Christa Giles

76
This concern with sin in both Wilde’s and Huysmans’ work
issued in part from their belief that ˝the artist is never
morbid˝ and ˝expresses everything.˝ 208 Art became the
means of aestheticizing sin. Moreover, because art
represented an aspiration towards the ideal, the
satanist/artist also dreamt of further and greater crimes.
Thus Gilles de Rais
in vain . . . may dream of unique violations, of
more ingenious slow tortures, but human
imagination has a limit and he has already
reached it–even surpassed it with diabolic
aid. Insatiable he seethes–there is nothing
material in which to express his ideal. 209
Dorian too (although in a less extreme manner) in his
search for sensations ˝at once new and delightful˝ would
abandon himself to their subtle influences,
and then, having, as it were, caught their
colour and satisfied his intellectual curiosity
leave them with …curious indifference. 210
This desire for ˝superhuman passions and superhuman
perversities˝ 211 is characteristic of many of the characters in
Huysmans’ and Wilde’s works, which deal directly or
indirectly with satanism. Thus Gilles de Rais is
˝unresponsive to mediocre passions, he is carried away
alternately by good as well as evil, and he bounds from