Manchu Decadance

Decadence Mandchoue

I think readers in this group might be interested in this book, and I humbly submit an essay for your enjoyment.

http://www.librarything.com/work/11136538

http://thelectern.blogspot.tw/2014/02/decadence-mandchoue-china-memoirs-of_9.htm....
http://thelectern.blogspot.tw/2014/02/decadence-mandchoue-china-memoirs-of.html

Murr, that's splendid, chapeau, applause, standing ovation---have a bathtub of evil-coloured orchids...!!

(The top link is dead, but the bottom goes to Part 1, and from there one gets to Part 2 nicely.)

Most interesting, most fascinating, most insightful. I didn't realise the connection between Backhouse and Wilde, and Wilde has been much on my mind these days. If I may, I think I'll want to quote at least one paragraph of yours elsewhere by and by, on Decadent aesthetic...

I must get those "memoirs", what you say about their linguistic promiscuity interests me just as much (maybe more) as the contents.

Why did it take so long to be published?

Thanks Lola!

Go ahead and quote freely. :)

Why did it take so long to be published?

I have no idea, but I think Trevor-Roper's nasty book had a lot to do with it. I really hope Earnshaw books produce the second manuscript Backhouse gave Hoeppli.

Hm, odd, one would think that any nastiness would only make it more tempting to the curious.

(There's a LT-sponsored group read of Dorian Gray afoot, but the discussions are shaping up as rather hopeless. It seems a great majority is having trouble finding any literary value or homosexual subtext to the book! :) Not sure I have the wherewithal to push that cart uphill at the moment...

When was the last time you read it? I'd like to discuss the moral aspects in view of Wilde's religious feelings (or lack thereof), and his doubts concerning the strength of "the moral" (he felt he overdid it--failure of nerve or craft?)--but, you know, discuss it with someone not bored or hostile.

Maybe I'll just post a few words in my thread...)

It's been a long time since I read it, I confess.

I did check out the discussion, but really, it was more than I could bear. The ignorance……And that Spalding creature splitting his academic hairs. Good for you for taking the discussion to a new level. You are a braver woman than me. :)

Or, I'm an idiot.

:)

pppft.

so what's your take on the moral aspect?

I don't know, I have to get back into the groove of what I knew and felt about Wilde. An Irish Protestant who at one point vacillated between Catholicism and atheism--it isn't easy to get a grip on what he thought about his "sin", or what he thought other people ought to have thought about it.

It's so unbearably sad reading about the trial. I took down his letters, never read them completely.

yes, it is terrible reading. Fucking Anglos.

I find it hard to understand why so many of the decadents turned to Catholicism: Grey you mentioned elsewhere, Corvo, Wilde etc. How could such obviously intelligent people fall for such bullshit? I put it down to a taste for the frocks, the unlimited sexual possibilities and the free wine. plus all the incense, colour and spectacle. So much more …. alluring than dreary Protestantism. On the other hand, you can't get much more decadent than the Roman catholic church, so perhaps they felt more at home there than anywhere else? Lying down with the whore of babylon etc etc.

#9

Yeah, Catholicism is showy, theatrical, ornamental and deeply perverse. It's not every religion that gathers the devotees around a torn crucified corpse, the more anguished the better. Quite the trip. And for the gays there's the obvious bonus of all male company and easy lays. A cousin of mine who's been spending three months every year in a Benedictine monastery for the last quarter century says that homosex is rampant, lots of brothers suffering from terminal boredom (that's his shoulder-shrugging explanation: "what's a body to do?")

As for the late century conversions... It seems to have been quite a craze--recall also (the not-Decadent) Cardinal Newman, Reginald Knox, Eric Gill and various acolytes of his... It can't have been exactly the same motivation with all these people, but it must have helped that so many were doing it.

Is it coincidental that Rome's universal church became so attractive at the time when international socialism was at its peak?

Ellmann tells a funny story about Wilde's religious oscillations. A convert friend had persuaded Wilde to come to Rome and get religion, and even given him money for the expenses. A professor of Wilde's got wind of this and insisted that Wilde join him and another student in Greece instead. Wilde compromised: went to Greece first, gambolled in the sun, and then proceeded to Rome, where he actually met the Pope. The meeting was "awesome", the friend believed all was set, when on passing the Protestant cemetery Wilde insisted on going in... and fell down in full prostration before Keats' grave. Friend gave up, poetical worship having outstripped the religious.

Delightful, no?

lol
fantastic story, with Wilde showing his true self there, perhaps.

Interesting about socialism and catholicism. Dostoevsky put his finger right on the connection between them. I'll dig out what he says about it. Incidentally, we were talking about Wilde's gift as a paradoxicalist and you quoted Gide, I think the only paradoxicalist to equal Wilde was Dostoevsky himself. Wilde wrote an interesting review of D's Humiliated and Insulted, but I have nowhere read what Dostoevsky thought about Wilde.

Oh, I meant fascistoid Catholicism as reaction to socialism, a bit later than the developments during Dostoevsky's time. Wilde would have been too late for FM to read him, I think, but I must see what Wilde wrote about D.

Great essay, Murr. Thanks for sharing it. I had never heard of Backhouse. Now I'm fascinated.

Thank you! Backhouse is a fascinating character indeed.