...a subtle fragrance of bergamot and frangipane, of moss-rose and cypress, marechale and new-mown hay, that had been lingering here and there, adding a flash of pink to this concert of exquisite insipidities... Parisian Sketches

How should we begin to think the approach of not going to war? By means of rhapsodomancy perhaps. In a chance encounter with Huysmans, we perceive how the aesthetic movement of the late 19th Century records the accumulation of the forces of production for war as a stultifying abundance of minutely detailed sensations which only serve to obscure that which they are decorating.



