SOURCE: "The Aesthetic Development of a Novelist Art Critic," in J. K. Huysmans: Novelist, Poet, and Art Critic, UMI Research Press, 1987, pp. 11-32.

In the following essay, Kahn examines the aesthetic and psychological principles underlying Huysmans's art criticism.

Huysmans wrote during a time of profound debate and fundamental changes in the arts. He experienced and influenced the end of Naturalism and saw the proliferation of many experimental groups of writers and paint ers. The lack of a confident direction which typified the arts in general at this time is reflected in Huysmans' perpetual search for the "true" aesthetic formula and his resultant changes of taste. Huysmans' unusually desperate attempt to understand the meaning and aim of art and literature stems largely from the fact that he was so dissatisfied with his own life that he turned to the world of the arts to fill a personal void.

Huysmans'...