20 January 2010

The Beardsley Age









01.44 AM : Decadent Night nights to Steff. Lots of promises of the Decadent breakfast and major study sesh that awaits us the next morning. Including a timeline and general 'Getting It' of the subject.
07.00 AM: I wake up and decide it's too early to get up, Decadently get back into bed.
08.00 AM: Steff Decadently rings me from my Decadent guest room (i.e. the bedroom I have slept twice in) and announces that she is indeed awake.
08.01 AM: I announce I am putting the kettle on
08.57 AM: Still not awake. All plans are fucked. 33 Minutes to leave house.
09.26 AM: Sat with Aubrey in my bedroom, eating four day old chocolate muffins, trying to convince myself that talking about Suede lyrics counts as Decadent secondary reading.
Started Decadence today. Here are some illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley, who worked for only five years within the Decadent period of the 1890s and yet gives his name to the age. My favourite is his one depicting Edgar Allen Poe's Black Cat. Beardsley manages to capture the essence of Poe's horrifying work; even coming from entirely different arenas, they arrive at the same point.
He also spent alot of time allegedly in tete-a-tetes with Oscar Wilde at my favourite restaurant in the world: http://www.kettners.com/ . If you ever meet someone that likes you enough to spent £14 on a knickerbockerglory you want to eat, a) get it while its good b) Kettners.
My class was amazing. Although there was the terrifying moment when we started having to read things aloud and define notions such as Symbolism and Naturalism and the dreaded dreaded Romanticism. So this is what proper English feels like. No Taxi Driver, no Less Than Zero and no Henry Miller? Better late than never I suppose.

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