Houellebecq’s fin de siècle: Crisis of society, crisis of the novel-thematic and poetological intertextuality between Michel Houellebecq and Joris-Karl Huysmans

Abstract

Shortly before the turn of the century (and of the millennium), a new current in literature seemed to make its appearance, the defining traits of which were perceived to be reflected in the semantic content of the term déprimisme. The novels of several French authors-among whom Michel Houellebecq, of special interest here-seemed to display something akin to “un nouveau mal du siècle,�? “[une] version nouvelle du désenchantement.�? The writers in question appeared to be united by a common distaste for the contemporary world, as well as by a “baisse d’énergie vitale�? characterizing both themselves and the characters in their novels-“des rebuts de l’humanité, des êtres en proie à la démence, à l’impuissance, et accessoirement à quelques perversions sexuelles�? (Rouart 1).1 Considered against the backdrop of this horizon of ideas, which evoked the sememes of the preceding fin-de-siècle, it need not come as a surprise that, a few years later, in a special issue of Magazine littéraire devoted to nihilism (“Le nihilisme�?), the name of Houellebecq was placed alongside those of Friedrich Nietzsche, Richard Wagner, and Arthur Schopenhauer.