Christa Giles

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life.˝ 491 Of course, as a general rule, Wilde rejects life as
˝poor, probable, uninteresting.˝ 492 But he maintains that the
temperament of the artist can transform his life into art
even as it is only the artistic temperament which can create
art. Therefore, according to Wilde, Holbein’s portraits
˝impress us with a sense of their absolute reality˝ precisely
because he ˝compelled life to accept his conditions, to
restrain itself within his limitations, to reproduce his type
and to appear as he wished it to appear.˝ 493 In effect, only
when rearranged and organised does life, or indeed art,
possess aesthetic significance. Moreover, only when the
artist cultivates his artistic receptivity can he create art.
Because, on one level at least, art, to both Huysmans
and Wilde was ˝a method of procuring extraordinary
sensations,˝ 494 the cultivation of the artistic temperament
often led to spleen and ennui as the hypersensitive nervous
system, attuned to the beauties of art, became overtaxed.
Sensation became an end in itself as both Des Esseintes and
Dorian Gray exemplify. Yet, the search for sensation
presupposed that the artist was experiencing intensely
while simultaneously remaining detached, disengaged, and
analytical. Des Esseintes even maintained that the modern
artist needed to be sickly if he wished to deal with a subject
˝unintelligible to precise or vulgar persons, and