"How could anybody have ever thought that there was anything appealing or sexy about vampires and the dreary children who wanted to be like them? Gah."

Haha! That's a bit how I feel about "decadent" authors like Huysmans and Villiers de L'Isle-Adam now that I'm an adult. As a young teenager I adored their rich, baroquely descriptive prose, the atmosphere of outrageous but slowly decaying luxury their protagonists inhabited, the perfervid emotion and symbol-laden sexuality, all lashed together with intimations of fetishes and perversions my youthful imagination, lacking any actual knowledge or explicit facts, embroidered into opulent tapestries of forbidden pleasure and sin. (Geez! Just look what even reminiscing about them does to my prose! ;-p )

I reread 'La-Bas' and 'Contes Crueles' a few years ago and was immediately struck by how threadbare the stories were-actual plot was at a minimum and what plot did exist was generally just recycled early Gothic in Victorian dress. The descriptions now seem campy: amusing for a page or two but then tiresome and absurdly overblown. There's no character development of any kind; the protagonist and those he interacts with are simply mannequins upon whom the author hangs his fetish of choice. Introspection and psychological astuteness are virtually nil. The world these books depict is one in which perception and sensing are everything and the only actions are reactions-even while committing the most taboo acts (ooohhh, lighting black candles...aaahhh, inhaling the fragrance of "poisonous" orchids for a cheap high...) the protagonists are essentially passive because they're essentially mindless, their actions apparently instinctual.

Curiously, I reread some of the works of Barbey d'Aurevilly at the same time as the above, and while generally classed among the same group as Huysmans, etc. and by no means a great or classic author, Barbey's best work points up the shortcomings of his peers quite clearly. Barbey's characters *act* and when they react their reactions reflect their psychological makeup, not merely instinct. Personalities in Barbey's literary world are strong and distinct; some are even unforgettable. There is no character in all of French literature quite like Hauteclaire Stassin, the coolly willful, unabashedly sensual, fiercely independent fencing mistress who dominates the supposedly objective narrator, her hopelessly smitten lover, and ultimately the tale itself ('Le Bonheur dans le Crime' one of six tales in Barbey's most famous work, 'Les Diaboliques'.) Barbey's prose is luxurious, even overripe, but it adorns the story rather than existing as an end in itself. His world is strange, dark, and hothouse humid with ardent emotions and steamy passions, but it's still recognizeable. It's easy to imagine it's out there, somewhere, lurking behind the bright lights and orderly facades of even our modern cities and suburbs.

P.S. Don't get me started on Swinburne ;-p