Illness, Culture and Comfort. Decadence as a Lifestyle in Eduard von Keyserling’s Short Stories

Abstract

In his short stories and novels, Eduard von Keyserling thematises various symptoms of decadence in the German-Baltic nobility circles, from which he himself was a descendant. Apart from decadence being one of the most important topics in his writing, his own sickness and blindness made Keyserling an epitome of decadence on his own. The traditions of the German-Baltic nobility which Keyserling describes in his prose works had remained unchanged for centuries. However, it seems that at the beginning of the modern period, the foundations of this culture were deteriorating. Its pillars, the older family members, try to pass the family values on to the new generations. The older generation is most often represented by mentally strong but sick or bedridden characters, who are quietly waiting for the coming end. Contrary to them, the young are unable to take the burden of tradition onto their own backs. These psychically hypersensitive characters yearn for a life outside the world in which they were born and brought up. Yet, each of their forays into the real world ends up in a confrontation with reality, once more underlining their weakness and incompetence. In a desire to escape, they attempt either to remove themselves from the family circles or relegate themselves to the comfort zone and small pleasures. Keyserling thus depicts the downfall of a century-old culture, which tries to alleviate the symptoms of decadence with aestheticism, while its representatives stumble through life filled with obstacles.