Aubrey Beardsley’s “Siegfried, Act II” was published in the art magazine The Studio in April 1893. The scene depicted is from Act II of Richard Wagner’s Opera Sigfried. Siegfried is depicted in a mystical forest after the defeat of a dragon. Underneath him is a seemingly parallel dimension that mimics the land he stands on. The paralleling land is shrouded in darkness and displayed upside down in contrast to the light of the known world. Fragments from the unknown world protrude into the known world and display a “Reality hidden beyond the veil” (Mantrant). This visualizes the fear of unseen worlds portrayed in decadent texts through its portrayal of an unseen world so closely intertwined and connected with the known world. This potentially causes chaos through its undermining of reality.
Works Cited
Beardsley, Aubrey. “Siegfried, Act II” The Studio. Vol. 1, No. 1, April 1893, pp. 11. https://archive.studiointernational.com/TheStudio/TS1893/april/The-Stud…pril-1893.html.
Mantrant, Sophie. “Pagan Revenants in Arthur Machen’s Supernatural Tales of the Nineties.” Cahiers Victoriens & Édouardiens, vol. 2014, no. 80, 2014, pp. 2-, https://doi.org/10.4000/cve.1466.