Character guide

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.