Twilights

Abstract

Like their literary fellows in other European countries, so too did Dutch authors become obsessed with fin de siècle moods of decline. European societies found themselves in a twilight, waiting to vanish or to be saved by a new messiah. No one has phrased this mood of decline and hope for a new future more poignantly than the Dutch author Lodewijk van Deyssel. The dandy, according to him, is the one who promise a new, harmonious community. It is the only figure that could save us from disappearing. He conceived his theory of dandyism in opposition to Baudelaire, whose work he came to know through his readings of Paul Bourget and Maurice Barrès. Van Deyssel’s writings may appear to be in opposition with Baudelaire’s musings on dandyism; they are, however, phrased in exact same terms. Van Deyssel, too, hopes that the dandy, as the quintessential example of how one should live one’s life, promises a new, harmonious community.