Abstract: The interview in the name of A. Meunier, filled with comedy, parody, and irony, reads like a fictional text. In his preface to À rebours in 1903, Huysmans explicitly insists on the strictly literary aspect of his writing, which takes precedence over its Catholic outlook. In the notes he wrote for Abbé Mugnier’s preface to his Pages catholiques (1899), the writer evokes his “extraordinary art,” defined as much by his “unparalleled language ” as by the “despairing tones of his soul.”
