Andrew Lang's Essay 'Decadence'

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Another poet and novelist of the same time period, Andrew Lang, wrote an essay, simply titled ‘Decadence’ addressing the movement after he observed a newspaper article praising a recently deceased young man (whom he calls X) for his decadent lifestyle. Lang expressed that the article’s deceased subject who was, “expressive of a life which had itself so much of the swift, disastrous, and suicidal impetus of genius” was given a false title as genius by the newspaper. To him, the decadent concept, romanticizing one’s life and perceiving hedonism as a valuable worldly truth was not only dangerous, but also silly, saying, “The ideas of life on which X ruined himself have been the ideas of hundreds of boys, of whom the majority laugh at their

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