19th Century Dandyism
19th Century Dandyism

Summary/Abstract: The 19th century, the century of transition, was also the century of dandyism. It created and offered the unique conditions needed for the poiesis of life as a work of art. Thanks to the complexity and ambivalence of his character, the dandy can be a pioneer reformist and an avant-gardist, a rebel and a utopian, challenging and disregarding the norms of his age and dreaming of a new social order, and a melancholic and conservator longing for the “good old days”. He appeals to the nostalgia of a great past, to a time prior 19th century transition, and he tries to revigorate the old values and to adapt them to the present circumstances, or to adapt the present to them. But he is first of all a contester of his age, he lives anachronically. In the same time he proposes a myth and a utopia in a period when myths and utopias are most frequent (old myths are demolished and new ones are built) and needed, so, in this respect he lives with his age. There is nothing intriguing in this duality of his character, nothing strange in the paradox of this situation. It is the dandy’s very nature. Anyway, these periods when old values are challenged and new ones are proposed, these periods of instability and searching are the most favourable to dandyism, as this concept rebirths from its own ashes. Why does dandyism appear and flourish in this periods? Because dandyism is a response to transition, and to the new, in a time when transition to the new is a response to the old.

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