Christa Giles

133
I quote this at length because the passage underlines the
decadent preoccupations which became intimately
connected with the idea of the dream or nightmare: an
escape into the past, a concern with myths, a fascination
with extremes of emotion on a grandiose scale and a
concomitant interest in sadism, the sinister, and the
forbidden. In En rade, in the first dream sequence an
anonymous girl is presented to the ruler of the palace in an
erotic episode redolent of bejewelled luxury and exoticism.
The female figure in the dream is implicitly juxtaposed with
Jack’s diseased and possibly dying wife who is repellent to
him. Louise is an ordinary woman, and according to Wilde:
˝Ordinary women never appeal to one’s imagination. They
are limited to their century.˝ 362 Thus Moreau’s women
possess an otherworldly quality, and are placed within other
ages. They are effectively transformed into icons, aloof from
reality, even existing in a sleep-like state. It is for this reason
that Des Esseintes describes Salomé’s eyes as being ˝fixed in
the concentrated gaze of a sleepwalker.˝ 363 This statement is
not merely Des Esseintes’ projection; it is faithful to
Moreau’s creations. The latter attempts to evoke a dreamlike
mood and, further, explicitly sees a dream as enabling man
to transcend reality. Moreau himself says of his painting of
Prometheus: