Christa Giles

10
The cornerstone of Wilde’s and Huysmans’ aesthetic
was a radical anti-naturalism. This anti-naturalism was
derived in the main from Baudelaire, and in the latter’s work
the cult of the artificial is inextricably bound to his belief in
original sin. Indeed, Baudelaire believed that the eighteenth-
century denial of original sin in part accounted for its
inability to perceive what he conceived to be “real” beauty:
Tout ce qui est beau et noble est le résultat de
la raison et du calcul. Le crime, dont l’animal
humain a puisé le goût dans le ventre de sa
mère, est originellement naturel. La vertu, au
contraire, est artificielle, surnaturelle… Le mal
se fait sans effort, naturellement, par fatalité; le
bien est toujours le produit d’un art. 2
Thus, he rejected the eighteenth-century belief in the
natural goodness of man, claiming rather that man’s
natural tendency is for destruction and crime, while
simultaneously espousing art and the artificial as the
source of all good. Further, he claimed that capitalism or
commerce (associated by Wilde and Huysmans with the
middle classes) was satanic and being “naturelle est donc
infâme.” 3 This reversal is elaborated upon by Huysmans’
hero, Des Esseintes, who believes that “the dominant spirit
of the age˝ is an ˝idiotic sentimentality˝ combined with a
˝ruthless commercialism.˝ 4 In his utter rejections of
˝bourgeois optics˝ 5 we have in embryo Wilde’s definition of