The House of a Symbolist 
THE DRAWING-ROOM 
ground,” the artist remarks, “that 1 prefer to place 
my models. ” Real, plastic forms against an indis¬ 
tinct, even unreal, background. 
Sketches, etchings, and paintings form the wall 
decorations, which are held in ivory colored frames 
and hung by golden chains. It is the master’s own 
work—for everything here is by his hand—which 
attains its full effect only in the setting of such an in¬ 
terior. In the studio, and so placed that one can see 
it almost everywhere, is that remarkable head with 
one wing known through so many pictures, which has 
come almost to be the signature of the artist. In 
England Khnopff found the model which realized 
his type of womanly beauty. He draws his style 
from the English pre-Raphaelites, and it was also in 
England that he saw that head of Hypnos which 
most visitors in the British Museum certainly pass 
by unconsciously but which, for him, had a myste¬ 
rious attraction. He has copied the bronze work in 
marble admirably to go with the white clean charac¬ 
ter of his rooms. One seems to take it for granted 
that Khnopff is a perfect artist, that he is fond of such 
works of art for their delicate forms and coloring, 
perhaps also because they awaken dim feelings and 
memories of long dead cultures. But his own at¬ 
titude is not that. “I wish,” he said, “that each 
thing should have a certain inner meaning.” Awing 
was accidentally broken off the head of his Hypnos; 
to Khnopff that stands for a symbol of maimed striv¬ 
ing, the feeling of dependence, and it is no soft dreams 
that this god of sleep brings: his lineaments are cruel, 
the empty eye sockets glow at night with an 'artificial 
fire and a dry bundle of brush wood is stuck behind 
the picture,—bizarre, but symbolically significant. 
realityHave I gotten into 
that marble castle where the 
seven princesses sleep en¬ 
chanted ? There is an endless 
passageway with deep per¬ 
spective into a distant room. 
I'here are stairs leading up¬ 
wards and backwards, and 
windows out of which one looks 
into a farther outlying draw¬ 
ing-room. Everything is 
tuned to pale epicurean tones. 
The walls, the ceilings and the 
floor, glare in spotless white, 
the curtains which divide the 
chambers here and there are 
of a silky bleached blue, dull 
gold ornaments are distributed 
with a sparing hand, and 
flowers stand on shelves in 
Venetian or crystal glasses,—■ 
but not fresh blossoms, rather 
dull colored roses of faded ap¬ 
pearance. Even the light is 
not that of sober day, but artificial, mystical and 
subdued, for the windows are screened with semi¬ 
transparent veils through which one sees the moving 
of the tree tops outside only like an indefinite magi¬ 
cal swaying to and fro. “It is before such a back- 
THE BLUE NICHE 
89 
