Opening Passage:
At Chartres cathedral, on leaving the little square which is swept in all weathers by a surly wind from the plains, a gentle whiff of the cellar, attenuated by the soft, almost stifled scent of incense, blows in your face when you enter the solemn gloom of its cool forests.
Durtal knew it well, that delightful moment when one breathes in again, still dazed by the sudden transition from a stinging north wind to a velvety caress of air. Every morning, at five, he left his rooms, and to reach the borders of that strange wood he had to cross the square; and always the same people appeared, emerging from the same streets: nuns bowing their heads, leaning forward, the edges of their wimples blown back and flapping like wings, the wind swelling skirts that were held down with great difficulty; then, almost bent double, wizened women clutching their clothes around them would make their way, their curved backs lashed by the squalls. (p. 17)
Summary: In En Route Durtal had visited a Trappist monastery, struggling with his temptations and attempting to write a book on Blessed Lydwine, having found a mentor in Abbé Gévresin. In La Cathedral, Gévresin has been reassigned to Chartres, and Durtal has followed him there. He has mostly overcome his temptations, but his momentum on the book has completely collapsed, and he is struggling with writer's block trying to finish even smaller commissions for periodicals. The writer's block is perhaps a bit symbolic his more spiritual problem, but more on that in a moment. He is spending his time, when not alone, with Abbé Gévresin and two new friends he has met in Chartres, Abbé Plomb and a stern-faced but in fact very pleasant-tempered nun, Madame Bavoil. In Chartres, Durtal has become a bit obsessed with the famous cathedral.
Photo credit: Guy Dugas, via Pixabay.
Much of the novel, in fact, consists of Durtal reflecting on the cathedral and discussing various aspects of its art and architecture with his friends. He has become particularly interested in medieval symbolism and allegory, which he is studying at great length in order better to understand the meaning of the cathedral. (Many of these discussions remind me a great deal of Umberto Eco, especially, of course, in The Name of the Rose.) Besides particular features of the building itself, which has led to the book being a perpetual staple for tourists and pilgrims visting the cathedral, he and his friends discuss the allegorical significance of gemstones, fauna, flora, church architecture, vestments, colors, numbers, odors, and more. You can practically open the book at random and you are likely within three pages of such a discussion of allegory and symbolism. This sometimes gives the book a sense of being more prose poem than novel, But Durtal, of course, was drawn to the Catholic Church because of its art and aesthetics, while also deploring the bad taste and kitschy sentimentalism that was practically universal in French Catholic art in the nineteenth century. He sees this as a grave impoverishment; the very vocabulary for speaking of spiritual and mystical things, a vocabulary that had had to use layers and layers of allegory and symbol, that had to engage all the senses to capture spiritual richness of meaning, has collapsed, and nothing remotely adequate has replaced it. What Durtal finds drawing him into Catholic life can hardly even be stated anymore, and so in learning of how the medieval artists and theologians struggled to convey these things, he is learning a vocabulary for entire realms of the spiritual life of which he had had only an inkling way back in the first book in the series.
However, important as all of this is to Durtal's growth, it is in a sense a secondary matter. Durtal has entered a sort of doldrums, and the real story of the book is how he gets moving again. The writer's block he is experiencing is symbolic of -- perhaps even a symptom of -- the fact that he has a similar spiritual block. He is, so to speak, floating in a sea of possibilities and unable to select any of them; he is writing the story of his spiritual life and has reached the point where either the page stays blank or the scene stalls because it is clearly not going anywhere. Perhaps this ties with the discussions of allegory and symbolism in that the only way to work through either block, writerly or spiritual, is to consider lots of things until something starts working. This means that, as in En Route, little happens physically but much psychologically, and, as in En Route, much of the substance of the action is subtle and indirect. It is a more engaging book than the prior book. There is a tendency to think that struggle makes for the most interesting psychological stories, but The Cathedral's story of reflective rambling is consistently more interesting than En Route's anxious wrestling. Perhaps, though, one cannot plausibly get to an interesting version of the reflection without first having passed through the struggle.
Durtal has an interest in the religious and cloistered life, which he has picked up from his time at La Trappe, although he is very certain that the Trappists are not for him. Despite the attraction, however, he is also reluctant to make any moves in that direction, because he is a writer who loves art, and it's difficult to think of any version of the cloistered life that gives him the kind of freedom that requires. He is reluctant to let that go, and it's not even that he's wrong to be so, since literally all of his spiritual life is interlaced with his love of art. Simply tryinig to rip up one would do incalculable damage to the other. But it is a major contributing component to his stalling out. In fact, over the course of the novel it becomes increasingly clear that he is not merely stalling out but actively stalling. Abbé Gévresin has mentioned to him that, because of his strong interest in plainchant, he should visit the community at Solesme, and a close reader will eventually begin to realize that much of the story of the book is in fact in the negative-space created by this -- Durtal spends most of the book actively not thinking about it. This is the sort of thing that could easily be missed, but the cleverness of the writing, once you see it, is extraordinary. Huysmans has written a psychological novel about someone deliberately avoiding thought about the one topic he needs to consider. Given this, there is only one way the book can actually end, with Durtal actually setting out to visit Solesme as Abbé Gévresin had suggested. But the interest of the book is how Chartres Cathedral, and his discussions with his friends, get him to that point.
Favorite Passage:
..."But why an altar to Saint Columbanus?"
"Because of all saints he is the most neglected, the least invoked by those of our contemporaries who should be praying to himt he most, since according to the attributions of special virtues he is the patron saint of idiots!"
"Nonsense!" cried the Abbé Gévresin, "why, if ever a man revealed a magnificent comprehension of things human and divine, it was that great abbot and founder of monasteries."
"Oh, I'm not suggesting in any way that Saint Columbanus had a feeble mind, but as to why this mission of protecting the greater part of the human race was entrusted to him rather than another, I don't know."
"Perhaps because he cured the mad and freed the possessed?" suggested the Abbé Gévresin.
"In any case," said Durtal, "it would be vain to erect a chapel to him because it would always be empty. No one would come to pray to this poor saint, because the sign of an idiot is that he thinks he isn't one."
"So he's a saint without any work," said Madame Bavoil.
"And one who isn't likely to find any, either," said Durtal, as he left. (p. 213)
Recommendation: Highly Recommended; this is a beautiful book.
****
J.-K. Huysmans, The Cathedral, Clara Bell & Brendan King, trs., Dedalus (Sawtry, Cambridgeshire: 2011).
