The loony painting of the impressionist, the erotic novels, the realistic horrors evolved by Zola, Ibsen, Tolstoi, Maupassant and Maeterlinck, the weird music of Wagner, the scarey fashions which mark the dress of the woman of our day, are all illustrations of this new “fin-de-siecle” spirit. We are told that the world of the present is living in “the reddened light of the dusk of the nations;” that faith is dying, that, tired of all existing things, man chases after new beliefs, new engagements and sensations, only to find that the trail of the serpent is over all. Fin de siecleism is a disease which has before afflicted mankind. It raged at the close of the year 1000, when there was a general belief that the end of all things was at hand, and men sought vainly to compress all possibly earthly pleasures into a few hours yet allotted them. The eighteenth century went out in the blood and horrors of the wars succeeding the French revolution, and poets of that day cast horoscopes for the future full of gloom and foreboding.
I’m not too certain how we got from 1000 to the end of the eighteenth century to 1895, but anyway…
The term “Impressionism” was coined around 1874 after the exhibition of Claude Monet’s Impression: Sunrise (according to The Cleveland Museum of Art). So by 1895, the movement was already 20 years old, and “post-impressionism” was on the scene.
“Dusk of the Nations” is the title of a chapter in Degeneration by Max Nordau. According to the reviewers at Amazon, Nordau thought that modern poetry and art was “depraved.” In Degeneration he “interprets the works of such stars as Baudelaire, Verlaine, Wilde, Tolstoy, Wagner, Nietzsche and Ibsen as the result of physiological “degeneration” and classifies the various artists according to their respective pathologies - egomania, sadism, exhibitionism and mysticism.”
“The trail of the serpent” is a phrase from Lalla Rookh, an extravagant epic poem by Thomas Moore. You can find it at Project Gutenburg, in The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore. Lalla Rookh was very popular, and the source material for specticales in the 1890’s. Eventually, you’ll see this for yourself here at Odd Ends, but for now you’ll have to take Bill’s word for it.
Check this site for a nice look at fin-de-siècle art.
I seem to recall, during our own recent millennial turn (but cannot find any easy links), learning that the idea that the masses were awash in madness at the turn of 1000 was invented sometime after 1000. Am I remembering correctly?
In any case, this 110-year-old commentary sounds like it could be written by any modern conservative/fundamentalist of any religious or political stripe. “You call that art?” “Girls dress too provocatively these days!” “Troubles a-brewing ’cause God is left out!” It’s like a broken record. Though I suppose that’s not something “kids these days” know about, is it?