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for both complexity and the expression of ambiguities and
ambivalence.
Wilde and Huysmans examined this entire complex
of ideas within the controlling framework of the themes
and imagery of satanism, dandyism, and dreams and
fantasy. These thematic concerns, as we have seen, gave
them a structure within which it was possible to deal with
such problems as the nature of identity, the unconscious,
and man’s means of dealing with refractory reality, the
entirety of which was presented in terms of their
perception of the relationship of life and art.