Christa Giles

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an ˝oeuf resté constamment mal éclos du réalisme˝ 540 and
his belief that Impressionism led to an impasse had
undergone a transformation. At this point Monet and
Pisarro found favour in Huysmans’ eyes. It remained true,
however, that Huysmans found it difficult to fully
appreciate the Impressionists, primarily because they did
not possess what he conceived as ˝modern temperaments.˝
So what constituted ˝modernity’ to Huysmans? Like
Wilde’s, his work betrays the fact that he was attracted both
to artificiality, which he identified with the urban (i.e. the
city), and the contemporary as well as fantasy, dreams, and
art of ˝escape.˝ Certainly, it was not exclusively modern
subject matter which appealed to him. In Le Salon de 1879,
he makes it clear that it is among the Impressionists that the
advances are being made, but he still feels that the time is
awaiting ˝qu’un homme de génie, réunissant tous les
curieux éléments de la peinture impressionniste, surgisse et
enlève d’assaut la place …˝ 541 Both Wilde and Huysmans
placed great importance on the man of vision. For it is he
who comes to embody the modern in his work through the
sheer force of his individuality. In Huysmans’ opinion,
Degas was just such a man, one who rendered ˝toute
moderne, par l’originalité de son talent.˝ 542 Further,
Huysmans saw this ˝shocking˝ new subject matter as a sign