Osmazômes (Huysmans)

It is generally known that in J.-K. Huysmans, the fascination with concentrates appears in two semantic fields: in nutrition and in æsthetics. To that, in our view, may be added a third: religion. Through a process we have dubbed “a reduction to the essence,” we argue that the osmazôme alluded to in A rebours, the ptomaïne mentioned in En rade, and the sacred essences discussed in Sainte Lydwine de Schiedam and La Cathédrale express in dialectical terms Huysmans’s fascination with an authentic presence. (ms) (in French)