Church|Roman Catholicism]].<ref>Hanighan, F. C. (1931). "Huysmans Conversion," ''The Open Court,'' Vol. XLV, pp. 474–481.</ref> ''En route'' depicts Durtal's spiritual struggle during his stay at a [[Trappists|Trappist]] monastery. In ''[[The Cathedral (Huysmans novel)|La cathédrale]]'' (1898), the protagonist is at [[Chartres]], intensely studying the cathedral and its symbolism. The commercial success of this book enabled Huysmans to retire from the civil service and live on his royalties.  In ''L'Oblat'', Durtal becomes a [[Benedictine]] [[oblate (religion)|oblate]]. He finally learns to accept the world's suffering.

Huysmans was a founding member of the [[Académie Goncourt]].

Huysmans's work was known for his idiosyncratic use of the [[French language]], extensive vocabulary, detailed and sensuous descriptions, and biting, satirical wit. It also displays an encyclopaedic erudition, ranging from the catalogue of decadent [[Latin]] authors in ''À rebours'' to the discussion of the iconography of Christian architecture in ''[[The Cathedral (Huysmans novel)|La cathédrale]]''. Huysmans expresses a disgust with modern life and a deep pessimism. This had led him first to the philosophy of [[Arthur Schopenhauer]]. Later he returned to the Catholic Church, as he described in his Durtal novels.

===Art criticism===
In addition to his novels, Huysmans was known for his art criticism, collected in his books ''L'Art Moderne'' (1883)<ref>In [https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n07/julian-barnes/robespierre-s-chamber-pot "Robespierre's Chamber Pot"], [[Julian Barnes]] writes that the 2019 translation by Huysmans biographer Robert Baldick that he reviews (titled ''Modern Art'') is the first translation of ''L'Art Moderne'' into English. ''London Review of Books'', 2 April 2020. Barnes adds that ''L'Art Moderne'' comprises Huysmans's reviews of "the Salons of 1879-82 and the Independent Exhibitions of 1880-1882".</ref> and ''Certains'' (1889).<ref>''Certains'' was translated into English for the first time in 2021, as ''Certain Artists''. It [https://huysmans.org/dedalus/certains.htm includes extended analyses of works by Edgar Degas, Odilon Redon, Gustave Moreau, and Félicien Rops.]</ref> "[H]e was a perceptive and talented art critic who was among the first to recognize the genius of [[Edgar Degas|Degas]] and the Impressionists."<ref>Antosh, Ruth (2024). ''J.-K. Huysmans'', p. 7.</ref> But after Huysmans sent a copy of ''L'Art Moderne'' to [[Camille Pissarro]], Pissarro wrote to him, "How is it that you don't say one word about [[Paul Cézanne|Cézanne]], whom not one of us has failed to acknowledge as one of the most singular temperaments of our time, and one who has had a very great influence on modern art? I was extremely surprised by your articles on [[Claude Monet|Monet]]. How can such astonishing vision, such phenomenal execution and such rare and extensive decorative feeling not have struck you back in 1870 ...?"<ref>[[Anka Muhlstein|Muhlstein, Anka]], ''Camille Pissarro: The Audacity of Impressionism''. New York: [[Other Press]], 2023, p. 125.</ref>