ABSTRACT
L. Tolstoy has specified the conditions which lead to decadence in art and, by contrast, those which are propitious for its flourishing. It flourishes when it has its roots in beliefs that are fundamental to the life of a people, these being religious in the sense that they give expression to what for that people is the meaning of life. Tolstoy takes Baudelaire’s poetry as a prime example of decadent art, emphasizing the obscurity of its style and the degraded nature of its themes. Anyone who is familiar with Baudelaire’s poetry will be forced to acknowledge that it exhibits some of the features which Tolstoy attributes to a decadent art. What Tolstoy seeks to show is that decadent art depends for its appeal on a set of techniques or devices which are really inartistic, which stand to genuine art as a kind of counterfeit.
