This provincial paradise would triumph over the decadence of metropolitan culture simply by escaping its infections.
The decadence and detachment of the aesthetes was but the result of high capitalism and the necessary alienation of the worker from his task.
The former is popularly associated with poverty and living conditions, the latter (incorrectly) with social decadence.
Rather than search for solace in images of primitive virtue, the wine poem finds it in sophisticated decadence.
It is he, above all, who represents imperial decadence and corruption.
He criticized what he called "literary decadence," where meaning resides in flashes of insight but not in the text as a whole.
Yet, the ghazal is the very opposite of that image of decadence.
Part of this was an even stronger statement about the potential of music education to curb drunkenness, decadence and social disruption amongst the working classes.
