After deciding that anticipating travel is preferable to actually traveling, the protagonist of this novel purchases real plants that look artificial.
At one point in this work, its main character designs a house with orange ceilings and leather paneling and orders his servants to cover their shoes in felt. After deciding that anticipating travel is preferable to actually traveling, the protagonist of this novel purchases real plants that look artificial. This work's protagonist once asked one of his mistresses to recreate a dialogue of Flaubert with a small black sphinx and a clay chimera. Its protagonist eats meat with licorice sauce, served to him by nude black women, off a black table during a farewell dinner he throws for his virility. The American acrobat Miss Urania is also a brief obsession of this novel's main character, who also purchases a number of paintings by (*) Gustave Moreau. Its protagonist's retreat into a purely aesthetic existence ends when he faints from starvation and a doctor orders him to return to a normal social life in Paris. For 10 points, identify this Decadent novel about the aesthete Jean des Esseintes, a work of Joris-Karl Huysmans.
At one point in this work, its main character designs a house with orange ceilings and leather paneling and orders his servants to cover their shoes in felt.
A {Rebours} [accept {Against Nature} or {Against} the {Grain}]