Don on Bauer (2012)

The late Roger Bauer (1918-2005) originally published Die schöne Décadence. Geschichte eines literarischen Paradoxon in 2001. As Bauer explains in an afterword, La Belle Décadence is not just his own translation, but an edited and revised version of this study, which synthesizes decades of scholarship and teaching. It is a philological-historical inquiry in the "littérature de décadence." Adopting a strictly diachronic point of view, Bauer seeks to discern the process of rehabilitation of a term commonly used in a negative sense, and to discover the glorious but brief apex of Decadence, as well as its subsequent décadence (8).

In the first part, entitled "Les Mots: les mots, les concepts et leur histoire," Bauer traces the etymology and usage of the words "decadencia," "déchéance" and "décadence" in the first chapter, and "décadent" and "dilettante" in the second, using a wide variety of authors, from medieval chroniclers via Rousseau and Montesquieu to Désiré Nisard, professor at the Collège de France, who tentatively started to reconsider the term, culminating in Baudelaire's use of "littérature de décadence" in a positive way.

Bauer adopts A.E. Carter's distinction of three stages in the evolution of literature of decadence (The Idea of Decadence in French Literature, Toronto: U of Toronto Press, 1958). Barbey, Baudelaire, the young Gautier and the young Flaubert represent a first period, influenced by Romanticism, which privileged the cult of the artificial as well as, more importantly, the cult of absolute Beauty. No longer bound by the "True" and the "Good," since the death of God had also caused the dissolution of the trinity formed by "le Bien, le Vrai et le Beau" (11), the Poet, as the new "high priest of absolute beauty", opened the gates to artificial paradises. During the second stage after 1850, medical and naturalist discourse on dégénérescence influenced the literature of Decadence, leading to decrepit and hysterical protagonists such as those of the Goncourt brothers and Huysmans's Des Esseintes. The third stage, after the 1880s, saw a more popularized and vulgarized version of Decadence, with authors such as Catulle Mendès, Jean Lorrain, and Rachilde, "des érotomanes grotesques et pathétiques" (17). Neglecting the Credo of the first, "celui du Salut par l'Art et par la Beauté" (18), this late form of Decadence later often became identified with the Decadent movement, wrongly according to Bauer who sees the search for true Beauty as its essence. Further writers discussed include Bourget, Péladan and Barrès, as well as Swedish author Ola Hansson, and Austrian novelists Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Thomas Mann. While Bauer's demonstrations give evidence of a vast knowledge of European literature at the time, these chapters are rather descriptive, making it hard to follow the argument.

The second part, "Les Images: Topoï et mythes de la littérature de décadence," consists of diachronic studies of representative topoi and their treatment in Decadent literature: figures such as Nero and Hérodiade-Salomé, church Latin, rococo, and symbolic landscapes with elements such as greenhouses, marshes and lagoons. These studies serve to verify Bauer's identification of a historical evolution, which roughly follows the same pattern: from glorification and elevation to "déglorification" and "déhéroïsation" (12). In a chapter on "Néron, le plus grand poète que le monde ait eu," Bauer goes back to the Latin sources, Tacitus, Suetonius, and Victorinus, among others, establishing the portrayal of Nero's horrific deeds in order to demonstrate a later improvement of his reputation: Nero first becomes a "grandiose monster" in texts by Diderot, Moritz, Sade, Staël, Byron and Staël, and later a "free and sovereign artist" in descriptions by the young Gautier and Flaubert, only to be neglected by Huysmans. Bauer demonstrates the changing perception of Nero in an erudite way; however, it is unclear how it fits into his overall project of analyzing littérature de décadence, unless this becomes a meaningless category encompassing eighteenth- and nineteenth-century texts. 

The third part is entitled "Le Regain," but announced in the introduction as an analysis of the "la décadence de la décadence." The first chapter analyzes authors of the late Decadence such as Rachilde, but also serves as a critical survey of other critics of Decadence such as Mario Praz, A.E. Carter and Jean Pierrot. While both authors and critics can be considered part of Decadence's legacy, the engagement with critics seems a bit out of place coming so late in the book, particularly since Bauer refers to them in earlier parts. Further chapters turn to the legacy of Decadence in other European countries, such as Scandinavia and Austria, with an entire chapter devoted to Nietzsche and Decadence.

La Belle Décadence offers many interesting avenues of exploration regarding littérature de décadence and its reception in other European literatures. Too often, however, the demonstration is impeded by tangents, and arguments are lost in loosely-constructed paragraphs and chapters. The editorial choice to leave quotations both in German and their French translations in the body of the text does not improve its clarity. Roger Bauer's admirable and vast erudition brings multiple fascinating facets of La Belle Décadence to light, but his study ultimately remains lacking in coherence and persuasive argumentation.