Andrew Lang's Essay 'Decadence'

Another poet and novelist of the same time period, Andrew Lang, wrote an essay, simply titled
‘Decadence’ addressing the movement after he observed a newspaper article praising a recently deceased young
man (whom he calls X) for his decadent lifestyle. Lang expressed that the article’s deceased subject who was,
“expressive of a life which had itself so much of the swift, disastrous, and suicidal impetus of genius” was given a
false title as genius by the newspaper. To him, the decadent concept, romanticizing one’s life and perceiving
hedonism as a valuable worldly truth was not only dangerous, but also silly, saying, “The ideas of life on which X
ruined himself have been the ideas of hundreds of boys, of whom the majority laugh at their

past selves in a year or
two.”
Other than poets and novelists throwing remarks about the subject, psychologists have come to their own
conclusions about decadence. ‘The External Person’ by Claudia G. Mircescu explains the possible deep
psychological reasons why writers and readers are drawn to such a theme. “Starting in France at the century’s turn,
the Decadence is based on models of romantic irrationalism. Refusing the positive view (according to which the
science and reason could guarantee an objective knowledge of reality), the decadent considers that all these cannot
offer him the real knowledge of a mysterious and enigmatic reality.” This conclusion means that the raising number
of decadent writers during the time was part of a widespread idea that true valuable things in life where not the
wholesome pursuits of past times but instead more instinctive and not of any preset ideology other than what comes
to people naturally, which in this case seems to be the constant stimulating of one’s own senses in new ways. The
very reason behind this lust for stimulation is also explored by Mircescu, in which she blames the overall direction