The Chimaera & the Sphinx
Scene from chapter IX in Huysmans´ Against Nature,
from the Dying Dreamer by Malin Zim
One of the earliest explorations into “hyperesthetic space” emerges from Against Nature (À rebours) by Joris-Karl Huysmans. Rebelling against the naturalism of contemporaries like Emile Zola, Huysmans’ main character Des Esseintes believes nature “has had her day” and that “the time has surely come for artifice to take her place whenever possible.” In response to the lack of aesthetic intensity in real world, Des Esseintes artificially manufactures a mind-altering virtual palette of artefacts in which to stimulate hyperesthetic experience, albeit without the social connectivity of twenty-first century cyberspace.
Interestingly, Des Esseintes does not acquire hyperaesthetic artefacts for social status, the transformative experience of the artefact is more important than the object itself. Further, Huysmans extends space beyond the visual and acoustic by allocating navigational functions to aromatics and haptic elements, mimicking the crossmodal effects of synesthetic cognition. By presenting artifice as the totally immersive reality of choice, Huysmans pioneers a manual for hyperesthetic experience. For Huysmans, it is cognitive manipulation that gives rise to flights of imagination, and imagination that controls human evolution itself.
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