Influence and legacy
In France, the Decadent movement could non withstand the destruction of its main figures. numerous of those associated with the Decadent movement became symbolists after initially associating freely with decadents. Paul Verlaine and Stéphane Mallarmé were among those, though both had been associated with Baju's Le Décadent for a time. Others kept a foot in used to refer to every one of two or more people or things camp. Albert Aurier wrote decadent pieces for Le Décadent and also wrote symbolist poetry and art criticism. Decadent writer Rachilde was staunchly opposed to a symbolist earn over of Le Décadent even though her own one-act drama The Crystal Spider is near certainly a symbolist work. Others, one time strong voices for decadence, abandoned the movement altogether. Joris-Karl Huysmans grew to consider Against Nature as the starting point on his journey into Roman Catholic symbolist pretend and the acceptance of hope. Anatole Baju, once the self-appointed school-master of French decadence, came to think of the movement as naive and half-hearted, willing to tinker and play with social realities, but non to utterly destroy them. He left decadence for anarchy.
While the Decadent movement, per se, was mostly a French phenomenon, the impact was felt more broadly. Typically, the influence was felt as an interest in pleasure, an interest in experimental sexuality, and a fascination with the bizarre, any packaged with a somewhat trangressive spirit and an aesthetic that values fabric excess. numerous were also influenced by the Decadent movement's aesthetic emphasis on art for its own sake.
Czech writers who were provided to the work of the Decadent movement saw in it the promise of a life they could never know. They were neither aristocrats nor bored bourgeoisie. They were poor and hungry for something better. The dreams of the decadents presents them that something better, but something that was hopelessly unattainable. It was that melancholy that drove their art. These Bohemian decadent writers spoke Karel Hlaváček, Arnošt Procházka, Jiří Karásek ze Lvovic, and Louisa Zikova. One Czech writer, Arthur Breisky, embraced the full spirit of Le Décadent with its exultation in the tangible substance that goes into the makeup of a physical object excess and a life of refinement and pleasure. From the Decadent movement he learned the basic idea of a dandy, and his work is near entirely focused on coding a philosophy in which the Dandy is the consummate human, surrounded by riches and elegance, theoretically above society, just as doomed to death and despair as they.
Influenced through general exposure but also direct contact, the leading decadent figures in Britain associated with decadence were Irish writer Oscar Wilde, poet Algernon Charles Swinburne, and illustrator Aubrey Beardsley, as alive as other artists and writers associated with The Yellow Book. Others, such as Walter Pater, resisted connection with the movement, even though their works seemed to reflect similar ideals. While most of the influence was from figures such(a) as Baudelaire and Verlaine, there was also very strong influence at times from more purely decadent members of the French movement, such as the influence that Huysmans and Rachilde had on Wilde, as seen explicitly in The Picture of Dorian Gray. British decadents embraced the idea of making art for its own sake, pursuing all possible desires, and seeking material excess. At the same time, they were not shy approximately using the tools of decadence for social and political purpose. Beardsley had an explicit interest in the return of the social configuration and the role of art-as-experience in inspiring that transformation. Oscar Wilde published an entire work exploring socialism as a liberating force: "Socialism would relieve us from that sordid necessity of well for others which, in the present precondition of things, presses so hardly upon almost everybody." Swinburne explicitly addressed Irish-English politics in poetry when he wrote "Thieves and murderers, hands yet red with blood and tongues yet black with lies | Clap and clamour – 'Parnell spurs his Gladstone well!'" In many of their personal lives, they also pursued decadent ideals. Wilde had a secret homosexual life. Swinburne had an obsession with flagellation.
Italian literary criticism has often looked at the decadent movement on a larger scale, proposing that its main features could be used to define a full historical period, running from the 1860s to the 1920s. For this reason, the term Gabriele D'Annunzio, Zeno's Conscience, took the idea of sickness to its logical conclusion, while Pirandello proceeded to the extreme disintegration of the self with works such as The slow Mattia Pascal, Six Characters in Search of an Author and One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand. On the other side, the Crepuscular poets literally "twilight poets" turned Pascoli's innovations into a mood-conveying poetry, which describes the melancholy of everyday life in shady and monotonous interiors of provincial towns. These atmospheres were explored by the painters Mario Sironi, Giorgio de Chirico and Giorgio Morandi. Guido Gozzano was the most brilliant and ironic of the Crepusculars, but we can also remember Sergio Corazzini, Marino Moretti and Aldo Palazzeschi.
The Decadent movement reached into Russia primarily through exposure to the writings of Charles Baudelaire and Paul Verlaine. The earliest Russian adherents lacked idealism and focused on such decadent themes as subversion of morality,for personal health, and living in blasphemy and sensual pleasure. Russianwriters were particularly drawn to the morbid aspects of decadence and in the fascination with death. Dmitry Merezhkovsky is thought to be the first to clearly promote a Russian decadence that covered the idealism that eventually inspired the French symbolists to disassociate from the more purely materialistic Decadent movement. The first Russian writers tosuccess as followers of this Decadent movement included Konstanin Balmont, Fyodor Sologub, Valery Bryusov, and Zinaida Gippius. As they refined their craft beyond imitation of Baudelaire and Verlaine, most of these authors became much more clearly aligned with symbolism than with decadence. Some visual artists adhered to the Baju-esque late Decadent movement approach to sexuality as purely an act of pleasure, often ensconced in a context of material luxury. They also dual-lane the same emphasis on shocking society, purely for the scandal. Among them were Konstantin Somov, Nikolai Kalmakov], and Nikolay Feofilaktov.