Decadence or decline, dark paths can lead to new Pentecosts

When I was a teenager – maybe about 16 – a friend and I decided to follow a fad of “decadence”. We weren’t all that sure what “decadence” was, but we knew it had little to do with normal life in our then cosy village of Sandymount in Dublin.

But teenagers soon find out about fads, and it appeared that decadence involved eccentric dressing, following the ideas of the 1890s, and especially reading the handbook of decadence, J-K Huysmans’s A Rebours, translated into English as “Against Nature”.

Diligently, I worked my way through this classic of decadence, which, if I remember, advocated turning everything natural upside down. For example, live by night, sleep by day and reject bourgeois norms. The lifestyle to aim at would today be called, I think, “Gothic”.

Another icon of decadence that was the artist Aubrey Beardsley, who had illustrated the infamous,“Yellow Book”, which republished illicit French writing – decadent, of course. His singular line drawings were considered hugely decadent, erotic, and on the borderline of pornography.

Obviously, Oscar Wilde was a leading model for decadence. We pored over “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, or listened to Michéal MacLiammoir reciting the story of the man whose sins were so dreadful his portrait, bearing them, became gruesome.

Eurovision

And now, when I observed the antics of the self-styled Bambie Thug and her “satanic” witchcraft carry-on at Eurovision, I wondered: is this just a bit like my teenage fad for “decadence”? Basically, a perversely daft exhibition? Pretending to a lifestyle to draw attention to herself? Is it just show business – where startle and wild innovation are part of the schtick; or is Bambie Thug genuinely a symbol of the decadence and decline of our culture?

I suppose one of the differences is that Bambie Thug’s dislikeable witch incarnation is that it is approved of by the establishment – highly praised by  politicians like Simon Harris and Michéal Martin – whereas the original cult of decadence was against the grain of the mainstream.

Yet, at least one serious commentator has already suggested that Bambie Thug’s music and lyrics contain spiritual references. Colette Colfer, a lecturer in world religions, has claimed that Bambie Thug’s “performance and song (and video) is fascinating from a religious perspective”: Ms Colfer writes in this current issue of The Irish Catholic.

Interestingly, the original purveyors of “decadence” all ended up Catholic converts: Huysmans, Beardsley and Oscar Wilde. Dark paths can lead to unexpected awakenings!

“I suppose one of the differences is that Bambie Thug’s dislikeable witch incarnation is that it is approved of by the establishment”

***

Robert Kennedy Jnr has shocked quite a few people – even some pro-choice advocates  – by insisting on the right to abortion up to birth. Yes, abortion should be available even if the pregnancy is “full term”, he told a TV interviewer last week. Following pressure from political and social campaigners – including members of the Kennedy clan – he had to retract that brutal statement, and phrase his views more ambiguously.

His devout grandmother, Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, whose family came from Bruff in Co Limerick, would have been appalled at what he’s been saying on this life issue.

He’s an odd character, this independent candidate for the U.S. Presidency. He’s been obsessed with environmental issues for decades. He has fomented conspiracy theories about the “evils” of vaccination which most medics considers highly irresponsible.

He has had a troubled life, having witnessed the assassination of his father, Bobby Kennedy, when he was 14, and then expelled from schools for drug offences.  His second wife took her own life in a distressing suicide.

Yet he says he’s a believing Catholic and has even written a biography of St Francis of Assisi, whom he venerates as the saint of nature and the environment.

Recently, he disclosed that a parasite had infected his brain in 2016. Perhaps the charitable interpretation was that the infection unbalanced his judgement. But he may yet be a player in the coming Presidential election by taking votes from Joe Biden – or even Donald Trump.

***

This weekend is Pentecost Sunday, and in quite a few European countries Pentecost it’s a public holiday (observed on the Monday.) These include Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece and Iceland.

I have heard it suggested that Protestant cultures have tended to mark Pentecost, or Whit Sunday, more emphatically than Catholic ones. Certainly, in Ireland, Whit Sunday has receded in consciousness – replaced by a generic “Bank Holiday”. But that’s true in Britain too, where “Whitsun” was once widely observed as a popular Christian feast. The poet Philip Larkin, though no Christian believer, wrote a book of poetry on the theme of The Whitsun Weddings, since Whitsun featured so strongly in English popular culture as a time for weddings.

I always like the narrative in the Pentecost story. How bewildered the disciples and early Christians must have been in those first days of Christianity. And then the Holy Spirit descended and they became a coherent community.