Provenance Of

The influences behind Against the Grain (À rebours)

30 works across 27 centuries, back to Odyssey and Hebrew Bible (Tanakh).

Following one thread, 5 works from Against the Grain (À rebours) to Rosalynde. Back to all 30 works

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
Find “The Flowers of Evil (Les Fleurs du mal)” on Amazon
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
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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
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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.

Find “Rosalynde” on Amazon

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)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To As You Like It (c. 1599)

Where it came from

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