Symbolism

Symbolism

Symbolism, a loosely organised literary and artistic movement originated in France in the late 19th Century, spread to painting and the theatre, influenced the Irish, British and American literature of the 20th Century. These artists expressed their emotional experience through the subtle and suggestive use of highly symbolized language.

French symbolist poets include Stephane, Mallarme, Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, Jules, Lafirgue, Paul Valery and Paul Claudel are considered to be the direct 20th Century heirs of the symbolist. Symbolism also represented a reaction against the objectives of realism and the increasingly influential movement of Impressionism. Symbolism originated in the revolt of certain French poets against rigid conventions governing both Technique and Theme in the traditional poetry. The symbolist wished to describe the fleeting immediate sensations of man’s inner life and experience. They attempted to evoke the ineffable intuitions and sense impressions of man’s inner life and to communicate the underlying mystery of the existence through a free and highly personal use of ‘metaphors and Images’, conveying the sate of the poet’s mind and  hint at the “dark and confined unity” of and inexpressible reality.

The symbolist like Verlaine and Rimbaud adopted Charles Baudelaire’s concept of the correspondence between the senses, combined with the Wagnerian ideal of a synthesis of the arts to produce an original conception of the Musical quality of poetry. The term “decadent” describing Baudelaire and others was replaced with the term “symboliste and symbolisme”. Many little symbolist reviews and magazines sprang up in the late 1880’s. Mallarme became the leader of the symbolist. Many of these poets resorted to the composition of prose poems and the use of Vers Libre (free verse). The symbolist movement also spread to Russia in 1894 through Vladmir, Aleksandr Bloc, Andrey Bely and Nikolay.

The symbolist movement in poetry reached its peak around 1890 and declined its popularity in 1900. Symbolist works had a strong and lasting influence on much British and American Literature in 20th Century. Symbolist theories bore fruit both in the poetry of WB Yeats and TS Eliot and in the modern novels of James Joyce and Virginia Wolf in which word harmonies and patterns of images predominant over the narrative and we also come across JK Huysmans.

The 20th Century American critic Edmund Willson’s survey of the Symbolistic Movement, “Axel’s Castle” (1931) is considered as classic of modern literary analysis and the authoritative study of the movement. Symbolism in painting took its direction from the poets and literary theorists of the movement. Dramatists also took their lead from the French Symbolist poets especially form Mallarme who opposed the dominant Realist Theatre which would evoke the hidden mystery of man and the universe.