Decadence In English (and French) Literature - Part 1

One evening she is Rosalind, and the next evening she is Imogen. I have seen her die in the gloom of an Italian tomb, sucking the poison from her lover`s lips [.] She has been mad, and has come into the presence of a guilty king, and given him rue to wear and bitter herbs to taste of. She has been innocent, and the black hands of jealousy have crushed her reed-like throat. I have seen her in every age and in every costume. (Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891)1

In many ways the actress is the quintessential Decadent: she is a person who has a complex, flexible and ever shifting identity, who fully embodies her art, continually undergoes an incredible array of disparate experiences, challenges conventional gender boundaries and lives a heightened - yet refined - life of intensity, but is nevertheless ultimately artificial. It is thus unsurprising that she is a trope in much of the writing of the Victorian Fin de Siècle. As Dorian Gray explains to Lord Henry Wotton, the actress - in this case the beautiful Sibyl Vane - `is all the great heroines of the world in one. She is more than an individual` (p. 45). To Dorian, a dandy obsessed with masks, poses and multiple selves, such a plenitude of identities (meaning that the young woman is `never` simply Sibyl Vane) results in the actress's attaining `genius` (p. 45). The fact that she is female makes such a fluctuation of self all the more remarkable, as she stands out as such a marked contrast to other traditional, predictable nineteenth-century women, who `ride in the Park in the morning, and chatter at tea-parties in the afternoon` with their `stereotyped smile, and their fashionable manner` (p. 43). Such a disparity had long been acknowledged: almost thirty years before The Picture of Dorian Gray was written, an anonymous writer in the February 1859 edition of Englishwoman`s Journal wrote that the actress is raised `far above those women who are absorbed by the petty vanities and trifles and anxieties of a woman`s ordinary life.`2 Nina Auerbach argues in Private Theatricals: The Lives of the Victorians, however, that the performance of numerous roles places an emphasis upon pretence that `connotes not only lies, but a fluidity of character that decomposes the uniform integrity of the self`,3 greatly unsettling the Victorian public who `clung to an idea of self that is not only knowable, but a reassuring object of faith`.4 That said, although the actress challenged conventional ideas of the `genuine self` (l. 36) as understood in Matthew Arnold`s 1852 poem `The Buried Life`5 and other literature of the period, she perfectly fits in with the Decadent conception of a fragmented, multitudinous selfhood. Such an attitude is exemplified by Dorian`s wondering at the `shallow psychology of those who conceive the ego in man as a thing simple, permanent, reliable, and of one essence` and his belief that man is a `being with myriad lives and myriad sensations, a complex multiform creature` (pp. 113-14). Hence Sibyl, with her multifarious personalities, her ability to realise the `dreams of great poets` (p. 71), her capacity to experience the intensity of a wide range of emotions and her ability to express them through `eyes that were violet wells of passion` (p. 42), is the Decadent ideal. Moreover, the actress`s ability to give `shape and substance to the shadows of art` (p. 71) is extremely near to fulfilling that which Wilde lauds himself as being in De Profundis `an artist in life`.6 For, as Gilbert`s response to Ernest`s question in Wilde`s essay `The Critic as Artist` demonstrates, the Decadent view is that `[l]ife and literature, life and the perfect expression of life` are `the two supreme and highest arts`.7 Hence the actress - whose life is the expression of literature - is close to being the perfect artist. Furthermore, if art is actually an improvement upon `poor, probable, uninteresting human life` (p. 981), as Vivian insists in Wilde`s essay `The Decay of Lying - An Observation`, the actress is arguably superior to the dandy in terms of being a true artist of life. The fact that her experiences on stage are artificial makes them all the more beautiful and appealing. As David Weir explains, `[t]o live life as art, to render the natural as artificial as possible, is the goal of the decadent` who `imagines art as the artificial alternative to a life that is too boring to contemplate.`8 Indeed, the very premise of Joris-Karl Huysmans` A rebours - considered by many as `the apogee of the Decadent novel` and its protagonist, Des Esseintes, regarded as `decadence incarnate`9 - is the anti-hero`s complete immersion into an artificial world of his own creating and his incessant attempts to create `that artificial atmosphere, which seemed to transfuse fresh blood into complexions faded and worn`.10 As Huysmans himself describes in a letter to Stéphane Mallarmé, Des Esseintes `substitutes the pleasures of artifice for the banalities of Nature.`11 Therefore, although Sibyl later laments that `the moonlight in the orchard was false`, Dorian is entranced by the fact that the `painted scenes` are Sibyl`s only `world` (p. 70). The dandy`s immediate assumption that - when Lord Henry declares that he has `loved so many` actresses - the Lord must be talking about `people with dyed hair and painted faces` (p. 43) further underlines the Victorians` automatic association of performers with artificiality. Moreover, the application of cosmetics was a practice greatly encouraged by the Decadents. For instance, Charles Baudelaire - whom Paul Bourget named a key `theoretician of decadence` in 188112 - states in his 1863 essay The Painter of Modern Life that cosmetics are employed to `surpass nature` and that it `matters but little that the artifice and trickery are known by all, so long as their success is assured`.13 He argues that the red of blusher and the black of eye-liner `represent life, a superficial and excessive life`, proceeding to explain that lining the eyes `renders the glance more penetrating and individual, and gives the eye a more decisive appearance of a window open upon the infinite` and that the application of rouge `adds to the face of a beautiful woman the mysterious passion of the priestess.`14 Hence make-up heightens the actress`s ability to express herself. Vivian claims in `The Decay of Lying` that the `basis of life - the energy of life, as Aristotle would call it - is simply the desire for expression` and that `Art is always presenting various forms through which this expression can be attained` (p. 985). Thus the employment of cosmetics can be seen as a form of art in itself, as well as promoting a Decadent intensity. Vivian states that `Art itself is really a form of exaggeration [.] an intensified mode of over-emphasis` (p. 978), and indeed - as Baudelaire shows - exaggeration and emphasis are make-up`s very purpose. Max Beerbohm`s essay `A Defence of Cosmetics`, which appeared in the inaugural 1894 issue of The Yellow Book, likewise celebrates make-up as part of a `new epoch of artifice`,15 declaring that through `the use of cosmetics, the masking of the face [...]We shall gaze at a woman merely because she is beautiful`.16 Beerbohm later insisted that his work was a `burlesque`.17 Nonetheless, the very fact that his essay was so ferociously attacked by reviewers who took it for granted that his Decadent stance must be sincere,18 demonstrates that the views he expresses are typical of `the "precious" school of writers` 19 he is parodying - a school that idolises the actress as the glorious embodiment of such beautiful artifice. However, the figure of the actress also highlights the fundamental tension that lies at the heart of Decadence: the inherent difficulty in reconciling the Decadent wish to be an artist of life - to experience every sensation and passion in the world with a remarkable intensity - and an ardent love of artifice, which is ultimately fake. Before Sibyl had met Dorian `acting was the one reality` of her life: `It was only in the theatre that I lived. I thought that it was all true.` (p. 70). Yet her multitude of identities - `The joy of Beatrice was my joy, and the sorrows of Cordelia were mine also` (p. 70) - exist in the sphere of her own imagination. As soon as she experiences a passion that `burns` her like `fire`, she sees through `the hollowness, the sham, the silliness of the empty pageant in which I had always played` (p. 70). In direct contradiction of Vivian`s argument in `The Decay of Lying` that art should only take `life as part of her rough material` (p. 978) and improve upon it, Sibyl asserts: `You had brought me something higher, something of which all art is but a reflection` (p. 70). Once this elevated love is taken from her, however, Dorian`s statement becomes true: `Without your art you are nothing` (p. 71). After she has been `taught [.] what reality really is` and `what love really is` (p. 70) she cannot return to the theatrical world that she now despises for being fake - `I hate the stage` (p. 70) - and so she chooses to die, rather than act again. Auerbach claims that the Victorians embrace death `as a final source of the integration lives promise and deny`, that the fragmented individual is renewed `not beyond death, but in it`.20 Therefore, by killing herself, Sibyl is finally able to experience a united identity and simply be Sibyl Vane, the one character in life that she never fully inhabits. This linking of actresses with death is one that is found frequently in Fin de Siècle writing, revealing the dual implications of the performer. A perverse fascination with such morbidity is a classic characteristic of Decadence. As Kerry Powell notes, Victorian rhetoric `could glorify or even spiritualise the actress in one breath, and in the next define her in terms of suffering, disease, madness, estrangement from humanity, and even death.`21 Through his portrayal of the multiple identities of the actress and the instability that accompanies such a fragmented, complex selfhood, Wilde is able to explore an underlying anxiety that pervades Decadent literature. Paradoxical, perverse, morbid, languid, artificial, diseased, refined, parodic, sensational, lurid, nuanced, depraved, beautiful, self-conscious, delicate, grotesque, effeminate, mannered, narcissistic, amoral, affective and sensual: an exact definition of Decadence is famously difficult to pin down. In the words of Arthur Symons, the movement has been `called by many names, none of them quite exact or comprehensive [.] adopted as the badge of little separate cliques, noisy, brainsick young people` who `exhaust their ingenuities in theorizing over the works they cannot write.`22 The seeming paradox of an artificial artist of life, however, is a concern that lies at the very heart of much of the so called `Decadent` literature of the nineteenth century in both England and France. In The Picture of Dorian Gray Lord Henry muses that `now and then a complex personality took the place and assumed the office of art; was indeed, in its way, a real work of art, Life having its elaborate masterpieces, just as poetry has, or sculpture, or painting` (p. 48). In a similar vein, Wilde himself once declared `I`ve put my genius into life; I`ve put only my talent into my work.`23 On one level this claim does appear to be reconcilable with a Decadent love of artificiality. Indeed, Wilde`s public life was one that was very carefully constructed. In her Idylls of the Marketplace, for instance, Regenia Gagnier attests that the contradictory aspects of Wilde - both those in his writings and those in his presentation of himself - `can only be understood by reference to his audiences`.24 She argues that in a `society of the spectacle`25 Wilde adopted the `commercial image of the dandy-artist`26 as a form of self-advertising,27 whilst simultaneously `using it dialectically to subvert the image of the bourgeois gentleman`.28 The way in which Wilde deftly adapted his own highly visible image in order to manipulate the Victorian public`s perception of him was an art in itself. Up until his trial in 1895, Wilde skilfully perfected the delicate balance of being at once popular and subversive, both fascinating and scandalising in equal measure. Dress played an important role in this self-fashioning. In an 1882 letter, for example, Wilde urges his American tour manager, to purchase a `tight velvet doublet`, insisting that the `sleeves are to be flowered - if not velvet then plush - stamped with large pattern. They will excite a great sensation`.29 Such a request, combined with his lament that `[t]hey were dreadfully disappointed at Cincinnati at my not wearing knee-breeches`,30 reveals Wilde`s acute sensitivity to the tastes and expectations of the public, as well as his desire to pander to them. Furthermore, his insistence that Morse visits `a good costumier (theatrical)`31 underlines the fact that Wilde`s clothes acted as a costume, aiding the performance that was his life. Simultaneously, however, Wilde`s appearance was also the material expression of many of his artistic theories and personal philosophies. Admiring other artists - such as Thomas Griffiths Wainewright - who possessed the `dangerous and delightful distinction of being different from others`,32 Wilde enjoyed confounding society through the thwarting of custom. One way in which he disturbed conventional expectations was by growing his hair longer than was traditionally thought appropriate for men and by having it curled. He explains in an 1883 letter to R. H. Sherard that `society must be amazed, and my Neronian coiffure has amazed it`.33 As Talia Schaffer argues, however, this `antiquarian standard` prevents his hairstyle from seeming `problematically effeminate`.34 Instead, it links his appearance with classical knowledge. Schaffer asserts that Wilde`s elaborate costume revives `widely disseminated images of men from historical and theatrical vocabularies`, aligning him with a `tradition of male creativity from the Cavalier poets to Shakespeare`.35 Begging to be read for meaning and drawing inspiration from a range of literary and historical texts, Wilde`s apparel is, in a sense, rendered a text itself, and so partakes in a wider intertextuality that mirrors that of his writing. Reflecting much Decadent literature - in which classicism meets the urban and contemporary, and archaism `jostles colloquialism`36 -Wilde`s attire is at once old-fashioned and startlingly modern. Whilst remarkably eccentric, on the one hand, Wilde`s outfits also served to establish his identity as a dandy on the other. In his 1896 essay `Dandies and Dandies`, Beerbohm describes dandyism as `the perfect flower of outward elegance`,37 describing it as one of the `decorative arts`.38 He agrees with the opinion that every faculty of a dandy`s soul, spirit, purse, and person is heroically consecrated to this one object, the wearing of clothes wisely and well.`39 The fact that Beerbohm supports such an attitude implies that he perceives the dandy as little more than an artist of apparel. However, as Baudelaire argues thirty-three years earlier in `The Dandy` section of The Painter of Modern Life, dandyism does not merely consist - `as many thoughtless people seem to believe` - in `an immoderate taste for the toilet and material elegance. For the perfect dandy these things are no more than symbols of his aristocratic superiority of mind.`40 Thus the dandy`s artificial, carefully constructed appearance is the material manifestation of his heightened sensitivity to life in general: in this case, his artificiality and life artistry are at one.