Christa Giles

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as well as an affirmation of the aristocracy of art. Wilde was
therefore to claim that the materialistic society ˝never
forgives the dreamer. The beautiful sterile emotions that art
excites in us are hateful in its eyes.˝ 340 Art is perceived as
being sterile, inward looking, autonomous, expressing
˝nothing but itself.˝ 341 Thus Des Esseintes’ favourite poet,
Mallarmé, depicts Salomé in terms of her narcissism:
Nourrice: Comment, sinon parmi d’obscures
Epouvantes, songer plus implacable encor
Et comme suppliant le dieu que le trésor
De notre grâce attend! et pour qui,
devorée
D’Angoisses gardez vous la splendeur
ignorée
Et le mystère de votre être?
Hérodiade: Pour moi. 342
Art was to be an end in itself and the dreamer/artist
concerned only with an interior voyage. It follows that the
critic Poizat noted that symbolism was inextricably bound
to the dream. Indeed he defined symbolism as:
the entry of the dream into literature, it was
the turning of man’s gaze from the outside to
the inside, the contemplation of things, as
they are reflected within us, as in some still
pool… 343