Christa Giles

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beautiful things. Wilde’s most famous dandy Dorian Gray
was, as he himself indicated, ˝a fantastic variation on
Huysmans’ over-realistic study of the artistic temperament
in our inartistic age.˝ 77 The structure of A rebours suggests
the reasons for Wilde’s fascination. For the central character
in the novel, Des Esseintes, is delineated by means of his
interest in the arts and verbal decorations rather than by
plot development.
Concomitant with the emphasis on form over
content was an emphasis on style (˝In all important
matters, style, not sincerity, is the essential˝). 78 A corollary
of this obsession was that the dandaical would have its
place even in the realm of language. ˝I was enchanted,˝
writes Whistler in a letter to Mallarmé (19 November, 1890)
˝…in reading the delightful sonnet [Billet à Whistler].˝ He
then rhapsodizes over a particular line: ˝It is really superb
and very dandyish at the same time.˝ 79 Whistler’s dandyism
issues from the same source as Huysmans’ and Wilde’s and
like theirs is obviously not merely sartorial. In the ˝Ten
O’Clock Lectures˝ which Huysmans admired, he reiterates
a common theme:
that nature is always right is an assertion
artistically as untrue as it is one whose truth
is universally taken for granted. Nature is
very rarely right… 80