Decadent/Aestheticist Literature

Is it just me, or does the decadent movement of the past feel more soulful and human than any kind of degeneracy we see today?

I don't know why, but the hedonism and degeneracy as described by Wolde and his contemporaries seems very beautiful for some reason.

I'm a similar position where I realise that unchecked hedonism is destructive, but hedonism seems appealing to me when conducted in moderation. I'm unsure how to reconcile these two opinions.

>hedonism
>moderation
poser

The whole Intentions is good and you can find it in there. There's also other classics by him like Decay of Lying.

Wilde considered The Reneissance by Walter Pater an important book to him, so those interested in aestheticism should check it out. I've yet to read it though.

E-Epicureanism, then?

I think enjoyment of the senses must be linked back to the mediums’ traditional forms in some way. It forms a continuity of enjoyment which makes said media immortal in their enjoyment.

You probably don't just enjoy modern "decadent" art/people on an aesthetic level. You might still agree with them on a theoretical level, but their practical applications of these ideas leads to results you don't enjoy, unlike with 1800s artists.

Overall when I read about degeneracy etc. on these boards I get the feeling that the degeneration is more on an aesthetic than on a moral/practical/whatever level. The problem isn't that they're necessarily malicious or harmful people, they're just kinda gross.

desu degeneracy has become a buzzword for newfags that means "whatever I'm proscribed not to like"

You mean prescribe, proscribe comes from proscription (Cicero et al).

I take “degeneration” to mean the purposeful deconstruction of man’s primordial archetypes by those who are less than human and debasing their indelible meanings through subterfuge in order to demoralize man and confuse him for their purposes.

Absolutely, however I still think that the average imageboard conservative's hate for the contemporary world comes mostly from an aesthetic point of view.

I get the opposite impression when examining the state of the modern decadent: they seem to have strayed away from beauty and art, aesthetics and culture, for ordinary and simple pleasures, leaving a boring and grotesque impression upon any who encounter them in their regressed, animal-like state

I think you were agreeing with my sentiment, actually. Ignore the first part.

I think that their aesthetic sensibilities are just wildly different than those of the past. They also intentionally want to widen the scope of things we find beautiful. Fat acceptance movement is a great example of this, big is beautiful and so on. They also do derive aesthetic value from the things they enjoy, even if you (or me) find them mundane or unappealing.

The biggest difference is probably that to the "modern decadent", aesthetic value is a private/individual thing, while to the conservative it is a public thing. The modern decadent does not want to state how other people should dress themselves and even see value in the variety of personal tastes, at least in theory. Everyone is free to look like just how they want and the other person has nothing to say to this, even if he finds it distasteful. This also puts more responsibility to the individual, because they simply can't follow the old rulebooks of looking/sounding/acting good.

The conservative sees the aesthetic space as a public space: the way things look, sound etc. should conform to the traditional ideas of good taste because they generally work and look nice and being aesthetically unappealing to other people is an attack towards them. Changes should be slow and careful.

I am not entirely sure where I stand on this issue myself but I can understand both point of views, actually, even if I don't often enjoy the contemporary aesthetic sensibilities.

Under the Hill by Aubrey Beardsley ("finished" by John Glassco)

I had a print edition of this one, I don’t know for the life of me where it went...

I think we're probably living in one of the most decadent times in human history currently, second only to Rome. With the easy access to pornography, the rise of fetish communities, and the use of recreational drugs becoming more normalised, I feel as though the ideas of the decadent movement have never been more relevant. Even so, I'm not sure if Wilde would applaud every aspect of modern decadence.

You might argue that aesthetics still exist but are becoming more subjective (unlike the type of aesthetics Kant advocated for), but I still feel as though something's missing. Even when decadent acts are glorified, something about them feels far less romantic. I wonder if it has something to do with the decadence of old having to fight against the social repression of desire.

That because it’s less about enjoyment and savoring than it is about exploring power dynamics critical theory style. Man vs. woman (femdom, bdsm), gay vs. straight (ts seduction/sissy shit), black vs. white (bbc/bleached shit), you name it. The glorifiers of this today don’t do it for pleasure, they do it for revolution and subversion of the prevailing mores; that’s why I think a lot of the sumptuousness is gone, because there is no subject to begin with, merely titles for opposing forces that the public can embrace on a primal level.

Ironic how critical theory types will martyr Wilde for being gay and persecuted, while at the same time ignoring his core doctrine that "all art is quite useless". The fact that hedonism in the past was apolitical aside from general beliefs in freedom of expression might actually be what's needed in our current age. The political left and right both indulge in too much hedonism to return to Victorian style chasity, so there needs to be an attempt to reconcile decadence with basic morality.

>I'm not sure if Wilde would applaud every aspect of modern decadence.
Wilde disliked vulgarity of any kind. He liked refined decadence, and pleasures which took place behind a veil.

If Wilde could see a modern gay pride parade, with dildos undulating in the breeze and fags blowing each other on the sidewalk of walking each other on leashes, he would be absolutely horrified.

A big difference between the people you call modern decadents and the decadents of the past and especially the aestheticists is that the current people are very political and generally interpret art through political analysis. Politics is probably the most important part of art to them. The 19th century aestheticism however advocated the absence of sosio-political elements in art and considered them unimportant or even undesireable. In this sense the modern "decadents" aren't similar to the Wildean gang at all.

>There’s something about modernism’s optimistic early days
The décadent are often pretty pessimistic tho.

Seconding this , also the authors that the main character is enthusiastic about, mainly Mallarmé and Flaubert, but also Barbey d'Aurevilly.

This is very good. There are also writers who are decadents in spirit or in introspection despite not belonging to the same era. if you like the decadents you might like De Maistre, Hello, Barrès and Drieu la Rochelle.

>The biggest difference is probably that to the "modern decadent", aesthetic value is a private/individual thing, while to the conservative it is a public thing.
The amusing thing is that by this token the esthetic of the archetypal twitter soiboi is also conservative in a sense (it's all about liking what's popular in certain circles and being joined in a wide undiscriminating community of appreciation).
The old-school decadents were about liking unpopular or obscure but high-quality stuff, not merely 'good things only the true patrician know' but 'things that traditional good-taste finds off-putting, but still aesthetically elaborate". A typical example being Baudelaire's The Carrion, a beautiful poem about a rotting corpse. The decadents were pointedly apoliticalor anti-political in their tastes, while the modern "degenerates" is all about politics (liking things is first and foremost a political statement). That might not apply to a handful of legitimately original trannies performers tho.
Not really disagreeing, just pointing out.

It's a pretty deep question. The decadents understood aesthetic as something private, almost initiatic. See how their master Baudelaire describes lesbianism in some of his best poems, it's almost always a hellish or religious experience (sometimes both), a thing for mystery cults.

So decadence for the decadents is private, secret, ecstatic, spiritual or anti-spiritual, associated with holy terror or gleeful anguish and only disclosed to the worthy. It is characterised by a carefully maintained ambivalence about aesthetic, moral and religious norms (norms are transgressed but in that very transgression their importance is proclaimed, blasphemy is only exciting if there is a God or at least a Church). This ties with the decadentist fascination with the Gothic era and with religious persecution and punishment (see Huysmans' praise of the Church's "vulgar" latin, or the lengthy description of persecution in the Portrait of Dorian Gray, or a lot of Bloy's account of historical slaughter).

On the contrary modern "decadence" is openly advertised, communal and even identitarian, political and demonstrative. It's a consumer choice as much as a private (but openly displayed) lifestyle, and it isn't supposed to be pitted against a greater morality that it is transgressing (the point of the modern gay movement is not "let's partake in blasphemy" but "what we do is harmless and the Church should get out of this"). In this respect the modern gay movement is a movement of reconciling bourgeois values with homosexuality (at term which wasn't often used in Wilde's time, though it already existed), while decadentism is about subverting and mocking bourgeois values.

I personally understand why gay would want to not be considered freaks of nature of course, but it's important to realize that decadentism and modern "degeneracy" are two different beasts entirely. The decadents actually like freaks of nature, homosexuality without transgression is simply not worth it for them. Indeed for some of them the very concept is unthinkable: homos having is a transgression, that's the whole spiritual content of it. They wouldn't even use the same word for our contemporary ideal of safe homosexuality.

Good post

Walter Pater's The Rennaissance and Appreciations, with an essay on Style are must-reads.

While I agree with the latter part of your dichotomy in respect to “normal, rank-and-file” LGBT people, I sense a very antagonistic character against the forces of conservatism in the intellectuals and the political groups which drive the LGBT agenda; they are obviously attempting to erode the traditional veil over homosexual and transsexual activities. They are trying to frame LGBT rights as a civil rights issue, the very movement which compelled the US Supreme Court to institutionalize affirmative action and other such accommodations to racial minorities across all facets of American public life.

I think it basically boils down to individualist recuperation. Turn of the century decadence is characterized by a loss of selfhood, a desire that brings one closer to the Object. Now desire is understood to make you "more yourself," and the way that you find pleasure becomes "self-expression" and "identity."

Obviously this is a trend that mimics capital's total domination. Another term for "identity-oriented desire" is simply consumerism. And not only are we as Subjects desecrated, but Objects lose their magnetism, their sovereignty, and become "commodities."

It's important to point out that none of this thought is particularly original, and that it was first and foremost queer and feminist theorists post-war who realized this shit. You think Wilde would hate Pride? Think about how Shulamith Firestone, Andrea Dworkin, or Mary Daly would feel -- they'd tear it to shreds.

Bump