 The poet's aim had to be an extreme aestheticization of life, and life the ultimate work of art.Recurrent themes in his literary works include the supremacy of the individual, the cult of beauty, exaggerated sophistication, the glorification of machines, the fusion of man with nature, the exalted vitality coexisting with the triumph of death.His novel "The Pleasure", published one year before "The Picture of Dorian Gray", is considered one the three genre-defining books of the Decadent movement, along with Wilde's novel and Huysmans's "Against Nature".