891), both of which are interesting experiments, but neither
of them an entire success; and a volume of art criticism, _Certains_
(1890), notable for a single splendid essay, that on Felicien Rops, the
etcher of the fantastically erotic. _En Rade_ is a sort of deliberately
exaggerated record--vision rather than record--of the disillusions of a
country sojourn, as they affect the disordered nerves of a town
_nevrose_. The narrative is punctuated by nightmares, marvellously woven
out of nothing, and with no psychological value--the human part of the
book being a sort of picturesque pathology at best, the representation
of a series of states of nerves, sharpened by the tragic ennui of the
country. There is a cat which becomes interesting in its agonies; but
the long boredom of the man and woman is only too faithfully shared with
the reader. _La-Bas_ is a more artistic creation, on a more solid
foundation. It is a study of Satanism, a dexterous interweaving of the
history of Gilles de Retz (the traditional Bluebeard) with the
contemporary manifestations of the Black Art. 'The execration of
impotence, the hate of the mediocre--that is perhaps one of the most
indulgent definitions of Diabolism,' says Huysmans, somewhere in the
book, and it is on this side that one finds the link of connection with
the others of that series of pessimist studies in life. _Un naturalisme
spiritualiste_, he defines his own art at this point in its development;
and it is in somewhat the 'documentary' manner that he applies himself
to the study of these strange problems, half of hysteria, half of a real
mystical corruption that does actually exist in our midst. I do not
know whether the monstrous tableau of the Black Mass--so marvellously,
so revoltingly described in the central episode of the book--is still
enacted in our days, but I do know that all but the most horrible
practices of the sacrilegious magic of the Middle Ages are yet
performed, from time to time, in a secrecy which is all but absolute.
The character of Madame Chantelouve is an attempt, probably the first in
literature, to diagnose a case of Sadism in a woman. To say that it is
successful would be to assume that the thing is possible, which one
hesitates to do. The book is even more disquieting, to the normal mind,
than _A Rebours_. But it is not, like that, the study of an exception
which has become a type. It is the study of an exception which does not
profess to be anything but a