The influences behind Against the Grain (À rebours)

1884

Against the Grain (À rebours)

Joris-Karl Huysmans

Decadent. France. Written in French.

Huysmans's novel (À rebours) follows Jean des Esseintes, the last of a worn-out aristocratic line, who shuts himself in a house at Fontenay and arranges his days around perfumes, jewels, Latin decadent authors, Moreau's paintings and Baudelaire's poems. Its library chapters on Petronius, Baudelaire, Poe, Flaubert and Mallarmé became a reading list for the Decadent movement.

Where it came from

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1874

The Temptation of Saint Anthony (La Tentation de saint Antoine)

Gustave Flaubert

Third Republic. France. Written in French.

A closet drama in which the desert hermit Anthony is besieged over one night by visions of heresies, gods, queens and monsters.

What it handed down

To Against the Grain (À rebours) (1884)

Direct source, well documented.

In chapter 14 des Esseintes singles out Flaubert's Temptation among modern books for its gorgeous, hallucinatory erudition. Its parade of exotic heresies, gems and monsters is a model for the novel's catalogues of rare and strange things.

Where it came from

Life of Antony, Athanasius of Alexandria c. 360 follow this thread
Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), Anonymous c. 10th–5th century BCE (compiled) follow this thread
Faust, Part One, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1808 follow this thread

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1871

Hérodiade (Scène)

Stéphane Mallarmé

Parnassian/Symbolist. France. Written in French.

A dramatic poem in which the virgin princess Herodias converses with her nurse about her cold, self-contained beauty.

What it handed down

To Against the Grain (À rebours) (1884)

Direct source, well documented.

Des Esseintes owns a manuscript anthology of Mallarmé and quotes 'Hérodiade' in chapter 14, linking it to Gustave Moreau's Salomé paintings he describes in chapter 5. Huysmans's praise brought Mallarmé, then little known, to a wide readership.

Where it came from

Gospel of Matthew, Anonymous c. 80–90 CE follow this thread
The Flowers of Evil (Les Fleurs du mal), Charles Baudelaire 1857 follow this thread

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1857

The Flowers of Evil (Les Fleurs du mal)

Charles Baudelaire

Second Empire. France. Written in French.

Baudelaire's verse collection on spleen, vice, the city and the ideal, prosecuted for obscenity on publication.

What it handed down

To Against the Grain (À rebours) (1884)

Direct source, well documented.

Des Esseintes has a unique edition of Baudelaire's poems printed in church-missal type and bound in pigskin (chapter 12), and treats Baudelaire as the poet who explored the hidden depths of the soul. The book's cult of artifice, perfume and spleen comes from poems such as 'Correspondances' and 'Spleen.'

To Hérodiade (Scène) (1871)

Stylistic influence, well documented.

Mallarmé's early verse was heavily Baudelairean, and 'Hérodiade' carries Baudelaire's cult of sterile, mineral beauty into a woman who refuses all touch. The poem's chill perfumes and jewels follow poems such as 'La Beauté.'

Where it came from

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1845

The Raven

Edgar Allan Poe

American Romanticism. United States. Written in English.

A narrative poem in which a grieving scholar is visited by a raven that answers every question with 'Nevermore.'

What it handed down

To The Flowers of Evil (Les Fleurs du mal) (1857)

Stylistic influence, probable.

Baudelaire discovered Poe in 1847 and spent years translating him, later translating 'The Raven' with Poe's account of its composition. Poe's doctrine of the poem as a calculated effect and his refrains and mourning for dead beloveds shaped several poems in the collection.

Where it came from

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1844

Lady Geraldine's Courtship

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Early Victorian. England. Written in English.

A long ballad of a poor poet's love for a noblewoman, written in long trochaic lines with internal rhyme.

What it handed down

To The Raven (1845)

Structural model, well documented.

Poe reviewed Barrett's poems and dedicated The Raven volume to her. The Raven's long trochaic line with internal rhyme closely follows the metre of 'Lady Geraldine's Courtship,' including a near-echo of its 'purple curtain' line.

Where it came from

The line stops here: minor branch.

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1841

Barnaby Rudge

Charles Dickens

Early Victorian. England. Written in English.

Historical novel of the Gordon Riots whose simple-minded hero keeps a talking raven named Grip.

What it handed down

To The Raven (1845)

Direct source, probable.

Poe reviewed Barnaby Rudge in 1841 and wished Dickens had made more of the talking raven Grip. Scholars widely take Grip as the seed of Poe's prophetic bird.

Where it came from

The line stops here: minor branch.

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1839

The Fall of the House of Usher

Edgar Allan Poe

American Romanticism. United States. Written in English.

A tale of the hypersensitive Roderick Usher, last of his line, and the collapse of his family and his mansion.

What it handed down

To Against the Grain (À rebours) (1884)

Thematic kinship, well documented.

Poe, known in France through Baudelaire's translations, is praised in chapter 14 for his analysis of will and nervous disorder. Roderick Usher, the over-refined last heir of a decaying line shut in his house, is a direct prototype for des Esseintes.

Where it came from

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1835

Mademoiselle de Maupin

Théophile Gautier

French Romanticism. France. Written in French.

An epistolary novel of a young man's love for a woman disguised as a cavalier, prefaced by a manifesto for art for art's sake.

What it handed down

To The Flowers of Evil (Les Fleurs du mal) (1857)

Thematic kinship, well documented.

Baudelaire dedicated the collection to Gautier as 'poète impeccable' and 'parfait magicien ès lettres françaises.' Gautier's preface to Mademoiselle de Maupin, insisting that art need serve no moral use, underpins Baudelaire's separation of beauty from virtue.

Where it came from

As You Like It, William Shakespeare c. 1599 follow this thread

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1829

Life, Poems and Thoughts of Joseph Delorme (Vie, poésies et pensées de Joseph Delorme)

Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve

French Romanticism. France. Written in French.

Poems presented as the remains of a fictional consumptive medical student, dwelling on urban drabness and morbid melancholy.

What it handed down

To The Flowers of Evil (Les Fleurs du mal) (1857)

Thematic kinship, well documented.

Baudelaire told Sainte-Beuve in letters that he had read Joseph Delorme young and been marked by it. Its sickly urban melancholy, drab Parisian settings and analytical despair anticipate the 'Tableaux parisiens' and 'Spleen' poems.

Where it came from

The Sorrows of Young Werther, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1774 follow this thread

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The EntailE. T. A. Hoffmann

1817

The Entail (Das Majorat)

E. T. A. Hoffmann

German Romanticism. Germany. Written in German.

A Night Piece about a cursed Baltic family seat whose castle partly collapses and whose line ends in crime and haunting.

What it handed down

To The Fall of the House of Usher (1839)

Disputed link, conjectural.

Scholars have proposed Hoffmann's tale, with its cursed family seat, collapsing tower and extinguished line, as a source for Usher. Poe's knowledge of Hoffmann is uncertain and probably came through translations and reviews.

Where it came from

The line stops here: minor branch.

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1808

Faust, Part One

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Weimar Classicism. Germany. Written in German.

A verse drama of the scholar Faust's wager with Mephistopheles and his seduction of Gretchen.

What it handed down

To The Temptation of Saint Anthony (La Tentation de saint Antoine) (1874)

Structural model, well documented.

Flaubert read Faust in Nerval's translation as a youth and said it overwhelmed him. The Temptation's dramatic form, its tempter figure Hilarion and its night of phantasmagoria owe much to Faust and its Walpurgis Night.

Where it came from

Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), Anonymous c. 10th–5th century BCE (compiled) follow this thread

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1774

The Sorrows of Young Werther

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Sturm und Drang. Germany. Written in German.

Epistolary novel of a sensitive young man's hopeless love and suicide.

What it handed down

To Life, Poems and Thoughts of Joseph Delorme (Vie, poésies et pensées de Joseph Delorme) (1829)

Thematic kinship, probable.

Sainte-Beuve's fictional biography of a sensitive, doomed young man belongs to the line of Werther, which French Romantics read avidly. The device of presenting a dead youth's writings with an editor's frame follows Goethe's epistolary novel.

Where it came from

The Poems of Ossian, James Macpherson 1765 follow this thread
Odyssey, Homer c. 725 BCE follow this thread

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1765

The Poems of Ossian

James Macpherson

Georgian. Scotland. Written in English.

Prose poems presented as translations of an ancient Gaelic bard, full of mist, lament and fallen heroes.

What it handed down

To The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774)

Direct source, well documented.

Near the end Werther reads Lotte his own translation of the 'Songs of Selma' from Ossian, a long quoted passage that brings their feelings into the open. Ossianic lament sets the mood of the novel's close.

Where it came from

Iliad, Homer c. 750 BCE follow this thread

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1764

The Castle of Otranto

Horace Walpole

Georgian. England. Written in English.

The first Gothic novel: a usurping prince, a doomed dynasty, a prophecy and a supernatural collapse of the castle.

What it handed down

To The Fall of the House of Usher (1839)

Thematic kinship, probable.

Walpole established the Gothic pattern of a doomed family whose house collapses at the end of its line. Poe adopts the decaying ancestral seat as the image of a family's ruin, ending with the mansion sinking into the tarn.

Where it came from

Hamlet, William Shakespeare c. 1600 follow this thread

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c. 1600

Hamlet

William Shakespeare

Elizabethan. England. Written in English.

Tragedy of a Danish prince urged by his father's ghost to avenge a murder by his uncle.

What it handed down

To The Castle of Otranto (1764)

Direct source, well documented.

Walpole's preface to the second edition defends mixing the comic and tragic by appeal to Shakespeare. The ghostly father demanding justice and the usurper's guilt echo Hamlet.

Where it came from

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c. 1599

As You Like It

William Shakespeare

Elizabethan. England. Written in English.

Pastoral comedy in which Rosalind, disguised as the youth Ganymede, courts Orlando in the Forest of Arden.

What it handed down

To Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835)

Direct source, well documented.

The characters of Mademoiselle de Maupin stage As You Like It, and Madelaine, disguised as the cavalier Théodore, plays Rosalind. The play's cross-dressing courtship becomes the novel's central device for confusing desire and gender.

Where it came from

Rosalynde, Thomas Lodge 1590 follow this thread

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1590

Rosalynde

Thomas Lodge

Elizabethan. England. Written in English.

A pastoral prose romance of a banished princess who disguises herself as a page in the forest of Arden.

What it handed down

To As You Like It (c. 1599)

Direct source, well documented.

Shakespeare took his plot from Lodge's romance: the banished duke, the wrestling match, the heroine disguised as Ganymede, and the forest of Arden.

Where it came from

The line stops here: minor branch.

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Tragic Histories (Histoires tragiques), vol. 5François de Belleforest

1570

Tragic Histories (Histoires tragiques), vol. 5

François de Belleforest

French Renaissance. France. Written in French.

A collection of moralized tales including the story of Amleth, prince of Denmark, who feigns madness to avenge his father.

What it handed down

To Hamlet (c. 1600)

Direct source, well documented.

Belleforest's tale of Amleth supplied the plot of a prince feigning madness to avenge a father killed by his uncle, who has married the widow. Shakespeare likely knew it directly or through the lost earlier Hamlet play.

Where it came from

Deeds of the Danes (Gesta Danorum), Saxo Grammaticus c. 1200 follow this thread

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c. 1314–1320

Inferno

Dante Alighieri

Late Medieval. Tuscany. Written in Italian.

The first canticle of the Divine Comedy, in which Dante, guided by Virgil, descends through the circles of Hell.

What it handed down

To The Flowers of Evil (Les Fleurs du mal) (1857)

Thematic kinship, probable.

'Don Juan aux enfers' stages a crossing of the infernal river in Dante's manner, and 'Béatrice' borrows Dante's beloved's name. Baudelaire's moral topography of damnation and his portraits of sinners in torment draw on the Inferno.

Where it came from

Aeneid, Virgil 19 BCE follow this thread

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Deeds of the DanesSaxo Grammaticus

c. 1200

Deeds of the Danes (Gesta Danorum)

Saxo Grammaticus

High Medieval. Denmark. Written in Latin.

A Latin history of the Danish kings, from legend onward, containing the Amleth story.

What it handed down

To Tragic Histories (Histoires tragiques), vol. 5 (1570)

Direct source, well documented.

Belleforest translated and moralized the Amleth story from Saxo's Latin, keeping the feigned madness, the eavesdropper killed, and the voyage to England.

Where it came from

The line stops here: draws on oral Scandinavian legend.

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c. 360

Life of Antony

Athanasius of Alexandria

Late Antiquity. Roman Egypt. Written in Greek.

A biography of the desert hermit Antony, recounting his renunciation of property and his battles with demonic temptations.

What it handed down

To The Temptation of Saint Anthony (La Tentation de saint Antoine) (1874)

Direct source, well documented.

Athanasius's Life is the source for Anthony's desert solitude and his nightly assaults by demons in many shapes. Flaubert expands these temptations into a vast pageant of visions.

Where it came from

Gospel of Matthew, Anonymous c. 80–90 CE follow this thread

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c. 80–90 CE

Gospel of Matthew

Anonymous

Early Christian. Roman Syria or Palestine. Written in Greek.

Gospel narrative of Jesus's life and teaching, including the death of John the Baptist at Herod's court.

What it handed down

To Hérodiade (Scène) (1871)

Direct source, well documented.

Matthew 14 tells of Herodias, her dancing daughter and the beheading of John the Baptist. Mallarmé takes the name and the biblical setting, giving the princess the name Hérodiade and reworking the story around her self-absorption.

To Life of Antony (c. 360)

Direct source, well documented.

Athanasius writes that Antony gave up his property after hearing in church 'If you would be perfect, go, sell what you have' (Matthew 19:21). The gospel's account of Jesus tempted in the wilderness supplies the pattern for Antony's desert trials.

Where it came from

Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), Anonymous c. 10th–5th century BCE (compiled) follow this thread

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c. 60 CE

Satyricon

Petronius

Neronian Rome. Imperial Rome. Written in Latin.

A fragmentary comic prose-and-verse narrative of two rogues wandering through the low life and luxury of the early Empire, including Trimalchio's feast.

What it handed down

To Against the Grain (À rebours) (1884)

Direct source, well documented.

Chapter 3 surveys des Esseintes's Latin library and praises Petronius as a realist of Roman vice and luxury. The novel's taste for late, corrupt Latinity and its interest in sterile excess draw on the Satyricon, Trimalchio's feast especially.

Where it came from

Aeneid, Virgil 19 BCE follow this thread
Odyssey, Homer c. 725 BCE follow this thread

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c. 50 CE

Thyestes

Seneca the Younger

Julio-Claudian. Imperial Rome. Written in Latin.

Revenge tragedy in which Atreus serves his brother Thyestes his own sons at a banquet, opening with the ghost of Tantalus.

What it handed down

To Hamlet (c. 1600)

Stylistic influence, probable.

Elizabethan revenge tragedy took its ghosts, rhetoric of vengeance and bloody banquets from Seneca, read in Latin and in the 1560s English translations. Hamlet's ghost and revenger belong to that Senecan line, though no single passage is copied.

Where it came from

Agamemnon, Aeschylus 458 BCE follow this thread

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19 BCE

Aeneid

Virgil

Augustan. Augustan Rome. Written in Latin.

Epic of the Trojan Aeneas's flight from burning Troy and his founding of the Roman line in Italy.

What it handed down

To The Flowers of Evil (Les Fleurs du mal) (1857)

Direct source, well documented.

'Le Cygne' opens 'Andromaque, je pense à vous,' recalling Aeneid Book 3, where Aeneas finds Hector's widow mourning by a false Simois river in exile. Baudelaire uses Virgil's image of displaced grief to frame the rebuilding of Paris.

To Hamlet (c. 1600)

Direct source, well documented.

The First Player's speech on Pyrrhus slaughtering Priam reworks Aeneas's account of Troy's fall in Aeneid Book 2. Hamlet asks for it as 'Aeneas' tale to Dido.'

To Inferno (c. 1314–1320)

Direct source, well documented.

Virgil is Dante's guide through Hell, and Aeneid Book 6, Aeneas's descent to the underworld, supplies figures such as Charon and Minos. Dante names Virgil as his master and the source of his style.

To Satyricon (c. 60 CE)

Direct source, well documented.

The poet Eumolpus recites a 'Capture of Troy' in verse that reworks Aeneid Book 2. Petronius mocks contemporary epic ambition through such Virgilian pastiche.

Where it came from

Odyssey, Homer c. 725 BCE follow this thread
Iliad, Homer c. 750 BCE follow this thread

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c. 10th–5th century BCE (compiled)

Hebrew Bible (Tanakh)

Anonymous

Iron Age to Persian period. Ancient Israel and Judah. Written in Hebrew.

The scriptures of ancient Israel: law, history, prophecy, psalms and wisdom books including Job.

What it handed down

To The Temptation of Saint Anthony (La Tentation de saint Antoine) (1874)

Direct source, well documented.

Flaubert draws on scripture for many visions, including the Queen of Sheba, Nebuchadnezzar and the gods of Israel's neighbours. Anthony's meditations quote and turn over biblical texts throughout.

To Faust, Part One (1808)

Structural model, well documented.

The 'Prologue in Heaven,' where the Lord allows Mephistopheles to tempt Faust, is modelled on the opening of the Book of Job. Goethe acknowledged the borrowing.

To Gospel of Matthew (c. 80–90 CE)

Direct source, well documented.

Matthew repeatedly quotes the prophets with the formula 'that it might be fulfilled,' presenting Jesus as completing Israel's scriptures. Its genealogy, Moses typology and temptation narrative are built from Hebrew Bible material.

Where it came from

This is one of the oldest surviving works in its tradition; the line ends here.

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458 BCE

Agamemnon

Aeschylus

Classical Athens. Athens. Written in Ancient Greek.

First play of the Oresteia: Clytemnestra murders her husband Agamemnon on his return from Troy, under the curse of the house of Atreus.

What it handed down

To Thyestes (c. 50 CE)

Thematic kinship, probable.

Seneca's play dramatizes the crime behind the curse on the house of Atreus that Aeshylus's Cassandra sees in vision, the feast of Thyestes' children. Seneca reworked Greek tragic plots of this family in his Agamemnon and Thyestes.

Where it came from

Odyssey, Homer c. 725 BCE follow this thread

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c. 725 BCE

Odyssey

Homer

Archaic. Archaic Greece. Written in Ancient Greek.

Epic of Odysseus's ten-year voyage home from Troy, pursued by the anger of Poseidon.

What it handed down

To The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774)

Direct source, well documented.

Werther carries his Homer everywhere and reads the Odyssey in the village, picturing the patriarchal simplicity of its world. His shift from Homer to Ossian charts his descent into despair.

To Satyricon (c. 60 CE)

Structural model, well documented.

The narrator Encolpius is pursued by the wrath of Priapus as Odysseus was by Poseidon's, a parody frame scholars widely accept. The book also stages Homeric scenes in sordid modern settings.

To Aeneid (19 BCE)

Structural model, well documented.

The first six books follow the Odyssey: a hero's wanderings, a storm, a banquet narrative of past sufferings, and a descent to the underworld. Virgil also revisits Homeric episodes such as the Cyclops' island.

To Agamemnon (458 BCE)

Direct source, well documented.

The Odyssey repeatedly tells of Agamemnon's murder on his homecoming by Aegisthus and Clytemnestra, as a foil to Odysseus. Aeschylus builds his tragedy on this Homeric story.

Where it came from

This is one of the oldest surviving works in its tradition; the line ends here.

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c. 750 BCE

Iliad

Homer

Archaic. Archaic Greece. Written in Ancient Greek.

Epic of the wrath of Achilles during the siege of Troy.

What it handed down

To The Poems of Ossian (1765)

Structural model, probable.

Macpherson presented his Fingal as a northern epic comparable to Homer, and Hugh Blair's accompanying dissertation pressed the comparison. Macpherson later published a translation of the Iliad himself.

To Aeneid (19 BCE)

Structural model, well documented.

The second half of the Aeneid restages the Iliad in Italy, with Turnus as a new Achilles and single combats, catalogues and funeral games on the Homeric model.

Where it came from

This is one of the oldest surviving works in its tradition; the line ends here.

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