Decline and Fall

Decline and Fall

I have recently read Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh; it is one of the funniest pieces of early 20th century satire that I have come across. I think that it is a precursor to PG Woodhouse’s novels - a humorous take on the English class system prevalent in the Twenties. It is a book which celebrates the English language - where everything has a meaning, a point, a thought, but it is also a book which at its core has themes of cultural confusion, moral disorientation and societal bedlam.

Interestingly when first published the novel was praised for its ‘almost passionate adherence to the ultra-modern’; in reality this is a most misguided comment as Waugh was a well documented proponent of the traditional. It is through the character of Professor Silenus that the themes of cultural confusion and modernity are discussed. Waugh presents a situation where the old order is torn down and replaced by the modern. Silenus - Le Corbusier in a fictional character’s clothing - is presented as a figure of ridicule but also as a personification of the post war era. The character of Professor Silenus forced me to re-evaluate my personal opinions of Le Corbusier. I had never before considered Le Corbusier in the light of society’s disenchantment with traditional ways in the wake of the Great War; the bonds of history and the established order that were so weakened by the rampant devastation and destruction. Le Corbusier’s thoughts about architecture are entirely logical, the machine age had emerged out of war and society no longer wanted to be associated with ‘before’. Though I have difficulty identifying with ‘the machine for living’ doctrine it is entirely logical and was presumably essential for a society struggling to identify with anything.

Le Corbusier’s attitudes towards architecture are difficult to identify with as we are not in the ‘machine age’. Today in an age of technology - the digital age - Le Corbusier would identify five different points of architecture such as.... actually I am not sure. I think that maybe this is something else that I had not realised about Le Corbusier; it is incredibly difficult to provide an identity for a generation. Le Corbusier gave a style and maybe a new focus to people who needed it. The machine age is not something solely about war and death, but also creation. I think that it is something that I will consider more each time I re-read ‘Decline and Fall’, and this piece must only be viewed as being tentative steps toward a new understanding.