The decadent is a type of the last man, the supremely
sophisticated man, who self-consciously dallies with the frills
of life while nature prepares its retribution--death at the
hands of the barbarians who wait outside the gates. The
decadent is a somber man. He does not enjoy his obsessive
pursuit of pleasure. He detests the great city, his megalopolis,
which holds him captive through the fatal appeal of its artifi-
ciality. His perversion is not merely a clinical aberration; it
cannot be understood solely in psychological terms. It rather
reflects a metaphysical sterility. It signifies that the decadent
(who confesses as much) has reached the limits of his possi-
bilities. A deathwish seizes him and impels him on an active
quest of damnation, destruction, annihilation. Love becomes
impossible for him. The woman of the French decadence is
no longer a wife to man or a mother to children. She in-
carnates activity, he passivity, in an extraordinary reversal
of roles. Their attraction for each other is destructive and
sado-masochistic. Love leads to death, not life; it ceases to
fructify, to yield possibility. It, too, is an aspect of the death-
wish and of the total collapse of hearth and home, of religion
and society, during the cataclysmic last days, the decadence,
of Western civilization.

Such is the fatalistic message of the French decadence. And
fundamentally it is a religious message.

Over the years several men have been invaluable to me
as catalysts. I am especially grateful to Dr. James M. Smith
( Emory University), mentor and friend, who first interested
me in the subject of French decadence and let me profit from
his vast erudition. I am indebted to Dr. A. E. Carter ( Uni-
versity of South Carolina) with whom I threshed out many
a problem. His criticism was always incisive. To Dr. Jules
C. Alciatore ( University of Georgia), who generously gave
of his time and knowledge, in the midst of his own work on
Stendhal, I am deeply grateful. Two faithful catalysts have
been Dr. Maxwell A. Smith ( University of Chattanooga) and
Dr. Howard Sutton ( Vanderbilt University). Their cogent
comments and their encouraging influence have been deeply
appreciated through the years. To Dr. Renato Poggioli

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