Joris-Karl Huysmans, Drifting (À vau-l’eau), translated by Brendan King (Sawtry: Dedalus, 2017)

Abstract

J.-K. Huysmans (1848-1907) is considered an important figure in not one, but two nineteenth-century literary movements: Naturalism and Decadence. The novella À vau-l’eau, published in 1882, might be said to hover astride the line dividing the two and to encompass his stylistic transition from the former to the latter, containing as it does both the meticulous attention to the realistic and often mundane details of everyday life that is characteristic of Naturalism, and the self-loathing malaise that is a prominent feature of Decadent art and literature.