Christa Giles

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significant, not what the mask hides. ˝What is interesting
about people˝ is therefore ˝the mask that each one of them
wears, not the reality that lies behind the mask.˝ 142 It
follows, then, that Wilde would entitle his piece on
costume and stage design ˝The Truth of Masks.˝ Wilde uses
the symbol of the stage, the mask and created artifact, to
broach the problem of identity and to suggest that both the
artist’s work and his mask is a lie or a fiction which reveals
some truth if only the reader or the audience can perceive
it. ˝A Truth in art,˝ Wilde maintains, ˝is that whose
contradictory is also true. The truths of metaphysics are the
truths of masks.˝ 143
In Huysmans’ work the dandy also clearly becomes
˝the spectator of … his own life,˝ 144 but his dandyism is
above all else an attempt to protect the inner self.
Baudelaire wrote that ˝sous un dédain léger je voile ma
torture,˝ 145 and Wilde too utilized dandyism to ensure that
his inner being remained untouched; he remained
inviolable.
˝To the world I seem, by intention on my part,
a dilettante and a dandy merely˝,
he wrote in a letter to Philip Houghton,
it is not wise to show one’s heart to the
world–and as seriousness of manner is the
disguise of the fool, folly in its exquisite