Just finished this thoughts?

First, learn how to correctly write a sentence.

I had no idea there was inspiration for the character that's very cool to know. I have Proust on my reading list so I'll be able to see his interpretation of him.

Thank you for your contribution to the discussion. Now not only do we have "what am I in for" threads and the "what the fuck did I just read" threads we have the "tell me what I think about what I just read" threads with inbreds replying with no contribution to the topic what so ever, and bumping them with a reply so they continue to stay up instead of letting them die??

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Anima?

In DG it's definitely alluded to (by Wotton I think, near the beginning) though if I'm not mistaken unmentioned specifically. I read DG when I was 16 and I'm twice that now.
Had a 19th c French novel phase so I'll list what I liked best up to Proust
Balzac Lost Illusions (both volumes, 2nd is Splendours and Miseries of a Courtesan)
Stendahl R&B, Charterhouse
Hugo Toilers of the Sea
Flaubert- if you can read A Rebours then try ..St. Anthony and Salambo, i.e. read all Flaubert
Zola The Earth, Germinal, Nana
Maupassant all
Gautier's de Maupin (loved this book)
France's Penguin Island, The Gods will have Blood, The Sign at the RP.
Gets a little obscure at this point- who reads the Goncourts, for instance?
Also really enjoyed Huysmans' La Bas.
What have (you) made it through so far OP? Anything specifically liked?

All of hugo pretty much
Balzac Lost Illusions(Just volume 1)
Toilers of the Sea
The Gods will have Blood
Charterhouse
Might not count but got caught up with Celine
And some obscure stuff like Léon Bloy
Gonna pick up St. Anthony after my current read(Bloy). Ill check out de Maupin for sure; reading about it now.Flaubert looks cool as well a must read i'm assuming

Had a friend who is a very serious French enthusiast recommend me the Goncourt brothers.(I thought they were just a weird reclusive favorite of his, might have to check it out now though.)

How can I stop being Des Esseintes?

If you read the Goncourts scan the journals as theyll boost your sense of that period of time very nicely, their fiction I found indifferent; another interesting journalist, although thoroughly depressing, is Amiel.
fwiw I mentioned France because Proust's 'writer character' in his tome, Bergotte, is primarily based on him. There's also a painter character (Elstir) and a musician character as well..
The aftermath of the principal disaster in the book (the Marcel character's) leads to an obsession with the 19th c. English belletrist John Ruskin too..

>Thank you for your contribution to the discussion.

I was about to copy a long pasta I made about that book years ago but I couldn't find it and I got bored. If you can find a several paragraph post on the archive about this book chances it's that ones.

Iirc that thread had a post about how the protagonist buy exotic flowers because they look like fakes.

You should also have written in the OP from the start.

Btw the guy is talking about is Robert de Montesquiou.

Read the later Huysmans and convert to Catholicism.

Ir just stop being afraid of earnestness, go outside more, exercise, read for enjoyment including silly stuff if you like it, and cultivate a general assumption (and assorted demeanor) that others human beings have an interior life as rich as yours and can teach you a lot.

Okay the post was easier to find than I thought:

Here I answer to user about the third chapter (I think) in which the narrator describes his taste for obscure medieval latin books:

>as I hadn't read any of the things he was talking about, so I just skipped those paragraphs.

The twist is that Huysmans himself didn't read all of them. He read a sizeable portion, then relied on stylistic bravado to fake the rest. His point was never to give a scholarly account of Middle Age Latin literature, but to expose the mindset of his character in a funny and mind-provoking fashion.

The whole book is a delicious collection of style exercises, you're supposed to be enjoying yourself. Of course it isn't always easy (it can be weird even in the original) but you shouldn't be afraid to dwelve into the chapters when you don't know what he references. Sit back, relax, enjoy the flow, and take it as an occasion to learn a few names.

Here I answer another anxious user:

>How does one become able to critique things like Des Esseintes?

Well, Des Esseintes is half literary-/r9k-faggot whiner (basically /lit at its most edgy), half insigthtful critic and refined aesthete (basically /lit at its most sophisticated).

So, not liking popular things, having a taste for the obscure, the weird, the carefully disbalanced, being very attuned to your own senses and tastes, and despising your contemporaries will do. You can achieve all that by reading a lot of unknown old books that demand effort and are rewarding but nobody cares about and by investing your whole emotional life into them.

It's worth noting that some of Des Esseintes' tastes were made up for the sake of contrariness, while other were borrowed from Huysmans himself. The character should be approached with caution, because in all likelihood you don't want to become like him.

If you're just aiming for critical acumen, read a lot, from many genres, eras, authors, read closely, with much attention to the peculiarities of each work, and read secondary literature (criticism/commentary, literary theories, letters and controversies among writers).
Taking time to look at paintings, sculpture, buildings, and seeking for the aesthic side of daily situations (which color is this, how it is different from the susual, which shape is the shadow in this courtyard at dusk, do you like it, and why ?) might help.

Funny I actually forgot I ever knew some of the things I said above (and it's depressing to think the post is from 2014, I was apparently much less of a human wreck by then).

>Robert de M
read the Jullian bio of this guy- great book, but what a complete ass hole.

He was a tragic figure in the end, as his youth waned and his popularity and parties. He always tried to have one foot in high society and the other in that of eccentric poetry. It would've been better if he left behind the salons of silly American heiresses and stuck closer to Mallarmé...

What's stayed with me is that he had a female admirer who frequently wrote him over the years and before he died he had a servant place all the letters she had sent in a box (unopened) with the instructions to send them to her once he died. I thought this immeasurably cruel. But his apartment just below the Sacre Couer in the heights of Paris as described by Jullian seemed incredibly cool fwiw (not much).
Principally this is what I remember.