‘Let us play a game of decadence…’

Abstract

The article polemizes with V. Milchina’s paper that focused on the discussion of the problem of decadence and/or decay in French and Russian intellectual cultures. The author examines several texts that feature the general cultural concept of decay in its meaning of decadence as used in literature in close relation to the concepts of modernity and nihilism. Based on his reconstruction of C. Baudelaire’s polemic with the French writer Barbey d,Aurevilly, S. Fokin concludes that, thanks to their literary dispute, the French word décadence developed a new literary, political, psychological, social, and, most importantly, modern (in reference to modernity) sense, which separates this lexeme from its earlier historical and general cultural meaning of decay. Following an overview of Nietzsche’s latter reaction to Baudelaire’s work, the author emphasizes the concept of ‘the consciousness of decadence,’ which is supposed to reveal the problematic nature of the use of décadence as the name of a literary movement. It refers to a matter more substantial, but also fleeting, transient, and ephemeral — in other words, modern, and therefore, a phenomenon of literary fashion.