{"id":4258,"date":"2011-08-08T13:01:57","date_gmt":"2011-08-08T10:01:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.keikari.com\/blogi\/?p=4258"},"modified":"2011-08-08T13:01:57","modified_gmt":"2011-08-08T10:01:57","slug":"kirje-nuorelle-dandylle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.keikari.com\/blogi\/kirje-nuorelle-dandylle\/","title":{"rendered":"Kirje nuorelle dandylle"},"content":{"rendered":"

T\u00e4m\u00e4n p\u00e4iv\u00e4n Vieraskyn\u00e4ss\u00e4 amerikkalainen journalisti Michael Mattis kirjoittaa<\/a> dandyismin olemuksesta ja k\u00e4yt\u00e4nn\u00f6st\u00e4 2000-luvun nuoren miehen el\u00e4m\u00e4ss\u00e4. Mattis sanailee mietteens\u00e4 Palmierille, joka t\u00e4ss\u00e4 tekstiss\u00e4 on todenn\u00e4k\u00f6isesti henkil\u00f6n sijaan vain kirjallinen tehokeino ja viittaus 1400-luvulla el\u00e4neen italialaisen humanistin<\/a> tuotantoon, erityisesti aikansa merkkiteokseen “Della vita civile”. Mattis tiivist\u00e4\u00e4 olennaisen t\u00e4st\u00e4 sosiaalisesta ilmi\u00f6st\u00e4 erinomaisesti, keskittyen Beaun hahmoon sek\u00e4 vaikutukseen ja sivuuttaen Wilden, d’Orsayn ja muut keikarit klisein\u00e4.<\/p>\n

Michael Mattis<\/p>\n

Letter to a Young Dandy, Part I<\/p>\n

“My Dear Palmieri:<\/p>\n

It is a rare and wonderful gift for a curmudgeon such as myself to\u00a0 receive the praise of youth. It\u2019s nice to know my little column is read\u00a0 at all, but to be solicited for advice is a singular honor.<\/p>\n

In your brief e-pistle you mentioned that you are about to start your studies at the University of Pennsylvania and that you will be studying English and perhaps taking a minor degree in psychology. Very well, a solid grounding in literature combined with some understanding of the motives that drive human behavior can be both enlightening and entertaining. Be sure not to take either too seriously, however, but treat each with the skepticism and humor it deserves. Besides, taking anything too seriously can lead to premature laugh lines, and those aren\u2019t funny.<\/p>\n

In anticipation of your arrival at university, you tell me that you have, \u201cconcocted a grand scheme with a dear Friend\u2026 that involves the introduction of the Dandy way of life to that of the University.\u201d\u00a0Furthermore, you say: \u201cOur manner of aestheticism and dress, we hope, preserves notions of Dandyism\u2026 into a frame of mind that promotes refinement of manners and elegance of speech.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hmm\u2026 a grand scheme? The introduction of the Dandy way of life? My dear Palmieri, while such intent may seem laudable to one so young and full of idealism, your words set this middle-aged dandy\u2019s fop-dar a-beeping. I hope you and your friend\u2019s \u201cgrand scheme\u201d does not involve flouncing around the quad in poofy shirts and knee breeches proclaiming the equiprimordiality of Beauty with a peacock feather in one hand and a dime-store quizzing glass in the other in some vain attempt to civilize the unruly, suds-swilling frat rats of U. Penn. You\u2019ll only make a ridiculous spectacle of yourself. And your followers will no doubt be the sort of pencil-necked misfits who work at the local comic-book store, and there\u2019s nothing dandyish about that.<\/p>\n

But I react too rashly. Let us take a step back and look first to first principles. Before we can discover how to bring dandyism with us wherever we go, we have to ask first what dandyism is. But even before we do that, let\u2019s discuss what dandyism is not.<\/p>\n

Dandyism is not, as has often been claimed, a response to bourgeois, middle class or \u201cmainstream\u201d values, manners or fashions. There is nothing so bourgeois as affecting to despise the bourgeois. Nor is it a reaction to democratic leveling, perceived authoritarian rule, bureaucracy, technology or MTV. It is not a world-altering aesthetic movement that needs to be evangelized among the heathen, the vulgar and the unwashed. It has nothing whatever to do with alienation, angst, transgression, resistance or teenage rebellion.<\/p>\n

Nor is dandyism a canvas upon which to paint a portrait of one\u2019s pomposity; it is not some sort of sartorial telegraph for communicating one\u2019s alleged spiritual superiority, supposed aesthetic authority, assumed poetic sensitivity, professed exquisite taste, or fictitious aristocratic lineage. Snobbery can be fun in its place, but it is hardly a credo. Dandyism won\u2019t necessarily make you better that the useful persons around you, like your butcher, your baker, or your mechanic, but it may make you better in some ways than you were before. But then it may also leave you, as the histories suggest, penniless and drooling in a French insane asylum, penniless and on the brink of suicide, or penniless and cursing the wallpaper from your death bed in a cheap right bank hotel.<\/p>\n

So what is it then? Simply put, dandyism is the study and practice of personal elegance.<\/p>\n

At first blush that may sound a trifle shallow. But the closer you look, the more complexity you will see. And you will also see just how difficult the end is to achieve in real life. Edward Bulwer-Lytton (he of \u201cIt was a dark and stormy night\u201d fame), is often remembered as one of the windiest novelists ever to disgrace the English language. Though Bulwer could indeed be a bloviating writer, he was nevertheless a great dandy. And he said it best when he wrote, \u201cHe who esteems trifles for themselves, is a trifler. He who esteems them for the conclusions to be drawn from them, or the advantage to which they can be put, is a philosopher.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is said that the flapping of a butterfly\u2019s wings in one corner of the globe can cause a hurricane in another. As an aspiring dandy, you will set your mind toward observing and uncovering the meanings hidden in the seemingly insignificant trifles that others may miss: the fall of a coat, the tint of a woman\u2019s hair, the tilt of a hat, the stress of a vowel, the grace of a gesture, the power of a word. The pinnacle of human trifling is, of course, fashion. As an aspiring dandy, you will become a student of fashion and its long and vital story amid human endeavor. Not just fashion in clothes, mind you, though you will watch this closely, but fashion in literature, fashion in advertising, fashion in music, fashion in morals, fashion in entertainment, fashion in art, fashion in thought and even fashion in politics. All of human folly and foible will be to you layered like a great ball of string, wound up with mystery and meaning. And as you unravel the ball the significance of the individual strings will grow more evident, just as their mysteries will deepen.<\/p>\n

The exposition of trifles has itself become fashionable in literary circles in recent years, as some historians, grown weary of treating the same weighty events over and over, have taken to exploring the extraordinary influence of apparently incidental things like pepper, coffee, sugar, codfish and even the color mauve. It is a development that has substantiated what the dandy has known since Brummell: that the world is not only made up of trifles but it is governed by triflers, and that to apprehend society one must first comprehend folly.\u00a0 Always remember, as Bulwer also said, \u201cNothing is superficial to a deep observer!\u201d<\/p>\n

But we will speak more about fashion later on.<\/p>\n

Whether you plan to write poems about trifles, paint canvases about folly, pen social critiques, or merely hang back and observe Vanity Fair\u2019s foibles with a satirical glint in your eye and a quip on the tip of your tongue is up to you. The choice is also utterly irrelevant to your aspirations to dandyism. Contrary to popular belief, to be successful, a dandy needn\u2019t be anything other than a dandy.<\/p>\n

In the 19th century, dandyism became associated with the cult of art and beauty called aestheticism. This was due in no small part to the influence of men like Theophile Gautier, Charles Baudelaire, Oscar Wilde, Robert de Montequiou and others, who straddled the worlds of beau monde and bohemia, celebrity and notoriety, literary salon and opium den, whorehouse and painter\u2019s studio. In the minds of today\u2019s scholars and intellectuals, the two phenomena have become indelibly linked.<\/p>\n

To add to the confusion, the aesthete was widely caricatured by popular magazines like Punch and in stage plays like Gilbert and Sullivan\u2019s operetta \u201cPatience\u201d. This snatch from the operetta\u2019s key song, \u201cThe Aesthete,\u201d is a parody of the young Oscar Wilde:<\/p>\n

\u2026 Though the Philistines may jostle,
\nYou will rank as an apostle
\nIn the high aesthetic band
\nIf you walk down Piccadilly with a poppy or a lily
\nIn your mediaeval hand\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

It is this clich\u00e9 of the wilting, flower-waving aesthete in velvet britches and floppy hat, who faints at the sight of a Moreau and gushes paroxysms of joy over a Rossetti, that the contemporary world most associates with the dandy, particularly in the United States.<\/p>\n

And the clich\u00e9 lives on. No doubt you will meet the modern retro-eccentric version of the fin-de-siecle aesthete during your university sojourn. He will be resplendent in his neo-Victorian \u201cBunthorne\u201d uniform, reminiscent of the costume Albert Finney wore in the film \u201cA Man of No Importance.\u201d You will see him in certain nightclubs and at certain parties, usually hanging around with the black-lipstick-and-eyeliner crowd, complaining in antiquated language about flip-flop-wearers, shabby grammar, reality TV, the Internet (except his own blog), athletes and how he was born into the wrong era.<\/p>\n

The more contemporary \u2014 and to my mind the more authentic \u2014 aesthete often wears a uniform, too, but one that reflects the anger and revolt endemic to today\u2019s art. Instead of waxing eloquent about a Whistler, our aesthete will proclaim the transgressive glories of Andres Serrano\u2019s \u201cPiss Christ\u201d or Damian Hirst\u2019s \u201cProdigal Son (Divided).\u201d Oversized boots, paint-spattered jeans, an unruly mop and a crappy attitude are the likely accoutrements of his attire.<\/p>\n

Both of these are costumes, of course, and neither has much to do with elegance (although the retro-eccentric will often confuse his effeminate extravagance for it). Dandies don\u2019t wear costumes, but carefully chosen attire.\u00a0You\u2019re probably asking yourself, \u201cBut can\u2019t a contemporary dandy be a contemporary aesthete?\u201d And the answer is: \u201cAbsolutely.\u201d But in the dandy alphabet, the \u201cD\u201d always comes before the \u201cA.\u201d<\/p>\n

Well-known contemporary dandies that also happen to be aesthetes include the late, post-modern architect, Phillip Johnson, Barnaby Conrad III, the author of books like \u201cAbsinthe: History in a Bottle\u201d and a painter in his own right, and, perhaps, the pop-star fashion plate Andre3000. Others have put the famed artist David Hockney in this category, but he is a bit too noisy and unkempt for my taste.<\/p>\n

But the fact is that there have been many dandies quietly dressing away for the last two centuries or more who could not possibly care less about art for its own sake any more than they care about quantum physics. You rarely hear about them because they are only seen in passing, for they have few pretensions outside their craft. A few have been found dressing up the columns of certain publications. The New Yorker\u2019s Robert Benchley\u00a0 and Vanity Fair\u2019s Dominick Dunne are two of the ink-tinctured men-about-town that spring to mind. Others can be found in the more creative enterprises like marketing, such as Thomas Mastronardi, the branding expert recently pictured on Dandyism.net\u2019s homepage. Still thousands of others dress each morning in splendid obscurity, doing so for no other purpose than to please themselves and the people they enjoy calling on. They may come from any of the more civilized professions, or from no profession at all. This is dandyism in its purest, most Brummellian form.<\/p>\n

About now you\u2019re probably thinking, \u201cWell all of this is fine in theory, but what shall I wear?\u201d<\/p>\n

But the hour grows late, my dear Palmieri, my fingers are weary and I\u2019m out of claret. You will have to wait until next time, when we discuss the dandy in practice.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

T\u00e4m\u00e4n p\u00e4iv\u00e4n Vieraskyn\u00e4ss\u00e4 amerikkalainen journalisti Michael Mattis kirjoittaa dandyismin olemuksesta ja k\u00e4yt\u00e4nn\u00f6st\u00e4 2000-luvun nuoren miehen el\u00e4m\u00e4ss\u00e4. Mattis sanailee mietteens\u00e4 Palmierille, …
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