Salome and other Decadent Fantasies
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Decadent literature is intrinsically and proudly a literature of moral challenge; it is sceptical, cynical, and satirical. It recognizes that everyday morality does not work either in practical or in psychological terms, and is therefore a sham, but that ideal morality is – not necessarily unfortunately – unattainable. This volume collects the best of Brian Stableford's decadent work, including: «Salome,» «O For a Fiery Gloom and Thee,» «The Last Worshipper of Proteus,» «The Evil That Men Do,» «Ebony Eyes,» «The Fisherman's Child,» «The Storyteller's Tale,» «The Unluckiest Thief,» «The Flowers in the Forest,» «The Mandrake Garden,» and «Chanterelle.»
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The artistic notion of Decadence was first defined by Theophile Gautier in the introduction that he wrote to the third edition of Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal, which appeared not long after Baudelaire’s death in 1866. According to this celebratory essay, “the style of the decadence” is “no other thing than Art arrived at that point of extreme maturity that determines civilizations which have grown old; ingenious, complicated, clever, full of delicate hints and refinements, gathering all the delicacies of speech, borrowing from technical vocabularies, taking color from every palette, tones from all musical instruments, contours vague and fleeting, listening to translate subtle confidences, confessions of depraved passions and the odd hallucinations of a fixed idea turning to madness.”
Such a style, Gautier argues, should be “summoned to express all and to venture to the very extremes”. Baudelaire’s work recalled to his mind “language already veined with the greenness of decomposition, savoring of the Lower Roman Empire and the complicated refinements of the Byzantine School, the last form of Greek Art fallen into deliquescence; but such is the necessary and fatal idiom of peoples and civilizations where an artificial life has replaced a natural one and developed in a man who does not know his own needs.”
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There and then, she danced for him.
She danced upon the floor of his cell, despite that it was moist with stinking excrement. The cell was narrow, with walls of filthy stone, and it was illuminated only by the light of a single tallow candle, but Salome did not need a huge space or a polished floor or a bright light in order to display her art. She was full to overflowing with enchantment, and magic radiated from her body as soon as she began to move.
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