/lit/ - Literature

DECADENCE, the brilliant behemoth that destroys Authenticity. The Decadents in France, Huysmans, Mallarme and Verlaine. These poets and novelist prescribe that reality is meant to portray all of the excess that exists within the wildly Earthly bounds of the bourgeoisie prosodically. Against Nature by Huysmans describes the French Republic as a hellhole to retreat from. Verlaine and Mallarme's poetry treats the subject of the Republic of France as a world in which the vagrants and conmen rule— Decadence exists as a Philosophical pretext to all Naturalist and Surrealist literature in the 19th and 20th Century. If it were not for Edgar Allan Poe's Poetry, especially his poem Spirits of the Dead, The Raven, and Israfel we would not currently exist in the Literary movement of today. Poe is on of the few responsible for the literature of the 19th-20th-- and hilariously 21st centuries. All poets of America; France; England and Russia, with the special exception of Germany and Italy in certain regards, ( Italy: who had Pound and Marinetti; Pound inarguably influenced by Poe as an American, Marinetti arguably influenced by the writing of Poe by his work in French newspapers prior to the Second World War; and Germany with Rilke, Ernst Junger and Walter Benjamin who's early educational career included Poe's Completed Works. Source: https://www.eapoe.org/pstudies/ps1970/p1978209.htm). Poe's influence in the writing of Decadency spans his poetry into his Short Stories, even the well-known ones. The Tell-Tale Heart tells of a man living a perfect life who cuts it short because he is paranoid of his neighboring tenant's dead eye staring into the blank heart and soul he has. Take from this what you will, but the object of decadence in this short story is undeniable. A man living a purely selfish lifestyle, cuts it short by reasoning that the only way to continue it without obstacles is to kill the man who he is living with. Decadence in this way is portrayed as a solipsistic, self-destructive psychopathy. No one in reality would murder their neighboring tenant because they have a dead-eye, but the main character and narrator of the story does for the exact reasons outlined. He is haunted by the imperfection of this man's constant staring, if there hasn't ever been a much more grandiose takedown of the object of Decadence, I Post too long. Click here to view the full text.

Put on some choons, start a 10 minute timer and just start writing your stream of consciousness. Don't plan ahead. Simply write the first words that come to your mind and then right the next words that come to mind. Don't worry about formatting, spelling, or grammar. Just write freely.


I swear to God I'm loosing my senses. I have no democratic dreams and eat the truth of faith with my mind. Now lead me to this future and I will be okay and learn the reality of our insurgent lies. I am consumed by the fact that I will disappear into thin air and before I turn to dust I fill myself with knowledge and divorce myself from lust. Now eat the witch of the sovereign awarenss steeped in the mysteries of eternal time. Brutal by design is the ensign for wine dine death savergery. The new nucleus of insanity rage missile attack syndrome rushed with a lucid attack dreams whacked from the concer of spiritual imaginaries. Zoom the liberated homosexual ninja. Superhuman sand beast with the worm eating phage. I raise my fist against the white sorceress in the sky. Necorcapitalism business of death. Initiate the series of globe wars begin the holy mantra. Expose the puke fountains in the deep earth where they hide the nucelar army march to the victory of the real. Deserst and processions of darkness and other non feeble alternative cruisers spinning in the loseness of time. Locked with the horns in the battlespace of cyberspace. Nazi zombies battle phreakers in the wires electric hum toasting Lum with microwave mind signals vibrating her body and opening her consciousness to the higher spiritual design. Holy metaphysics descend from the five pillars and slinking snakes whisper.

There's this point in his novel J.R. where Bast brings J.R. to an opera and after asks J.R. what he felt, and J.R. is entirely unresponsive to the emotional impact Bast thought it was supposed to have. Bast blasts J.R. and scrutinizes him for ruining everything. "—I asked you what you heard! that's all, I …
—What like it lifted me out of mysel…
—Not what I said no you! what you heard!
—What was I suppose to hear!
—You weren't! you weren't supposed to hear anything that's what
I'm …
—Then how come you made me lis…
—To make you hear! to make you, to make you feel to try to …
—Okay okay! I mean what I heard first there's all this high music
right? So then this here lady starts singing up yours up yours so then
this man starts singing up mine, then there's some words so she starts
singing up mine up mine so he starts singing up yours so then they go
back and forth like that up mine up yours up mine up yours that's what
I heard! I mean you want me to hear it again?
—No!
—See I knew you'd…
—Never want you to hear it again I never want to hear it again
myself! you, everything you ruin everything you touch!" They go on like this for a minute until J.R. says,
"—Boy after all I did for you…
—All you did there's nothing you haven't done for me nothing
wherever I go I, that junk pocket radio there was one station with
decent music the only station left on the radio anywhere it came on
one night noises screaming pounding noise brought to you in this new
popular format by the J R Family of Companies bringing America its full
share of of holy shit!
—No but …
—No but nothing! that was you too wasn't it? even that it was your
idea wasn't it?
—Okay what's so …
—Okay nothing it's the whole thing! the whole rotten thing it's a
perfect example even you can understand it! the one station that
played music great music left in the whole loud cheap pounding
stupidity of radio you find it and make it cheap and stupid like all the
rest if you could, if there was one flower out here in this mud and
weeds and broken toilet seats you'd find it and step on it." I love how Gaddis entirely satirizes the need for corporate plasticity in art here, it's amazing and a testament to how good of a writer he is.