Well, to begin with what does 'decadent' mean? It means decay and destruction. Decadent poets were a set of writers during the late 19th Century who wrote about death and other gloomy subjetcs. They are kind of Gothic, but not completely. Now my question, as a student of English Literature: why don't we read about the Decadents? Well, we seem to learn the Romantics, the Victorians and all, but the Decadents are merely mentioned and brushed aside. Why? Don't they deserve their rightful place in the canon?
Critics may argue that their poems are not worth reading, they are too gloomy and sad. Well, what is gloomy or sad about death? Everyone dies! Or about decay? Rotten flesh, stinking blood, worm eaten corpses is what Reality is- like cold water splashing on your face. People die in stampedes, eye balls pop out of sockets, brain oozed out of the skull; water fills your brain and eats you slowly, like a python swallowing you. Ice freezes and seals the warmest pores of your body. This is Reality, ugly but true. It is ugly, but yet beautiful. There is pleasure in pain, peace in a needle that slowly penetrating its way into you. A beauty indescribable and yet pure.
Besides, what is great about nature when you can't even see a single leaf without a film of pesticide? How can nature be beautiful when She opens her mouth like a greedy jackal to ravage us? How can Tsunami or an earthquake be beautiful? And if they aren't, well aren't they a part of nature as well? Is Wordsworth afterall great or are we conditioned to believe that he is great? Don't you think he is an escapist of sorts, trying to evade reality. They say a child's innocence is great and ignorance is lovely. If ignorance is a bliss, then why do even we seek knowledge?
Who describes what is beautiful and what not? Why is rose a pretty colour and black a deadly hue? Who sets these standards? Why must a poem be either intellectual like Pope's or serene like Wordsworth's to be considered great? What about people like Sylvia Plath and Kamala Das? Isn't that more close to us and real than anything else? Shouldn't the dark have an equal place in literature just as the light? Aren't black and blood-red stronger and more solid colours than rose and lavender?
Time that we revalued the poems taught in schools and colleges.
