Joris-Karl Huysmans

“ Weary of everything, sick of enjoyment, and drunken with sin, he wrote some admirable reflections and anticipated the blackest pessimism of our day, summing up the misery of him who endures the condemnation of living, in phrases that are its final expression. What distress is that of the Preacher: All the days of man are sorrow, and his travail grief; better is the day of death than the day of birth; all is vanity and vexation of spirit.
After his death, too, the old king remains a mystery. Had he expiated his apostacy and his fall? Was he, like his fathers, received into Abraham's bosom? ”

“ Durtal burst out laughing as he thought of the cathedral at Chartres.
"Here," said he to himself, "we reach the climax; pious imbecility can go no further. Among the subjects in sculpture in the ambulatory of the choir there is a group representing the Circumcision, Saint Joseph holding the Infant while the Virgin has a napkin ready and the High Priest is preparing to operate. And there has been a priest so modest, a divine so decorous as to regard this scene as licentious and to paste a piece of paper over the Child's nakedness! ”

“ After ablution and the anointing with oil, the holocaust of victims began. Flesh sputtered on the walls, mingling the black stench of burnt fat with the blue vapour of incense; the Patriarch anointed the right ear and thumb and foot of Aaron and his sons with blood; then, taking up the flesh of the sacrifice, he placed them in the hands of the new-made priests, who rocked first on one foot and then on the other, thus waving the offerings above the altar. ”

“ Why, then, fail to understand that God should have chosen him as a precursor? Besides, Jesus came to ransom sinners, He took upon Himself the sins of the whole world. Was it not natural, then, that He should take to prefigure Him, a man who, like others, had sinned?"
"Yes; that is true, no doubt."
And that evening, when he was away from the Abbé Plomb, from whom he parted on the church steps, as Durtal stretched himself on his bed, he recapitulated in his memory this theory of the Old Testament personages and the sculpture in the porch. ”

“ Elijah founding the first society of monks, the only man of the Old Testament history except Enoch who did not die; and Elisha, his disciple; the greater prophets Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and Daniel, and the groups of minor prophets announcing the advent of the Son, rising up in commination or lamentation, threatening or comforting the people.
The whole history of Israel flowed along in a torrent of curses, rivers of blood, oceans of tears! ”

“ And further on he exclaims, "Sin have I heaped upon sin, and the sins which I could not commit in very deed yet have I committed by evil desire."
Durtal closed the volume, regretting that it should be so entirely unknown to Catholics. They were all busy chewing the cud of the old hay left at the heading or end of the "Christian's Day" or "The Eucologia," or meditating on the pompous prayers elaborated in the ponderous phraseology of the seventeenth century, in which there is no accent of sincerity to be found—nothing, not an appeal that comes from the heart, not even a pious cry! ”

“ It was he who prophesied that a star should come out of Jacob and a sceptre rise out of Israel. As to the Queen of Sheba, according to the teaching of the Fathers, she is an image of the Church; Solomon's spouse, as the Church is the spouse of Christ."
"Well, well," muttered Durtal to himself. "The thirteenth century could not give a fitting presentment of that queen, whom we picture to ourselves as dressed with foolish magnificence, rocking on a camel across the desert at the head of a caravan under the blazing sky across the furnace of sand. ”

“ Next to Abraham, the father of believers, stands Moses, as a symbol of Christ; for the deliverance of Israel is an image of the Redemption of Man snatched by the Saviour from the devil, just as the passage of the Red Sea is an image of Baptism. ”

“ As to Joseph persecuted and sold, a slave raised almost to the throne, the merciful protector of his people, he is the prototype of Christ."
Durtal paused to gaze up at the beardless face, with curling hair cut close round. The youth wore a tunic under a surcoat embroidered round the neck, and he stood motionless, a sceptre in his hand. He might be a very young monk, humble, simple, and so far advanced in the mystic road that he was unconscious of it. This statue was undoubtedly a portrait, and it seemed certain that some refined and innocent novice had served as a model to the artist. ”

“ And they were not a whit more prudish or less audacious than sculpture. We have only to open the books of the Church to convince ourselves of the violent language in which she was wont to lash the sins of the flesh. Beginning with the Scriptures, the Bible itself—which no one dares read now but in mawkish French versions—what priest, for instance, would venture to recommend to the nerveless spirit of his flock the study of the sixteenth chapter of Ezekiel or of the Song of Songs, that Epithalamium of Jesus and the Soul—down to the Fathers and the Doctors? ”

“ Would it not really be far more sensible and judicious to open the windows, to air the rooms, to treat these souls as manly beings, to teach them not to be so much afraid of their own flesh, to inculcate the firmness and courage needed for resistance? ”

“ Under these circumstances the most anodyne book was a source of danger from the simple fact that love was alluded to, and woman depicted as an attractive creature; and this was enough to account for all—for the inherent ignorance of Catholics, since it was proclaimed as the preventive cure for temptations—for the instinctive horror of art, since to these craven souls every written and studied work was in its nature a vehicle of sin and an incitement to fall. ”

“ He was, in fact, one of the most mysterious types of the Holy Scriptures—this monarch mentioned in Genesis as the Priest of the Most High God. He consummates the sacrifice of bread and wine, blesses Abram, receives tithes from him, and then vanishes into the darkness of history. And suddenly his name is found in a psalm of David's, who declares that the Messiah is a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedec, and again he is lost without leaving a trace. ”

“ Their action is freer, no doubt, and the play of drapery is broader. The rhubarb-stem plaits of the robes are fuller, and have some movement, but where is the grace as of a sculptured soul that we see in the royal porch? All these statues, with their massive heads, are thick-set and mute, devoid of communicative life. ”

“ Study the mouldings of the arch with the four rows of images that adorn them. First the inner one, with its ten torch-bearing angels; the second, illustrating the parable of the wise and foolish virgins; the third, representing the Psychomachia, or struggle between the Virtues and the Vices; the fourth, a row of twelve queens embodying the twelve fruits of the Spirit; and linger over the enchanting series of statues in the moulding at the very edge of the archway of the porch, representing the occupations of the active and the contemplative life. ”

“ He ran quickly downstairs and hurried across to the cathedral, where the Abbé Plomb was pacing to and fro in front of the northern porch, reciting his Breviary.
"The side where sinners and demons are figured is especially that of the Virgin, who saves those and crushes these," said the Abbé. "The northern porch of a church is usually the most lively of all; here, however, the Satanic incidents are on the southern side, because they form part of the Last Judgment represented over the south door. ”

“ But remember the passages in which Isaiah and Jeremiah speak of Lucifer as dwelling in the blast of the north wind; and recollect that the great cathedrals did not originate in the south but in the middle and north of France; consequently, after having adopted this symbolism of seasons and weather, the pious architects dreamed of the horror of men buried in snow, and longing for a gleam of sunshine and a bright day. Naturally they thought of the east as the region of the original Paradise, and of those lands as milder and less inclement than their own. ”

“ The fact remains that these schemes of education have resulted, on the one hand, in the triumph of the flesh in the greater number of men who have been thus brought up and then thrown into a worldly life, and on the other, in a wide diffusion of folly and fear, an abandonment of the possessions of the intellect and the capitulation of the Catholic army surrendering without a blow to the inroads of profane literature, which takes possession of territory that it has not even had the trouble of conquering. ”

“ She is hardly pretty, and stands in the obsequious attitude of an advocate. Solomon looks like a jovial good fellow. The two effigies on the other side of the door might perhaps invite attention if they were not so completely crushed by the third. Again a question. By what right does the author of that admirable book 'Ecclesiastes' find a place in these ranks of honour?"
"Jesus the son of Sirach prefigures the Messiah as a Prophet and a Doctor. As to the figure next to him, it may equally well be Judith or Esther: her identity is doubtful; there is nothing that can help us to determine it. ”

“ And, on the other hand, if he is accused of tortures and bloodshed, why, the whole of the Old Testament is full of them! Jehovah Himself pours out blood like water, and exterminates men as if they were flies. It is well not to forget that the world then still lived under the Law of Fear. ”

“ If we allowed ourselves nowadays to use such materialistic comparisons and make use of such homely terms in speaking of Thy supremely adorable Body, what a clamour would arise from the 'respectable' among the worshippers and the blessed legion of the good women who have comfortable praying-chairs and reserved places near the altar—like front seats in a theatre—in the House where all are equal. ”

“ This portal, brought forward like an open porch, a sort of verandah in front of the doors, is an allegory of the Saviour showing the way into the heavenly Jerusalem. It was begun in the year 1215 under Philip Augustus, and finished by about 1275, under Philip the Bold; thus it was nearly sixty years in building, the greater part of the thirteenth century. It is divided into three parts, corresponding to the three doors behind it; there are more than seven hundred statues grouped here, large and small, representing, for the most part, personages from the Old Testament. ”

“ Nor is the art they display exciting. Only the subjects are interesting. Besides a row of angels bearing stars and torches, they represent the achievements of Gideon; the story of Samson, who, when a prisoner, rose in the night, and carrying away the gates of Gaza, escaped from the town, as Christ broke the gates of death, and escaped alive from His sepulchre; the history of Tobit, as a divine paragon of mercy and patience; and finally, in the corner we find a replica of the grand porch, the signs of the zodiac, and a calendar in sculptured stone. ”

“ Not every man can assimilate this meat; some there be who eat it not, but swallow it down in haste. It should be chewed as much as possible with the teeth of the understanding, to the end that the sweet of its savour be pressed out of it, and may come forth from it. ”

“ The Catholic force, which might have been thought better prepared than any others to contest the ground which theology had long since explored, retired in good order, satisfied to cover its retreat by firing from a safe distance, with its old-fashioned match-lock blunderbusses, on works it had neither inspired nor written. ”

“ The active life, on the left, is imagined in accordance with the picture of the virtuous woman in the last chapter of Proverbs. She is seen washing wool in a bowl, carding it, stripping the flax, beating it, spinning it on a distaff, and winding it into hanks. ”

“ This was part of her plan of education, for she aimed at moulding manly souls and not crippled creatures such as are turned out by the spiritual orthopedists of our day; she dragged out vice and lashed it wherever it lurked, and did not hesitate to preach the equality of men before God, insisting that bishops and monks should, when guilty, be placed in the pillory of its doorways ”

“ And these inspired men succeed each other, continuing from year to year their task of guardians of the public soul, watching over the consciences of judges and kings, expectant of the Divine word, and ready to proclaim it over the head of the crowd ”

“ But it is when they speak of His Passion and Death that the prophecies become mathematically exact, incredibly precise. The offering of palm branches, the betrayal by Judas, and the price of thirty pieces of silver appear in Zechariah; and Isaiah takes up the parable to describe the rejection and opprobrium of Calvary: 'He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities.... The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.... He was despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.... ”

“ David's tower; Solomon's throne; the garden enclosed and the fountain sealed of the Canticle; the dial of Ahaz; Elijah's saving cloud; Ezekiel's doorway—and I mention none but those of which the interpretation has received the seal and sanction of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church.
"As to the living beings that prefigured Her on earth, instances abound; the greater part of the famous women of the Old Testament are but anticipatory images of Her graces. Sarah, to whom an angel foretells the birth of a son who is himself a type of the Son ”