Silencing the Double: the Search for God in Huysmans' En Route

Abstract

Noted mainly as a Decadent, a Magician, an Occultist, to cite terms used by biographer Robert Baldick in his study of the author, J.-K. Huysmans, not surprisingly, encountered skepticism on the part of literary colleagues when they learned of his conversion. Yet part of the reason for this widespread incredulity can be laid to Huysmans' own reserve, a tendency toward mystification that characterized a writer known more for his treatise on the sensualistic self-involvement of des Esseintes in A Rebours (1884) or his study of the demon-worship of Durtal in La-bas (1891). As Baldick says: To all but his closest friends, Huysmans refused . . . to reveal the profound change of heart which he had undergone. His churchgoing, his reading of the mystics, even his oft-expressed intention of going to confession, were all explained often with a Mephistophelian smile as necessary documentation for his next novel (181). Still, beginning with his first meeting in May 1891 with Abbe Mugnier, referred to as Abbe G6vresin in the autobiographical En Route (1895),' and continuing with the author's introduction into the Trappist monastery of Notre-Dame d'Igny in July 1892, the stirrings of Huysmans' faith were becoming increasingly more urgent. What may account for Huysmans' hesitation to commit himself to a life of contemplation was perhaps the difficulty he faced in resolving a dualism inherent in his character. Indeed, the alternating influence on Huysmans at this time of Abbe Mugnier and his orthodox religious teachings, and the defrocked Abbe Boullan with his seances in Lyons, shows how torn the author felt between the need for demonstrations of the existence of the supernatural and the acceptance of the less spectacular development of his faith. Only with the unifying of his two conflicting selves, with the silencing, the elimination, of an antagonistic double, could he accede to that serenity he claimed he wished to have. In En Route, Durtal first perceives this opposition as one between his religious aspirations and his physical demands. It is only later that he realizes that his intellectual pride and his propensity for analysis have worked to counteract God's grace. Thus it is not the insistence of the body on its pleasures and its comforts, but Satan who suggests to him his doubts and reservations. Satan becomes the evil double whose voice Durtal must still, so that he can achieve some peace and greater spiritual maturity. Yet at the outset, it is the body whose requirements must be met. Thus, before embarking for the abbey at Notre-Dame de l'Atre, Durtal, whose spiritual itinerary mirrors Huysmans' own, fills his portmanteau with vials