DECADENTISM. - Decadentism, as a spiritual attitude in which the pessimism of Schopenhauer, the taste of Baudelaire (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 received the formulation of its literary and artistic program in certain youthful journals in 1885-'86.
Without renouncing the cult of Baudelaire, the decadents discovered and adopted as their poets Verlaine, Mallarmé and, later, Rimbaud. From their circle came Laforgue, the symbolists Corbière, Tailhade, Samain, Guérin, Jammes and the Flemish writers Maeterlinck, Rodenbach and Verhaeren. Singular is the figure of the novelist Huysmans, converted to Catholicism, and notable too is that of the poet Le Cardonnel, likewise converted and a priest. In Germany decadentism, having penetrated into philosophy, found in Nietzsche the theorist of the decadence of European civilization, as well as the champion of the superman, and arrived at the "anguished being" of Heidegger and the "existence turned back upon itself" of Jaspers. Representatives of decadentism were: in England, O. Wilde, A. Symons, L. Johnson, E. Dowson, W. B. Yeats; in Spain, Rubén Darío; in Russia, Merezhkovsky.
In Italy the first decadentist stirrings were in the movement of the "Scapigliatura" that developed in Milan between 1860 and 1880, which attempted in an uncertain manner to free poetry from the moralistic residues of Risorgimento aesthetics and to affirm its autonomy in the personality of the writer. Sure and precise decadentist elements are found instead in the work of d'Annunzio, especially where it is most open to theoretical suggestions (Poema paradisiaco and the lyrical prose from the Contemplazione della morte to the Libro segreto). Decadent inflections were also present in the poets around the "Convito" directed by De Bosis, and finally in the crepuscular poets and the intimists. They are revealed, however, above all in the religious restlessness latent in culture from the end of the century onward, through the most thoughtful and meditative authors such as Fogazzaro and, in poetry, Graf, Aganoor Pompili and Giulio Salvadori. In this sense decadentism acts profoundly also 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.
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Filippo Donini-Ferruccio Ulivi