Christa Giles

12
he can only reproduce the fragment that he happens to see.
Therefore, Baudelaire concludes that true realism lies rather
in one’s own perception of nature. Des Esseintes’ favourite
philosopher, Schopenhauer, expressed this idea cogently
when he said that ˝The world is my representation. I do not
see what is, what is is what I see.˝ 8 If a landscape is lovely,
Baudelaire claims, it is not ˝par lui même, mais par moi, par
ma grâce propre par l’idée ou le sentiment que j’y attache.˝ 9
The mind becomes the fabricator of beauty and it is in part
for this reason that Wilde and Huysmans claim that
technique is really personality.
What Wilde and Huysmans are concerned with are
ways of seeing how the artist’s internal vision transforms
nature by imposing order upon it and investing it with
meaning, thereby subordinating nature to his own vision.
Wilde takes this idea a step further, not merely rejecting
nature as an ideal of beauty, but suggesting in a radical
reversal that nature is a reflection of art:
The nineteenth century, as we know it, is
largely an invention of Balzac. … Where, if
not from the Impressionists, do we get those
wonderful brown fogs that come creeping
down our streets, blurring the gas-lamps and
changing the houses into monstrous
shadows? … the extraordinary change that