试论颓废的现代性

On the Modernity of Decadence

颓废,作为19世纪文化艺术中的一个重要主题,从一个侧面,反映了西方资本主义理性主义暴政下的现代文化危机。它是一种艺术风格,也是一种生活姿态。它是艺术家借以逃避现代生活的矛盾、痛苦和精神荒芜的解救之道,客观上体现了艺术家在现代性语境中对抗资产阶级理性主义的审美立场。无论是作为一种美学理想,还是作为一种文化样态,颓废概念都无法回避其现代性的实质。

As an important phenomenon of the 19th century’s culture and art, decadence reflects the crisis of modern culture, in which rationalism plays a leading role. Decadence is both a life style and an artistic style by which artists try to evade those contradictions, affliction and weariness of modern life and express their resistance against bourgeois rationalism. Decadence, whether as an aesthetic ideal or a form of culture, is modern in substance.