Christa Giles

116
aux cimes des échalas, aux pieds des tiges,
des vignes poussaient des raisins de rubis et
d’améthystes, des grappes de grenats et
d’amaldines, des chasselas de chrysoprases,
des muscats gris d’olivines et de quartz,
dardaient de fabuleuses touffes d’éclairs
rouges, d’éclairs violets, d’éclairs jaunes,
montaient en une escalade de fruits de feu
dont la vue suggerait la vraisemblable
imposture d’une vendange prête à cracher
sous la vis du pressoir un moût éblouissant
de flammes! 317
In The Picture of Dorian Gray, A rebours is referred to as
being written in ˝that curious jewelled style, vivid and
obscure at once.˝ 318 It is a book which generated in Dorian a
˝malady of dreaming,˝ 319 and was written in a style that
Wilde claimed possessed qualities characteristic of the
˝French school of Symbolistes.˝ 320 Baudelaire’s idea of the
whole visible universe as a storehouse of images and signs
which the imagination endows with value was a central
tenet of the Symbolists, and important to both Wilde’s and
Huysmans’ thought. For this emphasis on the imagination
and the dream betrayed an interest in the unconscious.
Decadent art, in its utilization of the subjective coupled with
the absurd, its focus upon the decorative surface as a kind of