Christa Giles

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satanism. In Les Diaboliques Barbey D’Aurevilly relates the
idea of the mask with the excesses of demonism:
Les natures au coeur sur la main ne se font pas
l’idée des jouissances solitaires de
l’hypocrisie, de ceux qui vivent et peuvent
respirer, la tête lacée dans un masque. Mais,
quand on y pense, ne comprend-on pas que
leurs sensations aient réellement la
profondeur enflammée de l’enfer. Or l’enfer
c’est le ciel en creux. Le mot diabolique ou
divin, appliqué a l’intensité des jouissances,
exprime la même chose, c’est-à-dire des
sensations qui vont jusqu’au surnaturel. 241
Wilde attempts to delineate these extremes of emotion
cloaked behind the social mask of the dandy. In The Picture
of Dorian Gray we are informed that in hypocrisy Dorian
˝had worn the mask of goodness.˝ 242 The novel, quite apart
from its debt to A rebours, owes something to Charles
Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer, in which the protagonist,
Melmoth, has made a bargain with Satan. In exchange for
his soul his life is lengthened, and the possibility of
escaping damnation is his if he can persuade someone to
take a similar path. While the satanic elements are not dealt
with as explicitly as in much of Huysmans’ early work, it
rapidly becomes apparent that Dorian’s powers have a