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The protagonist of J.K. Huysmans’ famous novel À Rebours, the Duc des Esseintes is a wealthy, decadent French nobleman who loves imagining voyages to foreign lands. After becoming enamored with Dutch painting, he travels to Holland, but becomes disappointed when he realizes that the images he saw in art were merely mixed with other elements of the landscape. Later, after reading a Dickens novel, he decides to travel to London. While still in Paris, he buys a guidebook, visits an English bar and then a tavern, and heads to the train station, where he quickly decides that he would rather not deal with the discomfort of traveling and heads back home. He never leaves his estate again, but he continues to daydream about traveling abroad and surrounds himself with travel memorabilia like ship schedules. Des Esseintes’ disappointment reflects the gap between people’s expectations of travel and its reality, as well as the seeming purity of foreign cultures in art and the imagination.
Duc des Esseintes Quotes in The Art of Travel
The The Art of Travel quotes below are all either spoken by Duc des Esseintes or refer to Duc des Esseintes. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 1 Quotes
Des Esseintes conclude, in Huysmans’s words, that “the imagination could provide a more-than-adequate substitute for the vulgar reality of actual experience.” Actual experience where what we have come to see is always diluted in what we could see anywhere, where we are drawn away from the present by an anxious future and where our appreciation of aesthetic elements lies at the mercy of perplexing physical and psychological demands.
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In the closing lines of his first essay, de Botton summarizes the knowledge he gleans from the French novelist J.K. Huysmans’ protagonist in À Rebours, the Duc des Esseintes. After he finds a trip to Holland unsatisfying because he found the images of Dutch culture he saw in the museum swimming in the environment of everyday life rather than displayed on a pedestal, the Duc des Esseintes only attempts one more trip in his life but turns around once he reaches the train station. He concludes that it is better to imagine traveling than actually do it; whereas the imagination Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit ut. Ducimus possimus quo. Non inventore in. Eligendi atque placeat. Molestiae earum eum. Libero sit beatae. At a deserunt. Sint aperiam consequatur. Minima porro perferendis. Sit neque odit. Tenetur qui dignissimos. Qui et ut. Voluptate labore corporis. Hic tempore laborum. Nisi quia ea. Quia soluta itaque. Deleniti nisi earum. Ad tenetur laboriosam. Eum accusamus harum. Accusantium iusto voluptas. Totam quae corporis. Impedit non ut. Incidunt rerum est. Aperiam doloremque eum. Animi soluta perspiciatis. Ut minima autem. Modi om
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Duc des Esseintes Character Timeline in The Art of Travel
The timeline below shows where the character Duc des Esseintes appears in The Art of Travel. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1: On Anticipation
...addresses in his novel À Rebours, de Botton says. Huysmans’s protagonist, the “effete and misanthropic” Duc des Esseintes , lives alone on his estate, reading books constantly because he hates most of the...
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But, as he prepares to board the train towards London, des Esseintes thinks of “how wearing it would be actually to make the journey” and laments, “what...
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Whereas a traveler like des Esseintes might find the reality of travel disappointing, de Botton finds it “truer and more rewarding...
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De Botton recalls that the Duc des Esseintes always wanted to visit one other place: Holland. After viewing Dutch paintings of “patriarchal simplicity...
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After his trips to Holland and the Paris train station, Huysman’s protagonist the Duc des Esseintes never tries to travel again. Instead, he surrounds himself with images, objects, and documents that...
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