Christa Giles

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the most perfect pleasure simply because it both satisfies
and leaves one unsatisfied. 51 Paradoxically, then, while the
decadent escapes into artifice and searches after the ideal,
as art remains an expression of life, or, rather, life is
experienced most fully through the artifices of art, the
decadent is trapped by his own aesthetic which constitutes
an irresolvable paradox. Thus his only possible recourse is
the adoption of an ironic stance.
A sense of frustration and ambivalence is
continuously articulated by the decadent. For him art
becomes not merely a way of escaping boredom, a means
of reconstructing a paradise of sensation and thought, the
assertion of an ideal, but an attempt to escape reality. Thus
the art with which Dorian surrounds himself is his means
of ˝forgetfulness, modes by which he could escape.˝ 52
Similarly, Des Esseintes feels an ever present desire to
escape from a ˝dull and stupid˝ 53 age, ˝from the
penitentiary of his own time.˝ He requires art to bring him
release from ˝the trivial existence of which he was so
heartily sick.˝ 54 Moreover, a great tension is produced in
the decadent between an intensely felt inner world and the
refractoriness of social reality: the self as an organic part of
society yet in opposition to it. Thus, according to Symons,
˝to live through a single day with an overpowering