MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ, UN ROMANTIQUE?
MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ, A ROMANTIC?

Summary/Abstract: Michel Houellebecq’s novel has proved many times to be controversial, highly pessimistic and leading to many possible interpretations. His use of racist, misogynistic language has had a great impact on the way we read his novels, usually, Houellebecq’s readers having a tendency to harshly criticize his work from this point of view only. However, most of the time, his choice for violence and bad language is only a literary device that hides a secondary level of interpretation. We often see in Houellebecq’s novel long descriptions of men leading miserable lives, men that are incapable of love, of a world decaying from lack of purity and decency where the sex liberation of 68’ and depression are the only aspects of human life that continue to persist. However, ever so often, between the lines, we notice a soothing depth, a romantic worldview easily ignored by an unaware reader. This paper aims to put forward the romantic component of Michel Houellebecq’s novels, and by doing so we will try to draw a parallel between his work and the French poet Charles Baudelaire, but also with Houellebecq’s most appreciated author, H.P. Lovercraft.

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