Abstract: Since the mid-19th century, the enthusiasm of western writers upon various “abnormal” topics have continued to thrive under the guidance of the “anti-natural” and “anti-moral” concepts derived from the idea of “freedom” of Romanticists, and “illness” is at the center of this aesthetic interest. Decadent writers such as Baudelaire and J.K.Huysmans devoted more energy to exploring and highlighting the unique potentials and advantages of “illness” in constructing new aesthetic ideas and spiritual themes, which was quite different from Naturalism that examined and depicted “illness” at the pathological level under the objective perspective of science. Decadent writers constructed the most distinctive mark of Decadent literature with the image of a Decadent who was infatuated with “illness”. They demonstrated their individualistic elite position of contempt, alienation and rebellion against the bourgeois aesthetic standards and values by establishing the superior status of “illness” to the bourgeois “health”. They explored and created new kind of beauty in an irrational state of life, which brought the so-called “Shock” effect which inspired introspection, thus thoroughly overturning the classical aesthetic paradigm. They set neurotic “Spleen”— which was developed from Romantic “Melancholy”— as the emotional impression of decadent protagonists, and set schizophrenia as common pathological symptom, and, at the same time, depicted “anti-natural” behavior and mind as the main feature of their aesthetic-decadent life, thereby accurately created the image of a Decadent whose sole pursuit of life is “free sensitivity”.

Key words: Decadent, illness, rebellion, shock, freedom