Huysmans (La-Bas, aka The Damned)

[Mark Thibodeau]

*A recent discussion of Houelbecq's novel Submission -- which is in part
about a professor of fin-de-sciecle decadent author Joris-Karl Huysmans --
prompted me to finally take a crack at that author's La-Bas (The Damned),
which has been in my "to read" pile ever since finishing, and loving, his
excellent short novel A Rebours (Against Nature). In the middle of an
extended meditation on the evils of money (which I will reproduce, below),
I was amused to find Huysmans using a word that has recently gained some
notoriety on the international stage. You'll know it when you see it. :-)*

Here is the excerpt, from Chapter 1, pp. 12/13:

The rules of money are precise and invariable. Money attracts money, money
seeks to accumulate in the same places, money is naturally attracted to
scoundrels and those who are entirely bereft of any talent. When, by an
exception which proves the rule, money finds its way into the hands of a
man who, though wealthy, is neither a miser nor has any murderous
proclivities, it stands idle, incapable of creating a force for good,
incapable of even making its way into charitable hands who would know how
to employ it. One might almost say that it takes revenge for its
misdirection, that it undergoes a voluntary paralysis whenever it enters
into the possession of someone who is neither a born swindler nor a
complete and utter *dotard*.

When, by some extraordinary chance, it strays into the home of a poor man,
money behaves even more inexplicably. It defiles immediately what was
clean, transforms even the chastest pauper into a monster of unbridled lust
and, acting simultaneously on the body and the soul, instils in its
possessor a base egoism, not to mention an overweening pride, which insists
that he spends every penny on himself alone; it makes even the humblest
arrogant, and turns the generous person into a skinflint. In one second, it
changes every habit, upsets ever idea, transforms the most deep-seated
passions.

Money is the greatest nutrient imaginable for sins of the worst kind, which
in a sense it aids and abets. If one of the custodians of wealth so forgets
himself as to bestow a boon or make a donation, it immediately gives rise
to hatred in the breast of its recipient; by replacing avarice with
ingratitude, the equilibrium is established again: a new sin is
commissioned by every good deed which is committed.

But the real height of monstrosity is attained when money, hiding the
splendour of its name under the dark veil of the word, calls itself
capital. At that moment its action is no longer limited to individual
incitations to theft and murder, but extends across the entire human race.
With a single word capital grants monopolies, erects banks, corners
markets, changes people’s lives is capable of causing millions to starve to
death.

And all the while that it does this, money is feeding on itself, growing
fat and breeding in a bank fault; and the Two Worlds worship it on bended
knee, melting with desire before it, as before a God.

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