At the beginning of Chapter XIV, in the novel "A Rebours", Des Azent, in a "numbness," "bogged down in idleness boredom," "frightened by his unsettled library," tries to "fix the mess" in his villa in Fontenay: "He called the servant who, under his guidance, took up the job by carrying his books one by one, and he was looking at them and determining their place in the library," wrote Huysmans . Since he had wanted to achieve sophistication in his choice, he had restricted it and almost sterilized the whole enjoyment, once again exacerbating the insurmountable conflict that existed between his views and the views of the world in which, after his birth, he had dropped the chance.

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According to Huysmans , Des Essen's views on art "came from a clear point of view: schools did not exist for him; the temperament of the writer was only important; the only interest in him was his intellectual efforts, regardless of the plot he was engaged in. ". The novelist states that his hero "until recently had worshiped the great Balzac, but at the same time his body lost its usual equilibrium, his nerves gained incredible power, his drawings went in a different direction, and so his adoration changed": "While he was aware of his injustice to the amazingly talented author of "The Human Comedy," Des Essen came to the point where he did not open his books, his radiating art of art offended him; now he was excited by new aspirations that were somewhat indefinable. " The evolution of taste in the esteem-decadent takes him "to seek a work of art that is in itself such as to bring what would allow it to give it such value": "He wanted to move forward with it, thanks as a patient supported by a reliable companion, as a passenger carried from a vehicle to a heavenly sphere in which the exalted sensations would bring in him an unexpectedly intense soul excitement whose causes he would seek for a long time and in vain.

Exhausted from the dynamics of life in the high secular society of the capital, Des Essen left Paris, as a result of which "he was increasingly moving away from reality and, above all, from the modern world from which he was growing in horror": "Ultimately, this hatred had an impact on his artistic and literary views, and he retreated as far as possible from those paintings and books whose storylines unfolded within the limits of modern life. Lacking the ability to admire indifferent beauty, no matter in what form it manifests, the sophisticated aesthetician Des Essen chooses his favorite authors as above all "looks deeper into the intimate essence of the temper of these masters." For him the undisputed masters in the development of the novel genre are Flaubert (with everything written by him from "The Temptation of St. Anthony" to "Parenting"), Jules and Edmon de Gocour / with "Germini Lasserio" / Edmund de Gocour "Faustina" / "Zola" with his novels from "The Abraham Moure's Sin. The "hero" of Huysmans directs himself to this selection of works because they are "filled with tension and humanity," because their authors "expose with more sincere ease the most difficult to explain the gusts of their being, and raise it up, itself , over the others, led him out of this ordinary life from which he was so tired "

Des Essen highly values ​​the works of these novelists, his contemporaries, as "at the time of their creation, they had found themselves in an analogous spiritual attitude." "Indeed, when the age in which a talented man is forced to live is uninteresting and dull, the artist, even without knowing himself, turns out to be nostalgic for some other century," says Yusmans' hero. In Des Essen, vague migrative wishes that seek to elucidate through reflection and research, "the instincts, feelings and tendencies inherited by the heredity are awakened, and are imposed with forceful conviction": "He is recalling memories of people and things he had not personally known, and then came a moment when he decided to suddenly get out of the age of his age and to be completely free of any other age with which, according to the latter, he had an illusion, he was in a more complete agreement.

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