Raising the question of what decadence is,should study the history of the appearance of the definition. And this concept was born in France, and its translation is the words "decline" and "decomposition". By digging deeper, you can find the root of this word in the Latin designation of the fall. So what is decadence? Who and where falls and what decomposes? And in general, with respect to whom or what should this concept be used?
It turns out that decadence is a direction inart. Sometimes this word refers to the behavior of a person whose views correspond to decadence. This direction emerged at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, when the historical upheaval of public life pushed creative people to rethink their creative positions. During this period of crisis social phenomena among the people began to wander decadent moods, the rejection of life in general, the trends of individualism and a sense of hopelessness and hopelessness. Art, as it were, found a way out of rejecting the political and civic life of society, deciding that this position is the only correct one, giving true freedom to creativity. Therefore, the question of what decadence is, you can also give another answer: avoiding reality, refusing to reflect politics and citizenship in your work.
So what then decadents display?Favorite themes in this artistic direction are death and non-existence, longing for ideals and spirituality, the dream of a beautiful future beyond reality. This trend has developed in various fields of art. It did not go around and literature. What is decadence in literature?
Many art critics considering thisdirection, use terms such as "neo-romanticism", "modern" and "symbolism". But it is worth noting that all of them cannot fully illuminate the decadence, being often only a part of the general movement. It is believed that decadence in literature dates back to the 18th century, the founder of which is called Montesquieu, and the closest successor to this is the writer and critic from France, Desiire Nizard.
However, many critics did not like literatureof this kind, and they practically made the word “decadence” insulting, poisoning Victor Hugo and romanticism in general. However, time has shown that the works of both Hugo and Edgar Allan Poe’s adherent of the direction we are considering are still read with delight by modern people. We have not forgotten both Charles Baudelaire and Theophile Gautier, who made a word from the insulting word, used as an honorary sign.
Они считали декаданс отрицанием «банального progress. " Among the Russian decadents of the “older generation” (1880–90) there are such famous poets and writers as A. Dobrolyubov, F. Sologub, K. Balmont, I. Konevskaya, Zinaida Hippius, D. Merezhkovsky and the “early” Bryusov. Modern in Russia were also represented by the pre-symbolist M. Minsky, prose writer L. N. Andreev, I. F. Annensky.
Subsequently, the ideas of decadence laid the foundationmany other modernist trends in literature. They are reflected in A. Blok and A. Akhmatova, in V. Bryusov and V. Kandinsky, in I. Stravinsky and many others, now called the classics of Russian literature.
Nowadays, this current begins its newround of flowering. In February of the last year of the last millennium, Marusya Klimova (writer) and Timur Novikov (artist) held a decadence festival called “Dark Nights”. And that was just the beginning. In 1005, a festival was held again in the Club on Brest in Moscow under the leadership of the leader of the Boston Tea Party group, journalist Vladimir Preobrazhensky. Today, literary decadence has separated from secular, from gothic and retro sites, virtually outlining its audience on the Internet. “Courtly decadence” in the modern world will soon reach the popularity of decadence during its greatest flourishing - in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
