Christa Giles

well, and I take the former for granted, and
write my poem, for a change, about the latter.
There is no necessary difference in artistic
value between a good poem about a flower in
the hedge and a good poem about the scent in
a sachet. 113
In the first volume of The Yellow Book, Beerbohm presents
these ideas in an extreme form, equating artifice with
religion and endowing the artificer with the powers of the
creator:
the era of rouge is upon us, and as only in an
elaborate era can man by the tangled
accrescency of his own pleasures and
emotions reach that refinement which is his
highest excellence, and by making himself, so
to say, independent of Nature, come nearest
to god, so only in an elaborate era is woman
perfect. Artifice is the strength of the world. 114
Thus dandyism represents a conscious, intelligent, artificial
beauty which serves to remove the dandy from the animal.
This assertion of form is a means of expressing the ideal
through the vehicle of the material. For only through the
mask of the body can the painter show the mystery of the
soul.
Through the aestheticization of the quotidian the
dandy consciously creates significance. For it is not ˝merely
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