Regusted with life: the therapeutic value of humour in J.-K. Huysmans’s À rebours [Against Nature]

Abstract

Although J.-K. Huysmans’s Decadent novel À rebours [Against Nature] is not known primarily as a comic novel, it has amused readers for different reasons since its publication in 1884. Henri Bergson identifies the body as a source of comedy, which is why tragic heroes do not drink, eat, or warm themselves up. I develop Bergson’s premise here to read Against Nature as a tragicomedy where the protagonist’s attempts to live an artificial existence are subverted by the functions of the body: eating, drinking, excreting, and copulating. But the humour is not limited to these bodily functions: we can also discern it in the structure of the novel, the narrator’s deadpan tone, and the protagonist’s hybrid status as both dandy and clown. Building on an insight by André Breton, I argue that the comedy in Against Nature has a therapeutic value in the etymological sense of therapia as healing. I link this to Freud’s view that the mechanism of the joke can be aligned with the functions of the grammatical person. As the first person of the joke, Huysmans through his narrator provides this therapy for his protagonist, the second person or subject of the joke. As for us, the readers or third persons of the joke, the therapy resides in the solitary or collective reception of this cautionary tale: if we find ourselves raging against other people or the demands of our bodies, we need to remember the importance of laughter, healthy living, and sociability. Des Esseintes, the protagonist of Against Nature, is disgusted with life; I conclude that he needs to become regusted in order to regain his taste for life and to stay alive. Reading Against Nature as both a comic novel and a therapeutic process enables us to see literary Decadence in a new light and to think more broadly about the therapeutic effects of comedy.