死亡后记 ——西川谈海子的死

　　海子去世以后，我写过一篇名为《怀念》的文章，那篇文章是这样开头的：“诗人海子的死将成为我们 这个时代的神话之一。”现在5年过去了，海子的确成了一个神话：他的诗被模仿；他的自杀被谈论；有人张罗着要把海子的剧本《弑》谱成歌导剧；有人盘算着想 把海子的短诗拍成电视片；学生们在广场或朗诵会上集体朗诵海子的诗；诗歌爱好者们跑到海子的家乡去祭奠；有人倡议设立中国诗人节，时间便定在海子自杀的3 月 26日；有人为了写海子传而东奔西跑；甚至有人从海子家中拿走了（如果不说是“掠走了”）海子的遗嘱、海子用过的书籍以及医生对海子自杀的 诊断书（这些东西如今大部分都已被追回）。海子在孤独寂寞中度过了一生，死后为众人如此珍视，敬仰，甚至崇拜，这在中国现当代文学史上，恐怕是绝无仅有的 事。我们由此也可以看出诗歌的力量所在。当然，很难说在对海子的种种缅怀与谈说中没有臆想和误会，很难说这里面没有一点围观的味道。忽然有那么多人自称是 海子的生前好友，这不能不让人怀疑到他们是想从海子自杀这件事上有所收益，他们是想参与到一个必将载入史册的“事件”当中来。

　　或许臆想和误会悉属正常。一个人选择死亡也便选择了别人对其死亡文本的误读。个人命运在一个人死后依然作用于他，这是一个值得我们深思的问题。在海子 自杀这件事上，我们不可避免地面对两种反应：一种是赞佩，一种是愤怒。有时我们会听到这样一种高声断喝：“海子是个法西斯！”“海子是自我膨胀的典型！” 有一种观点把海子变成了武侠小说中的人物，认为海子是那类练黑道武功的杀手，虽然武艺高强，但到底不是正宗，因此自身积郁了太多的毒素。海子最终是为自身 的毒素所害。大体说来，海子自杀激怒了两类人：一类是那些怀有高尚然而脆弱的道德理想的读者；另一类便是自身尚在谋取功名的诗人。我在美国出版的《一行》 诗刊上读到过这样一句莫名其妙的叹语：“怎么让这小子玩了头一把？” 似乎在自杀上也有一个优先权的问题，似乎海子从对诗歌语言的霸占最终走到了对死亡的霸占，似乎海子的死废掉了别人的死。这几年诗歌界内部对海子诗歌的评价较之1989年已经有了很大的不同，比如有些人认为海子的诗歌写作其实尚处于依赖青春激情的业余写作 阶段，并未真正进入专业写作，又比如认为海子只有他的梦想却没有他的方法论。这些观点或许都有道理，但是否也有人依然把海子视作一个挡道的人呢？

　　不过，尽管人们对海子的评价五花八门，但有一点是肯定的：海子的死带给了人们巨大和持久的震撼。在这样一个缺乏精神和价值尺度的时代，有一个诗人自杀 了，他逼使大家重新审视，认识诗歌与生命。但是，理论界似乎对此准备不足，因此反应得有些措手不及，这一点从有人将海子与屈原、王国维、朱湘，甚至希尔维 亚?普拉斯扯在一起就能看出。这种草率的归类表明，人们似乎找不到现成的、恰当的语言来谈论海子，人们似乎不知道怎样给海子定位。于是便有了一些想当然的 见解。四川诗人钟鸣在其文章《中间地带》里，把海子说成是一个奔走于小城昌平和首都北京之间的人，认为海子在两个地方都找不到自己的家，因此便只好让自己 在精神上处于一种中间地带。上海评论家朱大可在其《宗教诗人：海子与骆一禾》一文中，赋予海子的死以崇高的仪典意义；于是海子便成了一个英雄，成了20世 纪末中国诗坛为精神而献身的象征。朱文认为海子选择在山海关自杀也有其特殊的用意，因为山海关是长城的起点，是“巨大的种族之门”，与历史上最大的皇权专 制有关。我想，海子若真做此想，那么他定然脱不了演戏的干系，他的自杀也便成了自我献祭。而事实上，海子并没有选择山海关，而是选择了山海关至龙家营之间 的一段火车慢行道。那是一个适于自杀的地点，海子之前，曾有三个人在那里自杀。

　　本来在写了《怀念》那篇文章之后，我就不打算再拿海子做任何文章。我想我的责任是把海子的诗 歌整理发表出来，使之不致湮没、失散。至于如何评价海子的诗歌及他的自杀，应该由一些更加客观的人去探讨。特别是关于他的自杀，我一直不愿意说得太多。在 我看来，一个活着的人是没有资格去谈论他们的死亡的（我们顶多只能谈谈我们对自己的死亡的猜测），而一个握有死亡这枚大印的人，甚至可以蔑视恺撒这样的强 权。当然，我也知道约翰?顿说过这样的话：“无论谁死了，/我都觉得是我自己的一部分在死亡。/因为我包含在人类这个概念里。因此我从不问丧钟为谁而鸣， /它为我，也为你。”我想约翰?顿虽然指出每一个人的死都与我们有关，但他绝无意使每一个人的死都成为一种话语。换言之，我们从那死去的人身上所看到的， 不是那人的死而是我们自己的死。这种醒悟使我们向生命睁开眼睛，知道我们还活着，而且还不得不忍受太具体的生活内容。

　　海子去世以后，理论界大多是从形而上的角度来对海子加以判断。我不否认海子自杀有其形而上的原因，更不否认海子之死对于我们这个时代的精神意义，但若 我们仅把海子框定在一种形而上的光环之内，则我们便也不能洞见海子其人其诗，长此以往，海子便也真会成为一个幻像。在诗人自杀这个问题上，还是加缪有着一 种更加实在，也是更加站得住脚的看法。他在《西西弗的神话》一书中指出：“人们极少（但不能排除）因为反思而自杀。”的确，每一个人的自杀都有他的导火 索，海子也不例外。 5 年来，我对导致海子自杀的一些具体原因不愿多谈，是怕使海子受到伤害。但当我看到人们在思考海子自杀这个问题上越走越远，而且在诗歌写作和诗人行为上带来 某些不良影响时，我又颇感不安。为此我写下这篇文章，以期澄清某些基本事实，但愿它们不会为某些居心不良的人所利用。

　　以下是我所知和我所猜测的海子自杀的原因：

　　①自杀情结 海子是一个有自杀情结的人。我在《怀念》中已经引述过海子于1986年写下的一篇日记，那篇日记记于他一次未遂自 杀之后。此外，我们从海子的大量诗作中（如发表于1989年第一、二期《十月》上的《太阳·诗剧》和他至今未发表过的长诗《太阳·断头篇》等），也可以找 到海子自杀的精神线索。他在诗中反复、具体地谈到死亡--死亡与农业、死亡与泥土、死亡与天堂，以及鲜血、头盖骨、尸体等等。海子对于死亡的谈论甚至不仅 限于诗歌写作中。他死后，朋友们回忆起他生前说过的一些话，深悔从前没有太留意。有一位海子在昌平的友人告诉我，海子甚至同他谈到过自杀的方式。海子选择 卧轨，或许是因为他不可能选择从飞机上往下跳；在诸种可能的自杀方式中，卧轨似乎是最便当、最干净、最尊严的一种方式。我想海子是在死亡意象、死亡幻像、 死亡话题中沉浸太深了，这一切对海子形成了一种巨大的暗示。人说话应该避谶，而海子是一个不避谶的人。这使得他最终不可控制地朝自身的黑暗陷落。海子的另 一个自我暗示是“天才短命”。在分析了以往作家、艺术家的工作方式与其寿限的神秘关系后，海子得出这一结论；他尊称那些“短命天才”为光洁的“王子”。或 许海子与那些“王子” 有着某种心理和写作风格上的认同，于是“短命”对他的生命和写作方式形成了巨大的压力。关于这一点，我们在后面探究海子的写作方式与其写作理想的矛盾时还会谈到。

　　海子对自己自杀的看法或许与那些批评家的看法有较大不同。谁知道呢？也许那些批评家是正确的，而海子自己反倒说不清自己为什么而死。但我想我们至少应 该了解海子的形而上学，那就是：“道家暴力”。我一直不太明白“道家暴力”到底是什么意思。道者，天道，太初有道之道，道可道非常道之道，可这与暴力有什 么关系呢？海子把道形象化为一柄悬挂于头顶的利斧，可道为什么只能是利斧而不能是别的呢？1987年以后，海子放弃了其诗歌中母性、水质的爱，而转向一种 父性、烈火般的复仇。他特别赞赏鲁迅对待社会、世人“一个也不原谅”的态度。他的复仇之斧、道之斧挥舞起来，真像天上那严厉的“老爷子”。但海子毕竟是海 子，他没有把这利斧挥向别人，而是挥向了自己，也就是说他首先向自己复仇。他蔑视那“自我原谅”的抒情诗。他死于道。

　　②性格因素 要探究海子自杀的原因，不能不谈到他的性格。他纯洁，简单，偏执，倔 强，敏感，爱干净，喜欢嘉宝那样的女人，有时有点伤感，有时沉浸在痛苦之中不能自拔。在多数情况下，海子像一只绵羊一样对待他人。有一回海子的一个同事给 他送信，因为信有好多封，那人便一边读着信封上海子的名字--“海子海子海子”--一边把信递给他。可是忽然，送信人不再读“海子海子海子”，而改口为“ 孙子孙子孙子”，海子觉得送信人是在说着玩，便只是笑，倒是站在一旁的骆一禾火了起来，把送信人大骂一顿。一般说来，海子是温和的，但他也有愤怒的时候， 而且愤怒起来像一只豹子。有一回他在饭馆里一个人和几个人打起架来，结果打碎了眼镜，脸上也留下了血痕。事后他对我说，因为当时他真把命豁出去了，所以他 一个人和那几个人打了个平手。

　　海子性格的形成，应该既有其先天因素，也有其后天因素。所谓后天因素，自然指的是其农业背景。海子是农业的儿子，他迷恋泥土，对于伴随着时代发展而消 亡的某些东西，他自然伤感于心。1989年初，海子回了趟安徽。这趟故乡之行给他带来了巨大的荒凉之感。“有些你熟悉的东西再也找不到了，”他说。“你在 家乡完全变成了个陌生人！”至于先天因素，我指的是他的星座。海子生于1964年4月2日，属白羊星座。如果我们不仅仅是出于迷信的兴趣来看待他的星座的 话，我们至少可以在这里发现某些有趣的东西。海子一生热爱梵?高，称梵?高为“瘦哥哥”，而梵?高恰恰也是白羊星座生人，这其中难道没有什么神秘的联系 吗？是否生于这个星座的人都有一种铤而走险的倾向？早在1984年，海子就写过一首献给梵?高的诗，名为《阿尔的太阳》。诗中写道：瘦哥哥梵高，梵高啊/ 从地下强劲喷出的/火山一样不计后果的/是丝杉和麦田/还有你自己/喷出多余的活命时间这首诗写的是梵高，难道我们不可以把它看作是海子的某种自况吗？“ 不计后果”这个词，用在海子身上多么贴切！

　　③生活方式 海子的生活相当封闭。我在《怀念》一文中对此已有所描述。我要补充的一点是，海子似乎拒绝改变他生活的封闭性。他宁可生活在威廉?布莱克所说的“天真”状态，而拒绝进入一种更完满、丰富，当然也是更危险的“经验”状态。

　　1988年底，一禾和我先后结了婚，但海子坚持不结婚，而且劝我们也别结婚。他在昌平曾经有一位女友，就因为他拒绝与人家结婚，人家才离开了他。我们 可以想像海子在昌平的生活是相当寂寞的；有时他大概是太寂寞了，希望与别人交流。有一次他走进昌平一家饭馆。他对饭馆老板说：“我给大家朗诵我的诗，你们 能不能给我酒喝？”饭馆老板可没有那种尼采式的浪漫，他说：“我可以给你酒喝，但你别在这儿朗诵。”我想是简单、枯燥的生活害了海子；他的生活缺少交流， 即使在家里也是如此。他同家人的关系很好，同大弟弟查曙明保持着通信联系。但他的家人不可能理解他的思想和写作。据说在家里，他的农民父亲甚至有点儿不敢 跟他说话，因为他是一位大学老师。海子死前给家里买了一台黑白电视机。有一段时间，海子自己大概也觉得在昌平的生活难以忍受。他想在市里找一份工作，这样 就可以住得离朋友们近一些。但是要想在北京找一份正式的、稳定的工作谈何容易。海子的死使我对人的生活方式颇多感想，或许任何一个人都需要被一张网罩住， 而这张网就是社会关系之网。一般说来，这张网会剥夺我们生活的纯洁性，使我们疲于奔跑，心绪难定，使我们觉得生命徒耗在聊天、办事上，真如行尸走肉。但另 一方面，这张网恐怕也是我们生存的保障，我们不能否认它也有可靠的一面。无论是血缘关系，还是婚姻关系，还是社会关系，都会像一只只手紧紧抓住你的肩膀； 你即使想离开也不太容易，因为这些手会把你牢牢按住。但海子自杀时显然没有按住他肩膀的有力的手。

　　④荣誉问题 弥尔顿说过：追求荣誉是所有伟大人的通病。我想海子也不是一个对被社 会承认毫无兴趣的人。但和所有中国当代诗人一样，海子也面临着两方面的阻力。一方面是社会对于诗人的不信任，以及同权力结合在一起守旧文学对于先锋文学的 抵抗。这不是一个文学问题而是一个政治问题。另一方面是受到压制的先锋文学界内部的互不信任、互不理解、互相排斥。海子生前（甚至死后）可谓深受其害。尽 管我们几个朋友早就认识到了海子的才华和作品的价值，但事实上1989年以前大部分青年诗人对海子的诗歌持保留态度。诗人AB在给海子的信中就曾批评海子 的诗歌 “水份太大”。1988年左右，北京有一个诗歌组织，名为“幸存者”。有一次“幸存者”的成员们在诗人CD家里聚会，会上有诗人EFG 和HI对海子的长诗大加指责，认为他写长诗是犯了一个时代性的错误，并且把他的诗贬得一无是处（海子恰恰最看重自己的长诗，这是他欲建立其价值体系与精神 王国的最大的努力。他认为写长诗是工作而短诗仅供抒情之用）。 1987年，海子到南方去旅行了一趟。回京后他对骆一禾说，诗人JK人不错，我 们在北京应该帮帮他。可是时隔不久，海子在一份民间诗刊上读到了此人的一篇文章，文中大概说到：从北方来了一个痛苦的诗人，从挎包里掏出上万行诗稿。这篇 文章的作者评论道：“人类只有一个但丁就够了。”“此人（指海子）现在是我的朋友，将来会是我的敌人。”海子读到这些文字很伤心，竟然孩子气地跑到一禾处 哭了一通。这类超出正常批评的刺激文字出自我们自己的朋友实在有些说不过去，因为几乎在同时，北京作协在北京西山召开诗歌创作会议，会上居然有人给海子罗 列了两项 “罪名”：“搞新浪漫主义”和“写长诗”。海子不是作协会员，当然不可能去参加会议，于是只有坐在家里生闷气，而对于那浅见蠢说毫无 还击之力。在所有这些令人不解和气愤的事情当中，有一件事最为恶劣。海子生前发表作品并不顺畅，与此同时他又喜欢将写好的诗打印出来寄给各地的朋友们，于 是便有当时颇为著名的诗人LMN整页整页地抄袭海子的诗，并且发表在杂志上，而海子自己都无法将自己　　的作品发表。后来，此人欲编一本诗集，一禾、海子 和我便拒不参加。

　　⑤气功问题 有一件事人们或许已有所耳闻，但我却一直不愿谈论，因为我怕某些人会对此加以利用。现在为了客观起见，我想我应该 在此谈一谈。这件事情便是海子对气功的着迷。练气功的诗人和画家我认识几个，据说气功有助于写作，可以给人以超凡的感觉。海子似乎也从练气功中悟到了什 么。他跟他的一位同事，也是朋友，学气功。有一回他高兴地告诉我，他已开了小周天。他可能是在开大周天的时候出了问题。他开始出现幻听，总觉得有人在他耳 边说话，搞得他无法写作。而对海子来说，无法写作就意味着彻底失去了生活。也是在那时，海子对自己的身体也有某种幻觉，他觉得自己的肺已经全部烂掉了。海 子前后留有三封遗书。他留给父母的那封遗书写得最为混乱，其中说到有人要谋害他，要父母为他报仇。但他的第三封遗书（也就是他死时带在身上的那封遗书）却 显得相当清醒。他说：“我的死与任何人无关。”海子自杀后医生对海子的死亡诊断为“精神分裂症”。海子所在的学校基本上是据此处理海子自杀的事的。但我 想，无论是医生还是中国政法大学校方都不可能真正、全面地了解海子其人。倘若有人要充当冷酷的旁观者来指责或嘲弄海子，那么实际上他也是在指责和嘲弄他自 己。他至少忘记了他自己，忘记了我们每一个人的具体的生存。

　　⑥自杀导火索 每一个人的自杀都有他的导火索。作为海子自杀诸多可能的原因之一，海子的爱情生活或许是最重要的。在自杀前的那 个星期五，海子见到了他初恋的女朋友。这个女孩子1987年毕业于中国政法大学，在做学生时喜欢海子的诗。在我的印象中，她是中等身材，有一张圆圆的脸 庞。她大概和去年去世的内蒙古诗人薛景泽（雁北）有点亲戚关系。海子最初一些诗大多发表在内蒙的刊物上恐怕与这个女孩子有关。她是海子一生所深爱的人，海 子为她写过许多爱情诗，发起疯来一封情书可以写到两万字以上。至于他们到底是因为什么分手的，我不得而知。但在海子最后一次见到她时，她已在深圳建立了自 己的家庭。海子见到她，她对海子很冷淡。当天晚上，海子与同事喝了好多酒。他大概是喝得太多了，讲了许多当年他和这个女孩子的事。第二天早上酒醒过来，他 问同事他昨天晚上说了些什么，是不是讲了些他不该说的话。同事说你什么也没说，但海子坚信自己讲了许多会伤害那个女孩子的话。他感到万分自责，不能自我原 谅，觉得对不起自己所爱的人。海子大概是25日早上从政法大学在北京学院路的校址出发去山海关的。那天早上我母亲在上班的路上看到了从学院路朝西直门火车 站方向低头疾走的海子。当时我母亲骑着自行车；由于急着上班，而且由于他和海子距离较远，不敢肯定那是不是海子，便没有叫他。现在推算起来，如果那真是海 子，那么他中午便应到了山海关，我想任何人，心里难处再大，一经火车颠荡，一看到大自然，胸中郁闷也应化解了。看来海子是抱定了自杀的决心。他大概在山海 关呆了了一下午，第二天又在那闲逛了一上午，中午开始延着铁道朝龙家营方向走去。

　　⑦写作方式与写作理想 以上我谈的都是一些具体的事情。但正如加缪所说：“最清楚 的原因并不是直接引起自杀的原因。”我想海子的自杀应该也有其更加内在原因，那就是他的写作。记得有一次海子、白马和我在骆一禾家里聚谈，大家谈到写作就 像一个黑洞，海子完全赞同这种看法。海子献身于写作，在写作与生活之间没有任何距离。所以确切地说海子是被这个黑洞吸了进去。

　　我们在前面已经谈到，海子迷信“短命天才”，这势必影响到海子的写作方式。他可以一晚上写出几百行诗，而坐下来的头两个小时所写的可以几乎是废品。这 与叶芝那一天只写六行诗或菲利普?拉金那一两年才写一首诗的工作方式多么不同。海子的写作就是对于青春激情的燃烧，他让我们想到一个来自德国文学的词：狂 飚突进。然而，海子梦想中最终要成就的却不是“狂飚突进”的诗歌，他所真正景仰的大诗人是歌德。于是这里便有了一个矛盾。歌德的《浮士德》从从容容地写了 60年，并非一蹴而就，而海子却想以激情写作的方式来完成他的大诗《太阳》。他从浪漫主义的立场上向古典主义的歌德踊身而跃，结果是出人意料的，他落到了 介乎浪漫主义与古典主义之间的荷尔德林身上。海子所写的最后一篇诗学章就是《我所热爱的诗人--荷尔德林》。荷尔德林最终发了疯，而海子则以自杀结束了自 己的生命；不知道这里面有没有一种命运的暗合？这不能不说是海子写作本身的一个悲剧：在他的写作方式和写作目标之间横亘着一道几乎不可跨越的鸿沟。当我们 读到他那么多匆匆忙忙写下的未完成的长诗章节时，我们由衷地感到惋惜。以他的才份，而不是以他的工作方式，海子本可以写出更多、更好、更完整的作品来。

　　海子的一生，按照他自己的话说，“就是要成为太阳的一生”。他肯定受到崇拜太阳的古埃及人、波斯人、阿兹特克人的鼓舞，并且也受到了 “死于太阳并进入太阳”的美国诗人哈里?克罗斯比的震撼。海子终其一生而没有完成的大诗《太阳》，已经足以将其自身照亮。由此说来，海子的一生不是昏暗的而是灿烂的。然而，对我而言，海子无论如何不是一个神，而是一个活生生的人、有血有肉的朋友。他 有优点，也有弱点，甚至有致命的弱点。我想我们应该对死者有一个切合实际的了解，就像我们对自己所做的那样，这是最起码的人道主义。我在这里说的是一些导 致海子自杀的具体原因，是他的切肤之痛，至于海子那导致海子自杀的形而上的原因，肯定有人比我有更多的话要说。

　　此外，我之所以具体地写下海子的死因，是由于自海子自杀以来，死亡一直笼罩着中国诗坛，至今 已有少于14位青年诗人或自杀，或病故，或被害，这实在是一个令人无法忍受的数字。或许病故和被害是我们力所不能止，但对于自杀，我们不应该再在其中掺入 太多的臆想和误会。听说浙江有一位青年诗人在自杀前就曾在海子的家乡祭奠过海子，这让我难过。我不想把死亡渲染得多么辉煌，我肯定说那是件凄凉的事，其中 埋藏着真正的绝望。有鉴于此，我要说，所有活着的人都应该珍惜自己的生命，这样，我们才能和时代生活中的种种黑暗、无聊、愚蠢、邪恶真正较量一番。一种阴 郁的气氛只能培养狭隘的头脑，这对于写作是相当不利的。

Notes On "Camp" by Susan Sontag

Published in 1964; reprinted in Against Interpretation, 1966.

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Many things in the world have not been named; and many things, even if they have been named, have never been described. One of these is the sensibility -- unmistakably modern, a variant of sophistication but hardly identical with it -- that goes by the cult name of "Camp."

A sensibility (as distinct from an idea) is one of the hardest things to talk about; but there are special reasons why Camp, in particular, has never been discussed. It is not a natural mode of sensibility, if there be any such. Indeed the essence of Camp is its love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration. And Camp is esoteric -- something of a private code, a badge of identity even, among small urban cliques. Apart from a lazy two-page sketch in Christopher Isherwood's novel The World in the Evening (1954), it has hardly broken into print. To talk about Camp is therefore to betray it. If the betrayal can be defended, it will be for the edification it provides, or the dignity of the conflict it resolves. For myself, I plead the goal of self-edification, and the goad of a sharp conflict in my own sensibility. I am strongly drawn to Camp, and almost as strongly offended by it. That is why I want to talk about it, and why I can. For no one who wholeheartedly shares in a given sensibility can analyze it; he can only, whatever his intention, exhibit it. To name a sensibility, to draw its contours and to recount its history, requires a deep sympathy modified by revulsion.

Though I am speaking about sensibility only -- and about a sensibility that, among other things, converts the serious into the frivolous -- these are grave matters. Most people think of sensibility or taste as the realm of purely subjective preferences, those mysterious attractions, mainly sensual, that have not been brought under the sovereignty of reason. They allow that considerations of taste play a part in their reactions to people and to works of art. But this attitude is naïve. And even worse. To patronize the faculty of taste is to patronize oneself. For taste governs every free -- as opposed to rote -- human response. Nothing is more decisive. There is taste in people, visual taste, taste in emotion - and there is taste in acts, taste in morality. Intelligence, as well, is really a kind of taste: taste in ideas. (One of the facts to be reckoned with is that taste tends to develop very unevenly. It's rare that the same person has good visual taste and good taste in people and taste in ideas.)

Taste has no system and no proofs. But there is something like a logic of taste: the consistent sensibility which underlies and gives rise to a certain taste. A sensibility is almost, but not quite, ineffable. Any sensibility which can be crammed into the mold of a system, or handled with the rough tools of proof, is no longer a sensibility at all. It has hardened into an idea . . .

To snare a sensibility in words, especially one that is alive and powerful,1 one must be tentative and nimble. The form of jottings, rather than an essay (with its claim to a linear, consecutive argument), seemed more appropriate for getting down something of this particular fugitive sensibility. It's embarrassing to be solemn and treatise-like about Camp. One runs the risk of having, oneself, produced a very inferior piece of Camp.

These notes are for Oscar Wilde.

"One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art."
- Phrases & Philosophies for the Use of the Young

1. To start very generally: Camp is a certain mode of aestheticism. It is one way of seeing the world as an aesthetic phenomenon. That way, the way of Camp, is not in terms of beauty, but in terms of the degree of artifice, of stylization.

2. To emphasize style is to slight content, or to introduce an attitude which is neutral with respect to content. It goes without saying that the Camp sensibility is disengaged, depoliticized -- or at least apolitical.

3. Not only is there a Camp vision, a Camp way of looking at things. Camp is as well a quality discoverable in objects and the behavior of persons. There are "campy" movies, clothes, furniture, popular songs, novels, people, buildings. . . . This distinction is important. True, the Camp eye has the power to transform experience. But not everything can be seen as Camp. It's not all in the eye of the beholder.

4. Random examples of items which are part of the canon of Camp:

Zuleika Dobson
Tiffany lamps
Scopitone films
The Brown Derby restaurant on Sunset Boulevard in LA
The Enquirer, headlines and stories
Aubrey Beardsley drawings
Swan Lake
Bellini's operas
Visconti's direction of Salome and 'Tis Pity She's a Whore
certain turn-of-the-century picture postcards
Schoedsack's King Kong
the Cuban pop singer La Lupe
Lynn Ward's novel in woodcuts, God's Man
the old Flash Gordon comics
women's clothes of the twenties (feather boas, fringed and beaded dresses, etc.)
the novels of Ronald Firbank and Ivy Compton-Burnett
stag movies seen without lust

5. Camp taste has an affinity for certain arts rather than others. Clothes, furniture, all the elements of visual décor, for instance, make up a large part of Camp. For Camp art is often decorative art, emphasizing texture, sensuous surface, and style at the expense of content. Concert music, though, because it is contentless, is rarely Camp. It offers no opportunity, say, for a contrast between silly or extravagant content and rich form. . . . Sometimes whole art forms become saturated with Camp. Classical ballet, opera, movies have seemed so for a long time. In the last two years, popular music (post rock-'n'-roll, what the French call yé yé) has been annexed. And movie criticism (like lists of "The 10 Best Bad Movies I Have Seen") is probably the greatest popularizer of Camp taste today, because most people still go to the movies in a high-spirited and unpretentious way.

6. There is a sense in which it is correct to say: "It's too good to be Camp." Or "too important," not marginal enough. (More on this later.) Thus, the personality and many of the works of Jean Cocteau are Camp, but not those of André Gide; the operas of Richard Strauss, but not those of Wagner; concoctions of Tin Pan Alley and Liverpool, but not jazz. Many examples of Camp are things which, from a "serious" point of view, are either bad art or kitsch. Not all, though. Not only is Camp not necessarily bad art, but some art which can be approached as Camp (example: the major films of Louis Feuillade) merits the most serious admiration and study.

"The more we study Art, the less we care for Nature."
- The Decay of Lying

7. All Camp objects, and persons, contain a large element of artifice. Nothing in nature can be campy . . . Rural Camp is still man-made, and most campy objects are urban. (Yet, they often have a serenity -- or a naiveté -- which is the equivalent of pastoral. A great deal of Camp suggests Empson's phrase, "urban pastoral.")

8. Camp is a vision of the world in terms of style -- but a particular kind of style. It is the love of the exaggerated, the "off," of things-being-what-they-are-not. The best example is in Art Nouveau, the most typical and fully developed Camp style. Art Nouveau objects, typically, convert one thing into something else: the lighting fixtures in the form of flowering plants, the living room which is really a grotto. A remarkable example: the Paris Métro entrances designed by Hector Guimard in the late 1890s in the shape of cast-iron orchid stalks.

9. As a taste in persons, Camp responds particularly to the markedly attenuated and to the strongly exaggerated. The androgyne is certainly one of the great images of Camp sensibility. Examples: the swooning, slim, sinuous figures of pre-Raphaelite painting and poetry; the thin, flowing, sexless bodies in Art Nouveau prints and posters, presented in relief on lamps and ashtrays; the haunting androgynous vacancy behind the perfect beauty of Greta Garbo. Here, Camp taste draws on a mostly unacknowledged truth of taste: the most refined form of sexual attractiveness (as well as the most refined form of sexual pleasure) consists in going against the grain of one's sex. What is most beautiful in virile men is something feminine; what is most beautiful in feminine women is something masculine. . . . Allied to the Camp taste for the androgynous is something that seems quite different but isn't: a relish for the exaggeration of sexual characteristics and personality mannerisms. For obvious reasons, the best examples that can be cited are movie stars. The corny flamboyant female-ness of Jayne Mansfield, Gina Lollobrigida, Jane Russell, Virginia Mayo; the exaggerated he-man-ness of Steve Reeves, Victor Mature. The great stylists of temperament and mannerism, like Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Tallulah Bankhead, Edwige Feuillière.

10. Camp sees everything in quotation marks. It's not a lamp, but a "lamp"; not a woman, but a "woman." To perceive Camp in objects and persons is to understand Being-as-Playing-a-Role. It is the farthest extension, in sensibility, of the metaphor of life as theater.

11. Camp is the triumph of the epicene style. (The convertibility of "man" and "woman," "person" and "thing.") But all style, that is, artifice, is, ultimately, epicene. Life is not stylish. Neither is nature.

12. The question isn't, "Why travesty, impersonation, theatricality?" The question is, rather, "When does travesty, impersonation, theatricality acquire the special flavor of Camp?" Why is the atmosphere of Shakespeare's comedies (As You Like It, etc.) not epicene, while that of Der Rosenkavalier is?

13. The dividing line seems to fall in the 18th century; there the origins of Camp taste are to be found (Gothic novels, Chinoiserie, caricature, artificial ruins, and so forth.) But the relation to nature was quite different then. In the 18th century, people of taste either patronized nature (Strawberry Hill) or attempted to remake it into something artificial (Versailles). They also indefatigably patronized the past. Today's Camp taste effaces nature, or else contradicts it outright. And the relation of Camp taste to the past is extremely sentimental.

14. A pocket history of Camp might, of course, begin farther back -- with the mannerist artists like Pontormo, Rosso, and Caravaggio, or the extraordinarily theatrical painting of Georges de La Tour, or Euphuism (Lyly, etc.) in literature. Still, the soundest starting point seems to be the late 17th and early 18th century, because of that period's extraordinary feeling for artifice, for surface, for symmetry; its taste for the picturesque and the thrilling, its elegant conventions for representing instant feeling and the total presence of character -- the epigram and the rhymed couplet (in words), the flourish (in gesture and in music). The late 17th and early 18th century is the great period of Camp: Pope, Congreve, Walpole, etc, but not Swift; les précieux in France; the rococo churches of Munich; Pergolesi. Somewhat later: much of Mozart. But in the 19th century, what had been distributed throughout all of high culture now becomes a special taste; it takes on overtones of the acute, the esoteric, the perverse. Confining the story to England alone, we see Camp continuing wanly through 19th century aestheticism (Bume-Jones, Pater, Ruskin, Tennyson), emerging full-blown with the Art Nouveau movement in the visual and decorative arts, and finding its conscious ideologists in such "wits" as Wilde and Firbank.

15. Of course, to say all these things are Camp is not to argue they are simply that. A full analysis of Art Nouveau, for instance, would scarcely equate it with Camp. But such an analysis cannot ignore what in Art Nouveau allows it to be experienced as Camp. Art Nouveau is full of "content," even of a political-moral sort; it was a revolutionary movement in the arts, spurred on by a Utopian vision (somewhere between William Morris and the Bauhaus group) of an organic politics and taste. Yet there is also a feature of the Art Nouveau objects which suggests a disengaged, unserious, "aesthete's" vision. This tells us something important about Art Nouveau -- and about what the lens of Camp, which blocks out content, is.

16. Thus, the Camp sensibility is one that is alive to a double sense in which some things can be taken. But this is not the familiar split-level construction of a literal meaning, on the one hand, and a symbolic meaning, on the other. It is the difference, rather, between the thing as meaning something, anything, and the thing as pure artifice.

17. This comes out clearly in the vulgar use of the word Camp as a verb, "to camp," something that people do. To camp is a mode of seduction -- one which employs flamboyant mannerisms susceptible of a double interpretation; gestures full of duplicity, with a witty meaning for cognoscenti and another, more impersonal, for outsiders. Equally and by extension, when the word becomes a noun, when a person or a thing is "a camp," a duplicity is involved. Behind the "straight" public sense in which something can be taken, one has found a private zany experience of the thing.

"To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up."
- An Ideal Husband

18. One must distinguish between naïve and deliberate Camp. Pure Camp is always naive. Camp which knows itself to be Camp ("camping") is usually less satisfying.

19. The pure examples of Camp are unintentional; they are dead serious. The Art Nouveau craftsman who makes a lamp with a snake coiled around it is not kidding, nor is he trying to be charming. He is saying, in all earnestness: Voilà! the Orient! Genuine Camp -- for instance, the numbers devised for the Warner Brothers musicals of the early thirties (42nd Street; The Golddiggers of 1933; ... of 1935; ... of 1937; etc.) by Busby Berkeley -- does not mean to be funny. Camping -- say, the plays of Noel Coward -- does. It seems unlikely that much of the traditional opera repertoire could be such satisfying Camp if the melodramatic absurdities of most opera plots had not been taken seriously by their composers. One doesn't need to know the artist's private intentions. The work tells all. (Compare a typical 19th century opera with Samuel Barber's Vanessa, a piece of manufactured, calculated Camp, and the difference is clear.)

20. Probably, intending to be campy is always harmful. The perfection of Trouble in Paradise and The Maltese Falcon, among the greatest Camp movies ever made, comes from the effortless smooth way in which tone is maintained. This is not so with such famous would-be Camp films of the fifties as All About Eve and Beat the Devil. These more recent movies have their fine moments, but the first is so slick and the second so hysterical; they want so badly to be campy that they're continually losing the beat. . . . Perhaps, though, it is not so much a question of the unintended effect versus the conscious intention, as of the delicate relation between parody and self-parody in Camp. The films of Hitchcock are a showcase for this problem. When self-parody lacks ebullience but instead reveals (even sporadically) a contempt for one's themes and one's materials - as in To Catch a Thief, Rear Window, North by Northwest -- the results are forced and heavy-handed, rarely Camp. Successful Camp -- a movie like Carné's Drôle de Drame; the film performances of Mae West and Edward Everett Horton; portions of the Goon Show -- even when it reveals self-parody, reeks of self-love.

21. So, again, Camp rests on innocence. That means Camp discloses innocence, but also, when it can, corrupts it. Objects, being objects, don't change when they are singled out by the Camp vision. Persons, however, respond to their audiences. Persons begin "camping": Mae West, Bea Lillie, La Lupe, Tallulah Bankhead in Lifeboat, Bette Davis in All About Eve. (Persons can even be induced to camp without their knowing it. Consider the way Fellini got Anita Ekberg to parody herself in La Dolce Vita.)

22. Considered a little less strictly, Camp is either completely naive or else wholly conscious (when one plays at being campy). An example of the latter: Wilde's epigrams themselves.

"It's absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious."
- Lady Windemere's Fan

23. In naïve, or pure, Camp, the essential element is seriousness, a seriousness that fails. Of course, not all seriousness that fails can be redeemed as Camp. Only that which has the proper mixture of the exaggerated, the fantastic, the passionate, and the naïve.

24. When something is just bad (rather than Camp), it's often because it is too mediocre in its ambition. The artist hasn't attempted to do anything really outlandish. ("It's too much," "It's too fantastic," "It's not to be believed," are standard phrases of Camp enthusiasm.)

25. The hallmark of Camp is the spirit of extravagance. Camp is a woman walking around in a dress made of three million feathers. Camp is the paintings of Carlo Crivelli, with their real jewels and trompe-l'oeil insects and cracks in the masonry. Camp is the outrageous aestheticism of Steinberg's six American movies with Dietrich, all six, but especially the last, The Devil Is a Woman. . . . In Camp there is often something démesuré in the quality of the ambition, not only in the style of the work itself. Gaudí's lurid and beautiful buildings in Barcelona are Camp not only because of their style but because they reveal -- most notably in the Cathedral of the Sagrada Familia -- the ambition on the part of one man to do what it takes a generation, a whole culture to accomplish.

26. Camp is art that proposes itself seriously, but cannot be taken altogether seriously because it is "too much." Titus Andronicus and Strange Interlude are almost Camp, or could be played as Camp. The public manner and rhetoric of de Gaulle, often, are pure Camp.

27. A work can come close to Camp, but not make it, because it succeeds. Eisenstein's films are seldom Camp because, despite all exaggeration, they do succeed (dramatically) without surplus. If they were a little more "off," they could be great Camp - particularly Ivan the Terrible I & II. The same for Blake's drawings and paintings, weird and mannered as they are. They aren't Camp; though Art Nouveau, influenced by Blake, is.

What is extravagant in an inconsistent or an unpassionate way is not Camp. Neither can anything be Camp that does not seem to spring from an irrepressible, a virtually uncontrolled sensibility. Without passion, one gets pseudo-Camp -- what is merely decorative, safe, in a word, chic. On the barren edge of Camp lie a number of attractive things: the sleek fantasies of Dali, the haute couture preciosity of Albicocco's The Girl with the Golden Eyes. But the two things - Camp and preciosity - must not be confused.

28. Again, Camp is the attempt to do something extraordinary. But extraordinary in the sense, often, of being special, glamorous. (The curved line, the extravagant gesture.) Not extraordinary merely in the sense of effort. Ripley's Believe-It-Or-Not items are rarely campy. These items, either natural oddities (the two-headed rooster, the eggplant in the shape of a cross) or else the products of immense labor (the man who walked from here to China on his hands, the woman who engraved the New Testament on the head of a pin), lack the visual reward - the glamour, the theatricality - that marks off certain extravagances as Camp.

29. The reason a movie like On the Beach, books like Winesburg, Ohio and For Whom the Bell Tolls are bad to the point of being laughable, but not bad to the point of being enjoyable, is that they are too dogged and pretentious. They lack fantasy. There is Camp in such bad movies as The Prodigal and Samson and Delilah, the series of Italian color spectacles featuring the super-hero Maciste, numerous Japanese science fiction films (Rodan, The Mysterians, The H-Man) because, in their relative unpretentiousness and vulgarity, they are more extreme and irresponsible in their fantasy - and therefore touching and quite enjoyable.

30. Of course, the canon of Camp can change. Time has a great deal to do with it. Time may enhance what seems simply dogged or lacking in fantasy now because we are too close to it, because it resembles too closely our own everyday fantasies, the fantastic nature of which we don't perceive. We are better able to enjoy a fantasy as fantasy when it is not our own.

31. This is why so many of the objects prized by Camp taste are old-fashioned, out-of-date, démodé. It's not a love of the old as such. It's simply that the process of aging or deterioration provides the necessary detachment -- or arouses a necessary sympathy. When the theme is important, and contemporary, the failure of a work of art may make us indignant. Time can change that. Time liberates the work of art from moral relevance, delivering it over to the Camp sensibility. . . . Another effect: time contracts the sphere of banality. (Banality is, strictly speaking, always a category of the contemporary.) What was banal can, with the passage of time, become fantastic. Many people who listen with delight to the style of Rudy Vallee revived by the English pop group, The Temperance Seven, would have been driven up the wall by Rudy Vallee in his heyday.

Thus, things are campy, not when they become old - but when we become less involved in them, and can enjoy, instead of be frustrated by, the failure of the attempt. But the effect of time is unpredictable. Maybe Method acting (James Dean, Rod Steiger, Warren Beatty) will seem as Camp some day as Ruby Keeler's does now - or as Sarah Bernhardt's does, in the films she made at the end of her career. And maybe not.

32. Camp is the glorification of "character." The statement is of no importance - except, of course, to the person (Loie Fuller, Gaudí, Cecil B. De Mille, Crivelli, de Gaulle, etc.) who makes it. What the Camp eye appreciates is the unity, the force of the person. In every move the aging Martha Graham makes she's being Martha Graham, etc., etc. . . . This is clear in the case of the great serious idol of Camp taste, Greta Garbo. Garbo's incompetence (at the least, lack of depth) as an actress enhances her beauty. She's always herself.

33. What Camp taste responds to is "instant character" (this is, of course, very 18th century); and, conversely, what it is not stirred by is the sense of the development of character. Character is understood as a state of continual incandescence - a person being one, very intense thing. This attitude toward character is a key element of the theatricalization of experience embodied in the Camp sensibility. And it helps account for the fact that opera and ballet are experienced as such rich treasures of Camp, for neither of these forms can easily do justice to the complexity of human nature. Wherever there is development of character, Camp is reduced. Among operas, for example, La Traviata (which has some small development of character) is less campy than Il Trovatore (which has none).

"Life is too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it."
- Vera, or The Nihilists

34. Camp taste turns its back on the good-bad axis of ordinary aesthetic judgment. Camp doesn't reverse things. It doesn't argue that the good is bad, or the bad is good. What it does is to offer for art (and life) a different -- a supplementary -- set of standards.

35. Ordinarily we value a work of art because of the seriousness and dignity of what it achieves. We value it because it succeeds - in being what it is and, presumably, in fulfilling the intention that lies behind it. We assume a proper, that is to say, straightforward relation between intention and performance. By such standards, we appraise The Iliad, Aristophanes' plays, The Art of the Fugue, Middlemarch, the paintings of Rembrandt, Chartres, the poetry of Donne, The Divine Comedy, Beethoven's quartets, and - among people - Socrates, Jesus, St. Francis, Napoleon, Savonarola. In short, the pantheon of high culture: truth, beauty, and seriousness.

36. But there are other creative sensibilities besides the seriousness (both tragic and comic) of high culture and of the high style of evaluating people. And one cheats oneself, as a human being, if one has respect only for the style of high culture, whatever else one may do or feel on the sly.

For instance, there is the kind of seriousness whose trademark is anguish, cruelty, derangement. Here we do accept a disparity between intention and result. I am speaking, obviously, of a style of personal existence as well as of a style in art; but the examples had best come from art. Think of Bosch, Sade, Rimbaud, Jarry, Kafka, Artaud, think of most of the important works of art of the 20th century, that is, art whose goal is not that of creating harmonies but of overstraining the medium and introducing more and more violent, and unresolvable, subject-matter. This sensibility also insists on the principle that an oeuvre in the old sense (again, in art, but also in life) is not possible. Only "fragments" are possible. . . . Clearly, different standards apply here than to traditional high culture. Something is good not because it is achieved, but because another kind of truth about the human situation, another experience of what it is to be human - in short, another valid sensibility -- is being revealed.

And third among the great creative sensibilities is Camp: the sensibility of failed seriousness, of the theatricalization of experience. Camp refuses both the harmonies of traditional seriousness, and the risks of fully identifying with extreme states of feeling.

37. The first sensibility, that of high culture, is basically moralistic. The second sensibility, that of extreme states of feeling, represented in much contemporary "avant-garde" art, gains power by a tension between moral and aesthetic passion. The third, Camp, is wholly aesthetic.

38. Camp is the consistently aesthetic experience of the world. It incarnates a victory of "style" over "content," "aesthetics" over "morality," of irony over tragedy.

39. Camp and tragedy are antitheses. There is seriousness in Camp (seriousness in the degree of the artist's involvement) and, often, pathos. The excruciating is also one of the tonalities of Camp; it is the quality of excruciation in much of Henry James (for instance, The Europeans, The Awkward Age, The Wings of the Dove) that is responsible for the large element of Camp in his writings. But there is never, never tragedy.

40. Style is everything. Genet's ideas, for instance, are very Camp. Genet's statement that "the only criterion of an act is its elegance"2 is virtually interchangeable, as a statement, with Wilde's "in matters of great importance, the vital element is not sincerity, but style." But what counts, finally, is the style in which ideas are held. The ideas about morality and politics in, say, Lady Windemere's Fan and in Major Barbara are Camp, but not just because of the nature of the ideas themselves. It is those ideas, held in a special playful way. The Camp ideas in Our Lady of the Flowers are maintained too grimly, and the writing itself is too successfully elevated and serious, for Genet's books to be Camp.

41. The whole point of Camp is to dethrone the serious. Camp is playful, anti-serious. More precisely, Camp involves a new, more complex relation to "the serious." One can be serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the serious.

42. One is drawn to Camp when one realizes that "sincerity" is not enough. Sincerity can be simple philistinism, intellectual narrowness.

43. The traditional means for going beyond straight seriousness - irony, satire - seem feeble today, inadequate to the culturally oversaturated medium in which contemporary sensibility is schooled. Camp introduces a new standard: artifice as an ideal, theatricality.

44. Camp proposes a comic vision of the world. But not a bitter or polemical comedy. If tragedy is an experience of hyperinvolvement, comedy is an experience of underinvolvement, of detachment.

"I adore simple pleasures, they are the last refuge of the complex."
- A Woman of No Importance

45. Detachment is the prerogative of an elite; and as the dandy is the 19th century's surrogate for the aristocrat in matters of culture, so Camp is the modern dandyism. Camp is the answer to the problem: how to be a dandy in the age of mass culture.

46. The dandy was overbred. His posture was disdain, or else ennui. He sought rare sensations, undefiled by mass appreciation. (Models: Des Esseintes in Huysmans' À Rebours, Marius the Epicurean, Valéry's Monsieur Teste.) He was dedicated to "good taste."

The connoisseur of Camp has found more ingenious pleasures. Not in Latin poetry and rare wines and velvet jackets, but in the coarsest, commonest pleasures, in the arts of the masses. Mere use does not defile the objects of his pleasure, since he learns to possess them in a rare way. Camp -- Dandyism in the age of mass culture -- makes no distinction between the unique object and the mass-produced object. Camp taste transcends the nausea of the replica.

47. Wilde himself is a transitional figure. The man who, when he first came to London, sported a velvet beret, lace shirts, velveteen knee-breeches and black silk stockings, could never depart too far in his life from the pleasures of the old-style dandy; this conservatism is reflected in The Picture of Dorian Gray. But many of his attitudes suggest something more modern. It was Wilde who formulated an important element of the Camp sensibility -- the equivalence of all objects -- when he announced his intention of "living up" to his blue-and-white china, or declared that a doorknob could be as admirable as a painting. When he proclaimed the importance of the necktie, the boutonniere, the chair, Wilde was anticipating the democratic esprit of Camp.

48. The old-style dandy hated vulgarity. The new-style dandy, the lover of Camp, appreciates vulgarity. Where the dandy would be continually offended or bored, the connoisseur of Camp is continually amused, delighted. The dandy held a perfumed handkerchief to his nostrils and was liable to swoon; the connoisseur of Camp sniffs the stink and prides himself on his strong nerves.

49. It is a feat, of course. A feat goaded on, in the last analysis, by the threat of boredom. The relation between boredom and Camp taste cannot be overestimated. Camp taste is by its nature possible only in affluent societies, in societies or circles capable of experiencing the psychopathology of affluence.

"What is abnormal in Life stands in normal relations to Art. It is the only thing in Life that stands in normal relations to Art."
- A Few Maxims for the Instruction of the Over-Educated

50. Aristocracy is a position vis-à-vis culture (as well as vis-à-vis power), and the history of Camp taste is part of the history of snob taste. But since no authentic aristocrats in the old sense exist today to sponsor special tastes, who is the bearer of this taste? Answer: an improvised self-elected class, mainly homosexuals, who constitute themselves as aristocrats of taste.

51. The peculiar relation between Camp taste and homosexuality has to be explained. While it's not true that Camp taste is homosexual taste, there is no doubt a peculiar affinity and overlap. Not all liberals are Jews, but Jews have shown a peculiar affinity for liberal and reformist causes. So, not all homosexuals have Camp taste. But homosexuals, by and large, constitute the vanguard -- and the most articulate audience -- of Camp. (The analogy is not frivolously chosen. Jews and homosexuals are the outstanding creative minorities in contemporary urban culture. Creative, that is, in the truest sense: they are creators of sensibilities. The two pioneering forces of modern sensibility are Jewish moral seriousness and homosexual aestheticism and irony.)

52. The reason for the flourishing of the aristocratic posture among homosexuals also seems to parallel the Jewish case. For every sensibility is self-serving to the group that promotes it. Jewish liberalism is a gesture of self-legitimization. So is Camp taste, which definitely has something propagandistic about it. Needless to say, the propaganda operates in exactly the opposite direction. The Jews pinned their hopes for integrating into modern society on promoting the moral sense. Homosexuals have pinned their integration into society on promoting the aesthetic sense. Camp is a solvent of morality. It neutralizes moral indignation, sponsors playfulness.

53. Nevertheless, even though homosexuals have been its vanguard, Camp taste is much more than homosexual taste. Obviously, its metaphor of life as theater is peculiarly suited as a justification and projection of a certain aspect of the situation of homosexuals. (The Camp insistence on not being "serious," on playing, also connects with the homosexual's desire to remain youthful.) Yet one feels that if homosexuals hadn't more or less invented Camp, someone else would. For the aristocratic posture with relation to culture cannot die, though it may persist only in increasingly arbitrary and ingenious ways. Camp is (to repeat) the relation to style in a time in which the adoption of style -- as such -- has become altogether questionable. (In the modem era, each new style, unless frankly anachronistic, has come on the scene as an anti-style.)

"One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing."
- In conversation

54. The experiences of Camp are based on the great discovery that the sensibility of high culture has no monopoly upon refinement. Camp asserts that good taste is not simply good taste; that there exists, indeed, a good taste of bad taste. (Genet talks about this in Our Lady of the Flowers.) The discovery of the good taste of bad taste can be very liberating. The man who insists on high and serious pleasures is depriving himself of pleasure; he continually restricts what he can enjoy; in the constant exercise of his good taste he will eventually price himself out of the market, so to speak. Here Camp taste supervenes upon good taste as a daring and witty hedonism. It makes the man of good taste cheerful, where before he ran the risk of being chronically frustrated. It is good for the digestion.

55. Camp taste is, above all, a mode of enjoyment, of appreciation - not judgment. Camp is generous. It wants to enjoy. It only seems like malice, cynicism. (Or, if it is cynicism, it's not a ruthless but a sweet cynicism.) Camp taste doesn't propose that it is in bad taste to be serious; it doesn't sneer at someone who succeeds in being seriously dramatic. What it does is to find the success in certain passionate failures.

56. Camp taste is a kind of love, love for human nature. It relishes, rather than judges, the little triumphs and awkward intensities of "character." . . . Camp taste identifies with what it is enjoying. People who share this sensibility are not laughing at the thing they label as "a camp," they're enjoying it. Camp is a tender feeling.

(Here, one may compare Camp with much of Pop Art, which -- when it is not just Camp -- embodies an attitude that is related, but still very different. Pop Art is more flat and more dry, more serious, more detached, ultimately nihilistic.)

57. Camp taste nourishes itself on the love that has gone into certain objects and personal styles. The absence of this love is the reason why such kitsch items as Peyton Place (the book) and the Tishman Building aren't Camp.

58. The ultimate Camp statement: it's good because it's awful . . . Of course, one can't always say that. Only under certain conditions, those which I've tried to sketch in these notes.


1 The sensibility of an era is not only its most decisive, but also its most perishable, aspect. One may capture the ideas (intellectual history) and the behavior (social history) of an epoch without ever touching upon the sensibility or taste which informed those ideas, that behavior. Rare are those historical studies -- like Huizinga on the late Middle Ages, Febvre on 16th century France -- which do tell us something about the sensibility of the period.

2 Sartre's gloss on this in Saint Genet is: "Elegance is the quality of conduct which transforms the greatest amount of being into appearing."