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, 4 works from Against the Grain (À rebours) to Barnaby Rudge. 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
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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
- Lady Geraldine's Courtship, Elizabeth Barrett Browning 1844 follow this thread
- Barnaby Rudge, Charles Dickens 1841
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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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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 The Raven (1845)

Where it came from

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