Christa Giles

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which no real voice has ever pierced on its
way, to us, or from us to that which we can
only conjecture to be without. Every one of
those impressions is the impression of the
individual in his isolation, each mind keeping
as a solitary prisoner in its own dream of a
world. 345
The androgyne embodies these ideas, being
identified, by Wilde and Huysmans, with both narcissism
and the self-sufficiency of the dream world. Indeed in Là-
bas Huysmans explicitly identifies the androgyne with the
inward-looking, analysing intellect of the artist/aristocrat:
this cerebral hermaphrodism, selffecundation,
is a distinguished vice at least –
being the privilege of the artist – a vice
reserved for the elect… 346
Further, in Certains, he describes the ambiguous figure of
Saint Quentin in the painting ˝A Virgin and Saints˝ in terms
of its power to give rise to dreams:
Et l’aspect entier du saint fait rêver. Ces
formes de garçonnes aux hanches un peu
developpées, ce col de fille, aux chairs
blanches… 347
The interconnection of these decadent thematic concerns is
underlined when we remember that Barbey D’Aurevilly