Contrary to the conviction of much criticism of D'Annunzio, there is little of the Ubermenschliches to be found in Giorgio's flight from a "vita volgare" (63) to the luxe, calme et volupte of the moneyed
esthete. (11) Giorgio's brother reiterates the narrator's contempt for Giorgio: "Tu non hai mai fatto nulla per nessuno; tu non hai fatto che il tuo comodo e il tuo vantaggio, sempre; accarezzato, preferito, tenuto su l'altare" (137).
I am an
esthete. I love beauty and nature and feel most at peace with myself when I am surrounded by what I consider beautiful.
And, what of the fact that she issues an invitation to her shepherd, Oak, to step inside the inner sanctum at the feasting (and at other times works hand in hand with him on the
esthete).
An avowed
esthete, he wrote some of the most beautiful and sonorous poetry in Serbian literature.
Dalton is a music critic and leads a research initiative for the
Esthete Project for Artists With AIDS.
Lane was a gentleman, an
esthete, a bon vivant and a businessman.
There, the middle-aged Madame falls passionately in love with twenty-year-old
esthete and freedom fighter Diamantino Marquez, thus betraying not only her husband but also (and much more significantly) her own admonition to herself and her devotees "never to commit [them]selves to a relationship that would clip [their] wings."
Her relevance to the situation in Proust's novel is that Zipporah is a Midianite--not a member of the tribe--who becomes Moses's wife, just as Odette the middlebrow courtesan becomes wife to the aristocratic
esthete Swann.
A girl's money, faking papers -- What are you, some kind of half-assed, pseudo-mandarin amoral
esthete? What are you, a Raskolnikov of writing?
Both Greber and Labbe used the expertise and advice of George Huisman, a progressive
esthete and Directeur des Beaux Arts who entertained personal relationships with the artistic and architectural avant-garde of the 1930s.