Style and Influence
"Barbaric in its profusion, violent in its emphasis, wearying in its splendor, it is - especially in regard to things seen - extraordinarily expressive, with all the shades of a painter's palette. Elaborately and deliberately perverse, it is in its very perversity that Huysmans' work - so fascinating, so repellent, so instinctively artificial - comes to represent, as the work of no other writer can be said to do, the main tendencies, the chief results, of the Decadent movement in literature." (Arthur Symons, The Decadent Movement in Literature)
"...Continually dragging Mother Image by the hair or the feet down the worm-eaten staircase of terrified Syntax." (Léon Bloy, quoted in Robert Baldick, The Life of J.-K. Huysmans)
"It is difficult to find a writer whose vocabulary is so extensive, so constantly surprising, so sharp and yet so exquisitely gamey in flavour, so constantly lucky in its chance finds and in its very inventiveness." (Julien Gracq)
Read more about this topic: Joris-Karl Huysmans
Famous quotes containing the words style and/or influence:
“I am so tired of taking to others
translating my life for the deaf, the blind,
the “I really want to know what your life is like without giving up any of my privileges
to live it” white women
the “I want to live my white life with Third World women’s style and keep my skin
class privileges” dykes”
—Lorraine Bethel, African American lesbian feminist poet. “What Chou Mean We, White Girl?” Lines 49-54 (1979)
“If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life.”
—Rachel Carson (20th century)