Read Online The Dedalus Book of Decadence: (Moral Ruins) by Brian Stableford - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Brian Stableford
Ads: Link
most calculatedly Decadent work, the play Salomé, was written in French, and subsequently banned from the London stage by the Lord Chamberlain.
Despite that he was the target of the crusade which effectively assassinated the English Decadent Movement, Wilde wrote relatively little Decadent material, and all of it is much more moralistic than it could possibly have been if he really had been the narcissistic and quasi-demonic character he appeared to his enemies to be. A close inspection of Wilde’s work reveals that his philosophical affiliation to Decadence was much more apparent than real. Dorian Gray, having taken a full measure of inspiration from À rebours, reaches a far more frustrating impasse than des Esseintes, and must ultimately pay a dire price for the privilege of having lived the life of a work of art while his portrait accepted the burdens and penalties of actual Decadence.
It is significant that the most contemplative and rhetorically effective works which Wilde ever produced are not his fervent essay on “The Soul of Man Under Socialism” and his bitter letter “De Profundis”, and certainly not his plays; they are in fact the four stories, ostensibly written for children, which make up The House of Pomegranates (1891), which are somewhat Gautieresque in style but much bleaker and more thoughtful in outlook. These heartfelt and rather harrowing tales, especially “The Fisherman and his Soul” and “The Star Child”, express a resistance to Decadent self-indulgence which makes a complete nonsense of the notion that Wilde had much in common intellectually with Johnson’s Cultured Fauns. His public poses continually flirted with the outrage of his enemies, but his own defence of unconventional moral values-unlike Sir Henry Wootton’s in The Picture of Dorian Gray – is not founded in any celebration of their defiance of Nature, but rather in deep complaints against the standards of natural and social justice alike.
**********
In going beyond Decadence to search for new and better ideals Wilde was certainly not alone. Even for French writers Decadence was mostly a phase through which they passed – for English ones it tended rather to be a matter which they contemplated, and then side-stepped or reinterpreted to their own convenience. It is hardly surprising that when it ceased to be convenient the English writers who had been called Decadent wasted no time in renouncing the label altogether.
To the extent that Decadence caught on among the poets of England it caught on as a fairly restrained and entirely superficial stylistic affectation. There is more genuine Decadence to be found in the work of Russian writers who would mostly have preferred to be known as Symbolists. When Wilde’s trial sent Symons and the rest scurrying in search of a less embarrassing label they were quick to argue that no Englishman had ever meant anything by the word except a kind of style, and although that claim is not really supportable by Symons’ essay, it is borne out by the literary material.
For a brief period before Wilde’s trial the idea of Decadence did become fashionable enough in London to generate its own periodical press, whose flagship was John Lane’s quarterly Yellow Book, launched in 1894. By far the most famous (or notorious) contributor to the Yellow Book, however, was not a writer but an illustrator – the art editor Aubrey Beardsley, who had also designed the cover which united the works in Lane’s “Keynotes” series, in which several notable Decadent works were featured. It is Beardsley’s illustrative work rather than any production in poetry or prose which provided English Decadence with a memorable image. His astonishing decorations for Lord Alfred Douglas’s English translation of Wilde’s Salomé (1894) were far more original, exotic and daring than any other products of the Movement. The evidence of his incomplete baroque romance Under the Hill (1897), suggests that Beardsley
Despite that he was the target of the crusade which effectively assassinated the English Decadent Movement, Wilde wrote relatively little Decadent material, and all of it is much more moralistic than it could possibly have been if he really had been the narcissistic and quasi-demonic character he appeared to his enemies to be. A close inspection of Wilde’s work reveals that his philosophical affiliation to Decadence was much more apparent than real. Dorian Gray, having taken a full measure of inspiration from À rebours, reaches a far more frustrating impasse than des Esseintes, and must ultimately pay a dire price for the privilege of having lived the life of a work of art while his portrait accepted the burdens and penalties of actual Decadence.
It is significant that the most contemplative and rhetorically effective works which Wilde ever produced are not his fervent essay on “The Soul of Man Under Socialism” and his bitter letter “De Profundis”, and certainly not his plays; they are in fact the four stories, ostensibly written for children, which make up The House of Pomegranates (1891), which are somewhat Gautieresque in style but much bleaker and more thoughtful in outlook. These heartfelt and rather harrowing tales, especially “The Fisherman and his Soul” and “The Star Child”, express a resistance to Decadent self-indulgence which makes a complete nonsense of the notion that Wilde had much in common intellectually with Johnson’s Cultured Fauns. His public poses continually flirted with the outrage of his enemies, but his own defence of unconventional moral values-unlike Sir Henry Wootton’s in The Picture of Dorian Gray – is not founded in any celebration of their defiance of Nature, but rather in deep complaints against the standards of natural and social justice alike.
**********
In going beyond Decadence to search for new and better ideals Wilde was certainly not alone. Even for French writers Decadence was mostly a phase through which they passed – for English ones it tended rather to be a matter which they contemplated, and then side-stepped or reinterpreted to their own convenience. It is hardly surprising that when it ceased to be convenient the English writers who had been called Decadent wasted no time in renouncing the label altogether.
To the extent that Decadence caught on among the poets of England it caught on as a fairly restrained and entirely superficial stylistic affectation. There is more genuine Decadence to be found in the work of Russian writers who would mostly have preferred to be known as Symbolists. When Wilde’s trial sent Symons and the rest scurrying in search of a less embarrassing label they were quick to argue that no Englishman had ever meant anything by the word except a kind of style, and although that claim is not really supportable by Symons’ essay, it is borne out by the literary material.
For a brief period before Wilde’s trial the idea of Decadence did become fashionable enough in London to generate its own periodical press, whose flagship was John Lane’s quarterly Yellow Book, launched in 1894. By far the most famous (or notorious) contributor to the Yellow Book, however, was not a writer but an illustrator – the art editor Aubrey Beardsley, who had also designed the cover which united the works in Lane’s “Keynotes” series, in which several notable Decadent works were featured. It is Beardsley’s illustrative work rather than any production in poetry or prose which provided English Decadence with a memorable image. His astonishing decorations for Lord Alfred Douglas’s English translation of Wilde’s Salomé (1894) were far more original, exotic and daring than any other products of the Movement. The evidence of his incomplete baroque romance Under the Hill (1897), suggests that Beardsley
Similar Books
