Author: J. K. Huysmans

Cited by

• Michel Houellebecq (1)
  • IN: Submission (2015) Fiction, French
    EPIGRAPH: A noise recalled him to Saint-Sulpice; the choir was leaving; the church was about to close. 'I should have tried to pray,' he thought. 'It would have been better than sitting here in the empty church, dreaming in my chair -- but pray? I have no desire to pray. I am haunted by Catholicism, intoxicated by its atmosphere of incense and wax. I hover on its outskirts, moved to tears by its prayers, touched to the very marrow by its psalms and chants. I am thoroughly disgusted with my life, I am sick of myself but so far from changing my ways! And yet... and yet... if I am troubled in these chapels, as soon as I leave them I become unmoved and dry. In the end,' he told himself, as he rose and followed the last ones but, shepherded by the Swiss guard, 'in the end, my heart is hardened and smoked dry by dissipation. I am good for nothing.'
    FROM: En route, (1895), Novel, France