Against the Grain · Chapter
XVI explained
Des Esseintes, ordered by doctors to return to Paris for his health, is forced to abandon his secluded life at Fontenay.
What happens
Des Esseintes, ordered by doctors to return to Paris for his health, is forced to abandon his secluded life at Fontenay. He rages against the bourgeois society he must rejoin, despising its mediocrity, corruption, and the decay of aristocracy. He contemplates the futility of pessimism and the failure of religion, feeling utterly isolated and despairing as his refuge is dismantled around him.
Themes in this chapter
Disillusionment with Society
Des Esseintes expresses profound disgust with bourgeois society, its mediocrity, corruption, and the decay of aristocracy, seeing no place for himself in it.
Escapism and Solitude
The chapter centers on the forced end of Des Esseintes' solitary refuge at Fontenay, which he sees as his only haven from the world.
Religion and Spirituality
Des Esseintes reflects on the failure of religion, the adulteration of sacraments, and the impossibility of belief, deepening his despair.
Characters to notice
- Des Esseintes
Des Esseintes is forced to leave his Fontenay retreat due to doctor's orders, experiencing rage, despair, and a sense of impending doom as he contemplates returning to Parisian society.
- Arthur Schopenhauer
Des Esseintes tries to console himself with Schopenhauer's pessimistic maxims but finds them powerless to comfort him.
- Stéphane Mallarmé
Mentioned as one of the few artists whose refined sensibility Des Esseintes values, lamenting that no one else can appreciate such work.
- Paul Verlaine
Mentioned alongside Mallarmé as an artist whose subtlety Des Esseintes cherishes but finds no kindred soul to share.
- the doctor
The doctor who ordered Des Esseintes to leave Fontenay for Paris, insisting on distraction and amusement as the only cure.
Key passages
“Des Esseintes shut himself up in his bedroom and turned a deaf ear to the knocking of the men’s hammers who were nailing up the packing-cases the servants had got ready; each stroke seemed to beat on his heart and send a pang of pain through his flesh.”
Des Esseintes isolated himself in his room, ignoring the noise of workers packing his belongings, each hammer blow causing him physical pain.
Illustrates his visceral distress at being forced to leave his sanctuary.
“Well, crumble then, society! perish, old world!”
Let society collapse and the old world die!
Des Esseintes' bitter cry against the society he despises.
“Lord, take pity on the Christian who doubts, on the sceptic who would fain believe, on the galley-slave of life who puts out to sea alone, in the darkness of night, beneath a firmament illumined no longer by the consoling beacon-fires of the ancient hope.”
God, have mercy on a doubting Christian, a skeptic who wants to believe, a prisoner of life setting sail alone into a dark night without the guiding lights of old hope.
Des Esseintes' final prayer-like lament, expressing his spiritual crisis and isolation.