Silencing the Double: the Search for God in Huysmans' En Route

Silencing the Double: the Search for God in Huysmans' En Route Robert Ziegler Montana College of Mineral Science and Technology Noted mainly as a "Decadent," a "Magician," an "Occultist," to cite terms used by biographer Robert Baldick in his study of the author, J.-K. Huysmans, not surprisingly, encountered skepticism on the part of literary colleagues when they learned of his conversion. Yet part of the reason for this widespread incredulity can be laid to Huysmans' own reserve, a tendency toward mystification that characterized a writer known more for his treatise on the sensualistic self-involvement of des Esseintes in A Rebours (1884) or his study of the demon-worship of Durtal in Là-bas (1891). As Baldick says: "To all but his closest friends, Huysmans refused ... to reveal the profound change of heart which he had undergone. His churchgoing, his reading of the mystics, even his oft-expressed intention of going to confession , were all explained — often with a Mephistophelian smile — as necessary documentation for his next novel" (181). Still, beginning with his first meeting in May 1891 with Abbé Mugnier, referred to as Abbé Gévresin in the autobiographical En Route (1895),' and continuing with the author's introduction into the Trappist monastery of Notre-Dame d'Igny in July 1892, the stirrings of Huysmans' faith were becoming increasingly more urgent. What may account for Huysmans' hesitation to commit himself to a life of contemplation was perhaps the difficulty he faced in resolving a dualism inherent in his character. Indeed, the alternating influence on Huysmans at this time of Abbé Mugnier and his orthodox religious teachings, and the defrocked Abbé Boullan with his seances in Lyons, shows how torn the author felt between the need for demonstrations of the existence of the supernatural and the acceptance of the less spectacular development of his faith. Only with the unifying of his two conflicting selves, with the silencing, the elimination, of an antagonistic double, could he accede to that serenity he claimed he wished to have. In En Route, Durtal first perceives this opposition as one between his religious aspirations and his physical demands. It is only later that he realizes that his intellectual pride and his propensity for analysis have worked to counteract God's grace. Thus it is not the insistence of the body on its pleasures and its comforts, but Satan who suggests to him his doubts and reservations. Satan becomes the evil double whose voice Durtal must still, so that he can achieve some peace and greater spiritual maturity. Yet at the outset, it is the body whose requirements must be met. Thus, before embarking for the abbey at Notre-Dame de l'Atre, Durtal, whose spiritual itinerary mirrors Huysmans' own, fills his portmanteau with vials 203 204Rocky Mountain Review of laudanum, packs of antipyrine; he prepares a stock of cigarettes he imagines will be contraband. As one who suffers chronic indigestion and crippling "neuralgias," he cannot contemplate the need to spend a week away without his sedatives and bromides. Like many of his antecedents in Huysmans' other novels, des Esseintes and Folantin and Cyprien Tibaille, Durtal emerges as an inmate/hypochondriac in a body he regards as both a jail and an infirmary. Like them he turns to literature and art, to subjects of the spirit, to offset "délabrements de l'estomac," afflictions of the organs. For him a physical recalcitrance determines a quest for the sublime.2 In fact, the characters in Huysmans are in frequent conflict with themselves. They see their bodies as jailors to whom they hope to give the slip. Before they can be themselves, can read or paint or pray, the discomforts that are the body's voice must be neutralized or stilled. In order to gain access to their "prison of solipsism" (Brombert 151), they must first become more willing internees within the confines of their bodies. They must make that prison a place where they can live more comfortably. Whether it be des Esseintes ' retreat set off at Fontenay or the churches, "God's houses," that Durtal tends to frequent, their lodging becomes a kind of drug, assumes a pharmaceutical value, one whereby their horror of the...