Decadence: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

This book is an excellent introduction to Decadence for our time. It's a historical treatment of the subject, but the author shows that it's a legitimate response and reaction to modernism and, it seems to me, postmodernism. This book presents a moral case for Decadence with reference to History, Literature, Philosophy, and Art.

Excellent introduction to an obscure topic. Although the theory and practice of decadence as an aesthetic and social attitude had a major role to play in the moral condemnation of modernity in the mid nineteenth century, it is hard to find books summarizing the scholarship on this topic. The only other recent books on this topic I am aware of is David Weir's previous book: Decadence and the Making of Modernism (1995) and Phillip Mann's upcoming: The Dandy at Dusk: Taste and Melancholy in the Twentieth Century, to be released on November 1, 2018.90 years ago Edmund Wilson underscored how Symbolism underpinned literary modernism in Axels Castle. Back then, Symbolism and Decadence were used interchangeably in the context of literary modernism. But are they interchangeably? Though in the beginning, Symbolism and Decadence appear to be similar if not synonymous movements but are in fact two very distinct and in some ways disparate movements (consider the attitude each has towards Nature). For reasons too detailed to pursue here (principally homophobia) academics who defined the literary establishment and its canon –F. R. Leavis in Great Britain and Hugh Kenner and Edmund Wilson in the United States – expunged the Decadent roots of Modernism from the history of Modernism and attributed its stylistics to the more respectable (for which read less queer) “Symbolism”.40 years ago now, Richard Gilman in Decadence: The Strange Life of an Epithet dedicated an entire book on the ineffectiveness ofcoming up with an acceptable working definition of Decadence calling it " A portmanteau stuffed with emptiness".David Weir's brisk introduction succeeds in giving us a better idea of what do we mean when we use the term 'Decadence'. He discusses Decadence in aesthetic, social and cultural contexts as well as how it played out in Paris, London, Vienna in the 19th century, was democratized in the Weimar Republic in the 1920's and briefly in the the non-European context. He begins by tracing the etiology of the term in the study of Classical Rome in the 18th century and the central role of Paris in the development of decadence as the aesthetic expression of a conflicted attitude towards modernity [Just about every manifestation of decadence owes its origins, either directly or indirectly, to a loosely affiliated group of artists and writers who lived and worked in Paris around 1850's, especially the critic Théophile Gautier (1811-1872) who was the first to retrospectively describe the poet Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) as decadent. Baudelaire stands second only to Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly as the theorist of decadence and dandyism].Weir does not simply explore Decadence as a seedbed out of which the procedures and volatile transformations of modernism sprung but instead focuses on the ways that Decadence “amounts to a reformation of the aesthetic code whereby art brings forth its meaning”. Given the format of the Very Short Introductions, it is understandable that the book does not explore the notoriously challenging style of decadent texts but I wish the author had included a brief discussion on the differences between French and English literature of decadence and the social reasons underlying these.For me this book helps in recovering the aesthetic milieu out of which modernism grew as well as providing a look from the inside at 'Decadence' and is highly recommended as an introduction to the subject. It avoids jargon although an amateur like me had to reach out for his hock and seltzer to ease my passage through the denser sections of this book.....but I ended up dusting off my Baudelaire after completing this!