Huysmans’ rich and strange 1894 novel (‘the breviary of the Decadence’ as Arthur Symons dubbed it) has a title it has been notoriously difficult to translate. In French it is A rebours, which has been rendered variously Against Nature and Against the Grain, neither of which really cut the mustard. A rebours really signifies a sort of obstinacy or contrariety, and has much play in French idiom: comprendre à rebours means to get the wrong end of the stick, prendre quelqu’un à rebours to rub someone up the wrong way, and prendre l’ennemi à rebours to take the enemy from behind. The hint of anality makes it the perfect idiom for the book, whose hero, Des Esseintes, has not only devoted much of his life to ‘bizarre sexual practices and deviant behaviour’ but gains his nutrition via enemas, ‘unquestionably the ultimate deviation from the norm that anyone could realize.’As an aside, Against Nature is generally agreed as being the book Dorian Gray becomes obsessed with in Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, though it is never mentioned by name.
Consulted:
Collins Robert English-French Dictionary
Introduction to Penguin Classics edition of A rebours by Patrick McGuinness (2003)
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You're spot on about The Portrait of Dorian Gray and Dorian's "strangest book". Though not mentioned by name, it was identified by the author as À rebours during the Queensberry trial. The 1926 Groves & Michaux English language edition, Against the Grain, features the words: “THE BOOK THAT DORIAN GRAY LOVED AND THAT INSPIRED OSCAR WILDE.”
ReplyDeleteInteresting...Yes, Wilde paid very heavily for admiring that book.
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