DECADENTS, (it., Sp., Port. de cadente. from Lat. de, from + caderc, to fall). The name of a class or group of young writers (particularly poets) and artists in France dur ing the close of the nineteenth century. The term began to he derisively applied about 1882; it was used interchangeably with that of 'Sym became associated in a way with the rise of Impressionism in painting (see PAINTING. sec tion .I/odern Painting) and has now been prac tically supplanted by the word 'Symbolists' (q.v.), all that proved to he durable in ddrudisme. The term dc'eadent, how ever. is still used, loosely, to designate by way of ridieule all modern writers, like Ibsen and Annunzio. whose themes at thous have been atavistic, their characters 'degenerate.' and their theories of art more or less subversive.
The d6eadent poets in France merit distinctive notice for the role which they played in connec tion with the development of the or movement. Their literature may be said to have been horn of the demonincism of Baudelaire, the exaggerated realism in Zola. the haughty pes simism and gorgeous indifference of Leconte de Lisle, and the over-refining neurosis of the Gon court:, against all which influences. except that of Baudelaire. the Decadents nevertheless revolted wholly or in part like unnatural children. As for Baudelaire, they adoringly adopted him as their particular sire and model. Their more im mediate avatars were Verlaine and Maflame. Among the Decadents of Paris there developed two general groups which naturally intermingled to some degree. The less serious class associated their verse with the chanson populairc. They did not shrink from repulsive themes. brutal coehonncries. Rabelaisian wit, the authors glory ing in the extravaganzas of 'eccentrics' writing for the pavement public. Their songs were put forth in all sorts of loose, unkempt forms of verse—varieties such as had never been dreamed of in Paris. To whet their own morbid inspira tions, they drank absinthe, and ate hashish and morphine. They celebrated the effects of dissipa tion and disease. and were proud to belong among the poetes maudits. They were noisy poseur, often most ingenious and clever, and always sur prising. Their cafes. notably the Chat Noir, were long frequented by a public greedy for the latest sensation.
It was the more serious class of Parisian Deca dents who became a part of the Symbolist move ment. They were the delicate and aristocratic brothers of the song-writers. They reflected the same traits and motives, but in a more fine grained, literary, and enlightened manner, and in the higher forms of verse. They, too. identified themselves with urban life, and exalted its facti tious stimulations and the elaborate and refined corruptions of an excessive or declining civiliza tion. They disdained the natural, the simple, the rural. the healthful. They were rare xsthetes, dwelling in Baudelaire's 'artificial paradises.' with anwmic, satiny complexions. victims of goaded nerves, supreme egoists, in search of the unusual, the abnormal and the difficult. They prided themselves on being savants mys tifieateurs, and were distinguished by maladive airs and effeminate graces. What few ideas
these poets, in their effaced cult of Hartmann and Buddhism. harbored and expressed, were voluntarily involved in mystic complexity, in ob seurantisra. They wished to substitute sensations for ideas, and art for morals. Their theories and practices in the more intimate matter of the art of poetry. however, stood out as interesting and original. It was their aim always to suggest and to mask, never to name or expose. They employed the semi effects, the neutral tones, and relied on pale motives, evaporative nuances, and on lingering, caressing extenuations of results. More conspicuous was their ambitious confusing of the functions of the senses. insisting on color in music- and on music in color, and finding forms and perfumes in both. Their main purpose in this sphere was to interpret emotions as music and to marry it to poetry, as devoted Wagnerians. They sought to wed the flow of harmonies to liquid verse, to emphasize floating indecisions and extremely mobile sensuousnesses, earning thereby the name of '61411e:scents.' In all this they courted the neurotic, the psychical, the supranatnral, and reacted against the mate rialistic and plastic cults of the realists and the Pa rnassia The most tangible of their innovations lay in their forms of verse—their rers bri,scs—in which they displayed attempts at blank verse or rhymed prose. and strove to expand the formal and contracted limitations of French versifica tion. They wrote 'familiar alexandrines,' and verse of more than twelve feet ; they discarded the ciesura at the hemistich, and the alternating process of male and female rhymes. In fact, rhymes and fixed forms were generally abandoned for assonances, cadences, repetitions, and for polymorphic lines which were meant to be the tonal and visible counterpart and representation of the themes versified.
The Deeadents of Paris were specifically little more than curiosities: but in their connection with Symbolism they were not without effect on literature and art. indeed, it may almost be said that the Wcadents were merely the 'Sym bolists' who failed. Among, those who have been for one reason or another or at various times as sociated in France. in the public mind. with de cadisme may be mentioned (to name a few among many) Maurice Barres, De Regnier. Gustave Kahn: the two Belgians Maeterlinck and Roden bach ; the Greek, Moreas: the Americans, Viele Griffin and Stuart Merrill. The Thatre Libre was also to some extent identified with the De cadents. In other continental countries may perhaps be cited the Swede Gla liansson, the Norwegian IlIalmar Christiansen, the Austrian Hermann Bahr. In England Aubrey Beardsley (q.v.), with his fantastic. 'unwholesome' picto rial art, was considered a conspicuous Decadent. There have been ne very characteristic echoes in English poetry, because blank verse, rers Libre, etc., were not new' to it. Consult: P. Domnic, Les jcunrs (1S0“) : G. Pellissier. Etudes de lit teraturr contemporainc (1S9S) ; A. Symons, The Symbolist Movement in Literature( London, 1S99 ) .