Aesthetic and Decadent poetryIIIBut, of course, it did not. Certainly, FitzGerald's transformation of "Wild-
erness" into "Paradise" made it seem as if poetry could make an intolerable
Victorian world into one of beauty and pleasure. Yet the use of this same
formula by a poet of the next generation reveals both its refinement and its
limitation. Two poems by Ernest Dowson help to show the similarity and
difference between FitzGerald's brand of desire and fulfillment and that of
the Decadents. In his most famous poem, "Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae
sub Regno Cynarae" ('I am not what I once was in Cynara's day' [Horace,
"Ode 4.1."] 1891) - later more commonly known as "Cynara" - the
speaker spends the night with a prostitute while longing for his beloved,
and claims this lack of fulfillment illustrates a contemporary version of
devotion. He is true to the ideal beloved because he is not satisfied by the
woman with whom he finds himself. "But I was desolate and sick of an old
passion. / When I awoke and found the dawn was gray: / I have been
faithful to thee, Cynara in my fashion" (ED 58). This idea of an ideal and
thus impossible love forms the basis of what we might term the fashion of
Decadence: a vague desire to feel some ideal love while wallowing in
a degraded and unfulfilling environment. John R. Reed makes this
crucial point about Decadence: "The central quality of Decadent style is
implicit in the word's etymology. It involves a falling away from some
established norm; it elaborates an existing tradition to the point of apparent
dissolution." 15
This double bind becomes apparent in Dowson's "Villanelle of the Poets'
Road" (1899), in which ambivalence toward fulfillment is built into the
structure of the poem:
Wine and woman and song,
Three things garnish our way:
Yet is day over long.
Lest we do our youth wrong,
Gather them while we may:
Wine and woman and song.
Three things render us strong,
Vine leaves, kisses and bay;
Yet is day over long.
Unto us they belong,
Us the bitter and gay,
Wine and woman and song.
We, as we pass along,241