ABSTRACT
Jacques Barzun has described decadence as a condition in which people accept the futile and bizarre as things that cannot be resisted, and see no clear path ahead of them, even a dauntingly hard one. Decadence in language is chiefly a means-become-ends phenomenon, and, because language is so much a part of all human life, a highly dangerous one: a disease of language is like blood poisoning, affecting every organ of the body. The taking of language as primary is the source of much of the pleasure and instruction afforded by civilized and cultivated life. For the decadent-language user, language is primary, and the world of common experience secondary, if not wholly negligible; the window becomes a mirror. Among the uglier features of our world for which language decadence is partly responsible is anti-Semitism. The primacy of words over things, for intellectuals, comes about because language is both a tool and an art medium, both means and end.
