Book Review: The Life of J.-K. Huysmans by Robert Baldick
“Lord, you gave him great talent, and he used it for your glory. You gave him great suffering, and he accepted it for your blessing…”
– Abbé Fontaine
“Lord, you gave him great talent, and he used it for your glory. You gave him great suffering, and he accepted it for your blessing…”
– Abbé Fontaine
“Against the darkness of the interior, the windows are in effect grey or black, and one must go inside the church and turn round in order to see the fire of the glass catch alight; the outside is here sacrificed to the inside. Why?
Perhaps, Durtal answered himself, it’s a symbol of the soul illuminated in its innermost places, an allegory of the spiritual life…”
– The Cathedral, J.K. Huysmans
“Everything lies contained in that building,” he went on, waving his hand to designate the church; “the scriptures, theology, the history of the human race, set forth in a broad outline. Thanks to the science of symbolism a pile of stones may be a macrocosm.”
“I will worship towards thy holy temple, and I will give glory to thy name. For thy mercy, and for thy truth: for thou hast magnified thy holy name above all.”
– Psalm 137:2
“No, the more I think of her,” he cried, “the more I think her prodigious, unique, the more I am convinced that she alone holds the truth, that outside her are only weaknesses of mind, impostures, scandals. The Church is the divine breeding ground, the heavenly dispensary of souls…”
“But it was fit that we should make merry and be glad, for this thy brother was dead and is come to life again; he was lost, and is found.” (Luke 15:32)
“No day will pass that I feel no pain for you.”
– Charlemagne
(Laisse 207. 2901)