2. Paris

The decline of Rome held special relevance for the French because the architects of the French Revolution took Republican Rome as their model of governance. The work of the traditionalist critic Désiré Nisard, who compared the poetry of the decadent Romans to that of his romantic contemporaries, and the art of Thomas Couture are first considered. The writings of Baudelaire, Théophile Gautier, Joris-Karl Huysmans, and Marguerite Eymery Vallette (who wrote under the pen-name Rachilde) are also discussed. Their decadence was mostly confined to the literature they wrote. Such cultural decadence is typical of the Parisian variant during the 1880s.

Introduction

The Introduction first considers the etymological and historical meanings of decadence. Different interpretations of the word “decadence” point to historical decline, social decay, and aesthetic inferiority. Decadence today may be best understood as the aesthetic expression of a conflicted attitude toward modernity, which first arose in nineteenth-century France and is best expressed by the author Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867). Decadence then “travelled” to London, where Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) became the preeminent decadent writer. Other metropolitan centers that made up part of the urban geography of decadence during the fifty-year period (1880–1930) of decadence’s peak were fin-de-siècle Vienna and Weimar Berlin.

Afterword

Manifestations of decadence outside of western Europe appear to confirm philosopher Theodor Adorno’s thesis that decadence entails an implicit critique of modernity. The elevation of decadence to a position of such heightened social and cultural significance is only one part of the legacy of Baudelaire, Huysmans, and Wilde. Today, academic interest in decadence is on the rise and a set of sociocultural concerns that once seemed secondary or derivative now appears far more substantial than the notion of "decadent style" or of some other purely aesthetic analysis. Because of its conflicted sense of modernity, decadence emerges as a kind of dark humanism, with the decadent paradigm of decline and decay acquiring positive value.

4. Vienna and Berlin

Sociocultural integration occurred first in fin-de-siècle Vienna, where decadence underwent a “bourgeoisification” and where the taste for decadence, no longer limited to aristocrats or elites, found a middle-class audience, even as artists and writers actively sought out that audience rather than working to “shock” it. The sociocultural decadence of Vienna prior to World War I is exceeded after the war only by that of Weimar Berlin, where decadence became, almost, a mass movement, as Berliners of all social strata eagerly participated in forms of social behavior that challenged bourgeois norms and traditions. The rise of the Nazi regime forced a major reconsideration of the meaning of decadence.

1. Rome

Ancient Roman writers whose work inspired latter-day decadents include the biographer Suetonius (69–122 CE) and the historian Tacitus (56–120 CE), who both wrote about the depraved behavior of Caligula, Nero, Vitellius, and other decadent emperors. Their accounts of outrageous behavior, as well as The Satyricon (an important novel about first-century Rome attributed to Petronius), form the classical model of Roman decadence. Later influential commentators on the fall of Rome were the French moral philosopher Montesquieu (1689–1755) and the British historian Edward Gibbon (1737–1794). Historical novels about ancient Rome by Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880) and Walter Pater (1839–1894) also had a bearing on the development of decadence.

3. London

Decadence in Great Britain takes form in the late nineteenth century as both a reflection of and reaction to the urban plan of its capital city. London decadence has this in common with Parisian decadence, but with several significant differences, such as the British preference for neo-Gothic architecture and the contrasting allocation of urban space to variations in social class. The work of John Ruskin affirms the neo-Gothic aesthetic, while that of Walter Pater emerges as a decadent rejection of it. Later, the work of George Moore, Arthur Symons, Oscar Wilde, and Ernest Dowson certified London decadence as a culture antagonistic to bourgeois tastes and manners.