Christa Giles

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the obvious precursor of this type of decadent protagonist:
a ˝hero,˝ according to Dorian Gray, ˝in whom the romantic
and scientific temperaments were so strangely blended.˝ 354
In Des Esseintes romantic yearning for the ideal and a
scientific determination to conjure up inner paradises by
means of the deception of the senses were united. Solitude,
then, came to be considered as a superior mode of being, as
only through the cultivation of solitude could the artist flee
the material world and enter a spiritual realm.
Silence also became associated with this idea of
solitude even as inner contemplation was identified with
the entry into a world of dreams. Further, silence was not
only associated with the condition of reverie; it was also
obliquely identified with or symbolised the unconscious
from which artistic creation emerged. In 1890 Carlyle’s
words were translated in the French symbolist review
Entretiens Politiques et Littéraires:
SILENCE and SECRECY! Altars might still be
raised to them (were this an altar-building
time) for universal worship. Silence is the
element in which great things fashion
themselves together…Speech is of Time,
Silence is of Eternity.
Bees will not work except in darkness,
Thought will not work except in Silence… 355