Huysmans's Flowers

Contemplating the grotesque specimens just delivered from Paris nurseries, J.-K. Huysmans's decadent esthete, Jean Floressas des Esseintes, reflects on floriculture as the intersection of nature and artifice: “par le temps qui court,” he intones, “les horticulteurs sont les seuls et les vrais artistes.” A multifaceted symbol appearing throughout Huysmans's oeuvre, flowers mark off the stages of the author's artistic and religious development. Beginning with the plebian geraniums of En Ménage (1881), progressing through the Decadent blooms of A rebours (1884), and ending with the lilies in Sainte Lydwine de Schiedam (1901) representing the spiritualization of flesh into holiness, the Huysmansian flower evolves as does the spiritual naturalist who used them in his fiction.