Matthew Sturgis' 'Passionate Attitudes' 1995

 

Macmillan first edition - 1995

It is not often I feel out of depth in a book - not because of a lack of knowledge (that's a reason for reading it in the first place), but simply because I am not grasping the subject. It did not start well - there is a four line extract from Walter Pater's 'Conclusion' to The Renaissance between the Acknowledgements and Contents pages:

'Not to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude in those about us, and in the very brilliancy of their gifts some tragic dividing forces on their ways, is, on this short day of frost and sun, to sleep before evening.'

Apart from providing the title for this book, What on earth does that mean? The Chapter headings seem rather self-conscious as well: 'Poisonous Honey', 'Impressions and Sensations', 'The Cult of Celebrity', 'Profit and Parody' and 'The Decline of Decadence'.

Notwithstanding all the above, I ploughed on. The first chapter is a very useful exposition of how the writings of Gautier, Flaubert, the Goncourts and Baudelaire affected (infected?) the French cultural scene in the nineteenth century. The position that these writers took up in the decadent world of their imagining was ambivalent. They were antipathetic to bourgeois materialism, yet fascinated by the new luxurious amenities it afforded, and by the prevailing grossness They decried the decadence of society and yet they claimed that as artists they were the most extreme examples of the 'decadent' type...popular success came to be regarded as a sure sign of mediocrity, public abuse and incomprehension the mark of real distinction. Well, I certainly won't abuse them, but incomprehension is an apt word for my approach.

From 1882, Paul Verlaine reappeared on the Parisian scene, with a reputation founded more on scandal than on poetry. I remember watching the 1995 movie Total Eclipse, starring David Thewlis as Verlaine and Leonardo DiCaprio as Arthur Rimbaud, his younger lover. It was billed as 'Young, wild poet Arthur Rimbaud and his mentor Paul Verlaine engage in a fierce, forbidden romance while feeling the effects of a hellish artistic lifestyle.'  Verlaine certainly came to be seen as the figurehead as 'decadence' asserted itself, first in France and then in England. He was 'made of carnal spirit and unhappy flesh' against society, his homosexuality set him against nature. It was, he claimed proudly, the poet's lot and privilege  to stand accurst. Bully for him.

After 50 pages or so relating the development of 'decadence' in France, the author turns to the English version. Arthur Symons and Havelock Ellis both visited Verlaine in Paris in 1889 and returned home determined to spread the gospel. As an aside (see previous Blogs), Methodism rears its 'negative' head again! Symons was the only son of a 'depressive Wesleyan preacher and his barely more cheerful wife...study irregular verbs as he might during his father's sermons, the insidious message of Methodism got through to him: all earthy delights are subject to guilt'. Symons spent most of the rest of his life reacting to this. Gradually, Sturgis introduces us to others who felt strongly, or otherwise, the pull of the decadent movement: George Moore, Ernest Rhys, W.B. Yeats, Henry Harland, Will Rothenstein, Max Beerbohm, George Davidson, John Gray and Ernest Dowson.

Walter Pater was pulled in as a Muse (his 1873 Studies in the History of the Renaissance occasioned both alarm and excitement in its doctrine 'art for art's sake') , but he fought shy of actual involvement. Above them all towered Oscar Wilde, 'the High Priest of the Decadents' for some, and Aubrey Beardsley who best distilled the 'essence of the decadent fin de siecle'. Here is not the time or space to give an adequate account of their importance. I saw the 1997 film on Wilde, with Stephen Fry a very aptly cast Oscar. My attitude towards Fry probably mirrors the vast majority of the public's opinion of Wilde a century before. Beardsley comes across as a brilliant artist living inside a tragic body. 

John Lane's The Yellow Book and Leonard Smithers' Savoy are given their share of the limelight, the latter shining very briefly. I have three volumes of the former, but only because John Buchan (strangely) wrote for it.

I hadn't realised how 'conservative' Punch was and how regularly and fiercely it drew scorn down on the 'decadents'. It was interesting to read of Richard Le Gallienne and W.E. Henley and their barbs thrown at the 'decadents'.

If this Blog is a little scatter-gunned, it is because I never really settled into the book. I am not a Bohemian by nature, hence my negative feelings for the later Bloomsbury avant-garde group, and find it difficult to engage sympathetically with the 'decadents' or 'symbolists'. No matter; I'm sure reading 'Passionate Attitudes' did me good and widened my outlook.