L'Oblat

L'Oblat (The Oblate) is the last novel by the French writer Joris-Karl Huysmans, first published in 1903.

Description

L'Oblat is the final book in Huysmans' cycle of four novels featuring the character Durtal, a thinly disguised portrait of the author himself. Durtal had already appeared in Là-bas, En route and La cathédrale, which traced his (and the author's) conversion to Catholicism.

In L'Oblat, Durtal becomes an oblate, reflecting Huysmans' own experiences in the religious community at Ligugé. Like many of Huysmans' other novels, it has little plot. The author uses the book to examine the Christian liturgy, express his opinions about the state of Catholicism in contemporary France and explore the question of suffering (one notable passage describes the Garden of Gethsemane).

Sources
  • Robert Baldick The Life of J.-K. Huysmans (OUP, 1955; revised by Brendan King, Dedalus, 2006)
gollark: I mean, more like "without large-scale coordination mechanisms and specialization".
gollark: "do something which provides other people value or die", how awful.
gollark: (as a job)
gollark: You know, there are quite a lot of jobs. And you can do anything which people are willing to pay (enough) for.
gollark: Maybe some people are depressed because of, I don't know, deep feelings on society, but for some it's probably just some kind of random chemical imbalance (I do not know neuroscience).
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