Christa Giles

intruder and it is revealed that beneath the mask is a dark
void. There is a sinister quality associated with the symbol
of the mask in this story, a sense that the mask is terrifying
primarily because of its inexplicability and irreducibility.
The impossibility of grappling with this nothingness, the
abyss, or the void is what Durtal faces in Là-bas and
Mallarmé focusses on in his poetry and is one important
aspect of the symbol of the mask. Existing in a relativized
universe, man cannot ascertain what is reality and what is
illusion as reality may be a mere projection of his
consciousness. This can be translated into an
epistemological problem, a questioning of the very
possibility of attaining knowledge in a refractory world. As
Schopenhauer maintained, things appear ˝as in a mask,
which allows us merely to assume what is concealed
beneath it, but never to know it.˝ 160
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The Pierrot figure efficaciously encompasses a
pensive sorrow, an ironic detachment issuing from despair
and disillusionment – the comic mask beneath which lurks a
profound pessimism. In Huysmans’ Pierrot sceptique, a
pantomime written in collaboration with Leon Hennique
after seeing a production by the English mimes the Hanlon-
Lees, we are presented with an essentially ironic vision.
Pierrot sceptique begins with an image of death – that of
Madame Pierrot facing the audience in a coffin. Later, after