La Cathédrale (1898)

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The Quarterly Review

Vol 190 Jan-Dec 1899.

Modern Mysticism


We may turn to the latest work of Huysmans, La Cathédrale, nominally a novel, but in reality a treatise on mystic symbolism, to see what this Neo-Catholic mysticism amounts to. In his earlier works and before his conversion was complete, Huysmans had painted the vices and abominations of commonplace life with considerable relish, and also with a coarseness of style akin to the naturalism of Teniers, but without the latter’s bonhomie, rather reminding us of Swift’s savage irony without his vigour. Ferocious contempt and weary disgust with everyday life lead the hero of A Rebours (that is, M. Huysmans himself, who always figures as the hero of his novels) into the arms of religion. "Have pity, Lord, on a Christian who doubts: I am an unbeliever who tries to believe." Seeking deliverance from the banalities and the platitudes of the world and the truculent pessimism which they produce, he finds it in a kind of Neo-Catholic mysticism of his own creation. In Là-bas, he describes his hero, Durtal, as in the depths of gruesome horror at the things he seens in the world below. In En Route he attempts to climb the heights, and describes his triumph in the victory of faith, achieved in the Trappist monastery.

In La Cathédrale Huysmans begins to speak in the language of mystics, such as St. Teresa, and in affection for mystic worship and the liturgical services of plain song. Here, in the gloomy precincts of "Notre Dame de Sousterre", in the crypt of Chartres Cathedral, he attends early celebrations and finds spiritual repose. He has learned to hate the broad daylight introduced by the Renaissance, which he tells us killed "l’âme mystique", and put an end to religious art in France. He yearns for a return of the age of faith, and complains of the rigid formalism which chills religious devotion in the present day. He envies the nuns their ignorant simplicity, whilst his own soul remains dissatisfied, in a dry and barren state, even after his conversion. He breaks out into ecstacies over Frà Angelico’s ’Crowning of the Virgin’, as the expression of a monk’s mystic appreciation of the contemplative life. He can think of nothing better than assuming the Benedictine habit, and in the peace and seclusion of the cloister realising thepoetic dream of life. This, however, with his strongly developed power of analytic criticism, he discovers to be nothing else than a "cloître fabriqué de bric de réalité et de brac de rêve". Nor has he the courage to face without flinching the hardships and severe discipline of convent life. He actually faints when called upon to start for the journey to the Benedictines. Such is the result of his religious education by means of symbolism in the mystical Cathedral par excellence.

The book is a treatise, in fact, on monumental physiology, archaeological symbolism, mystical cosmology, for the author sees hidden meanings in smells, mystical zoology in stone, architectural mysticism, and what not. "Quelle bouille pour les chats, quelle bouteille à l’encre que cette ménagerie du Bien and du mal, s’écria Durtal, en posant sa plume." What nourishment, by way of spiritual meat and drink, do these discussions give to the soul suffering from spiritual anaemia?

The chief value of Huysmans’ writings consists in this, that they give a tolerably distinct outline of the type of mystic evolved by a modern environment. He presents us with a view of the mystical side of Decadentism, in which we note the absence of force and fibre, arising from a lack of sincere belief, a consequent incapacity to endure hardship for conscience’ sake, with intermittent but ineffectual efforts to produce spiritual ecstacies and divine raptures in a spiritual mechanism where the motor-spring has been broken, and appears to be beyond repair. No wonder the friends and former companions of Huysmans are scpetical about the sincerity of his conversion, especially as the old Adam comes out occasionally in his proneness to handle irreverently sacred things and to dwell with delight on unsavoury themes, the remaining grains d’ordure picked up in the Satanic school among the Diabolists, his former companions. Thus he coarsely describes in La Cathédrale a chromograph of Christ, "d’un air aimable, un coeur mal cuit, saignant dans les ruisseaux de sauce jaune". On a par with such exhibitions of misplaced humour are his attempts to defend the gross indecencies of medieval stone-carving, on the plea that prudery is a sign of a degenerate age. When Barbey d’Aurevilly had read Baudelaire’s Fleurs de Mal he wrote to the author: "There are only two things which the poet who made them bloom can do — he must either blow out his brains or become a Christian." Such men try to become good Catholics because they are attracted by the beauty of its religious mysticism, but they also display an ingrained distaste for Roman discipline. At the same time it would be rash to speak too sweepingly of the "mystically degenerate mind", as some have done, or to treat the movement with contempt as the ’reversion of cultured humanity to the mental darkness of the past’. For it is impossible to deny the serious and nobel aim which underlies the attempts of some modern mystics, however perturbed by the admixture of much that is ignoble and debasing. They turn to the Roman communion as the only spiritual society which, like them, is opposed to the vulgarities of materialistic atheism; they are sincere in their efforts to re-introduce the reign of Romance, loftiness of sentiment, and a divine order founded on ideals. Even if it be little better than the aspiration of a refined élite in a decadent social environment, it deserves as such our careful attention as one of the signs of the times.