Delphi Collected Works of Joris-Karl Huysmans Illustrated (eBook)

Joris-Karl Huysmans (Autor)

Joris-Karl Huysmans (Herausgeber)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025
2328 Seiten
Delphi Publishing Ltd (Verlag)
978-1-80170-255-3 (ISBN)

Infos

The unique novels of Joris-Karl Huysmans epitomise the aesthetic, spiritual and intellectual life of late nineteenth century France. He started his literary career as a follower of Émile Zola, before breaking away to publish a series of novels too decadent in content and violent in style to be considered works of naturalism. 'Against the Grain', Huysmans's masterpiece, relates the experiments in aesthetic decadence undertaken by the wearied survivor of a noble line. Always autobiographical in content, Huysmans' novels chart the development of a protracted spiritual odyssey, as the hero seeks happiness in spiritual and physical escapism. A perceptive art critic, Huysmans also helped win public recognition for the Impressionist artists. This eBook presents Huysmans' collected (almost complete) works, with numerous illustrations, rare translations, informative introductions and the usual Delphi bonus material. (Version 1)

* Beautifully illustrated with images relating to Huysmans' life and works
* Concise introductions to the major texts
* 6 novels, with individual contents tables
* Features rare novels appearing for the first time in digital publishing, including the author's infamous first novel 'Marthe'
* Images of how the books were first published, giving your eReader a taste of the original texts
* Excellent formatting of the texts
* Rare short stories and novellas available in no other collection
* Includes Huysmans' rare non-fiction, including the Sainte Lydwine biography - first time in digital print
* Ordering of texts into chronological order and genres

CONTENTS:

The Novels
Marthe (1876)
Against the Grain (1884)
Down There (1891)
En Route (1895)
The Cathedral (1898)
The Oblate (1903)

The Shorter Fiction
A Dish of Spices (1874)
Sac au dos (1880)
Down Stream (1882)

The Non-Fiction
Sainte Lydwine of Schiedam (1901)
Critical Papers (1903)

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The unique novels of Joris-Karl Huysmans epitomise the aesthetic, spiritual and intellectual life of late nineteenth century France. He started his literary career as a follower of Emile Zola, before breaking away to publish a series of novels too decadent in content and violent in style to be considered works of naturalism. 'Against the Grain', Huysmans's masterpiece, relates the experiments in aesthetic decadence undertaken by the wearied survivor of a noble line. Always autobiographical in content, Huysmans' novels chart the development of a protracted spiritual odyssey, as the hero seeks happiness in spiritual and physical escapism. A perceptive art critic, Huysmans also helped win public recognition for the Impressionist artists. This eBook presents Huysmans' collected (almost complete) works, with numerous illustrations, rare translations, informative introductions and the usual Delphi bonus material. (Version 1)* Beautifully illustrated with images relating to Huysmans life and works* Concise introductions to the major texts* 6 novels, with individual contents tables* Features rare novels appearing for the first time in digital publishing, including the author s infamous first novel Marthe * Images of how the books were first published, giving your eReader a taste of the original texts* Excellent formatting of the texts* Rare short stories and novellas available in no other collection* Includes Huysmans rare non-fiction, including the Sainte Lydwine biography first time in digital print* Ordering of texts into chronological order and genresCONTENTS:The NovelsMarthe (1876)Against the Grain (1884)Down There (1891)En Route (1895)The Cathedral (1898)The Oblate (1903)The Shorter FictionA Dish of Spices (1874)Sac au dos (1880)Down Stream (1882)The Non-FictionSainte Lydwine of Schiedam (1901)Critical Papers (1903)

Textauszug

I

“LOOK HERE, LITTLE one,” said Ginginet, stretched upon the urine-colored velvet of the bench, “you haven’t a bad voice, you are pretty, and you have a certain stage presence, but that’s not all. Listen to me. Its an old ham, a roustabout of the provinces and abroad, who is talking to you, an old wolf of the stage, as steady on the boards as a sailor on the sea. Well! You’re not popular enough yet with the mob! That will come, little dear, but you’re not quite there yet with your hips, you don’t come in quite right on the boom of the bass-drum. Look here, look at me, I’ve got legs like a pair of warped tweezers, arms like vine-stalks; when I open my mouth its like the frog of a wine-vat, and I am just about as light on my feet as a ton of bricks, but bingo! when the cymbal clashes, I shake a leg, rasp out the last word of the stanza, gargle a false note, and there you are; I’ve got the public in the palm of my hand. That’s what you’ve got to do. Come on, warble your ditty, and I’ll show you the fine points as you go along. One, two, three, attention, your daddy’s got his auricular tube open, your daddy’s listening.”

“Here, Mademoiselle Marthe, here’s a letter which the door-woman told me to hand you,” said a big girl with a burr and a snivel in her voice.

“Ah! That’s fine,” cried the young one. “Look here, Ginginet, what I’ve just received. Nice, isn’t it?”

The comedian unfolded the paper and the corners of his lips mounted to the flaps of his nose, revealing gums smeared with red and producing a crack in the mask of rouge and powder with which his face was varnished.

“It’s in verse!” he exclaimed, visibly alarmed. “In other words, the one who sends it is some fellow without a sou. A well-to-do-gentleman doesn’t send verse!”

The players had reassembled during this conversation. It was as cold as the north-pole that night, and the back-stage corridors, with their drafts of air, were glacial. All the actors were huddled about a coke fire that flamed in the chimney.

“What’s that?” inquired an actress, insolently décolletée from head to foot.

“Hear ye,” said Ginginet, and he read, amid general attention, the following sonnet:

TO A SINGER

A fife that squalls and hisses with dry throat;
Sniffling bassoon; an old man who tries to spit
His teeth down the trombone’s neck; the violin?
It Sounds like an ancient rebeck’s rasping note.

A mighty flageolet — on its beak you dote;
A surly cornet, a bass-drum like to split:
Such is, with a conductor very fit —
Tun-bellied, scrofulous, an ugly bloat —

The theatre-orchestra, which holds in check
A lady apt for any amorous list:
On you, my only love, my sole delight, this fleck.

Each night you follow— ’tis your infamous duty;
Eyes shut, arms down and mouth made to be kissed,
I see you smile on cads, O Queen of Beauty!

“And it isn’t signed!”

“Listen, Ginginet, that’s what you call handing the orchestra leader a sweet one; ought to show him those vers-s-es; that will take him down a peg, the old catgut-scraper!”

“Come, ladies, on the stage,” cried a gentleman clad in a black hat and a blue macfarlane. “Take your places, the overture is beginning!”

The women arose, tossed cloaks over their nude shoulders, shook themselves with a collective shiver — and, followed by the men, who had interrupted their pipes or their bezique game, filed through the little door which gave access to the stage by way of the wings.

The fireman on duty was at his post, and although he was half-dead with cold, there were flames in his eyes when he saw what was under the petticoats of some of the danseuses scattered through this revue. The stage manager gave three taps, and the curtain slowly rose, revealing an auditorium filled with people.

There is no doubt that the more interesting part of the show was not upon the stage but in the auditorium. The theatre run by Bobino, commonly known as Bobinche, was not filled, like those of Montparnasse, Grenelle and other ancient suburbs, with working men who desired to listen, seriously, to a drama. Bobino had for clientele the students and the artists, a clamourous and mocking race if ever there was one. They had not come into this hovel, tapestried with cheap wall paper, to be transported by heavy melodramas or light revues; they had come to yell, to laugh and to interrupt the piece — in short, to be amused! And so, the curtain had barely risen when the brayings began; but Ginginet was not the man to be disturbed by a little thing like that; his long dramatic career had accustomed him to hoots and hubbubs. He graciously saluted those who interrupted him, entering into conversation with them and interspersing his line with jests addressed to the boisterous ones; in short, he ended by getting a hand for himself. The show however, went badly enough; it went lame from the second scene. The auditorium was once more in a tempest. It was particularly delighted by the entrance of an enormous actress with a nose pickled in a sea of fat. The musical passage ejaculated from the spout of this human tub was met with great reinforcements on the part of the audience, to the time of “larifla, fla, fla.” The poor woman was dumbfounded and did not know whether to hold her ground or to flee. And then Marthe appeared, and the uproar died down.

She was charming, in the costume which she herself had cut out of silk and moire remnants. A rose-colored cuirass seamed with false pearls, a cuirass of an exquisite rose hue, that tenuous, almost ethereal hue which is only to be found in stuffs from the East, encircled her hips, which could scarcely be contained within their prison of silk; with her helmet of opulently red hair, her titillating lips, humid, voracious, red, she was enchanting, irresistibly seductive!

The two most intrepid hucksters, who answered one another from orchestra pit to gallery, had ceased their cries; “The ring breaks, but your keys are safe, five centimes, one sou! Orgeat, lemonade, beer!” Sustained by the prompter and by Ginginet, Marthe was applauded excessively. As soon as her ballad was ended, the tumult broke out again, more furiously than ever. The painter seated in the lower stalls and the student in a red oil-skin, who was roosting up above in the “hen-house,” bawled themselves hoarse in the finest fashion imaginable, with a wealth of jests and quibbles, to the great joy of the spectators, whom the piece was boring to tears.

Stationed at the foot-lights, near one of the wings, Marthe looked over the auditorium and asked herself which of these young fellows might have sent her the letter. But all eyes were turned upon her; all were blazing in honor of her throat; it was impossible for her to discover, among all these admirers, the one who had sent the sonnet.

The curtain fell without her curiosity being satisfied.

The following evening, the actors were in a surly humor; they were expecting a new outbreak, and the director who acted as stage manager, owing to the absence of funds, was promenading feverishly up and down the stage, waiting for the curtain to go up.

He was suddenly tapped on the shoulder and, turning, found himself face to face with a young man, who grasped his hand and, very calmly, remarked: “You’re quite well today, I presume?”

“But... but yes... not bad...and you?”

“Oh, so so, thanks. And now, let’s understand each other. You don’t know me, and I don’t know you. Well! I am a journalist, and I intend to write a wonderful article on your theatre.”

“Ah! Enchanted, ravished, I assure you! But for what journal do you write?”

“For the Monthly Review.”

“Don’t know it. When does it come out?”

“Generally every month.”

“Well... won’t you sit down?”

“Thank you, but I don’t think I’ll take advantage of your invitation.”

And the young man was already in the greenroom, where actors and actresses were chattering together.

He was a clever fellow, this newcomer! He said a friendly word to one, a friendly word to another and promised everybody a gracious article, especially Marthe, whom he gazed upon with so greedy an eye that she had little difficulty in divining the fact that he was the author of the letter.

He came back a number of days following and paid her court; the short of it was, he succeeded, one evening, in dragging her home with him.

Ginginet, who was watching the young man’s manoeuvres, fell into a furious rage, which he poured out in great torrents on the bosom of Bourdeau, his colleague and friend.

The two were seated at table in a wine shop of the obscurer sort, drinking a pint together. If the truth must be told, Ginginet had succeeded, since afternoon, in painting his gullet one of the liveliest of reds; it seemed that he had sand-dunes in his throat, which he was attempting to irrigate with great waves of wine. His head soon sank, little by little, over the table, until his nose dipped in his glass, and, without addressing his companion, who was snoring away more...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 8.7.2025
• Reihe/Serie: Delphi Series Fifteen
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Anthologien
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• Schlagworte: complete • Down • Grain • Marthe • Proust • Route • Zola
• ISBN-10: 1-80170-255-1 / 1801702551
• ISBN-13: 978-1-80170-255-3 / 9781801702553