Poétique picturale de la prose dans Le Drageoir aux épices et les « Croquis et eaux-fortes »

In his first published texts, Huysmans made himself both a poet and a painter, as the “Croquis et eaux-fortes” (1875-1876) and the “Sonnet liminaire” of the Drageoir aux épices (1874) demonstrate. There is a pictorial poetics at work here, and the question of whether this enters into competition with, or rather complements, the poetics of the prose needs to be considered. The references to painting can, at times, be seen to aestheticise the prosaic and at others, and on the contrary, to defend an aesthetics of triviality.