DECADENTISMO. - Decadentism, as a spiritual attitude in which Schopenhauer’s pessimism, Baudelaire’s taste (fascination with mystery, horror of reality, renunciation of action), and a strong current of metaphysical idealism converged, established itself around 1880 in Parisian literary circles and found the formulation of its literary and artistic program in several youthful journals in 1885–86.
Without abandoning the cult of Baudelaire, the decadents discovered and adopted as their poets Verlaine, Mallarmé and, later, Rimbaud. From their circle emerged Laforgue, the symbolists Corbière, Tailhade, Samain, Guérin and Jammes, and the Flemish writers Maeterlinck, Rodenbach and Verhaeren. The figure of the novelist Huysmans, who converted to Catholicism, is singular, as is that of the poet Le Cardonnel, who likewise converted and became a priest. In Germany, decadence, having entered philosophy, found in Nietzsche the theorist of the decline of European civilization, as well as the advocate of the superman, and reached Heidegger’s “anguished being” and Jaspers’s “existence turned back upon itself.” Representatives of decadence were: in England, O. Wilde, A. Symons, L. Johnson, E. Dowson and W. B. Yeats; in Spain, Rubén Dario; in Russia, Merezkovskij.
In Italy, the first decadent tendencies appeared in the movement of the “Scapigliatura,” which developed in Milano between 1860 and 1880 and attempted, in an uncertain manner, to free poetry from the moralistic remnants of the Risorgimento aesthetic and to affirm its autonomy in the writer’s personality. Decadent elements that are certain and precise are found instead in the work of d’Annunzio, especially where it is more open to theoretical influences (Poema paradisiaca and lyrical prose from the Contemplazione della morte to the Libro segreto). Decadent inflections were also present among the poets associated with the “Convito,” directed by De Bosis, and finally among the crepuscolari and the intimisti. They are revealed above all in the religious inquietude latent in the culture from the end of the century onward, through the more thoughtful and meditative authors such as Fogazzaro and, in poetry, Graf, Aganoor Pompili and Giulio Salvadori. In this sense decadence also acts profoundly in the lyric poetry of G. Pascoli, who was the first to break with the local literary tradition and turn toward a mystical conception of poetry.
Filippo Donini-Ferruccio Ulivi