Joris-Karl Huysmans

Name: Against the Grain — Chapter VII
Author: Joris-Karl Huysmans

Against the Grain — Chapter VII (1926)

Summary

“Against the Grain — Chapter VII”, published in 1926, is a work by Joris-Karl Huysmans. It explores elements such as Des Esseintes, thunderclap of love and boyhood.

Quotes from Against the Grain — Chapter VII (Joris-Karl Huysmans)

Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against the Grain — Chapter VII (1926)

“ He sought for motives to account for the change in himself; yes, he must have been forcibly drawn in the direction of the priesthood because the Church, and the Church only, has preserved the art, the lost beauty of the centuries; she has stereotyped, even in the cheap modern reproductions, the patterns of metal work, preserved the charm of chalices slim and tall as petunias, of sacred vessels of exquisite curves and contours, safeguarded, even in aluminium, in sham enamel, in coloured glass, the grace of the models of olden days. ”

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Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against the Grain — Chapter VII (1926)

“ There was the fact, odd as it might seem: he was less confident at the present moment than he had been in his boyhood, in the days when the Jesuits exercised direct supervision over his training, when their teaching had to be received, when he was entirely in their hands, was theirs, body and soul, without family ties, without any outside influences of any kind to react against their ascendancy. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against the Grain — Chapter VII (1926)

“ At this point, Des Esseintes recovered footing. Doubtless he was content to accept this admission of social rottenness, but his mind revolted against the vague remedy offered, the hope of another life. Schopenhauer was more exact; his doctrine and the Church's started from a common point of view; he, too, took his stand on the wickedness and baseness of the world; he, too, cried out, with the Imitation of Our Lord, in bitterness of spirit: "Verily it is a pitiful thing to be alive on the earth!" He, too, preached the nullity of existence, the advantages of solitude ”

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Source: Wikisource

Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against the Grain — Chapter VII (1926)

“ No longer able to intoxicate himself afresh with the magical enchantments of style, to fall into an ecstasy over the delicious witchery of the rare and well-chosen epithet that, while still definite and precise, yet opens infinite perspectives, to the imagination of the initiate he resolved to complete the decoration of his dwelling, to fill it with costly hothouse flowers and so procure himself a material occupation that should distract his thoughts, calm his nerves and rest his brain. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against the Grain — Chapter VII (1926)

“ Just as in the Middle Ages the Church saved from barbarism, philosophy, history and letters, so she has saved plastic art, brought down to our own days those wondrous patterns in ecclesiastical robes and jewelry which the manufacturers of Church furniture and ornaments do their best to spoil, though they can never quite ruin the original beauty of form and colour. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against the Grain — Chapter VII (1926)

“ But if the novelists talk about the thunderclap of love at first sight, there is also a certain number of theologians who speak of the thunderclap of religion. Admitting the truth of this doctrine, no man then was safe against succumbing. There was no room left for self-analysis, no use in weighing presentiments, no object gained by taking preventive measures; the psychology of mysticism was futile. It was so because it was so, and there was no more to be said.
"Why, I am growing crazy," Des Esseintes told himself ”

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Source: Wikisource

Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against the Grain — Chapter VII (1926)

“ he did not extol the benefits of a Providence which has invented that abomination, useless, incomprehensible, unjust and inept, physical pain; far from endeavouring, like the Church, to justify the necessity of torments and trials, he exclaimed in his indignant pity: "If a God had made this world, I should not like to be that God; ”

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Source: Wikisource

Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against the Grain — Chapter VII (1926)

“ By dint of examining the processes of his thought, of striving to connect its threads together and discover its causes and conditioning circumstances, he eventually persuaded himself that its activities during his life in the world of men had their origin in the education he had received. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against the Grain — Chapter VII (1926)

“ Surrounded by a cloistered atmosphere, wrapt in a fragrance of incense that intoxicated his brain, he had got into an overwrought condition of nerves, and then, by a natural association of ideas, these books had ended by dimming his recollections of his life as a young man, while throwing into high relief those connected with his boyhood among the Fathers. "There is no difficulty," Des Esseintes told himself with an effort after self-examination, "in accounting for this irruption of the Jesuit element at Fontenay ”

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Source: Wikisource

Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against the Grain — Chapter VII (1926)

“ At these memories his nerves quivered; then, in a sudden mood of revolt, of swift revolution, ideas of monstrous depravity would attack him,—thoughts of the profanities foreseen in the Confessors' Manual, degraded and filthy abuses of the holy water and the consecrated oil. Face to face with an omnipotent God now stood up a rival full of energy, the Demon ”

Joris-Karl Huysmans

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Quotes from Against the Grain — Chapter VII (Joris-Karl Huysmans)

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