ABSTRACT
That most charming and witty poem ‘Michael Robartes and the Dancer’ is a serious allusion to this group of ideas. The dancer here reconciles antithetical movements: the division of soul and body, form and matter, life and death, artist and audience. Similarly, the passion of Gautier, and others, for the dance is not unrelated to their importance in the evolution of the Image. It is impossible to separate the face from the dancer, and the complex of ideas they embody certainly includes some that belong to pathology rather than to aesthetics. Mr. Barker Fairlie has recently, in his study of Heine, drawn attention to that poet’s continued interest in the dance. By this juxtaposition the Dancer becomes an emblem with a double aspect. Salome is the Dancer in the special role of the Image that costs the artist personal happiness, indeed life itself.
