Lurking

The Decadent movement came at the fin de siècle, the end of the 1890s--it was associated with Symbolist art and writing, and also stuff like Beardsley's wild drawings, Wilde's Dorian Grey. It was different than the wider Romantic movement [c1800s-1850s]. One very interesting thing it created by Jean Lorrain's [1855-1906] novel Monsieur De Phocas [Mister De Phocas], read here in French.

If you like masks, Venetian carnival-style atmospheres, the eerie and True Detective, try this, it's what to read after it. It always reminds me of Astarte [Ashtoreth] with his line of her and mention of a black Astarte statue--I recall her picture by Sargent up on the curved wall in Boston's famous Italian marble palazzo Public Library. 

Astarte [Greek: Ἀστάρτη], also called Ishtar or Aphrodite by other groups, was an ancient goddess especially worshipped in Cyprus and Phoenician cities like Sidon, Tyre and Byblos [now the area of the coast in Lebanon and Syria--they were famous for trading their purple dye, which came from local snails]. She represented sexuality but also war, and notice the crescent moon under her feet, all the shining golden cut glass pressed into the painting, like the acorns on the sides. 

Here's a little quote I like:
Astarte has come again, more powerful than before. She possesses me. She lies in wait for me.
Astarté est revenue, plus puissante qu'avant. Elle me possède, elle me guette. [original French]

And another longer one:
The madness of the eyes is the lure of the abyss. Sirens lurk in the dark depths of the pupils as they lurk at the bottom of the sea, that I know for sure - but I have never encountered them, and I am searching still for the profound and plaintive gazes in whose depths I might be able, like Hamlet redeemed, to drown the Ophelia of my desire.

And this great creepy part:
“Masks! I see them everywhere. That dreadful vision of the other night - the deserted town with its masked corpses in every doorway; that nightmare product of morphine and ether - has taken up residence within me. I see masks in the street, I see them on stage in the theatre, I find yet more of them in the boxes. They are on the balcony and in the orchestra-pit. Everywhere I go I am surrounded by masks. The attendants to whom I give my overcoat are masked; masks crowd around me in the foyer as everyone leaves, and the coachman who drives me home has the same cardboard grimace fixed upon his face!

It is truly too much to bear: to feel that one is alone and at the mercy of all those enigmatic and deceptive faces, alone amid all the mocking laughs and the threats embodied in those masks. I have tried to persuade myself that I am dreaming, and that I am the victim of a hallucination, but all the powdered and painted faces of women, all the rouged lips and kohl-blackened eyelids... all of that has created around me an atmosphere of trance and mortal agony. Cosmetics: there is the root cause of my illness!

But I am happy, now, when there are only masks! Sometimes, I detect the cadavers beneath, and remember that beneath the masks there is a host of spectres.”