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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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)

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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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

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

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

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
Iliad, Homer c. 750 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

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

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

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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Where it came from

What it handed down

To Against the Grain (À rebours) (1884)

To Hérodiade (Scène)

Where it came from

What it handed down

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

To Hamlet

To Inferno

To Satyricon

Where it came from

What it handed down

To The Sorrows of Young Werther

To Satyricon

To Aeneid (19 BCE)

To Agamemnon

Where it came from

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