Aestheticism And Decadence

Front 1

Robert Buchanan (The Fleshly School of Poetry: Mr. D. G. Rossetti)

Back 1

--Against Rosetti
--Rosetti and other fleshly poets have poets of great color but no subtance
--while other poets use animal sensations as devices--rosetti and others use them as themes.
--perverse.
--Love portrayed in these poems is not spiritual but carnal

Front 2

Walter Pater Preface to the Renaissance

Back 2

Beauty, like all human experience, is relative
-Defining the concrete, not the abstract, types of beauty is the purpose of aesthetics
-Critics should ask how a particular poem, or song, or painting, affects them
-What is beauty's relationship to truth or experience? We probably can't know the answer, and we definitely shouldn't care.
-Critic identifies beauty and determines how it is produced
-Critics cannot determine which period or style was better, since all eras and all styles have great artists, but they should select the greatest artists
-William Blake: "The ages are all equal, but genius is always above its age."
-Tough to separate the best sections of art from the common, ordinary sections

Front 3

Walter Pater "Leonardo da Vinci" from the Renaissance

Back 3

-Leonardo da Vinci was a great artist, detached from the world by his incredible genius
-curiosity and the desire for beauty are the two defining qualities of his work
-according to Pater, da Vinci perceives things differently from ordinary men,

Front 4

Walter Pater Conclusion to the Renaissance

Back 4

-Physical life is a passing sensation created by a combination of natural elements
-Thought is even more transient, filled with individual impressions and fleeting moments
-Experience is the only worthwhile end in a fading world
-Hedonism: enjoy every moment, because you only have so many of them
-"To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstacy, is success in life."
-always form opinions, but never keep just one, especially not someone else's
-philosophy is just a tool to help men capture pleasure that might otherwise escape them
-we are all going to die soon, so enjoy art and music to make life worthwhile

Front 5

Walter Pater Postscript to Appreciations

Back 5

-the terms classical and romantic distinguish between two different styles
-however, both styles are united under the category of art
-many false critics try to make the classics seem boring, when in fact they are merely old
-classics defined by an "order in beauty"
-romantic works defined by a "strangeness in beauty"
-great artists have to balance curiosity and beauty to produce great works
-romance has to create beauty from unlikely elements
-born classicists are obsessed with the forms of the past
-born romanticists seek "original, untried matter" and shape it into a solid structure that eventually becomes like a classic
-romantic and classic are relative qualities: The Odyssey is more romantic than The Iliad, because it places more emphasis on curiosity and strangeness
-a critic can determine how classical or romantic a work is, but an author should not be too concerned with labels, since qualities of classics and romances can be easily mixed
-all art is united against the stupidity which ignores ideas and the vulgarity which ignores style

Front 6

Oscar Wilde Preface to the Picture of Dorian Gray

Back 6

-Impressionism and Symbolism fall under the category of "Decadence"
-Decadence, as a style of writing, is marked by "intense self-consciousness, a restless curiosity in research, an over-subtilizing refinement upon refinement, a spiritual and moral perversity."
-Symons thinks that the Decadent school of art is unhealthy, and does not want to be healthy
-opposed to the clarity and order of classical writings
-Decadence is the result of an artificial, uncertain, materialistic society
-a man named Stephane Mallarme is representative of Decadence
-Mallarme writes beautiful, strange works
-Marllarme does not want ordinary people to understand his writings
-confusing, elitist nature of Decadence
-Decadence is "fascinating, repellent, and instinctively artificial"