Editing Symbolism (movement) (section)

===Symbolists and decadents===
The symbolist style has frequently been confused with the [[Decadent movement]], the name derived from French literary critics in the 1880s, suggesting the writers were self indulgent and obsessed with taboo subjects.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.wisegeek.com/what-was-the-decadent-movement-in-literature.htm|title=What Was the Decadent Movement in Literature? (with pictures)|website=wiseGEEK|date=5 June 2023 }}</ref> While a few writers embraced the term,  most avoided it. Jean Moréas' [[Symbolist Manifesto|manifesto]] was largely a response to this polemic. By the late 1880s, the terms "symbolism" and "decadence" were understood to be almost synonymous.<ref>David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, ''Russian orientalism: Asia in the Russian mind from Peter the Great to the emigration'', New Haven: Yale UP, 2010, p. 211 ([https://books.google.com/books?id=Kk8XrtXe3IcC&q=decadence+symbolism&pg=PA211 online]).</ref> Though the aesthetics of the styles can be considered similar in some ways, the two remain distinct. The symbolists were those artists who emphasized dreams and ideals; the Decadents cultivated ''[[wikt:précieux|précieux]]'', ornamented, or [[hermeticism (poetry)|hermetic]] styles, and [[morbid]] subject matters.<ref>Olds, see above, p. 160.</ref> The subject of [[Decline of the Roman Empire|the decadence of the Roman Empire]] was a frequent source of literary images and appears in the works of many poets of the period, regardless of which name they chose for their style, as in Verlaine's "''Langueur''":<ref>[http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Langueur ''Langueur''], from ''Jadis et Naguère'', 1884</ref>

:''Je suis l'Empire à la fin de la Décadence,<br />Qui regarde passer les grands Barbares blancs<br />En composant des acrostiches indolents<br />D'un style d'or où la langueur du soleil danse.''
::(I am the Empire at the endgame of decadence, watching the great pale barbarians passing by, all the while composing lazy acrostic poems in a gilded style where the languishing sun dances.)