Christa Giles

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Khnopff’s pastel ˝Le Silence of 1890,˝ in which a
woman her expression remote and otherworldly,
crystallises (as does Redon’s work on the same subject) this
central theme in symbolist and decadent art. The union of
Byzantine exoticism with the idea of silence and dreams in
the painting has its parallel in Huysmans’ conflation of the
exotic with the dream in chapter five of A rebours. In this
chapter it is described how Des Esseintes would stand
night after night ˝dreaming˝ 356 in front of Moreau’s painting
of Salomé. And it is significant that Moreau’s use of
mythologies ˝whose bloody enigmas he compared and
unravelled,˝ his ˝architectonic mixtures˝ with ˝sinister
quality,˝ should paradoxically suggest to Des Esseintes an
˝entirely modern sensibility.˝ 357 For the flight into the world
of dreams suggested by extension a rejection of a
positivistic world which attempted to reduce all to the
factual. Wilde’s fairytale The Happy Prince begins with just
such a juxtaposition:
˝He looks just like an angel,˝ said the Charity
Children
˝How do you know?˝ said the Mathematical
Master, ˝you have never seen one.˝
˝Ah! but we have, in our dreams,˝ answered
the children; and the Mathematical Master