The Cathedral
1898
Huysmans, the master of decadence, attempts something unexpected: a novel about reaching God through beauty. Durtal, the author's literary double, has already converted to Catholicism in earlier books. Now he settles in Chartres not as a penitent but as a pilgrim to the cathedral itself. The novel unfolds as a sustained meditation on how stone, light, and the Virgin's presence can become a path to the divine. Huysmans describes the cathedral's labyrinth, its flying buttresses, its medieval sculptures with an obsession that borders on the erotic. Durtal's inner life mingles with contemplations of Marian apparitions at La Salette and Lourdes, with the harsh winter weather, with the monks and townspeople who pass through this Gothic threshold. The book is neither conventional piety nor theological argument. It is something stranger: a decadent's attempt to transfigure his love of the beautiful into love of the holy. Those who surrender to its deliberate, unhurried pace will find a unique fusion of aesthetic worship and spiritual longing, rendered in prose of almost tactile richness.
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“the surplice and alb signify innocence; the cord that serves as a girdle is an emblem of chastity and modesty; the amice, of purity of heart and body”
— J.-K. Huysmans
“Under these circumstances the most anodyne book was a source of danger from the simple fact that love was alluded to, and woman depicted as an attractive creature; and this was enough to account for all”
— J.-K. Huysmans
“She was certainly very unmodern and inexperienced by the standards of to-day--on the other hand, she was a very long way indeed from the Lily Dales and Eleanor Hardings of Mr. Trollope. She””
— J.-K. Huysmans
