Art Criticism - The State University of New York

suggestion to the artist and the poet."9 Many artists had painted Salome, but
only Moreau in his opinion, had succeeded in capturing the charms and allurements
of this dancing figure. His reverence before the paintings of Salome
bear witness to des Esseintes' thoroughly debased view of the female sex. In
his eyes woman is the inevitable perpetrator of man's downfall- she can only
play the role of the femme fatale. He cannot conceive of a stable and loving
relationship between male and female and his own romantic encounters with
the opposite sex are fraught with failure and impotence. He recalls his affair
with a ventriloquist, when his fetishistic instincts propelled him to convince
her to imitate the voices of - in a sense give life to - the chimera and the sphinx.
In this example, his libidinal energy is directed towards unnatural objects of
fantasy and illusion, rather than succumbing to the natural erotic charms of his
lover.
Indeed, the debilitating effects of his sexual adventures coupled with
his desire to escape from Paris led Des Esseintes to choose his new life of
solitude. But this new lIfe is steeped in decay and the imminence of death. His
literary and artistic inclinations are inherently gloorr:y and share a predilection
for sickness, d .. xay, gross abnormality or death. The enjoyment of his paintings
can only temporarily rescue him from the all-enveloping ennui so characteristic
of the decadent's response to the ardors of existence. His health does
not improve under'these isolated circumstances, but deteriorates both mentally
and physically. His choices and experiments are imbued with abnormality,
weakness and failure, He strives to create art and improve on Nature by having
a turtle's shell inlaid with jewels and by filling his home with artificially engineered
exotic hothouse flowers. Both the turtle and the flowers die, and in an
analogous manner his enjoyment of his beloved literature and art also expires.
They induce a force of sensation and fantasy his weakened mind and body can
no longer endure. Finally des Esseintes is forced by his doctor to abandon his
life of solitude, and return to the city life of Paris - to a world where, to his mind,
no single individual can match his refined aesthetic sensibility.
With the novel Against the Grain, Huysmans rebelled against naturalism,
positivism and realism, and produced a novel, which is in effect an
unintentional scathing satire of the times, Huymans' fervent praise of Gustave
Moreau's paintings did much to enhance Moreau's reputation in the Paris art
world, but he was not alone in his unabashed admiration for this artist. Among
other decadent literary figures equally enthused by the art of Gustave Moreau
was Comte Robert Montesquiou, an aesthete, a dandy, a poet, and well-known
society figure of fin-de-siecle Paris. He was a major inspiration for the character
of des Esseintes, and also an ardent admirer of Moreau. Marcel Proust, another
society snob, devoted several laudatory essays to the artist's work, and made
frequent references to the same in his novel Remembrance of Things Past,to
The lesser known, but overtly decadent author Jean Lorrain, also found per-
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Art Criticism