ROME REGENCY HOME

“I love the word decadence” gushed Verlaine, “all gleaming with crimson.” The word mimics the symptoms of disease and is made up of a mixture of carnal spirit, melancholy flesh, and all the violent splendours of the Byzantine Empire, loved as an emblem by the French decadent dandies of whom Verlaine, Baudelaire and Rimbaud were the clearest sickly voices.

Not believing in the future is the essential mark of the decadent dandy. When you don’t believe in that future, particularly if you don’t have a god to punish you if you step out of line or reward you with heavenly bliss when your otherwise pointless life is over, what do you do? You know that the religious promise of immortality is a pure illusion, fit for children. What can you do? You can decide that the only real power that you have in this life is over your own body, so why not drink and drug it to death? After all, as all self-respecting dandies know, suicides are the aristocrats of death.

In the dandy’s spiritual home all roads lead to Rome. Monstrous emperors devising exquisite new cruelties or else consumed by awful boredom. The excesses of individual behaviour which, in Christian times, would be labelled as the sins of a avarice and voluptuousness. Tiberius wanted to see little girls strangled but he had respect for the religious laws against the strangulation of virgins. So he ordered the executioners to fuck them before they were throttled. Nero castrated his boy Sporus to turn him into a girl, and solemnly, magnificently married him. Then he went off to the circus, where he dressed up in the skins of wild animals and had himself locked into a cage, from which he was released to attack the genitalia of men and women tied to stakes.

In the Roman Arena the games became more and more depraved, with women, children, dwarfs and even the disabled being pitted against each other. Once, when there was a shortage of suitable victims, Caligula ordered a section of the crowd to be thrown to the animals. Occasionally live sex shows were staged. Women convicted of sexual offences were raped to death by bulls after being smeared with the secretions emitted by cows when on heat. Public burning to death provided the floodlights for matches after dark.

If a slave killed himself, or attempted to within six months of his purchase he could be returned alive or dead to his old master and the deal was declared invalid. In this glorious age people would offer themselves for execution to amuse the public at five minae (about £150), the money to be paid to their heirs; the market was so competitive that the candidates would offer to be beaten to death rather than beheaded, since that was a shorter torture, more painful and so more spectacular.

Later, in the Regency period, there was an era marked by extravagance of behaviour and personality, one which swung betweens extremes of elegance and refinement and depths of sodden brutality. An age of extravagance and exoticism, when the ruling class, blazed, cracked and fizzed in a torrid Indian summer before the dismal winter of democracy descended. An age marked by great eccentricities, a devil may care individuality, homosexuality, and criminality. Gothic fiction, rakes, strumpets, gamblers, murderers, drunkards and artists. Gentleman are having their shoe laces ironed while half naked children are sweeping their chimneys. Wilberforce is denouncing the slave trade while Beau Brummell is denouncing with equal gravity an imperfectly tied cravat. HA! What about that?

It is no longer possible to be exotic.

What has happened to us? Whatever happened to the good old days when children worked in factories?

Look at our shitty little lives.We give people a box in the suburbs ; it's called a house. Every night we sit in it starring at another box ; it's called a television. In the morning we run off to work in another box ; it's called an office, we return from one box to the other box in another box on wheel ; it's called a car. Finally we go off in another box forever ; it's called a coffin.

Fuck that baby. Not me. If I had a throne, you could call it home. And what is a home but a comfortably padded lunatic asylum?

I ain’t no loony. Do I believe in capital punishment? Not since it ceased to be a public occasion. Force is all that maters. War is sacred. Hanging is excellent. We don’t need too much knowledge. Build more prisons and fewer schools. Knock down the hospitals and old people’s homes. Give me your fucking money. And suck my fucking cock while your at it.

Comments

[JBA]

Well, there's decadence and then there's depravity. Do you suppose the latter stems from over-exuberance in the former?

Perhaps you're familiar with Job Charnock, credited with the founding of Calcutta, who is said to have ordered slaves to be whipped during meals because he enjoyed dining to the sound of their screams. Other than that, the man was as dull as dung dust.

And let's not neglect to mention Countess Elisabeth Báthory of Transylvania, who legend has it bathed in the blood of virgins because she believed it preserved her beauty. She crossed the line from decadence to depravity when she ran out of peasant girls and began to tap the daughters of the minor aristocracy. She invented creative tortures for her victims, and with an alleged 650 victims, is the most prolific serial killer in history.

We all have an inner voyeur with an enormous soft spot for such people.

[Fransexual]

Ah yes, decadence, some aspire to it whilst others simply are.

I ask...does the world really need another 'grey' person, me thinks not. Anon.

Frances

[Liam Taylor]

Well, this really is one of the best entries so far, a commendably eloquent appraisal of decadence.

With so many references to ancient Rome (Caligula was always one of my favourites), I found particular enjoyment in your words.

The focus on sexual exploitation and tyranny is splendid, since such a heady combination as this is surely proof that there is no need of heaven, whether or not it exists.

[Steve Murray]

Just dropping by to say hello/pay respects/wave cheerily. Life goes on, doesn't it ?!
Be good.
S.

[karen parkin (nee lyall)]

Hi Sabastian,
wonder if you will remember me ? We shared a flat... you, me and Steve Murray ( who has just left you a comment as well)Off St Sephens Street in Edinburgh, many years ago, I introduced you to Ev Smith i brought her round to cut your hair, just read your book...you were one of the most kind, loving,gentle, also a bit odd guy i have ever met, love to you old boy xx

[Andrew Clarke]

Er, hello Sebastian, Steve and Karen (hey!) . . . Karen, I asked you out and then you met Steve and Seb who were living at my house and . . . Shouldn't we all write a book together???? Hope you're all well. I decadently went to Amazon and ordered a copy of the book and read it in one night and laughed out loud . . . Steve - get in touch with me at the Grauniad?

[James]

Sebastion is out at the moment.

[Canada Goose Jacket]

http://www.canadagoosejacketssales.net

[Belstaff Jackets]

http://www.uk-belstaffjackets.com