Figures of Several Centuries

part into a sordid ennui, rising at times into a rage at existence. The

protagonist of every book is not so much a character as a bundle of impressions and sensations--the vague outline of a single consciousness, his own. But it is that single consciousness--in this morbidly personal writer--with which we are concerned. For Huysmans' novels, with all their strangeness, their ch...