Decadent Subjects: The Idea of Decadence in Art, Literature, Philosophy, and Culture of the Fin de Siecle in Europe

Charles Bernheimer described decadence as a stimulant that bends thought out of shape, deforming traditional conceptual molds . In this posthumously published work, Berheimer succeeds in making a critical concept out of this perennially fashionable, rarely understood term. The book is a coherent and moving picture of fin de siecle decadence. The collection of essays shows the contradictions of the phenomenon, which is both a condition and a state of mind. In seeking to show why people have failed to give a satisfactory account of the term decadence, Bernheimer argues that we often mistakenly take decadence to represent something concrete, that we see as some sort of agent. His salutary response is to return to those authors and artists whose work constitutes the topos of decadence, rereading key late 19th-century authors such as Nietzsche, Zola, Hardy, Wilde, Moreau and Freud to rediscover the very dynamics of the decadent. Through careful analysis of the literature, art, and music of the fin de siecle including a discussion of the many faces of Salome, Bernheimer leaves us with a multidimensional look at decadence, all the more important as we emerge from our own fin de siecle.