A Note on Voluptuousness: A Personal Essay on Decadence and Pleasure

Abstract

What is the relationship between decadence and pleasure? Surely there must be some such relationship, but it has to be (as we used to say) problematic. Part of the problem involves cultural context, or rather, contexts. Decadence begins as a sensibility – a composite of pessimism, refinement, immorality, aestheticism – and ends up as a culture, in both senses: as something learned but also lived. Learned decadence was once housed in such institutions as the University of Oxford and the Bodley Head, but such institutions have also had a major role in the development of decadence as a lived culture. It is one thing to read about a character in a novel who has a set of blue china; it is another thing altogether to actually have a set of blue china and to enjoy using it. If that pleasure seems too mild and aesthetic for decadence, feel free to fill the cup of blue china with absinthe and have the character light up one of those opium-tainted cigarettes we read about – then stop reading and light one up for yourself.