Stranded by Joris-Karl Huysmans

Author:Joris-Karl Huysmans
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781909232112
Publisher: Dedalus Ebooks
Published: 2012-07-27T00:00:00+00:00

Notes

*116. …French kickboxer. Huysmans uses the phrase maître de savate, savate being a form of kickboxing introduced into France at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It was popularised by fighters such as Charles Lecour during the mid-1850s, and later by Joseph Charlemont, who not only wrote kickboxing training manuals but established a boxing academy in Paris in 1887. Huysmans also made a reference to savate in A Rebours. It is possible that he saw an exhibition bout during the period he frequented cirques and musichalls.

*116a. …uterine metritis. An inflammation of the lining of the uterus. In the nineteenth century it was common to associate ‘neurotic’ or ‘hysterical’ symptoms with diseases of the womb or uterus.

*116b. …a spell of adynamia. A medical condition characterised by a loss of strength and vigour.

*117. …illness whose roots extended everywhere. This is an obvious play on Pascal’s well-known quote about Nature being “an infinite sphere whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference nowhere”. However, Pascal had adapted his quote either from Saint Augustine, who in his Confessions defined God as being ‘wholly everywhere, but nowhere limited in space’, or from the twelfth century Book of Propositions attributed to the fabled alchemist, Hermes Trismegistus, who defined God as “an infinite sphere whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere”. As Huysmans was familiar with all three sources it’s not clear which author he was specifically pastiching.

*117a. …a magisterium concocted by a Bolognese count. The German alchemist Martinus Rulandus (1569-1611) defined ‘magisterium’ in his Lexicon alchemiae (Lexicon of Alchemy, 1612) as: “a Chemical State which follows the process of extraction, and in which a matter is developed and exalted by the separation of its external impurities. In this manner are all the parts of natural and homogenous concretion preserved. But they are so exalted that they almost attain the nobility of essences.”

*117b. …Count Mattei. Born in Bologna to a wealthy, aristocratic family, Count Cesare Mattei (1809-1896) studied natural science, anatomy, physiology and pathology, before going on to formulate his theory of electro-homeopathy during the 1870s. Mattei used plant extracts as the active agent of his materia medica, which he prepared by a method borrowed from Paracelsus known as cohobation. Mattei made huge claims for his new treatments and they quickly spread throughout Europe during the latter half of the nineteenth century: by 1884, for example, there were 79 distribution centres in 10 European countries. A French translation of Mattei’s most famous work, Électro-homoeopathie, principes d’une science was published in 1879, ( See Figure 6 Here) but it is unlikely that Huysmans had seen a copy before working on En Rade, as his descriptions are a little imprecise. In fact Mattei stained his “liquid electric” cures not just green but red, white, straw yellow and blue, in order to distinguish between them. “Green electricity” was intended for use to “calm the pains of cancerous lesions”, but could be used “for all sorts of wounds,” and above all for “pains in the joints”. After En Rade was published Huysmans told several of his

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