Christa Giles

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ages that are being dealt with: ˝For some it’s all white and
for others utterly black. No intermediate shade.˝ 262
Ultimately, however, satanism becomes an expression of ˝le
vide.˝ And Gilles de Rais, we are told, stopped ˝insatiable˝
before the void. This sentiment, although it did not result in
satanic practices, was expressed in A rebours as a
feverish desire for the unknown, the
unsatisfied longing for an ideal, the craving to
escape from the horrible realities of life, to
cross the frontiers of thought, to grope after a
certainty. 263
The consciousness of evil and the desire to treat it as
subject matter was a central concern to both Huysmans and
Wilde. The craving for the impossible, the ideal, often
ended in frustration and impotence, and therefore ennui,
which frequently led to satanism. In Baudelaire’s
˝Reniement de Saint Pierre,˝ satanism is a means of
escaping ˝un monde où l´ action n’est pas la soeur du
rêve.˝ 264
Wilde’s play Salomé exemplifies the rejection of the
present age in the presentation of a dream world and
embodies, perhaps more than any other of his works, his
notion of satanism and decadence. Salomé, indeed, might
be said to be the evocation of a decadent mood. It is