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Title: Decadence
Series: A Very Short Introduction
Author: David Weir
Rating: 1.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Non-Fiction
Pages: 142
Words: 44K

Synopsis:

From the Publisher

The history of decadent culture runs from ancient Rome to nineteenth-century Paris, Victorian London, fin de siècle Vienna, Weimar Berlin, and beyond. The decline of Rome provides the pattern for both aesthetic and social decadence, a pattern that artists and writers in the nineteenth century imitated, emulated, parodied, and otherwise manipulated for aesthetic gain. What begins as the moral condemnation of modernity in mid-nineteenth century France on the part of decadent authors such as Charles Baudelaire ends up as the perverse celebration of the pessimism that accompanies imperial decline. This delight in decline informs the rich canon of decadence that runs from Joris-Karl Huysmans's À Rebours to Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, Aubrey Beardsley's drawings, Gustav Klimt's paintings, and numerous other works. In this Very Short Introduction, David Weir explores the conflicting attitudes towards modernity present in decadent culture by examining the difference between aesthetic decadence--the excess of artifice--and social decadence, which involves excess in a variety of forms, whether perversely pleasurable or gratuitously cruel. Such contrariness between aesthetic and social decadence led some of its practitioners to substitute art for life and to stress the importance of taste over morality, a maneuver with far-reaching consequences, especially as decadence enters the realm of popular culture today.

My Thoughts:

I was talking with a friend of mine about higher education and we ended up discussing how it seems that those who are the most informed on a subject are often the worst at actually conveying information about said subject. Which led me to talk about this series and that lead to some interesting info for me.

Zac, my friend (and no, he's not just in my head), was saying that a lot of higher education is about finding the right books on a subject tangential to the one you're actually studying. So an Introductory book like this is meant for someone who is already experienced in some aspect of the subject and wants a bibliography to expand their knowledge. It went a LONG way towards explaining my issues with this series. It's not an Introduction for the Layperson, but an Introduction for People Already into the Subject. While it doesn't solve my problems with the series, it radically adjusts my perspective and that will help alleviate some of the frustration caused by idiots who aren't idiots but are idiots. With that out of the way, let's proceed.

I was hoping the author would take a factual look at Decadence and keep his opinions to himself. In fact, I wasn't just hoping that, I was expecting that. Instead, I am treated to an author glorifying and almost wallowing in the perverse and disgusting. The author doesn't appear to just be interested in the subject of Decadence itself but to have dived into the very essence of Decadence and come out praising it. Metaphorically, he doesn't just talk about pig poop but he dives in and then proceeds to throw it at the reader while shouting how wonderful, how liberating, how brave anyone is who can swim in pig poop.

I'm adding a couple of quotes now.

“ But above all perverse, almost everything perverse interests, fascinates me.”

~chapter 3

“those decadents and degenerates of the 1920s now appear almost heroic in their hedonism”
~chapter 4

“but such attraction to degradation is by no means a criticism”

~Afterwords

Now, none of those are in context and many are not the authors words but quotes he is using to support his own ideas. However, the context IS clear that he supports each and every statement. It made me sick.

To end, this book made me sick and I'm sorry that I read it. Talking about a subject is far different from praising a subject :-(

★✬☆☆☆ ( )

This short overview of decadence tries to cover a lot of ground--France, Britain, Weimar Germany, and brief looks elsewhere, and as a result it fails to make its intended impression. There is enough here to guide you toward a few seminal works and authors, however. The audiobook is well read. ( )

I’ve had Decadence, a Very Short Introduction on my TBR for a little while now, but what prompted me to pick it up now was a review of Inappropriation by Lexi Freiman at Theresa Smith Writes. By the sound of it, Inappropriation luxuriates in decadence, and that triggered thoughts about decadent books in general – some that I’ve liked and others that I’ve disliked, such as a recent book that I abandoned at page 6 because of its disgusting content. (And I’m no prude. This was beyond revolting.) But it seems from David Weir’s entertaining VSI that decadence is not so much a quality that can be bandied about in respect of book content as a literary movement.
This is the blurb for this latest addition to the VSI series:
"The history of decadent culture runs from ancient Rome to nineteenth-century Paris, Victorian London, fin de siecle Vienna, Weimar Berlin, and beyond. The decline of Rome provides the pattern for both aesthetic and social decadence, a pattern that artists and writers in the nineteenth century imitated, emulated, parodied, and otherwise manipulated for aesthetic gain. What begins as the moral condemnation of modernity in mid-nineteenth century France on the part of decadent authors such as Charles Baudelaire ends up as the perverse celebration of the pessimism that accompanies imperial decline. This delight in decline informs the rich canon of decadence that runs from Joris-Karl Huysmans’s A Rebours to Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Aubrey Beardsley’s drawings, Gustav Klimt’s paintings, and numerous other works.
In this Very Short Introduction, David Weir explores the conflicting attitudes towards modernity present in decadent culture by examining the difference between aesthetic decadence–the excess of artifice–and social decadence, which involves excess in a variety of forms, whether perversely pleasurable or gratuitously cruel. Such contrariness between aesthetic and social decadence led some of its practitioners to substitute art for life and to stress the importance of taste over morality, a manoeuvre with far-reaching consequences, especially as decadence enters the realm of popular culture today."
The VSI begins with an Introduction, followed by four chapters:
Rome: classical decadence
Paris: cultural decadence
London: social decadence
Vienna and Berlin: sociocultural decadence
Then there is an Afterword called ‘Legacies of decadence’, some references and suggestions for further reading.
Weir describes what we associate with decadence: historical decline, social decay (political corruption and excessive hedonism) and aesthetic inferiority. We know about the social decay of ancient Rome – the decadence of Caligula and Nero et al – from the biographies in Suetonius’ Lives of the Caesars and from Tacitus, an historian. But he points out that despite the fall of Rome and its undisputed decadence, many aspects of Roman culture and ingenuity persist: the Latin language lives on in the Romance languages, and our system of laws and of representative government is modelled on the Roman Republic. Rome aided the spread of Christianity after the conversion of the Emperor Constantine in the 4th century, and Roman architecture and engineering have had a lasting influence to this day.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2018/08/10/decadence-a-very-short-introduction-by-david... ( )