Christa Giles

il a repris les mythes éculés par les rengaînes
des siècles et il les a exprimés dans une
langue persuasive et superbe, mystérieuse et
neuve. Il a su d’éléments épars créer une
forme qui est maintenant à lui. 448
169
The emphasis on style, this ˝over-subtilizing of
refinement upon refinement,˝ was popularly viewed at the
period as betraying an overdeveloped intellect threatened
by inanition and paralysis resulting in narcissism and
ennui. However, many of these qualities (examined by
Wilde in The Picture of Dorian Gray and Huysmans in A
Vau-l’Eau and A rebours) also paradoxically became the very
stuff of decadent art. The most obvious manifestation of
these propensities lay in the pivotal idea of the use of
language as ornament. Ornament, design, as in the case of
the dandy, became the means of dominating nature; of
creating an independent structure so that this structure,
above and beyond the content, conveyed meaning. As
Wilde wrote in the Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray,
˝Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.˝
The focus on ostensibly superfluous decoration
eventually culminated in Art Nouveau, and is manifested
in Huysmans’ and Wilde’s work as verbal virtuosity. Their