A new, carefully commented and free from annoying errors of previous editions translation of the famous work of the French writer J. C. Huysmans (1848–1907). “Without Bottom” (1891), the first part of the famous trilogy dedicated to Satanism, refers to the “decadent” period in the author’s work and is, in fact, a novel within a novel: on the one hand, this is perhaps the only biography of Gilles de Re, the legendary associate of Joan of Arc, who, after the martyrdom of the Virgin of Orleans, devoted himself to serving the devil, on the other hand, the story of a certain Parisian writer who, having become disillusioned with the notorious spiritual values of European civilization of the late 19th century, turns to the Middle Ages and bitterly realizes how insurmountable an abyss separates this complex, contradictory and yet heaven-oriented era from the modern, devoid of any ups and downs, hopelessly “flat” desacralized world, corroded by the ulcer of materialism, with its wretched plebeian faith in technological progress and “humanistic ideals”...