Deze serie duikt in de duistere krochten van de menselijke psyche en occulte mysteries. Het volgt de afdaling van een protagonist in een wereld van satanische rituelen, magie en decadentie. Dit is een fascinerende onderdompeling in de decadente sfeer van de fin de siècle, waar de grenzen tussen realiteit en het bovennatuurlijke vervagen. De werken verkennen obsessie, verdorvenheid en de zoektocht naar betekenis in de donkerste uithoeken van het bestaan.
At the novel's center is Durtal, a writer obsessed with the life of one of the blackest figures in history, Gilles de Rais — child murderer, sadist, necrophile, and practitioner of all the black arts. The book's authentic, extraordinarily detailed descriptions of the Black Mass have never been surpassed.
After the Satanic debaucheries of La -bas (1891) and the sensual battles of En Route (1895), comes the cloistered calm of The Cathedral (1898). In this long, reflective novel, Huysmans' alter-ego, Durtal, sets out to explore the mystic symbolism embodied in one of the greatest gothic edifices in France, Chartres cathedral. Written at the time of the Dreyfus Affair, a political scandal that threatened to tear France apart, Chartres cathedral became for Huysmans a potent symbol of the harmonious diversity of the Middle Ages, one that had the potential to unify the divisions in contemporary French society. This complex, multi-layered vision of Chartres cathedral as a structure in which art, science and religion could exist in harmony rather than discord, captured the public imagination on its first publication, and The Cathedral became a runaway bestseller. This edition contains 20 photographs of parts of Chartres cathedral mentioned in the text.