Christa Giles

has taken place in the climate of London
during the last ten years is entirely due to a
particular school of Art. 10
Wilde did not merely express this in terms of paradox
(˝Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life˝ 11 ) and
identify art with the artificial; he also expressed a desire to
replace life with art. The idea of replacing life with art was
adumbrated in the novel A rebours (1884), that ˝breviary of
decadence˝ which had such an extraordinary influence over
Dorian Gray. The very title of the novel evokes the idea of
the cult of artificiality, and certainly the hero, Des Esseintes,
considers artifice to be ˝the distinctive mark of human
genius.˝ 12 He repeatedly maligns nature (˝Nature…has had
her day; she has finally and utterly exhausted the patience
of sensitive observers by the revolting uniformity of her
landscapes and skyscapes˝), 13 and his tone and attitude are
echoed by Wilde in ˝The Decay of Lying˝:
Enjoy Nature! I am glad to say that I have
entirely lost that faculty. People tell us that
Art makes us love Nature more than we
loved her before; that it reveals her secrets to
us; and that after a careful study of Corot and
Constable we see things in her that had
escaped our observation. My own experience
is that the more we study Art, the less we care
for Nature. What Art really reveals to us is
13