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Dandyism Quotes

Browse 13 quotes about Dandyism.

Dandyism Quotes

“the dandy can only play a part by setting himself up in opposition. He can only be sure of his own existence by finding it in the expression of others’ faces. Other people are his mirror. A mirror that quickly becomes clouded, it is true, since human capacity for attention is limited. It must be ceaselessly stimulated, spurred on by provocation. The dandy, therefore, is always compelled to astonish. Singularity is his vocation, excess his way to perfection. Perpetually incomplete, always on the fringe of things, he compels others to create him, while denying their values. He plays at life because he is unable to live it. He plays at it until he dies, except for the moments when he is alone and without a mirror. For the dandy, to be alone is not to exist. The romantics talked so grandly about solitude only because it was their real horror, the one thing they could not bear.”

SolitudeRebelRomanticismDandyismRomantic Hero
Book:The Rebel
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“In this watercolor Gavarni portrays an individual whose father was an industrialist and whose older brother was a distinguished professor. From the looks of him, Hippolyte Beauvisage Thomire had a keen eye for fashion in casual clothing, however. He represents the new generation of bourgeois consumers that emerged during the July Monarchy. He is the modern young man off the newly invented fashion plates and out of the cast of Balzac’s Human Comedy. Charles Baudelaire, the great cultural critic of Louis Philippe’s reign in latter years, called the artist Gavarni “the poet of official dandysme." Dandysme, Baudelaire said (in his famous essay “De l’heroisme de la vie moderne” [The heroism of modern life], which appeared in his review of the Salon of 1846), was “a modern thing.” By this he meant that it was a way for bourgeois men to use their clothing as a costume in order to stand out from the respectable, black-coated crowd in an age when aristocratic codes were crumbling and democratic values had not yet fully replaced them. The dandy was not Baudelaire’s “modern hero,” however. “The black suit and the frock coat not only have their political beauty as an expression of general equality,” he wrote, “but also their poetic beauty as an expression of the public mentality.” That is why Baudelaire worshiped ambitious rebels, men who disguised themselves by dressing like everyone else. “For the heroes of the Iliad cannot hold a candle to you, Vautrin, Rastignac, Birotteau [all three were major characters in Balzac’s novels] . . . who did not dare to confess to the public what you went through under the macabre dress coat that all of us wear, or to you Honore de Balzac, the strangest, most romantic, and most poetic among all the characters created by your imagination,” Baudelaire declared.”

BalzacBaudelaireDandyism
Book:The Art of the July Monarchy: France, 1830 to 1848
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“Dandyism is the last flicker of heroism in decadent ages.... Dandyism is a setting sun; like the declining star, it is magnificent, without heat and full of melancholy. But alas! the rising tide of democracy, which spreads everywhere and reduces everything to the same level, is daily carrying away these last champions of human pride, and submerging, in the waters of oblivion, the last traces of these remarkable myrmidons.”

HumansAgeLastsStarsWaterLevelsSunDemocracyPrideSpreadSettingSettingsHeatChampionRisingRemarkableMelancholyTidesHeroismMagnificentAlasOblivionFlickerDandyism
Author:Charles Baudelaire
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“These beings have no other status, but that of cultivating the idea of beauty in their own persons, of satisfying their passions, of feeling and thinking.... Contrary to what many thoughtless people seem to believe, dandyism is not even an excessive delight in clothes and material elegance. For the perfect dandy, these things are no more than the symbol of the aristocratic superiority of his mind.”

PeopleThinkingMindBelievePersonsIdeasFeelingsSeemsPassionPerfectMaterialsClothesDelightContrarySymbolsSatisfyingSuperiorityEleganceCultivatingAristocraticDandyDandyism
Author:Charles Baudelaire
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“A certain kind of rich man afflicted with the symptoms of moral dandyism sooner or later comes to the conclusion that it isn't enough merely to make money. He feels obliged to hold views, to espouse causes and elect Presidents, to explain to a trembling world how and why the world went wrong.”

MenWorldFeelsKindEnoughCertainCausesPresidentViewsMoneyMoralRichConclusionComicMaking MoneySooner Or LaterSymptomsObligedTremblingRich ManDandyism
Author:Lewis H. Lapham
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