Christa Giles

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their effects. For this reason, his language was deliberately
vague and suggestive, seeking to focus not on words but on
intentions. This attempt to evoke silence, as we have noted,
had its parallel in Moreau’s paintings, where the gesture
generates a sense of limbo, of pregnant silences.
Ricketts was greatly influenced by Moreau as well as
by Japanese art. His extremely stylized illustrations for
Wilde’s ˝The Sphinx˝ evinced the same quality of stasis,
elaborate use of ornament and concern with detail. They
also create a sense of tension between meaning and design.
˝Crouching by the Marge,’ from his illustrations of Wilde’s
˝The Sphinx,˝ used filigree designs to depict the decadent
theme.
Sing to me of that odorous green eve when
crouching by the marge
You heard from Adrian’s gilded barge the laughter
of Antinous
And lapped the stream and fed your drouth and
watched with hot and hungry stare
The ivory body of that rare young slave with his
pomegranate mouth! 588
In the drawing that represents these stanzas, Ricketts
makes these lines very much his own. He presents us with
a sphinx who is in the classical tradition half woman, half