The Genesis of the Cape and Beret Problem

“For an incandescent wit like Wilde, it was possible to express that contempt with grace and skill. But the majority of decadents were not that brilliant, and the best they could do was define art in negative terms, as the absence—or better still, the inversion—of other values, especially moral ones. To establish one’s creative bona fides, it was no longer necessary to make art; all one had to do was profess to worship beauty, lead a dissolute life, and mock traditional ideas of right and wrong” (Martha Bayles, Hole in our Soul, p. 36).