Joris-Karl Huysmans

Charles-Marie-Georges Huysmans published under the pen name Joris-Karl and worked in the French civil service for 30 years to pay the rent. He started as a Naturalist writer, then published À rebours in 1884 — a novel whose idiosyncratic language and erudition made him the face of the Decadent movement. His deep pessimism pulled him toward Schopenhauer, but the trajectory bent: Là-bas in 1891 sent his character Durtal into research on Satanism and the child-murderer Gilles de Rais, and the Durtal trilogy that followed — En route, La cathédrale, L'Oblat — traced a spiritual conversion to Cathol…