The Dedalus Book of Decadence: (Moral Ruins) Read Online Free Page A

fact, that the only poet who gave Baudelaire a reasonable measure of moral support while he was alive was the only one who condescended to give an oration at his funeral: his long-time friend Théodore de Banville, the Parnassian inheritor of Gautier’s mantle as the premier champion of art for art’s sake.
    Given all this, it is not surprising that Baudelaire’s vivid verses and ornate poems in prose are so full of lamentations – but they are not mere cries of despair. What is quintessentially Decadent about them is the way in which they harness personal tragedy to the greater context, attempting to use analysis of the personal predicament to reach a more perfect understanding and aesthetic appreciation of the state of the world.
    It is easy enough to feel sorry for Baudelaire, but pity is out of place when contemplating the poets of Decadence; how could they have become poets of Decadence unless they were torn apart by the contradictions which others managed to avoid? How, if Baudelaire had not had his comforts eked out, could he possibly have laid claim – as he did in the most celebrated of his several poems entitled “Spleen” – that he had more memories than if he had lived a thousand years, crowded as secrets in his unhappy brain? How could he have likened himself to a graveyard churned about by worms of remorse? And how, if he had only harboured such feelings for brief intervals of alienation, couldhe possibly have learned to savour the sensation as he did? If he had made a better living, he would only have been one more Parnassian among many; as it was he became the primary inspiration of the whole Decadent Movement.
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3.
    GENIUS AND MADNESS:
THE ATTRACTIONS OF DECADENCE
    Even when one accepts that Baudelaire would have been a less interesting poet had he not led such a tortured life it remains rather surprising that he became a role-model for an entire movement. In order to understand this more fully, it is necessary to pay some attention to the other intellectual currents of the day.
    Before the movement actually got under way in the 1880s the pessimism which the Decadents were to embrace was given an increased measure of respectability by the philosophy of Schopenhauer, which was popularized in France by Théodule Ribot in 1874. Schopenhauer argues that the world contains so much more misfortune than joy that life is fundamentally unhappy, tolerable only because the Will to Live persistently deceives us with unrealistic hopes. The enlightened man, according to Schopenhauer, must replace this deceptive will with an honest Idea, whose contemplation is fundamentally aesthetic. All this seemed to French aesthetes a significant underlining of what Baudelaire had attempted and achieved.
    An even more striking and radical endorsement of the Decadent pose was, in addition, provided by contemporary fashions in proto-psychology, with which many writers were closely in touch. The experiments with hashish and opium which were undertaken by Gautier and other members of the self-styled Club de Haschichins in the 1830s and 1840s were undertaken in a fairly careful spirit of exploration: the drugs were frequently supplied by medical men who supervised and observed their use, and catalogued their effects. The principaldoctor involved in Gautier’s hallucinatory adventures was Joseph Moreau, who liked to style himself “Moreau de Tours”. Moreau’s interest in abnormal psychology was by no means confined to the study of psychotropic substances; he produced a whole series of books between 1835 and 1859 investigating the phenomena of “nervous disorders”. His work exhibits two constant preoccupations which were of considerable potential interest to Decadents, and his personal acquaintance with both Gautier and Baudelaire must have ensured that they were thoroughly familiar with his ideas. The first of these preoccupations was an intense interestin artistic genius as a species of neurosis; the second was a