Summary
Summary of En Route
Who it’s for
This book suits readers who like inner struggle, religious questions, and rich description of music, churches and art. It will also reward anyone curious about a writer's conversion. If you want fast action or a tidy plot, it may feel slow.
What this book is
En Route is a novel by the French writer Joris-Karl Huysmans, published in 1895. It follows Durtal, a Parisian author who has tried every pleasure and found them all stale. Durtal had appeared before in Down There, a book about Satanism. Now Huysmans sends him in the opposite direction, toward the Catholic Church. The novel grew out of Huysmans's own conversion, and it reads like a report from inside a mind that is changing.
There is little plot in the usual sense. Most of the action happens in Durtal's head, in churches, and at last in a Trappist monastery where he goes on retreat. What you get is a close account of doubt, desire, shame and slow surrender, along with long passages on plainchant, medieval art and the writings of the mystics. Huysmans writes in a rich, crowded style, full of odd words and sharp comic touches. Let us begin with the man himself, bored and restless in Paris.
In this summary
- 1A jaded writer finds only emptinessFree
- 2Music and beauty open a door
- 3A priest answers and the flesh resists
- 4Silence and fear inside the monastery
- 5What the book says about sin and grace
- 6A novel built from mood and detail
Key point 1 of 6
A jaded writer finds only emptiness
The novel opens on Durtal in Paris, worn out in body and spirit. He has lived among books, women and fine sensations, and none of them satisfy him any more. He is not unhappy in a dramatic way. He is flat, irritable and tired of himself. Everything he once enjoyed now leaves a bitter taste.
He is also unhappy with the world around him. Modern Paris seems vulgar to him, and so does the literature of his own time. He has little faith in progress, and he looks back with longing to older ages. In that mood he starts to wander into churches, at first for the quiet and the old stones.
Huysmans takes his time here. He lets Durtal grumble, mock himself and circle around the idea of belief without touching it. Durtal already feels the pull of Catholic belief. What he resists is living it, giving up his old habits, and bowing to confession and discipline. He fears the loss of his freedom. Yet something keeps pulling him back to the pews.
This opening matters because it shows that the conversion is not sudden. No vision knocks Durtal down. Instead there is a long wearing away of old habits, and a growing sense that the life he has built is a dead end. The reader meets a man who is not sure he wants to be saved, only that he cannot go on as he is.
That’s 1 of 6 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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