Huysmans chez lui ed. by Marc Smeets (review)

SMEETS, MARC, éd. J.-K. Huysmans chez lui. CRIN 52. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009. ISBN 978-90-420-2562-2. Pp. 182. $50. This collection of ten essays brings together a fine sampling of analytic and biographical research on fin-de-siècle novelist and art critic Joris-Karl Huysmans. The overarching themes include Huysmans’s Dutch origins, his philosophical and aesthetic ties with Holland and Belgium, and the writer’s yearning for a domestic or inner space along with many of his fictional characters. To set the tone, Marc Smeets constructs the idea of “le chez soi huysmansien” by identifying the Low Countries as the idyllic land of happiness and home for Huysmans: “la Hollande, c’est le pays de bonheur, le pays qui lui rappelle son enfance, le pays qui ressemble encore le plus au pays imaginaire où l’auteur, si ce pays de cocagne pouvait vraiment exister, se sentirait enfin ‘chez lui’” (9). In a similar vein, the bulk of essays traces the impact of Dutch and Flemish cultures on Huysmans’s writing, his aesthetic tastes, and his sense of self and home. Philippe Barascud examines the orthographic variations of Huysmans’s name (“Huysmans ou Huÿsmans?”), noting that whereas “Huÿsmans” appears on the covers of the first editions of both the 1874 Le drageoir à épices and the 1875 Le drageoir aux épices, the dieresis disappears from the author’s name in his subsequent works, and does not reappear until the publication of En ménage in 1881. Barascud’s intriguing research attempts to determine whether the typographical omission is deliberate or reflects a publishing error. The rest of the collection touches on themes and topics ranging from religion and aesthetics, to nature, interior landscapes, and literary milieus. While Huysmans’s 1901 hagiography Sainte Lydwine de Schiedam figures prominently in both Zielonka’s reflective travel account “Huysmans à Schiedam: sur les traces de Sainte Lydwine,” and Solal’s “Le divin lait de Lydwine: érotique du chez soi et théorie du dehors,” Jean-Marie Seillan bases his arguments for Catholicism and racialism on La cathédrale. Art and neurosis combine smoothly in Maarten van Buuren’s essay to shed light on Huysmans’s aesthetic sensibilities and artistic temperament. Similarly, Devaux highlights pictorial experiences and visual elements —“des marqueurs du pictorial dans la prose de Huysmans” (33) in “Huysmans chez lui/Huysmans au musée: la galerie de tableaux de ‘La Kermesse de Rubens’”. Thorel-Cailleteau’s “Intimisme,” on the other hand, privileges anodyne subjectivities—“sujet minuscule et pitoyable” (139) and sickly landscapes. Estrella de la Torre Giménez and Patrick Bergeron both adopt a comparative approach . Whereas de la Torre Giménez emphasizes “les rapprochements de goûts et de techniques littéraires” (65) between Huysmans and Belgian literary figures like Lemonnier and Rodenbach in her energetic investigation, Bergeron’s complex interpretation of domestic melancholy draws analogies between Huysmans and Barrès. The compilation closes with a discussion of nature and nostalgia in Huysmans’s works by Per Buvik. This collection of essays explores Huysmans’s affinities with Holland and Belgium from multiple angles to offer insights into the author’s interiority and conceptualization of home; it informs and enriches Huysmans studies. Edgewood College (WI) Sayeeda H. Mamoon 568 FRENCH REVIEW 85.3 ...