/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.15353230]

From Barzun:
>All that is meant by Decadence is “falling off.” It implies in those who live in such a time no loss of energy or talent or moral sense. On the contrary, it is a very active time, full of deep concerns, but peculiarly restless, for it sees no clear lines of advance. The forms of art as of life seem exhausted; the stages of development have been run through. Institutions function painfully. Repetition and frustration are the intolerable result. Boredom and fatigue are great historical forces.
>It will be asked, how does the historian know when Decadence sets in? By the open confessions of malaise.… When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent. The term is not a slur; it is a technical label.

Isn't decadence a recurring event in all societies? I can see current Western society appropriately described by the above statement but so would've someone in 1950s, 1900s, etc. living in their respective societies. From whatever grace it may be in, society always since to be "falling off" from it regardless of the point of in time it may find itself in.

[Anonymous No.15353242]

>>15353230
Was America decadent in the 1780s?

[Anonymous No.15353250]

decadence is an inevitable byproduct of the industrial system