Christa Giles

awakens a corresponding physical sensation,
which undoubtedly works poignantly upon
the soul. 534
209
The link between a work of art and what was in part a
sensory response was, to some degree, prepared for by
Baudelaire. His idea of ˝correspondances˝ suggested a
symbolic interrelationship between the different senses,
and Huysmans and Wilde interpreted this response as
being primarily physical – a response of synaesthesia. This
emphasis on the senses meant that the ˝artistic
temperament˝ would need to have an almost instinctive
nervous reaction to colour and form. Because the sensory
perception is in Wilde’s and Huysmans’ view redolent of
the mystical, it functions on a multiplicity of levels so that
the ostensibly sensuous came also to embody the spiritual.
When Lord Henry says that art is ˝simply a method of
procuring extraordinary sensations,˝ 535 he is merely stating
this idea in its most reductionist form.
Wilde’s and Huysmans’ response to the
Impressionists was conditioned by their interest in colour
and their respective ideas as to what constitutes art. Wilde,
therefore, approved of the Impressionists because ˝their
white keynote, with its variations in lilac, was an era in
colour,˝ because they captured an evanescent moment, and