May I Say Nothing?
May 2015
Fin de la realité: Artificial milieus and hyperreality in Huysmans’
Against Nature and Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray
Paper given at the ‘Æstheticism, Degeneration, and Decadence’ Conference in
the London Nineteenth-Century Studies Seminar Postgraduate Conference,
25th April 2015
Rebecka Klette
Birkbeck, University of London
“The first duty in life is to be as artificial as possible.”1 Oscar Wilde’s
statement echoes throughout fin-de-siécle narratives: to the Decadents and
Æsthetes of the late nineteenth century, the goal of existence was to reject,
surpass and transcend nature, even reality, by creating beauty in a sordid
world. In this paper, I aim to outline how the protagonists in Oscar Wilde’s
The Picture of Dorian Gray and Joris-Karl Huysmans’ Against Nature (À
Rebours) were trying to escape nature by creating fake nature, in favour of
their own constructed artificial environments, in Des Esseintes’ case by
surrounding himself with artifice, and in Dorian’s case by actually replacing
himself with Art. I will argue that these artificial environments should be
conceived of as simulacra, as the sign that has replaced the signified,
rendering the world outside it irrelevant, and the artificial milieu hyperreal.
The boundaries between authentic and fake, between artificial and organic,
between copy and original are constantly transgressed, and the artificial
world appears to be “more real” than the world itself. I aim to show that
Wilde and Huysmans appear to be anticipating Jean Baudrillard’s theory of
hyperreality, in which representation becomes more real than the
represented object, becoming simulacra, a copy without an original. This is,
however, not to be interpreted as an anachronistic expression of
postmodernism, but rather what Baudrillard calls simulacra of the second
order, which he relates to nineteenth-century media mass-production of
signs as commodities (artifice) imitating, preceding and replacing the
original (nature).2
The protagonist of Against Nature (1884), Duc des Esseintes, has retreated
from urban society to a secluded mansion in the suburbs of Paris, where he
devotes himself to the cultivation of artifice through the enjoyment of
beautifully adorned books, art, stimulants and narcotics, exotic and fake
flowers, perfumes, and rare gems. Des Esseintes’ goal is to transcend, replace,
and simulate nature by surrounding himself with the artificial: he attempts
to create an artificial world within his home, but does not attempt to imitate
or reproduce nature, but to annihilate it, “seeking the copy or the
mechanically produced, not as a substitute for the natural but in preference
to it.”3 He paints his walls in colours that will appear more vibrant in artificial
light, admiring perfume for its capability to imitate and surpass natural
scents, even simulating rivers by pouring coloured essences into his
aquarium, enabling him to enjoy “all the sensations of a long sea-voyage,
without ever leaving home.”4 Des Esseintes creates in his home an artificial
world, so that he doesn’t have to return to the real world, regarding
imagination as superior to, and more real than, actual experience: perceiving
the urban cityscape as alienating and æsthetically displeasing, he attempts to
escape to nature - but not the untouched nature of the Romanticists, but an
imagined nature; a refined, processed and artificial nature. When Des
Esseintes becomes tired of fake flowers imitating real ones, he instead longs
for “natural flowers that would look like fakes.”5 His desire for the artificial
has progressed from Baudrillard’s first stage of sign order (in which the copy
reflects a profound reality, perfectly attempting to copy the flower), to the
third stage of sign order, in which the copy masks the absence of a profound
reality, playing at being an appearance.6 Similar to my argument, Françoise
Gaillard differentiates between the “realist illusion” and the “decadent
imitation” in her essay on Á Rebours,7 where the former aims to appear a true
representation, while the latter emphasises its artificiality and falsity, “a copy
that announces itself as copy”.8 By seeking real flowers that look fake, and
fake flowers that look real, the real and the fake can no longer be separated,
rendering them simultaneously natural and artificial. By preferring real
flowers that appear to copy artificial flowers, the copy has preceded the real
to become simulacra, or as Galliard argues, resulting in “a naturalized artifice
and an artificial nature”.9 Des Esseintes also decides to gild and encrust a live
tortoise with jewels: by encasing nature in artifice, he undermines it,
rendering nature an imitation of itself, a copy without an original essentially, hyperreal. The turtle can be read as representing Baudrillard’s
second level of sign order,10 in which the sign perverts and masks a profound
reality, ultimately erasing it: the tortoise dies, unable to “bear the dazzling
luxury imposed upon it”.11
To Oscar Wilde, Life imitates Art, rather than Art imitating Life; this can be
interpreted as an early form of the theory of Hyperreality, in which Art
(understood as Sign) precedes life, becoming more real than reality itself. The
New Hedonism that Lord Henry and Dorian advocates in The Picture of
Dorian Gray (1891) seeks to recreate life artificially, and “It was the creation
of such worlds as these that seemed to Dorian Gray to be the true subject (…)
of life”.12 By stating that “Being natural is simply a pose”,13 Lord Henry posits
nature as merely another act of artifice, another performance or simulation:
he even claims that he loves acting because “It is so much more real than
life.”14 Wilde’s cult of artifice is most apparent in chapter 11, recounting how
Dorian takes up the study of perfumes, music, and jewels; a clear homage to
Á Rebours. To Dorian, materiality implies immortality: by trading places with
his own portrait, he has himself become a work of art, an artificial commodity
interchangeable with commodities in much the same way he changed places
with the portrait. Dorian seeks to gain the ontological stability and essence of
the material object, and gains it through the portrait - the portrait changes
and decays, while Dorian remains in a fixed state of youth and beauty. While
he influences his portrait through his depraved actions, he is simultaneously
under the influence of “The Yellow Book”, unanimously understood by
scholars to be Huysmans’s Á Rebours. The book seems to precede him, much
like Kostas Boyiopoulos argues that the portrait of Dorian seems to precede
Dorian himself.15 This renders Dorian a mere copy of the original character:
“The whole book seemed to him to contain the story of his own life, written
before he had lived it.”16 The idea that Life imitates Art is again apparent:
Dorian (Life) imitates Des Esseintes (Art), while the organic portrait imitates
the artificial Dorian, causing the liquidation of all referentials.17 The
metamorphosis is twofold: the portrait ceases to be sign, and Dorian becomes
sign; the boundaries between sign and object has imploded, and the “real”
Dorian is simultaneously the portrait and the individual.
The protagonists isolate themselves from the real world in different ways:
while Des Esseintes physically removes himself from Parisian society to
retreat to his villa, Dorian hides away his portrait (his “true” self) in the attic,
while he himself - as artefact, as commodity and as simulacra - roams around
London. Dorian is thus turning every space he inhabits into an artificial one,
rendering London a sort of giant Wünderkammer, in which he is one of the
collected artefacts.
Des Esseintes prefers the copy to the real, wishing the real to appear as fake
and the fake as real; to Dorian, everything in the world is copy, mere
manifestations of abstract ideals - nothing is real, so everything must be
equally real and equally unreal, creating a kind of ontological inflation of
Truth. Dorian and Des Esseintes prefers signs over the signified, not as a
substitute, but because the sign appears to be more real, or equally real,
compared to the reality it signifies, moving from the realm of realism into
hyperrealism. This artificial projection of civilised society, in turn, starts to
precede the environment it supposedly mimics, and the need to experience
“true” city life becomes redundant. Dorian seem to regard the city spaces of
London which he frequents as “equally real” compared to the æsthetic
habitats which he, Lord Henry, and Basil have constructed for themselves the artificiality of the city is recreated in a separate private space, rendering
“The public spaces of the city (…) colonised to the interior artistic vision of
the subject.”18 Rather than a wish to return to “true” nature, nature could
now be tamed and artificially reproduced,19 refined and moulded to
nineteenth century preferences: the artificial milieu as simulacrum becomes a
condensed city, a sort of decadent doll house or Victorian folly. By projecting
his personality onto his surroundings, he transforms environment from a
passive organic state to an artificial, ever-morphing performance, as easily
changed as the changing of a theatre coulisse and scenery. As Sign replaces,
erases and renders its referent redundant, the artificial world annihilates the
nature it was supposed to represent. While representation is sign aspiring to
appear as reality, the artificial environment is reality aspiring to appear as
sign,20 trying to supersede and erase reality - becoming Hypernature,
becoming hyperreal.
Bibliography
Baudrillard, Jean, Simulacra and Simulation, trans. by Sheila Faria Glaser
(Michigan: The University of Michigan Press, 1994)
Boyiopoulos, Kostas, ‘Simulation in The Picture of Dorian Gray: Echoing
Hamlet, Anticipating Baudrillard, and the Comparative.’ Comparative Critical
Studies 11.1 (2014) 7-27.
Cook, Matt, London and the Culture of Homosexuality, 1885-1914 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2003)
Eco, Umberto, Travels in Hyperreality (London: Pan Books, 1987)
Gaillard, Francoise, “A rebours ou l’inversion des signes.” in L’esprit de
décadence, Colloque de Nantes 1, (Paris: Libraire Minard, 1980) 129-40 (131),
cited in Spackman.
Huysmans, Joris-Karl, Against Nature, trans. by Robert Baldick (London:
Penguin Books, 2003)
McGuinness, Patrick, ‘Introduction’ in Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against Nature,
trans. by Robert Baldick (London: Penguin Books, 2003)
Olalquiaga, Celeste, The Artificial Kingdom: A Treasury of The Kitsch Experience
(London: Bloomsbury, 1998)
Spackman, Barbara, ‘Interversions’ in Perennial Decay, ed. by Liz Constable,
Dennis Denisoff, and Matthew Potolsky (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1999), pp. 35-49.
Wilde, Oscar, ‘Phrases and Philosophies for the use of the young’ (1894) in
Art and Decoration (London: Methuen & Co, 1920)
Wilde, Oscar, The Picture of Dorian Gray (London: Wordsworth Classics, 2001)
(PDG)
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Oscar Wilde,
‘Phrases
and
Philosophies for
the use of the
young’ in Art
and
Decoration
(London:
Methuen & co,
1920), p. 1.
2
Jean
Baudrillard,
Simulacra
and
Simulation, trans.
by Sheila Faria
Glaser
(Michigan: The
University
of
Michigan Press,
1994), p. 6.
3
Patrick
McGuinness,
‘Introduction’ in
Joris-Karl
Huysmans,
Against Nature,
trans. by Robert
Baldick
(London:
1
Penguin Books,
2003), p. xxxi.
4
Joris-Karl
Huysmans,
Against Nature,
trans. by Robert
Baldick
(London:
Penguin Books,
2003),
Hereafter
referred to as
AN, p 21.
5 AN, p. 83.
6
Jean
Baudrillard,
Simulacra
and
Simulation, trans.
by Sheila Faria
Glaser
(Michigan: The
University
of
Michigan Press,
1994), p. 6.
7
Françoise
Gaillard,
“A
rebours
ou
l’inversion des
signes.”
in
L’esprit
de
décadence,
Colloque
de
Nantes 1, (Paris:
Libraire Minard,
1980)
129-40
(131), cited in
Barbara
Spackman,
‘Interversions’ in
Perennial Decay,
ed.
by
Liz
Constable,
Dennis Denisoff,
and
Matthew
Potolsky
(Philadelphia:
University
of
Pennsylvania
Press, 1999), pp.
35-49, p. 37.
8
Barbara
Spackman,
‘Interversions’ in
Perennial Decay,
ed.
by
Liz
Constable,
Dennis Denisoff,
and
Matthew
Potolsky
(Philadelphia:
University
of
Pennsylvania
Press, 1999), pp.
35-49, p. 44.
9 Spackman, p.
43.
10 Baudrillard, p.
6.
11 AN, p. 49.
12 Oscar Wilde,
The Picture of
Dorian
Gray
(London:
Wordsworth
Classics, 2001),
p. 105.
Hereafter
referred to as
PDG.
13 PDG, p. 7.
14 PDG, p. 65.
15
Kostas
Boyiopoulos,
‘Simulation in
The Picture of
Dorian
Gray:
Echoing Hamlet,
Anticipating
Baudrillard, and
the
Comparative.’,
Comparative
Critical Studies
11.1 (2014) 7-27
(p. 13).
16 PDG, p. 102.
17 Baudrillard, p.
2.
18
Matt Cook,
London and the
Culture
of
Homosexuality,
1885-1914
(Cambridge:
Cambridge
University Press,
2003), p. 96.
19
Celeste
Olalquiaga, The
Artificial
Kingdom:
A
Treasury of The
Kitsch Experience
(London:
Bloomsbury,
1998), p. 13.
20 Eco, p. 52.