New Addition: An 1888 Glossary of Decadent & Symbolist Subculture

Jacques Plowert [Paul Adam], Petit glossaire pour servir a l'intelligence des auteurs décadents et symbolistes. (Little Glossary to Aid the Comprehension of  Decadent and Symbolist Authors). Oct., 1888. First Edition. Vanier, Bibliopole: Paris. With marginalia by unknown avant-gardist.

As with every generation of the avant-garde, the Decadent and Symbolist movements systematically developed ways to de-familiarize and radicalize the use of language, and their work was thus under constant attack as incomprehensible, absurd, esoteric, and degenerate. The designations "Decadent" and "Symbolist" were themselves contested, typically applied to overlapping networks of the same community, and often used synonymously both by proponants and detractors. This satirical dictonary of avant-garde slang (argot), neologisms, anti-conventional usage, and theoretical vocabulary is a tongue-in-cheek but accurate snapshot of linguistic experimentation and communal argot within the avant-garde at the time, offering examples of each word from recent Decadent texts.

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This rare volume was issued by the ultra-Symbolist publisher Léon Vanier, and represents a group of avant-garde poets and theorists who were promoting self-declared Decadence and Symbolism; indeed, Vanier's publishing house called itself a 'Bibliopole'--a bit of Symbolist argot which dos not appear in the dictionary but is defined in the Glossaire itself, thus (roughly translated): "Bibliopole: Seller of books. Greek, Bibliopôlès. ex. "Léon Vanier, bibliopole of Symbolists and Decadents." (Posters.)" The list of Vanier publications on the back maps out a network of young radical polemicists of Symbolism including Paul Adam and Francis Viele-Griffin (editors of the leftist Symbolist journal Entretiens), J.K. Huysmans (author of À Rebours, the 'Breviary of Decadence'), Jean Moreas and Gustave Kahn (editors with Adam of the journal Le Symboliste), the francophone American anarchist symbolist poet Stuart Merrill, and, interestingly, the earlier satire of Decadent poetry, Les Deliquescences. The latter, intended as a parodic attack on the Symbolists but then adopted by them (much like Janin's The Dead Donkey and the Guillotined Woman against the Frenetics several generations earlier), was attributed to the pseudonym Adoré Floupette; on the back of this volume, the true authors--Henri Beauclair and Gabriel Vicaire--are listed along with Floupette. The Glossaire, too, was published pseudonymously by "Jacques Plowert", and is usually attributed to Paul Adam.

This particular copy opens up further possible complications and corellations between these two Decadent satires. It contains marginalia in pencil by an unknown 19th Century reader. 

Most of this marginalia consists in annotations beside certain entries (predominantly examples drawn from Gustave Kahn & Mallarmé) giving a number and a single word. These would seem to refer to page numbers in the volumes in question--presumably in whatever edition of each work was in the previous reader's possession; but so far I have been unsuccessful in locating the noted words, or the quoted passages, on the indicated pages of the editions online, or matching them with titles of poems, etc. by the authors in question. Clearly, in any case, the reader was deeply involved in avant-garde literature and was actively using the glossary in his or her own poetic, critical, and/or bibliographic process; it is quite possible that they personally knew some of the writers and/or editors represented. 

On the title page, the owner has made an intriguing and enigmatic addition to the title-page: directly below the pseudonym "Jacques Plowert," they have penciled in the names of four poets, enclosed together in parentheses: Felix Féneon, the virulent Decadent anarchist; Jean Moréas, outspoken polemicist of Decadence; Paul Adam, the known actual writer of the Glossaire; and Henri Beauclair, co-author of the satirical Déliquescences. Is it possible that this book's owner, privy to information unpublished but known within the Decadent community, is informing us that the pseudonym "Plowert" in fact covers a collaborative effort by four writers? In this connection Beauclair's collaboration is interesting, since he seems never to have been sympathetic to the movement's aims but, through his parody published by the same Decadent press, was a clear influence on the Glossaire. Or is there some other connection to which the previous reader was attempting to point us? In any event we know that all four had already been published by Vanier, that all but Beauclair are frequently quoted in the Glossaire itself, and that all three were outspoken proponants of Decadence.