Christa Giles

26
Courtisane. In ˝The Decay of Lying,˝ Vivian expresses the
belief that the artist should avoid what he calls
modernity of form and modernity of subjectmatter.
To us, who live in the nineteenth
century, any century is a suitable subject for
art except our own. The only beautiful things
are the things that do not concern us. 59
So, following what their master Flaubert adumbrated in
Salammbô, and in La Tentation de Saint-Antoine, Wilde and
Huysmans became interested in the blossoming of ancient
societies just before their decline. The excesses, perversions,
and grandiose passion and intensity depicted in in such
paintings as Delacroix’s ‘Sardanapalus’ suggested an
irrationality and corruption of colourful hedonism and
flowering of physical appetites, luxury, and depravity
which were extremely seductive when juxtaposed with
what they felt be the obsession with science, conformity,
and materialism of their own age. In La Nuit de Cléopatre,
Gautier expressed an idea which would give rise to Wilde’s
sphinx and Salomé:
Our world is very small beside the ancient
world; our feasts are paltry affairs compared
with the terrifying banquets of Roman
patricians and Asiatic princes. With our
paltry habits, we find it hard to conceive of
those enormous existences which made