Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 06.djvu/47

* DECADENTS. 35 DECAISNE. have been born of the demouiaeism of Baudelaire, the exaggerated realism in Zola, the haughty pes- simism and gorgeous indifference of Leconte de Lisle, and the over-refining neurosis of the Gon- eourts, against all which influences, except that of Baudelaire, the Decadents nevertheless revolted wholly or in part like unnatural children. As for Baudelaire, they adoringly adopted him as their particular sire and model. Their more im- mediate avatars were Verlaine and ilallarme. Among the Decadents of Paris there developed two general gioups which naturally intermingled to some degree. The less serious class associated their verse with the chanson populairc. They did not shrink from repulsive themes, brutal cochonneries. Rabelaisian wit, the authors glory- ing in the extravaganzas of 'eccentrics' writing for tlie pavement public. Their songs were put forth in all sorts of loose, unkempt forms of verse — varieties such as had never been dreamed of in Paris. To whet their own morbid inspira- tions, they drank absinthe, and ate hasliish and morphine. They celebrated the effects of dissipa- tion and disease, and were proud to belong among the poetes maudits. They were noisy poseurs, often most ingenious and clever, and always sur- prising. Their cafes, notably the Chat Xoir, were long frequented by a public greedy for the latest sensation. It was the more serious class of Parisian Deca- dents who became a part of the S.ymbolist move- ment. They were the delicate and aristocratic brothers of the song-writers. They reflected the same traits and motives, but in a more fine- grained, literary, and enlightened manner, and in the higher forms of verse. Thej', too. identified themselves with urban life, and exalted its facti- tious stimulations and the elaborate and refined corruptions of an excessive or declining civiliza- tion. They disdained the natural, the simple, the rural, the healthful. They were rare {esthetes, dwelling in Baudelaire's 'artificial paradises,' with ansemic, satiny complexions, victims of goaded nerves, supreme egoists, in search of the unusual, the abnormal and the difficult. They prided themselves on being savants jni/s- tificateurs, and were distinguished by maladive airs and efi'eminate graces. What few ideas these poets, in their effaced cult of Hartmann and Buddhism, harbored and exjiressed, were voluntarily involved in mystic complexity, in ob- scurantism. They wished to substitute sensations for ideas, and art for morals. Their theories and practices in the more intimate matter of the art of poetry, however, stood out as interesting and original. It was their aim always to suggest and to mask, never to name or expose. They employed the semi efTects, the neutral tones, and relied on pale motives, evaporative nuances, and on lingering, caressing extenuations of results. More conspicuous was their ambitious confusing of the functions of the senses, insisting on color in music and on music in color, and finding forms and perfumes in both. Their main pui-pose in this sphere was to interpret emotions as music and to marry it to poetry, as devoted Wagnerians. They sought to wed the flow of harmonies to liquid verse, to emphasize floating indecisions and extremely mobile sensuousnesses, earning thereby the name of 'deliquescents.' In all this they courted the neurotic, the psychical, the supranatural, and reacted against the mate- rialistic and plastic cults of the realists and the Parnassians. The most tangible of their innovations lay in their forms of verse — their tens brisis — in which they displaced attempts at blank verse or rhymed prose, and strove to expand the formal and contracted limitations of French versifica- tion. They wrote 'familiar alexandrines,' and verse of more than twelve feet ; they discarded the ctesura at the hemistich, and the alternating process of male and female rhymes. In fact, rhymes and fixed forms were generally abandoned for assonances, cadences, repetitions, and for jjolymorphous lines which were meant to be the tonal and visible counterpart and representation of the themes versified. The Decadents of Paris were specifically little more tluin curiosities : but in their connection with Symbolism they were not without effect on literature and art. Indeed, it may almost be said tlutt tlie Decadents were merely the 'Sym- bolist.-,' wlio failed. Among those who have been for one reason or another or at various times as- sociated in France, in the public mind, with de- codi'sme may be mentioned (to name a few among many) ilatirice Barr6s, De Regnicr. Giistave Kahn; the two Belgians ilaeterlinck and Roden- baeh : the Greek, liortas ; the Americans, Viele- Griflin and Stuart Merrill. The Theatre Libre was also to some e.xtent identified with the De- cadents. In other continental countries may perhaps be cited the Swede Ola Hansson, the Norwegian Hjalniar Christiansen, the Austrian Hermann Bahr. In England Aubrey Beardsley ( q.v. ), with his fantastic, 'unwholesome' picto- rial art, was considered a conspicuous Decadent. There have been no' very characteristic echoes in English poetry, because blank verse, vers lihre, etc., were not new to it. Consult: R,. Doumic, Lcs jeunes (1896) : G. Pellissier, Etudes de Ut- teraiure contemporaine (1898) ; A. S_Tnons, The t^ynt bolist Movement in Literature ( London, 1899 ). DECAEN, de-kax', CnABi.E.s JI.^tthieu Isi- DOKE, Count (1769-1832). A French general, famous principally for his share in the victory of Hohenlinden in 1800. In 1802 he went to India as Captain-General of the French possessions there, was obliged to surrender to the English in 1810, and, liaving returned in ISll, was placed in command of the anny in Catalonia. He com- pelled the English to raise the siege of Tarra- gona, and was created cotmt in 1812. When Xapoleon abdicated. Dccaen entered the service of Lotiis XV^III., but on the Emperor's return from Elba again accepted a command under liim. After the battle of Waterloo he lived in retirement. DECAGON (Gk. Sixa, deica, ten + yuvia, 1/6)1 iVi, angle). A geometric plane figure of ten sides and ten angles. When both the sides and the angles are equal, the figure is called a regular decagon. This figure is obtained from a regular pentagon (q.v.) by describing a circle around the latter, bisecting the ares between its vertices, and drawing lines from these vertices to the points of section. See Polygons. DECAISNE, dc-kan', Joseph (1809-82). A French botanist, bom in Brussels. He studied medicine and natural science in Paris, and in 18-30 became connected with the Museum of Natu- ral History, in which he was made professor of botany in I8I8. Three years later he was