24 April 2010

Not A Triple Tautology

In explaining the phrase épater le bourgeois, Wikipedia uses the wonderful phrase "French Decadent poets." This suggests worlds I had no idea of; poets who aren't decadent, Frenchmen who aren't poets, and even French poets who aren't decadent. Who'd a thought it.

1 comment:

Harry Eagar said...

If wish I could find a copy of the volume 'Victorian Prose and Poetry' that was used in a course I took at Cow College. You wouldn't believe how decadent the late Victorian English poets were.

None, not even Swinburne, were personally as depraved as Rimbaud, but no French poets I know of were as decadent as the English.

'City of Dreadful Night' was one title.

Except for Alfred Noyes, these were also the last English poets to understand the difference between poetry and prose.