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El presente artículo se propone cotejar dos lecturas antimodernas de Platón y la tradición platónica, la de Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821) y la de Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848-1907) que resultan a la vez complementarias e inversas. Estas apropiaciones, que abren y cierran el siglo XIX, expresan el auge y el declive del “platonismo romántico”. De Maistre recurre intensamente a los diálogos de Platón, a los que cita, comenta, traduce y reescribe, así como a diversos textos del neoplatonismo antiguo y de la tradición platónica moderna. Por su parte los textos de Huysmans, en particular À rebours (1884), la novela más representativa de la sensibilidad decadente, expresa la crisis de ese platonismo romántico, tal como se advierte en cuestiones tales como el nihilismo, el recurso a la figura del simulacro y el replanteo del tópico del andrógino. El platonismo y su crisis interrogan la temporalidad histórica, desde la aceleración revolucionaria hasta la decadencia finisecular.

The essay will focus on Degas as ‘cruel’ painter, draftsman and sculptor of ballet dancers. In this essay, the Degas’s poetics, philosophy, aesthetic of dance are dealt with as a specific stage of European thought on art and poetry. In particular, they are analysed in the light of the theories developed in Europe in the second half of 19th century and in the first half of 20th century in relation with the art criticism, philosophy, literary criticism, visual thought. Degas was not a painter alone, but a sculptor, photographer, and poet. Late in his career, Degas turned to poetry as a new language for his artistic expression. Degas valued a multi-faceted form of art, as expression of the doctrine of Synaesthesia, which has been carefully examined and characterised from several vantage points. The creative efforts of the artist were the result of a conscious effort to search for means to revolutionise the philosophical-literary, the figurative thinking that dominated about classical dance. The essay deals with this specific aspect of Degas’s thought about dance, which can be also considered as medium of communication with social and political implications.

Si le terme de métadiscours est devenu usuel depuis Harris (1959), son utilisation au sein d’œuvres littéraires peut être tracée avec davantage d’ancienneté. La réflexion sur le travail de l’écrivain, grâce à l’utilisation du métadiscours au sein d’œuvres fictionnelles, connaît un développement particulièrement soutenu à la fin du XIXème siècle. Parmi les auteurs qui trouvent dans le métadiscours un moyen de renouveler le genre romanesque, Huysmans constitue sans nul doute l’un plus novateurs en la matière. Au-delà de ses nombreuses insertions critiques dans À Rebours, c’est dans l’incipit de Là-bas que Huysmans semble faire culminer son désir de voir s’étendre les limites du roman par l’insertion d’un métadiscours dont les objectifs vont au-delà d’une remise en cause de l’ « impasse du naturalisme ». Dès lors, le métadiscours étend ses possibilités, il gagne en autonomie et en profondeur pour devenir tout à la fois objet et moteur de l’intrigue. L’art du roman doit alors s’entendre aussi comme un art sur le roman.

En el poema “La música”, Baudelaire procede de la sensación bruta al terreno moral. En el célebre soneto “Correspondances” el camino es inverso: de lo espiritual (1er cuarteto) a lo material (2.º cuarteto) para mezclar ambos en los dos tercetos (música coral de elevaciones sensuales). El poema “Harmonie du soir” de Baudelaire también mezcla moral, religión y sensación. Motivados por este poema, poetas como Verlaine y Rimbaud escriben los suyos sobre la aleación de los sentidos, a menudo con un matiz moral. Puede pensarse que no ocurre lo mismo con sus sucesores; en especial, Huysmans propone un contraejemplo en À rebours, donde el excéntrico conde des Esseintes elabora artefactos para el disfrute de los sentidos pero que de ningún modo rebasan el nivel sensorial.

J.-K. Huysmans' decadent hero feels endangered in the world that surrounds him, is obsessed by time that flows by and causes inevitable physical degradation. he however struggles against time and space, turning his life into work of art. Guided by his imagination he changes the reality around him and runs away from time hiding in a world of his own, created in defense from the mundane. For some Against the Grain is only a novel that consists of loosely connected episodes, for others it is a perfect example of playing with time and space directed by a decadent aesthete. For the needs of his hero, huysmans prepared a perfect arena: a reigned hermitage in Fontenay-aux-Roses, its seclusion making it possible for the hero to carry out all his experiments planned. The novel is an account of events happening in internal space: aesthetic sensations, dreams, recollections, reminiscence, a demiurge stricken with neurosis.

Through the application of Charles Mauron’s psychocritical method, we have searched which elements of Huysmans’ Croquis parisiens were the first formulation of some “obsessif personal myths”, continued in later novels: from En ménage (1881) until the last of Durtal’s cycle L’oblat (1903). The connections we have found between the elements of these Croquis and the posterior work of Huysmans’ are: the vocational singleman who has the leading role (André Jayant, des Esseintes or Durtal), the guilty sexuality of Huysmans’ “fictional heteronymous”, the usual presence of Pierrot and the castration anxiety he produces, the femmes fatales and/or fantastic in the imagination of the author, the powerful and productif Huysmans’ onyrism, and, at last, the common use of metaphors of liquid origin. All of them are present in germ, as a first formulation, in these Croquis, what shows the seminal importance of this collection of short stories.