Staring from the definition found in the dictionary, the decadence is a literary movement especially of late 19th-century France and England characterized by refined aestheticism, artifice, and the quest for new sensations. [1] In decadence, important is not necessarily what is seen, but the hermeneutics: what man feels when he sees the creative result of this feeling. It is the current that requires a co-operation from the public to the artistic work for the purposes of re-creation. The image proposed by the decadents is a violent one, an image that shocks by having a fascinating and terrifying power. It is a image that stimulates and also stimulates. To achieve such effects, these images (whether they are painted, engraved or created through the word) should be wandered as much as possible from the usual. The trick lies in the colour, in the innovation, in the way of using the beauty of the jewelry and the gems. For the decadents not life is devoted to art but art is devoted to life, life is art. Decadence shared in the creation of space for the later ascension of an internationally oriented avant-garde; and lastly, Decadence also required the creator to be independent of the surrounding society, thus making it one of the first manifestations of an alternative subculture.
Decadence in the visual arts represented the dynamic duality of order and chaos, the painful moment of the birth of a new life and a new structure. [2] The same feeling is shared by the dandy, Dorian Grey, the character in the novel ‘The Picture of Dorian Grey’ by Oscar Wilde. For his decadent spirit, as it seen in his literary works Huysmans or Wilde, the love for the artificial is nothing else but the love for perfection, where the time does not leave marks. They are dandys who live in a world made by themselves, they create their own lives as if their lives were some asocial shows, turned the wrong way, and loving the art because they replaced their lives with it. The provoked and induced sensations are so strong that such characters can not distinguish the reality from art and vice versa anymore, as probably happened with the decadent artists who lived with such intensity of feelings, mistaking their own lives with the artworks. One of the works in which the decadent movement makes its presence felt is in The Picture of Dorian Grey, by Oscar Wilde, considered to be his most significant work. The Picture of Dorian Gray is the only published novel by Oscar Wilde, appearing as the lead story in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine on 20 June 1890, printed as the July 1890 issue of this magazine.[3]
The Term Paper on Life Love And Death The Work Of Adam Fuss
Life, Love and Death: The work of Adam Fuss Peanut butter and jelly, a common combination of two separate entities, most people have heard of this duo, many enjoy it, but only one manufacturer packaged them together in a handy snack. Much like the tasty treat that is Goobers is the tasty duo of Adam Fuss and Roland Barthes. Two separate men, Adam Fuss and Roland Barthes put together in one ...
The magazine’s editors feared the story was indecent as submitted, so they censored roughly 500 words, without Wilde’s knowledge, before publication. Wilde later revised the story for book publication, making substantial alterations, deleting controversial passages, adding new chapters and including an aphoristic Preface which has since become famous in its own right.[4] Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde’s protagonist is a character dominated by negativity, leading a life of debauchery. In his case, immorality will have tragic consequences. Sin seems to fascinate him, he also draws in this kind of life other young people like Adrian Singleton and Alan Campbell. Its immorality consequences will be also suffered by the young actress, Sibyl Vane, the one Dorian falls in love with and it ends by destroying her life. Seduction is followed by him leaving her, a move that brings her to despair and pushes her to commit suicide. The echoes of his immoral life are heard by the high society which he frequents, but the only thing Dorian Grey cares about is his own self, his beauty and his youth. His moral distortion is associated with the distortion of the picture made by his friend, Basil Hallward, this being the only element which has a connection between the two lives Dorian lives. Here is shown the eternal theme of “beauty without age and life without death”.
The Essay on The Picture of Dorian Gray: as Lord Henry Says
... to Dorian or simply Lord Henry mentors and encourages Dorian to live a life devoted to nothing but pleasure. The impact Lord Henry haves on Dorian gave him ... the mystery right in front of them. In this case, Lord Henry represents beauty as something that is there but we are not ... talked about, and that is not being talked about,” Lord Henry states to Basil who no longer seeks the hype of having a ...
Basil Hallward is the one that links the two lives, the two faces of Dorian, which at first is innocent, passive, unconscious of his beauty and strength, then he transforms under the influence of Lord Henry. His conception is hedeonistic. If Basil is the art creator, the picture’s creator, Lord Henry is the creator of Dorian’s new aspect. The experience of the sin is finished by killing his friend, Basil Hallward. His act does not stirs remorse, his only concern being to erase the traces in order to avoid getting discovered. His diabolism can be compared to the one of Des Esseintes , which attempts to transform a young man, Auguste Langlois, into an assassin, through vice, but the difference is that the Huysmans’s character has not the power to commit a murder himself. The murder is followed by the destruction of the portrait. A strong element related to the decadent movement is the dandyism, the social phenomenon, meaning a man who places particular importance upon physical appearance, refined language, and leisurely hobbies, pursued with the appearance of nonchalance in a cult of Self.[5] A first determination of dandyism is shown when old Lord Fermor says to his nephew Henry Wotton “Well, Harry, what brings you out so early? I thought you dandies never got up till two, and were not visible till five.” [6]
Lord Henry Wotton is fully a dandy, most of the qualities found at him. His modality of choosing the people he comes into strengthens the claim that Henry is a dandy, ” I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their intellects.”[7] The first principle of aestheticism, the philosophy of art by which Oscar Wilde lived, is that art serves no other purpose than to offer beauty. Throughout The Picture of Dorian Gray, beauty reigns. It is a means to revitalize the wearied senses, as indicated by the effect that Basil’s painting has on the cynical Lord Henry. It is also a means of escaping the brutalities of the world: Dorian distances himself, not to mention his consciousness, from the horrors of his actions by devoting himself to the study of beautiful things—music, jewels, rare tapestries. In a society that prizes beauty so highly, youth and physical attractiveness become valuable commodities. Lord Henry reminds Dorian of as much upon their first meeting, when he laments that Dorian will soon enough lose his most precious attributes.
The Essay on Dorian Picture Painting Gray
When an artist composes a great piece of work, he puts his heart into it. Part of that person is invested into its creation, which makes it more than just a statue in the park, or a picture on a wall. In Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, more than the artist's heart is put into his painting. Basil Hallward, an artist, paints an amazing lifelike portrait of a man named Dorian Gray. ...
In Chapter Seventeen, the Duchess of Monmouth suggests to Lord Henry that he places too much value on these things; indeed, Dorian’s eventual demise confirms her suspicions. For although beauty and youth remain of utmost importance at the end of the novel—the portrait is, after all, returned to its original form—the novel suggests that the price one must pay for them is exceedingly high. Indeed, Dorian gives nothing less than his soul.[8] The Picture of Dorian Grey reunites so many reasons and literary themes as the theme of the mirror, the theme of dual personality, which were common even to the Romantics, but Oscar Wilde relates them in the sphere of decadent art which expresses through the debate about the morality contained in this novel.
All the obscure and stylistic elements of the decadent literature work as a mean of escape from traditionalism and thus to create a new form of art that is more concerned with the earthly essence of people and how it affects their personality: “ The ideal which the hero aims to establish by cutting the plenary living without ethical or religious inhibitions, to all sensations, through a perfect harmonization between affect and intellect, by accepting the supremacy of senses as a rule of life focuses on the formula ” A New Hedonism “. “[9]
Works Cited
“Decadent movement – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.” Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Jan. 2013. . Expers, Nominis. “Hedonism.” Angelfire: Welcome to Angelfire. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Jan. 2013. . “SparkNotes: The Picture of Dorian Gray: Themes, Motifs & Symbols.” SparkNotes: Today’s Most Popular Study Guides. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Jan. 2013. . “The Conflict Between Aestheticism and Morality in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray » Writing Program » Boston University.” Boston University. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Jan. 2013. . Wilde, Oscar, Edgar Mansfield, and James L. Thielman. The picture of Dorian Gray. Paris: Charles Carrington …, 1908. Print.
The Essay on Theme And Its Importance
Theme is the principal phrase or idea behind a story. It plays an important role in the notable accomplishment of Shirley Jacksons The Lottery, The Open Boat written by Stephen Crane, and Battle Royal by Ralph Ellison. Each of these stories portray an important and powerful theme which is a valuable contribution to the success of each work. The Lottery is a story about human sacrifice and ...
[1] American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition [2] http://fnewsmagazine.com/2007-may/art-&-decadence.php
[3] The Picture of Dorian Gray (Penguin Classics) – Introduction [4] Notes on The Picture of Dorian Gray – An overview of the text, sources, influences, themes and a summary of The Picture of Dorian Gray [5] Cult de soi-même Charles Baudelaire, “Le Dandy”, noted in Susann Schmid, “Byron and Wilde: The Dandy in the Public Sphere” in Julie Hibbard et al. , eds. The Importance of Reinventing Oscar: versions of Wilde during the last 100 years 2002 [6] Oscar, Wilde “The Picture of Dorian Grey “ , Chapter 3 [7] Oscar, Wilde “The Picture of Dorian Grey”, Chapter 1 [8] http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/doriangray/themes.html
[9] Gheorghe, Mihaela, Dandysmul – mod de existenţă artistic, Cluj-Napoca : Limes, 2004., p. 150
