Fin De Siecle Art

The loony paintings of the impressionist, the erotic novéis, the realistic horrors evolved by Zola, Ibsen, Tolstoi, Maupassant and Mester] inck, the wierd music of Wagner, the scarey fashions which mark the dress of the woman of our day, are all illustrations af this new "fin-de-siecle" spirit. We are told that the world of the present is living in "the reddened light of the :lusk of the nations;" that faith is dying, that, tired of all existing things, man chases after new beliefs, new ensagements and sensations, only to find that the trail of the serpent is over all. Fin de siecleism is a dlsease which has before afflicted mankind. It raged at the close of the year 1000, when there was a general belief that the end of ill things was at hand, and men sought irainly to compress all possibly earthly pleasures into a few hours yet allotted :hem. The eighteenth century went out in the blood and horrors of the wars succeedidg the Frenen revolution, and the poets of that day cast horoscopes for the future full of gloom and forebodlng.