In an age when democratic ideas, levelling processes and the popularization of thought are in vogue, the phenomenon of a Remy de Gourmont emphasizing the aristocratic virtues, drawing attention to the perfect detachment demanded by literature and art, makes one pause as though transported to a different world, to a less nervous existence. Gourmont, the aristocrat of letters, the thinker who could shrug his shoulders amusedly at current acceptances of progress, modernity and evolution, never for an instant ceased battling for a more discriminate attitude towards life and letters. He permitted none of his carefully reared mansions of the intellect to be sullied by aught that could not pass th…
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