The Decadent Republic of Letters: Taste, Politics, and Cosmopolitan Community from Baudelaire to Beardsley (Haney Foundation Series)

241 Pages·2012·1.789 MB·English

by  Matthew Potolsky

Th e De cadent Republic of Letters

THE DE CADENT
REPUBLIC OF LETTERS
Taste, Politics, and Cosmopolitan Community
from Baudelaire to Beardsley
Matthew Potolsky
university of pennsylvania press
philadelphia
A volume in the Haney Foundation Series, established
in 1961 with the generous support of Dr. John Louis Haney.
Copyright © 2013 University of Pennsylvania Press
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used
for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this
book may be reproduced in any form by any means without
written permission from the publisher.
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104- 4112
www .upenn .edu/ pennpress
Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Potolsky, Matthew.
Th e decadent republic of letters : taste, politics, and cosmopolitan community from
Baudelaire to Beardsley / Matthew Potolsky. — 1st ed.
p. cm. — (Haney Foundation series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978- 0- 8122- 4449- 6 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Decadence (Literary movement)—England. 2. Decadence (Literary
movement)—France. 3. English literature—19th century—History and
criticism. 4. French literature—19th century—History and criticism. 5. Literature
and society—England—History—19th century. 6. Literature and society—France—
History—19th century. I. Title. II. Series: Haney Foundation series.
PN56.D45P67 2013
809'.034—dc23
2012014203
To my family

contents
Introduction. “Workers of the Final Hour” 1
Chapter 1. “Partisans Inconnus”: Aesthetic Community and
the Public Good in Baudelaire 20
Chapter 2. Th e Politics of Appreciation: Gautier and
Swinburne on Baudelaire 45
Chapter 3. Golden Books: Pater, Huysmans,
and De cadent Canonization 70
Chapter 4. A Mirror for Teachers: De cadent Pedagogy and
Public Education 103
Chapter 5. A Republic of (Nothing but) Letters:
Some Versions of De cadent Community 131
Postscript. Public Works: Stéphane Mallarmé’s
“Le Tombeau de Charles Baudelaire” 164
Notes 175
Bibliography 205
Index 225
Ac know ledg ments 231

introduction
“Workers of the Final Hour”
Community is made of what retreats from it.
—Jean- Luc Nancy, Th e Inoperative Community
With surprisingly few exceptions, the history of the de cadent movement has
been told from the perspective of a single national tradition— with due ac-
know ledg ment of the French (most often), En glish, American, or German
origin of this or that key fi gure or contributing intellectual thread. Written as
part of a growing interest among scholars in cosmopolitanism, international-
ism, and cross- Channel and transatlantic connections, Th e De cadent Republic
of Letters regards de cadence as fundamentally international in origin and ori-
entation. Th e various names artists and critics have applied to fi n- de- siècle
literary movements tend to be identifi ed with a single national tradition. Aes-
theticism was largely a British movement; Symbolism developed in France.
De cadence, by contrast, was an international movement from the beginning,
and had a lasting impact around the world well after the turn of the century.
Th is book focuses chiefl y on French and En glish writers of the second half of
the nineteenth century, but the stylistic and thematic paradigms I tease out of
the movement were adapted by writers from the United States, Latin America,
Central Eu rope, and other regions. Defi ned by more than the familiar set of
images, themes, and stylistic traits normally associated with the movement,
de cadence, as I present it here, is a characteristic mode of reception, a stance
that writers take in relationship to their culture and to the cosmopolitan tradi-
tions that infl uence them.
Th is stance originates in a transatlantic encounter: Charles Baudelaire’s
translations of and critical writings on Edgar Allan Poe. Th ese texts provided