Christa Giles

eality of all the strangest, boldest, most
monstrous, impossible inventions of the
imagination. 60
Of course the poem ˝The Sphinx˝ is directly derived from
an incident in A rebours 61 in which Des Esseintes’ liason
with a ventriloquist allows him to re-enact Flaubert’s
dialogue between the Chimera and the Sphinx. The
emphasis upon sensation and refinement of sensual
pleasure which this theme connoted held a particular
attraction for Wilde, and the very fact that such subject
matter was provocative invested it with great appeal, as it
enabled him to ˝épater les bourgeois.˝
In his poem ˝The Sphinx,˝ eroticism, fatality, and
exoticism, the emphasis upon the decorative surface,
remind one of Moreau’s paintings, as does his attempt to
create an almost synaesthetic experience for the reader,
bringing sound, sight, and scent into play. The sphinx of
the poem of that name is an androgyne. The attempt to
escape reality in art, the rejection of accepted moral values,
and the immersion into an internal world of one’s own
mind in this poem suggest a kind of auto-eroticism or, in
Huysmans’ words, ˝spiritual onanism.˝ The androgyne
becomes the supreme symbol of the decadent’s
ambivalence, suggesting his rejection of nature while at the
same time paradoxically waking in him ˝foul dreams of
sensual life.˝ 62 Huysmans’ description of Moreau’s
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