Christa Giles

60
Plusieurs de ses affiches l’attestent. Qui ne se
rappelle, parmi ses nombreuses illustrations,
celles qui célèbrent le Pierrot, ce Pierrot en
habit noir qu’il arbora le premier et qu’a
repris, à sa suite, M. Willette? Qui ne se
rappelle l’incompressible gaieté de son
Agoust conduisant la pantomime des Hanlon-
Lees, dans Do mi sol do?
Yet, significantly, this Agoust
devenait presque satanique dans ce dessin qui
bondissait, étoffé de rouge sur un fond
verdâtre pointillé d’encre, surmonté
d’éclatantes lettres blanches, doublées de
noir. 162
The ˝joie démentielle, presque explosible˝ 163 has the quality
of demonic parody so evident in Beardsley’s work. Indeed
Arthur Symons recognised in Beardsley the 0 or
nothingness behind the elegant artifice and compared the
artist to Verlaine’s Pierrot gamin:
And so he becomes exquisitely false, dreading
above all things that ˝one touch of nature˝
which would ruffle his disguise, and leave
him defenceless. Simplicity, in him being the
most laughable thing in the world, he
becomes learned, perverse, intellectualising
his pleasures, brutalising his intellect; his