MDDM Decadence

[Monica Belevan]

>Interesting,and right on to a point,  but I can't quite figure out how
>your definition applies to the use of the term at M&D.275 by the RC.

-- Terrance, now we give definite show that we are not one same person. 
*Monica winks* Like I answered David, I don´t have either MD or the Henry 
Adams text, but I was merely trying to point a twigged finger at the many 
acceptations of Decadence in Pynchon. Perhaps it served a purpose, and then 
again, maybe not.

--Of course, the definition I mentioned, that is, a
>move toward non-humanity, is a big one in all of Pynchon's novels.

-- Which is part of the decadentism I made mention to. Refer to ´´ The 
Artificial Paradises´´, Charles Baudelaire. Beyond the hashish and the 
opiacy of the whole things, he´s setting the benchmark for a revised 
aesthetic, and a revalorization of what is natural and what is not.
>
>Of course, as you know, there begins in the 18th century a stream of
>literature on the decline of western civilization. Now, whatever
>misgivings one may have or may entertain on this or that special
>argument, one can not deny that the theorists, poets, or whomever,
>overall, have a case. On the other foot, the period, as M&D makes
>obvious if we don't know much about the history of technology and
>science (Mumford is pretty good on this) is that the same period also
>experienced and indeed may be characterized as an exuberantly expansive
>period for science, invention, innovation.  Of course this science is
>not quite what P decries and condemns.

-- It´s more like Newtonian phyhsics adapted to the history of aesthetics. 
Action and reaction. Hegelian dialectics, point counterpoint. Ying yang 
mechanics.

One thing stirs some alternate response. So you have industralism and 
luddism, so you have roaring twenties nostalgia and avant-garde, so you have 
revisionist and oulipian sixties.

This is just another case, the Gothic spirit, Romanticism, seance sessions, 
all forms of revivalism deep into the 1800s ( Irish renascentism, Slavophile 
aesthetics, taking a mere tour of the themes of Wagnerian opera), as a 
reaction to Zola, to Bovaryism, as a reaction to Stubbs skinning a horse, to 
imperial aesthetic engrandizement, etc, etc.

Love, Moni



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