RICHARD GILMAN
187
gain a measure of control or power through knowingness (a rather
different matter from knowledge) over another perplexing aspect of the
life of behavior and values; we want it to exist so that we can have an
attitude toward it. And we want to have an attitude because such a
stance implies superiority over fate; we become judges, we decide about
the world.
The fashion consists, to begin with, in the assumption that
"decadence" does exist; the word chosen to denote the thing is then
employed as an approved instrument, a certified agency of meaning, on
the basis of a sly consensus. Crucial to the success of this enterprise, this
conspiracy to inject another unnecessary meaning into the world, is
the blotting out of the word's history, which this work is an attempt to
restore.
If
we knew what the word had experienced before we LOok it up,
what vicissitudes and turns of fortune, what assaults and betrayals and
what infections it had incurred, we would most likely drop it, as a
tainted object. The truth is that we want the phenomenon of decadence
to be historical, but not the word.
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Chicago Review
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43.
The Little Magazine
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A Modem Documentary History
Among the writers first published in
Chicago Review
are Wayne Booth. William
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include: Ai. Samuel Beckett. Harold Bloom, Allen Ginsberg. Thomas Mann,
Charles Olson. David Wagoner. Tennessee Williams . ..
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