refinement , a spiritual and moral perversity ’, surmising it as a ‘ new and beautiful and interesting disease ’. Regenia Gagnier also writes that ‘ Modern Decadence was identified as the choice and fantasy of the individual psyche , detaching it from the social whole .’ Looking at this ‘ Hildred ’ piece , I see this ‘ disease ’ in the painting , and I also see this fascination with the self , both in its style and in its subject matter ( a man painting himself in a self-portrait over a mirror ). Chambers is writing in response to Decadence , then , for it is this ‘ fantasy ’ of ‘ the individual psyche ’, this ‘ intense self-consciousness ’, that takes centre-stage in the Chambers stories , a beginning of a world fascinated not just with the self , but of its detachment from ‘ the social whole ’.
For Max Nordau , a physician at the time , this intense self- consciousness is indeed a kind of horror that effects the formal elements of art . He said ‘ impressionism ’ was an ‘ atavism ’ which ‘ carries back the human mind to its brute- beginnings ’, where ‘ artistic activity ’ devolves to ‘ an
Engl102 embryonic state ’,
as the impressionistic writer ‘ gives himself the air of a painter ’, ‘ professes to seize the phenomenon , not as a concept , but to feel it as a simple sense- simulation .’ When I look at this painting , I see that the artist is purposefully leaning into that style , of a world made of impressions — though it does also feel expressionistic in how the skin of the hand is a nicotine yellow , and how its palette doesn ’ t differ all that much from the tones of the rest of the piece . It ’ s this painting that made me think of the fears that Chambers and Nordau address , this terror that was felt in response to the turn toward the self .
This turn toward the self is something Chambers draws upon in ‘ Repairer of Reputations ’, the story this painting is inspired by , as the entire story is unreliably narrated . Hildred , for instance , is wearing ‘ the diadem ’ which he perceives as a ‘ golden jewelled crown ’, when in actuality , however , the golden diadem is just a ‘ brass crown ’; he looks in the mirror ,
ENGLISH LITERATURE
93