The aesthetes and decadents desired art that was not utilitarian. If art has a purpose, a meaning beyond itself, beyond its own existence in the world, then that objective and meaning has a value seemingly greater than the art itself and supersedes it, degrading its very existence as art. The irony of the art and writing of the Aesthetic and Decadent movements is that much of it is moral, has a clear purpose, and is only seemingly veiled by the mediums themselves. The brilliance and beauty of a decadent poem or a narrative of aesthetic fiction is in the language itself. So a question seems to assert itself: Is the medium that which is beautiful, or the work of art that it creates? Or are they both beautiful?
I would not call The Picture of Dorian Gray a beautiful book, but rather the language that constitutes it beautiful. But is the language itself all that constitutes the book? What makes up the matter of the book? Yet I can easily say that Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” is a beautiful poem. Why? The answer seems to be that when speaking of a poem the language itself is directly perceived as what comprises the poem, inclusive of its rhythm and the images it invokes. But for fiction so much more seems to go into the work than just the language—the development of a plot with all its twists and turns, the setting and atmosphere, the exploration and building of characters through dialogue and action. Poetry, on the other hand, seems to be something pared down, more readily available to be deemed “beautiful.” It seems that fiction rather than poetry is quite often the genre that leads to instruction in moral belief and behavior. But doesn’t poetry do this as well? This is most notably true for the poetry written before the Romantics but continues through them to the present.