The Decadent.

[Sam Pawlett]

All the great artists and philosophers are dead. There are no more
Shoenberg's, Wittgensteins,  Musils or even a Keynes.Instead we have
RuPaul, Frank Stallone, Robert Lucas and Marilyn Manson.The respected
journals of opinion like the Times Literary Supplement and the New York
Review of Books are full of boring rumination on third rate poets like
Robert Bly or endless intellectual tail chasing on artists past. Nobody
listens to classical music anymore or even jazz. Radio stations
dedicated to jazz and classical music and serious public affairs
programming are few. John Coltrane is called the last great innovator.
Concert halls are half empty. What we have in abundance today is
decadence.Can decadence function as a form  of class struggle as the
decadent poets Baudalaire, Verlaine and Rimbaud thought and practiced?
Or does the decadent reflect the complete collapse of human civilization
leading to a prison of nihilism and despair with little hope of
redemption as Adorno thought?

Sam Pawlett