or (or ) is a French phrase that became a rallying cry for the French Decadent poets of the late 19th century including

Charles Baudelaire Charles Pierre Baudelaire (, ; ; 9 April 1821 – 31 August 1867) was a French poet, essayist, translator and art critic. His poems are described as exhibiting mastery of rhythm and rhyme, containing an exoticism inherited from the Romantics ...

and Arthur Rimbaud. It means "to shock or scandalise the (respectable) middle classes." The Decadents, fascinated as they were with

hashish Hashish (; ), usually abbreviated as hash, is a Compression (physics), compressed form of resin (trichomes) derived from the cannabis flowers. European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, Lisbon, As a Psychoactive drug, psychoactive ...

opium Opium (also known as poppy tears, or Lachryma papaveris) is the dried latex obtained from the seed Capsule (fruit), capsules of the opium poppy ''Papaver somniferum''. Approximately 12 percent of opium is made up of the analgesic alkaloid mor ...

, and absinthe, found, in Joris-Karl Huysmans' novel (1884), a sexually perverse hero who secludes himself in his house, basking in life-weariness or , far from the bourgeois society that he despises. The Aesthetes in England, such as

Oscar Wilde Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish author, poet, and playwright. After writing in different literary styles throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular and influential playwright ...

, shared these same fascinations. This celebration of "unhealthy" and "unnatural" devotion to art and excess has been a continuing cultural theme. Later,

Dada Dada () or Dadaism was an anti-establishment art movement that developed in 1915 in the context of the Great War and the earlier anti-art movement. Early centers for dadaism included Zürich and Berlin. Within a few years, the movement had s ...

and

Surrealism Surrealism is an art movement, art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike s ...

pursued the same intent.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Epater la bourgeoisie French political catchphrases French Third Republic 1880s neologisms 1880s quotations Decadent literature

See also

References