"Down There, or the Abyss" is one of Huysmans's darkest and most terrible novels. It has everything: chilling details about the bloodthirsty Gilles de Rais, the secrets of alchemists, satanic masses, philosophical debates. One of the main characters in the novel, the writer Durtal, is an easily recognizable double of the author. The appearance of Alfred de Musset's novel "Gamiani or Two Nights of Voluptuousness" on the book counter made a stunning impression on his contemporaries. Only a few experts and connoisseurs were able to discern in the scandalous work a unique and subtle parody of the outdated literary canons of romanticism.