Christa Giles

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means of self-analysis through the creation of novel
sensations.
Thus even as symbolist poets chose words for their
suggestive power and not for their reportorial capacity, so
too did Wilde and Huysmans seek in the artist one who
could suggest ideas through form. ˝Only through
conventional images can he [the painter] suggest ideas,˝
maintained Wilde, ˝only through its physical equivalents . .
. can [he] deal with psychology.˝ 376 Because the ˝mystery of
the soul˝ 377 was being conveyed through form, and because
˝the one characteristic of a beautiful form is that one can see
in it whatever one wishes to see,˝ 378 Wilde concluded that
˝beauty has as many meanings as man has moods.˝ 379 Wilde
objected to the Impressionists for the very reason that they
were dealing with purely painterly sensory impressions of
the external natural world rather than focussing on an
intellectual or spiritual element conveyed through line and
form. Thus an emphasis was placed more and more on the
subjective internal life of the artist, and by extension on his
dream life. Huysmans concluded that what he termed a
˝symbolic science˝ was the province of other eras. The
fantastic, the symbolic had only one refuge in the age of
Darwin, in the expression of an internal life. ˝Dans le
domaine du Rêve,˝ he concluded, ˝l’art demeure seul.˝ 380