24 Facts About Joris-Karl Huysmans

Joris-Karl Huysmans is most famous for the novel.

Joris-Karl Huysmans supported himself by way of a 30-year career in the French civil service.

Joris-Karl Huysmans's work expressed his deep pessimism, which had led him to the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer.

Joris-Karl Huysmans discussed the iconography of Christian architecture at length in La cathedrale, set at Chartres and with its cathedral as the focus of the book.

For 32 years, Joris-Karl Huysmans worked as a civil servant for the French Ministry of the Interior, a job he found tedious.

The young Joris-Karl Huysmans was called up to fight in the Franco-Prussian War, but was invalided out with dysentery.

Joris-Karl Huysmans used this experience in an early story, "Sac au dos".

Joris-Karl Huysmans intended to set up a community of Catholic artists, including Charles-Marie Dulac.

Joris-Karl Huysmans had praised the young painter in La cathedrale.

Dulac died a few months before Joris-Karl Huysmans completed his arrangements for the move to Liguge, and he decided to stay in Paris.

In 1905 Joris-Karl Huysmans was diagnosed with cancer of the mouth.

Joris-Karl Huysmans died in 1907 and was interred in the cimetiere du Montparnasse, Paris.

Joris-Karl Huysmans used the name Joris-Karl Huysmans when he published his writing, as a way of honoring his father's ancestry.

Joris-Karl Huysmans's first major publication was a collection of prose poems, Le drageoir aux epices, which were strongly influenced by Baudelaire.

Joris-Karl Huysmans followed it with the novel, Marthe, Histoire d'une fille.

Joris-Karl Huysmans's next works were similar: sombre, realistic and filled with detailed evocations of Paris, a city Huysmans knew intimately.

Joris-Karl Huysmans began to drift away from the Naturalists and found new friends among the Symbolist and Catholic writers whose work he had praised in A rebours.

Joris-Karl Huysmans's La-bas attracted considerable attention for its portrayal of Satanism in France in the late 1880s.

Joris-Karl Huysmans introduced the character Durtal, a thinly disguised self-portrait, who is writing a biography of the notorious 15th-century child-murderer and torturer Gilles de Rais.

The commercial success of this book enabled Joris-Karl Huysmans to retire from the civil service and live on his royalties.

Joris-Karl Huysmans's work was known for his idiosyncratic use of the French language, extensive vocabulary, detailed and sensuous descriptions, and biting, satirical wit.

Joris-Karl Huysmans expresses a disgust with modern life and a deep pessimism.

Joris-Karl Huysmans had a long-term, on-and-off relationship with Anna Meunier, a seamstress.

Joris-Karl Huysmans was made a Chevalier de la Legion d'honneur in 1892, for his work with the civil service.