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Innocent Decadence: The Poetry of the Savoy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Wendell Harris
Wendell Harris*
Affiliation:
University of Colorado, Boulder
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Extract

The simultaneous flowering of decadent verse and ephemeral little magazines upon the English literary scene of the 1890's is remarked as of central interest in the literary histories of the period. The two phenomena were closely related, for the poets of the English decadent “movement” and the editors of the new periodicals were for the most part members of the same extensive London coterie. The members of the Rhymers' Club were closely identified with the clusters of writers gathered around the Yellow Book, the Dome, and the Savoy; and with few exceptions the production of the group as a whole has come to be regarded as exhibiting certain morbidly exotic traits which gave the predominantly “decadent” flavor to the period. Of the many little magazines which served as admirable show-cases for this decadent poetry, none is more often cited as embodying the spirit of the age than the Savoy. Edited by Arthur Symons, illustrated largely by Aubrey Beardsley, and repeatedly presenting the work of Ernest Dowson, the periodical seemed, during its single year of existence—1896—to speak for all the arch-decadents except the already disgraced Wilde. Bernard Muddiman's description of the Savoy as “the fine flower of the publications of the age” sums up the achievement of its eight numbers; his references to it as providing the pages upon which “the abnormal, the bizarre, found their true home” sums up its reputation. Yet the reader who turns to the Savoy expecting to find a luscious garden of exotic and forbidden poetry will be largely disappointed, for its verse has less of extravagance and perversity than is ordinarily implied by the description of literature as “decadent.” There is a real danger of misinterpreting the poetry of the decade whenever it is approached along the beaten paths of ruling preconceptions about the “decadent spirit” of the 1890's. The examination of the representative sample of verse provided by the Savoy illustrates the desirability of revaluating that spirit.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 77 , Issue 5 , December 1962 , pp. 629 - 636
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1962

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References

Note 1 in page 629 The Men of the Nineties (London, 1920), p. 41.

Note 2 in page 629 The Idea of Decadence in French Literature, 1830–1900 (Toronto, 1958).

Note 3 in page 629 See especially Osbert Burdett, The Beardsley Period (New York, 1925), p. 158, and Holbrook Jackson, The Eighteen Nineties (New York, 1914), p. 78.

Note 4 in page 629 See Victor Plarr, Ernest Dowson, 1888–1897 (London, 1914), p. 59.

Note 5 in page 629 See Mark Longaker, Ernest Dowson (Philadelphia, 1944), for an attempt at a just evaluation of Dowson's excesses.

Note 6 in page 629 “The Decadent Movement in Literature,” Harper's New Magazine, lxxxvii (1893), 858–867.

Note 7 in page 630 See the preface to the revised Silhouettes (London, 1896). The volume also includes some patent imitations of French praises of artificiality as in “Maquillage.”

Note 8 in page 630 Savoy, No. 1 (January 1896), S.

Note 9 in page 630 The following are the eight poems contributed by Yeats. Almost all were altered both in text and title before publication in The Wind Among the Reeds; the titles of the love poems were further changed in the collected edition. The final form of the title is given in parentheses in each case where it differs from the original. Savoy i, 83: “The Shadowy Horses” (“He Bids His Beloved Be at Peace”) and “The Travail of Passion.” ii, 109: “A Cradle Song” (“The Unappeasable Host”) and “The Valley of the Black Pig.” iii, 67: “O'Sullivan Rua to Mary Lovell” (“He Remembers Forgotten Beauty”), v, 52: “O'Sullivan Rua to the Secret Rose” (“The Secret Rose”), vii, 62: “O'Sullivan Rua to the Curlew” (“He Reproves the Curlew”) and “Out of the Old Days” (“To His Heart, Bidding it Have no Fear”).

Note 10 in page 630 I have followed the Savoy text in every case. References in parentheses refer to number and page of that periodical.

Note 11 in page 630 The Heritage of Symbolism (London, 1943), p. 183.

Note 12 in page 631 London, 1899, p. 86.

Note 13 in page 631 See Arthur Symons, “Sarojini Naidu,” Figures of Several Centuries (London, 1917), pp. 376–389.

Note 14 in page 633 London, 1897.

Note 15 in page 634 See the introduction and appendices to Desmond Flower's The Poetical Works of Ernest Christopher Dowson (London, 1934).

Note 16 in page 634 “The Decay of Lying,” The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (New York, 1923), v, 60.

Note 17 in page 636 See note 15 above.