Demonism from Warning to Worship

The Development of the Demonic and the Transition of the Fallen Angel to the Demonic Muse in the Poetry of Charles Baudelaire and Ivan Cankar

Abstract

The paper outlines how the emergence of the concepts of the aesthetics of ugliness (Rosenkranz) and the ‘new beauty’ (Baudelaire) impacted the role of the demonic in the poetry of the Modern period (i.e. decadence, symbolism and New Romanticism). In the Slovenian context, demonism appeared in older verse texts with the purpose of warning against Satan, Hell and the posthumous penalty due to an unvirtuous life that did not follow God’s commandments and the higher Truth. In the fin-de-siècle period, however, the demonic came under the influence of German and French philosophical thought and its role changed, shifting from the fear of the fallen angel, Lucifer, to the worship of the demonic muse. The speaker in the poems, who still believed in spiritual purity and salvation in the Romantic period, became a victim of black magic in the Modern period and faced (spiritual) damnation under the spell of a witch’s deceptive beauty.