Against the Grain · Characters
Character guide
Key figures in Against the Grain by J.-K. Huysmans.
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Des Esseintes
major
Also known as the Des Esseintes, XVI Des Esseintes, This Des Esseintes
Des Esseintes is the last of an exhausted aristocratic line, and he has chosen to live alone with his books, his perfumes, and his carefully staged illusions rather than endure the stupidity of modern society. His project is to substitute artifice for nature, yet his body keeps sabotaging the experiment: a passing well-being dissolves into hallucinations of frangipane, and he finds himself sniffing the air for a smell no servant can detect. His retreat is the whole arena of the book, and his failing health is what makes it dramatic.
Salomé
supporting
Salomé exists for Des Esseintes not as a woman but as a painted and written obsession, a figure of jewelled depravity who lets him escape the dullness of his own century. She belongs to the same appetite that draws him to Baudelaire and to the Latin decadents: beauty inseparable from cruelty, desire inseparable from ruin. She matters because she shows how his reading and looking are not idle but a form of self-definition, the tastes by which he builds a life against the grain.
Miss Urania
supporting
Also known as Urania
Miss Urania is the living woman on whom Des Esseintes tries to hang his dream of a hard, brutal, virile beauty, reading his own inverted desires into the fixed smile she wears while turning on her trapeze. She courts him practically, knowing his wealth and name can advance a career, and once his wishes are granted his disappointment is total: she is merely stupid, greedy, and feminine. Their affair is the book's sharpest demonstration that the imagined object always outshines the real one.
Marquis de Sade
supporting
Also known as de Sade
De Sade enters Des Esseintes' world through the library rather than the drawing room, as a writer whose frankness about the most mysterious impulses of human temperament becomes a kind of honesty. In a century Des Esseintes finds dull and stupid, de Sade represents an extreme that at least refuses to lie about what people want. He matters because he helps explain why Des Esseintes prefers the morbid and the excessive to the decent and the ordinary.
Charles Baudelaire
supporting
Also known as Baudelaire
Baudelaire is the writer Des Esseintes credits with expressing the inexpressible, defining with strange sanity the fleeting and evanescent conditions of broken spirits. After Baudelaire, the number of French books on his shelves is very limited, which tells you how completely one poet has become the measure of his taste. He matters because he gives Des Esseintes a language for spleen and for the modern soul's exhaustion, the very mood that drives the retreat.
Gustave Moreau
supporting
Also known as Moreau, a Gustave Moreau fallen sick
Moreau belongs to the same impulse that makes Des Esseintes prefer the Tentation de Saint-Antoine to the Education sentimentale: a hunger for the remote, the fabulous, the magnificently barbaric, anything but modern existence. His paintings give Des Esseintes a world to inhabit, one where delicate and proud beings move through pomp and suffering. He matters because he shows the aesthetic that governs the villa, the conviction that art should lift a man out of his trivial century.
Paul Verlaine
minor
Also known as Verlaine, Paul Verlaine
Decadent poet whose work is analyzed by Des Esseintes as a master of linguistic artifice.
Edgar Allan Poe
minor
Also known as Poe
American writer whose tales of horror and logic fascinate Des Esseintes.
Arthur Schopenhauer
minor
Also known as Schopenhauer
German philosopher whose pessimism resonates with Des Esseintes' worldview.
Barbey d'Aurévilly
minor
Also known as Barbey
Catholic writer whose dandyism and style are praised by Des Esseintes.
Stéphane Mallarmé
minor
Also known as Mallarmé
Poet whose hermetic style is admired by Des Esseintes for its obscurity.
Jan Luyken
minor
Also known as Luyken
Dutch engraver whose religious illustrations are collected by Des Esseintes.
Tertullian
minor
Early Christian writer whose asceticism is referenced by Des Esseintes.
the doctor
minor
Physician who advises Des Esseintes on his failing health.
the servant
minor
Also known as his servant, the servants
Unnamed household staff who attend to Des Esseintes' needs.
Madame Laure
minor
Also known as Madame, mother Laure
Proprietress of a brothel visited by Des Esseintes.
Auguste Langlois
minor
Also known as Auguste
Friend who lends Des Esseintes a tortoise encrusted with jewels.
Ruysbroek
minor
Flemish mystic whose spiritual writings are admired by Des Esseintes.
De Falloux
minor
French politician and historian mentioned in a list of authors.
Honoré de Balzac
minor
Also known as the great Balzac
Novelist whose 'La Comédie humaine' is a touchstone for Des Esseintes.
Victor Hugo
minor
Also known as Hugo
Poet and novelist whose romanticism is critiqued by Des Esseintes.
D'Aigurande
minor
Minor character mentioned in a list of acquaintances.
Christ
minor
Central figure of Christianity, referenced in Des Esseintes' religious musings.
Gustave Flaubert
minor
Also known as Flaubert
Novelist whose style and exoticism are admired by Des Esseintes.
Émile Zola
minor
Also known as Zola
Naturalist writer whose realism Des Esseintes rejects in favor of artifice.
Villiers de l'Isle-Adam
minor
Also known as Villiers, Adam
Symbolist playwright whose works are collected by Des Esseintes.
Albrecht Dürer
minor
Also known as Albert Durer
German Renaissance artist whose engravings are studied by Des Esseintes.
Petronius
minor
Roman satirist whose 'Satyricon' is admired for its decadence.
Virgil
minor
Also known as the gentle Virgil
Roman poet whose pastoral works are contrasted with modern decadence.
Richard Wagner
minor
Also known as Wagner
Composer whose music dramas are discussed by Des Esseintes.
Claire Lenoir
minor
Also known as this Claire Lenoir
Character from a story by Villiers de l'Isle-Adam referenced by Des Esseintes.
the Crampton
minor
Brand of mechanical organ owned by Des Esseintes.
Fortunatus
minor
Legendary figure whose inexhaustible purse is mentioned by Des Esseintes.
Trimalchio
minor
Extravagant host from Petronius' Satyricon, referenced as a decadent archetype.
Abbé Peyreyve
minor
Priest who debates theology with Des Esseintes.
Lacordaire
minor
Also known as the Dominican Lacordaire
Dominican preacher whose sermons are read by Des Esseintes.
Bossuet
minor
Bishop and orator whose works on divine providence are studied.
Veuillot
minor
Also known as Veuillot , more outspoken and frank
Catholic journalist whose polemical style is noted by Des Esseintes.
Ernest Hello
minor
Also known as Hello
Catholic writer whose mystical works are collected by Des Esseintes.
Ozanam
minor
Catholic historian and social reformer mentioned in passing.
St. Ambrose
minor
Church Father whose hymns and writings are referenced.
Persius
minor
Roman satirist whose difficult style is compared to modern poetry.
Claudian
minor
Late Roman poet whose works are part of Des Esseintes' library.
the Chimaera
minor
Also known as Chimaera
Mythological hybrid creature referenced as a symbol of artifice.
the little Judas
minor
Nickname for a young boy in a story within the book.
Pantin
minor
Nickname for a puppet or caricature figure mentioned in passing.
De Goncourt
minor
French writer and diarist whose style is noted by Des Esseintes.
Odilon Redon
minor
Also known as Redon
Symbolist painter whose works are collected by Des Esseintes.
Tristan Corbière
minor
Also known as Corbière
Poet whose ironic style is admired by Des Esseintes.
Théodore Hannon
minor
Belgian poet whose decadent verse is compared to Baudelaire.
Monsieur Folantin
minor
Protagonist of a novel by Huysmans, referenced as a parallel figure.
Ennodius
minor
Late antique bishop and writer mentioned in a list of hagiographers.
Eugippus
minor
Monk who wrote a life of St. Severin, referenced in passing.
St. Severin
minor
Saint whose life is recorded by Eugippus, mentioned briefly.
St. Epiphanes
minor
Saint whose miracles are related by Ennodius, mentioned in passing.
Père Chocarne
minor
Dominican preacher whose sermons are read by Des Esseintes.