Pleasure Wars

415 Pages·1998·4.01 MB·English

by  Peter Gay

BOOKS BY PETER GAY
The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud Education of the Senses (1984)
The Tender Passion (1986)
The Cultivation of Hatred (1993)
The Naked Heart (1995)
Pleasure Wars (1998)
Reading Freud: Explorations and Entertainments (1990) Freud: A Life for Our
Time (1988) A Godless Jew:
Freud, Atheism, and the Making of Psychoanalysis (1987) Freud for Historians
(1985)
Freud, Jews and Other Germans:
Masters and Victims in Modernist Culture (1978) Art and Act: On Causes in
History—Manet, Gropius, Mondrian (1976) Style in History (1974)
Modern Europe (1973), with R. K. Webb The Bridge of Criticism: Dialogues on
the Enlightenment (1970) The Enlightenment: An Interpretation Vol. II The
Science of Freedom (1969) Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider (1968) A
Loss of Mastery: Puritan Historians in Colonial America (1966) The
Enlightenment: An Interpretation Vol. I The Rise of Modern Paganism (1966)
The Party of Humanity: Essays in the French Enlightenment (1964) Voltaire’s
Politics: The Poet as Realist (1959) The Dilemma of Democratic Socialism:
Eduard Bernstein’s Challenge to Marx (1952)
Pleasure Wars
The Bourgeois Experience
VICTORIA TO FREUD
VOLUME V

FOR
RUTHIE
Contents
Introduction: Definitions
BOURGEOIS EXPERIENCES, V: Bourgeoisophobes
1. Gustavus Flaubertus
2. Six-Pack Philistines
3. Confusing Confrontations
ONE The Political Economy of Art
1. Battles of the Budgets
2. Affordable Masterpieces
3. Limits and Possibilities
TWO The Geography of Taste
1. Dividends from Commerce
2. Majestic Dispensations
THREE Acknowledged Legislators
1. Guides to Pleasure
2. Master Craftsmen
3. From Zola to Wilde
FOUR Hunters and Gatherers
1. A Map of Motives
2. Collecting as Autobiography
3. The Victorian Maecenas
FIVE Movers and Shakers
1. Founders
2. Buttresses for the Establishment
3. The Perspiring Philistine on Trial
SIX Modernism
1. A Profusion of Alternatives
2. Modernists vs. Modernists
3. Causes and Effects
4. Against the Need for Probability
CODA A Bourgeois Experience
Notes
Bibliographical Essay
Acknowledgments
Index
Photo Inserts
Copyright
“Bourgeois,” I observed, “is an epithet which the riff-raff apply to what is
respectable, and the aristocracy to what is decent.”
—“Anthony Hope,” [pseud. Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins], Dolly Dialogues, 1894
Der heuchlerische Anschein, mit dem alle bürgerlichen Ordnungen übertüncht
sind, wie als ob sie Ausgeburten der Moralität wären—z. B. die Ehe; die Arbeit;
der Beruf; das Vaterland; die Familie; die Ordnung; das Recht. Aber da sie
insgesamt auf die mittelmässigste Art Mensch hin begründet sind, zum Schutz
gegen Ausnahmen und Ausnahme-Bedürfnisse, so muss man es billig finden,
wenn hier viel gelogen wird.
—Friedrich Nietzsche, Nachlass
Bourgeois, vous avez—roi, législateur ou négociant—institué des collections,
des musées, des galeries. Quelques-unes de celles qui n’étaient ouvertes il y a
seize ans qu’aux accapareurs ont élargi leurs portes pour la multitude. Vous
vous êtes associés, vous avez formé des compagnies et fait des emprunts pour
réaliser l’idée de l’avenir avec toutes ses formes diverses, formes politique,
industrielle et artistique. Vous n’avez jamais en aucune noble entreprise laissé
l’initiative à la minorité protestant et souffrante, qui est d’ailleurs l’ennemie
naturelle de l’art.
—Charles Baudelaire, Salon de 1846