Christa Giles

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lion, although in Wilde’s poem it is made clear that the
sphinx’s body is ˝spotted like the lynx.˝ 589 Wilde’s source
may have been Balzac’s short story ˝A Passion in the
Desert˝ (in which a French Napoleonic soldier is lost in the
Egyptian desert and has an affair with a desert panther).
Certainly, this story is one of the sources of Khnopff’s
famous painting ˝Les Caresses,˝ with which Wilde was
probably familiar. In this painting a spotted sphinx is
figured embracing an androgynous Oedipus.
In Ricketts’ illustration, the primary concern is not
subject but form. The elongated form of the androgynous
Antinous echoes the delicate verticals of the three trees in
the middle ground, transforming the human figure into
pattern. The importance of the autonomy of detail (which,
in this picture, is still subsumed to the overall design) is
made apparent by the two flower-like forms emerging at
random from the tree and rocks. The semicircle of the
sphinx’s body in the foreground, like Antinous’ body,
echoes other configurations in the piece. In this way,
Ricketts, through his use of line in the drawing,
deliberately avoids imitating the forms of nature. The
sinuous, repetitive lines of the river self-consciously draw
attention to the river’s own artifice. The river’s circular