The Dedalus Book of Decadence: (Moral Ruins) by Brian Stableford Page A

be reckoned as a mere corollary of the first, concerns their cynical attitude to matters of sexual morality – and, indeed, their dismissal of the ambitions of all prescriptive systems of morality. They were right-but not particularly original – when they argued that no set of rules could ever succeed in dampending the perverse curiosity of the human mind; they were right, too, to be severely sceptical as to whether that acknowledged impossibility is altogether to be regretted. The mythology of ideal romantic love which is peddled in today’s world is not much different from that which was peddled in the 1880s, and there are probably no more people who think that actual contemporary relationships are accurately reflected in that mythology than there were then; that is not surprising. What is surprising is there are probably as many people, or more, who think that the world would be a far better place if the real world were more like the mythological world of romantic fiction. A healthy dose of Decadent fiction may still be capable of curing victims of that particular delusion, and ought at least to be tried.
    Even the Decadents, it must be confessed, did have a tendency to regret the non-existence of Ideal Love, but their sense of tragedy was outside the common rut. They shed their fair share of tears over the fact that real people have to make do with lesser affections, which must of necessity be granted to relatively undeserving recipients. But they were also prepared to take an experimental attitude to the problem by suggesting that if the mythology turned out to be an abject failure (as it inevitably would) perhaps it might be stretched and twisted into a better shape by trial and error.
    The quest for new sensations – which, inevitably, can also be seen as a search for new sins – is sometimes seen even by the Decadents themselves as little more than an elaborate process of self-destruction, but its underlying attitude of combative derision towards received mythology is perfectly healthy. We live, alas, in a world which is still obsessed with the project of finding and maintaining the perfect relationship, and where a substantial fraction of the periodical press, ads and all, is devoted to an extraordinary elaboration of the typical concerns of “agony columns”. The Decadents can tell us, as they told their own contemporaries, that all the advice about how to build the ideal relationship is not only bullshit but unnecessary bullshit, and that the only sensible reaction to the discovery that it never really works is to say “What the hell!” and try something else instead. Decadents admit that the way the cards are stacked, everyone’s life is likely to be a long catalogue of mistakes – but they point out that one doesn’t actually have to keep making the same mistake over and over and over again.
    It is mainly because the Decadents say these things, which still need to be said, that there is still some point in reading them. Their stylistic coquetry is not empty even when its illusions have been stripped away; their calculated indecency still poses a real challenge. They can still be alarming and surprising, and even their constant flirtation with certain ideas fit only for the dustbin (which they were unfortunate enough to inherit from incompetent intellectuals) still has a certain redeeming quaintness. Stricken they might have been by ennui, spleen , and impuissance , but when the time came for a Big Push they were never afraid – in spite of their debilitating neurasthenia, cynical wit and calculated charm – to go over the top and charge headlong into the barbed wire.
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A SAMPLER OF FRENCH DECADENT TEXTS
1.
    TO THE READER
    by Charles Baudelaire
    Stupidity, soul-sickness, and errant sin,
    Possess our hearts and work within our flesh,
    Our fond remorse is nursed within the crèche,
    As beggars take their lice to be their kin.

    Our sins are stubborn, our penitence is mean;
    We fatten the