HUYSMANS, Joris-Karl (1848-1907)

HUYSMANS, Joris-Karl (1848-1907)

Poème autographe [signed] : « Sonnet masculin »
N.p.n.d, 1 p. in-8° on laid paper
Some ink smudges on margins, central fold skillfully repaired

Famous sonnet depicting a scene of sodomy between two male subjects

The only known manuscript of this poem

From the Stéphane Mallarmé library

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« Les rideaux tout souillés des morves d’un branlé
Enveloppaient le lit — Un bidet rempli d’eau
Attendait — Le vieillard entra — mit son cadeau,
Cinq francs, dans une coupe en zinc — et l’enculé

Tournant le dos porta ses jumelles rondeurs,
Dames-jeannes d’amour, au bouchon du miché.
À grand’aide de suif, il fut vite fiché
Dans cette cave en chair où fument des odeurs

De salpêtre et de bran, ce dard qui sautillait,
Éperdu, dans ses doigts ! — Après un long effort,
Il entra jusqu’au ventre en ce trou qui bâillait

Et l’anus embroché sonna son doux flic-flac.
C’est bon, dis, petit homme,  oh oui ! va, va, plus fort
Ah ! reste — assez — laisse — ouf ! — Et l’on entendit clac ! »

[J.K. Huysmans]

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Known as a novelist and art critic, Huysmans nevertheless let himself be tempted by versified composition. Probably at his beginnings, when he was looking for his way. When he published his first book, Le Drageoir à épices, in 1873 (which became Le Drageoir aux épices in the 1874 reprint), he placed a sonnet at the head of this collection of prose poems and short stories. The two obscene sonnets that he published later, in Le Parnasse satyrique du dix-neuvième siècle, could date from this period. In any case, this is the hypothesis made by two a priori reliable witnesses, Henry Céard and Jean de Caldain:
“It was during these years of mad youth (the years 1873-1874) that Huysmans wrote sonnets intended for the hell of libraries and which, for reasons that are understandable, he did not attempt to reproduce in any collection: the Sonnet Pointu (or Sonnet masculin) and the Sonnet saignant (or Sonnet féminin).”
Composed exclusively in masculine rhymes – in prosodic conformity with the subject – the Sonnet masculin also belongs, from a formal point of view, to the tradition of the “libertine” sonnet (built on four rhymes in the quatrains: abba, cddc, and not on two rhymes as the rule inherited from the poets of the Pléiade). A tradition that Baudelaire had abundantly illustrated in Les Fleurs du Mal.
Huysmans counting syllables and looking for rhymes is no doubt unexpected, but we recognize him by his taste for the word rare or picturesque, by his crude realism, by his pessimism turned towards the ridiculous or the ugly.

It is not customary for manuscripts of pornographic works, versified or in prose, to be signed by the hand of their authors. This poem is no exception to the rule. Free of deletions or corrections, this manuscript was probably intended for printing. The signature could have been added by the publisher or a prote.