At the heart of this novel set among a turn-of-the-century Roman aristocracy engulfed in its own decadence stands Andrea Sperelli, a refined and worldly poet. Sperelli is entangled by two conflicting loves: firstly, for the sensual Elena Muti and, secondly, for the spiritual Maria Ferres, who represents the experience of art and poetry. In the end cynicism and sensual passion triumph as Sperelli calls out Elena’s name during a night of love with Maria, who flees in horror. The spiritual-artistic vocation is thereby vanquished by the erotic and moral principle is replaced by a cult of sterile aestheticism which reflects the ethical perspective of the nineteenth—century decadents.


Inspired by Joris-Karl Huysman’s A Rebours (Against Nature), the book concludes with a sense of failure as Sperelli the ‘superior man’ has to confront his own unstable nature, wayward and chameleon-like and incapable of fulfilling itself spiritually in real life.

‘During this pause, both felt a certain perplexing uneasiness; Elena was no longer exactly conscious of the moment, nor was she quite mistress of herself... In the presence of this man to whom, once upon a time, she had been bound by such passionate ties, and in this spot where she lived the most ardent moments of her life, she felt her reserve melting, her mind wavering and growing feeble. She was at that dangerously delicious point of sentiment at which the soul receives its every impulse, its attitudes, its form from its external surroundings as an aerial vapour from the mutations of the atmosphere.’ p197