Symbolism (arts)
John William Waterhouse, Cecilia, 1895
Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Jeunes Filles au Bord de la Mer
(Young Girls on the Edge of the Sea), 1879, Muse d'Orsay,
Paris
Victor Vasnetsov, The Knight at the Crossroads, 1878
Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement
of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other
arts. In literature, the style originates with the 1857 pub-
lication of Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal. The
works of Edgar Allan Poe, which Baudelaire admired
greatly and translated into French, were a signicant in-
uence and the source of many stock tropes and images.
The aesthetic was developed by Stphane Mallarm and
Paul Verlaine during the 1860s and 1870s. In the 1880s,
1
the aesthetic was articulated by a series of manifestos and
attracted a generation of writers. The name symbolist
itself was rst applied by the critic Jean Moras, who in-
vented the term to distinguish the symbolists from the re-
lated decadents of literature and of art.
Distinct from, but related to, the style of literature,
symbolism of art is related to the gothic component of
Romanticism.
1 Etymology
The term symbolism is derived from the word sym-
bol which derives from the Latin symbolum, a symbol
of faith, and symbolus, a sign of recognition, in turn from
classical Greek symbolon, an object cut in half
constituting a sign of recognition when the carriers were
able to reassemble the two halves. In ancient Greece, the
symbolon was a shard of pottery which was inscribed and
then broken into two pieces which were given to the am-
bassadors from two allied city states as a record of the
alliance.
2 Precursors and origins
Symbolism was largely a reaction against naturalism and
realism, anti-idealistic styles which were attempts to rep-
resent reality in its gritty particularity, and to elevate
the humble and the ordinary over the ideal. Symbolism
was a reaction in favour of spirituality, the imagination,
and dreams.[1] Some writers, such as Joris-Karl Huys-
mans, began as naturalists before becoming symbolists;
for Huysmans, this change represented his increasing in-
2 3
terest in religion and spirituality. Certain of the char-
acteristic subjects of the decadents represent naturalist
interest in sexuality and taboo topics, but in their case
this was mixed with Byronic romanticism and the world-
weariness characteristic of the n de sicle period.
The symbolist poets have a more complex relation-
ship with Parnassianism, a French literary style that
immediately preceded it. While being inuenced by
hermeticism, allowing freer versication, and rejecting
Parnassian clarity and objectivity, it retained Parnassian-
isms love of word play and concern for the musical
qualities of verse. The symbolists continued to admire
Thophile Gautier's motto of "art for arts sake", and re-
tained and modied Parnassianisms mood of ironic
detachment.[2] Many symbolist poets, including Stphane
Mallarm and Paul Verlaine, published early works in Le
Parnasse contemporain, the poetry anthologies that gave
Parnassianism its name. But Arthur Rimbaud publicly
mocked prominent Parnassians, and published scatolog-
ical parodies of some of their main authors, including
Franois Coppe misattributed to Coppe himself in
L'Album zutique.[3]
One of Symbolisms most colourful promoters in Paris
was art and literary critic (and occultist) Josphin
Pladan, who established the Salon de la Rose + Croix.
The Salon hosted a series of six presentations of avant-
garde art, writing and music during the 1890s, to give
a presentation space for artists embracing spiritualism,
mysticism, and idealism in their work. A number of Sym-
bolists were associated with the Salon.
3 Movement
Henri Fantin-Latour, By the Table, depicting: seated: Paul
Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, Lon Valade, Ernest d'Hervilly and
Camille Pelletan; standing: Pierre Elzar, Emile Blmont and
Jean Aicard
MOVEMENT
3.1 The Symbolist Manifesto
Symbolists believed that art should represent absolute
truths that could only be described indirectly. Thus, they
wrote in a very metaphorical and suggestive manner, en-
dowing particular images or objects with symbolic mean-
ing. Jean Moras published the Symbolist Manifesto
(Le Symbolisme) in Le Figaro on 18 September 1886
(see 1886 in poetry). The Symbolist Manifesto names
Charles Baudelaire, Stphane Mallarm, and Paul Ver-
laine as the three leading poets of the movement. Moras
announced that symbolism was hostile to plain mean-
ings, declamations, false sentimentality and matter-of-
fact description, and that its goal instead was to clothe
the Ideal in a perceptible form whose goal was not in
itself, but whose sole purpose was to express the Ideal
Ainsi, dans cet art, les tableaux de la nature,
les actions des humains, tous les phnomnes
concrets ne sauraient se manifester eux-mmes
; ce sont l des apparences sensibles destines
reprsenter leurs anits sotriques avec des
Ides primordiales.
(In this art, scenes from nature,
human activities, and all other
real world phenomena will not
be described for their own sake;
here, they are perceptible sur-
faces created to represent their es-
oteric anities with the primordial
Ideals.)[4]
In a nutshell, as Mallarm writes in a letter to his
friend Cazalis, 'to depict not the thing but the eect it
produces.[5]
3.2 Techniques
The symbolist poets wished to liberate techniques of ver-
sication in order to allow greater room for uidity,
and as such were sympathetic with the trend toward free
verse, as evident in the poems of Gustave Kahn and Ezra
Pound. Symbolist poems were attempts to evoke, rather
than primarily to describe; symbolic imagery was used
to signify the state of the poets soul. T. S. Eliot was
inuenced by the poets Jules Laforgue, Paul Valry and
Arthur Rimbaud who used the techniques of the Symbol-
ist school,[6] though it has also been said that 'Imagism'
was the style to which both Pound and Eliot subscribed
(see Pounds Des Imagistes). Synesthesia was a prized ex-
perience; poets sought to identify and confound the sep-
arate senses of scent, sound, and colour. In Baudelaire's
poem Correspondences, (considered to be the touchstone
of French Symbolism [7] ) also mentions forts de sym-
boles forests of symbols
3.3 Paul Verlaine and the potes maudits 3

symbols, but these symbols were unique and privileged

objects. The symbolists were more extreme, investing
all things, even vowels and perfumes, with potential sym-
bolic value. The physical universe, then, is a kind of
language that invites a privileged spectator to decipher it,
although this does not yield a single message so much as
a superior network of associations.[8] Symbolist symbols
are not allegories, intended to represent; they are instead
intended to evoke particular states of mind. The nominal
subject of Mallarm's Le cygne (The Swan") is of a
swan trapped in a frozen lake. Signicantly, in French,
cygne is a homophone of signe, a sign. The overall eect
is of overwhelming whiteness; and the presentation of the
narrative elements of the description is quite indirect:

Le vierge, le vivace, et le bel aujourd'hui

Va-t-il nous dchirer avec un coup daile ivre
Ce lac dur oubli que hante sous le givre
Le transparent glacier des vols qui nont pas fui!
Un cygne dautrefois se souvient que cest lui
Magnique mais qui sans espoir se dlivre...

(The virgin, lively, and beautiful

Portrait of Charles Baudelaire, precursor of the symbolist style, today will it tear for us this hard
circa 1862 forgotten lake that lurks beneath
the frost, the transparent glacier of
ights not taken with a blow from a
Il est des parfums frais comme des chairs
drunken wing? A swan of long ago
d'enfants,
remembers that it is he, magni-
Doux comme les hautbois, verts comme les
cent but without hope, who breaks
prairies,
free...[9] )
Et d'autres, corrompus, riches et triomphants,
Ayant l'expansion des choses innies,
Comme l'ambre, le musc, le benjoin et l'encens, 3.3 Paul Verlaine and the potes maudits
Qui chantent les transports de l'esprit et des sens.
Of the several attempts at dening the essence of sym-
(There are perfumes that are fresh bolism, perhaps none was more inuential than Paul
like childrens esh, Verlaine's 1884 publication of a series of essays on
sweet like oboes, green like mead- Tristan Corbire, Arthur Rimbaud, Stphane Mallarm,
ows Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, Grard de Nerval, and
And others, corrupt, rich, and tri- Pauvre Lelian (Poor Lelian, an anagram of Paul Ver-
umphant, laines own name), each of whom Verlaine numbered
having the expansiveness of innite among the potes maudits, accursed poets.
things,
like amber, musc, benzoin, and in- Verlaine argued that in their individual and very dier-
cense, ent ways, each of these hitherto neglected poets found
which sing of the raptures of the genius a curse; it isolated them from their contempo-
soul and senses.) raries, and as a result these poets were not at all concerned
to avoid hermeticism and idiosyncratic writing styles.[10]
They were also portrayed as at odds with society, having
and Rimbaud's poem Voyelles:
tragic lives, and often given to self-destructive tenden-
cies. These traits were not hindrances but consequences
A noir, E blanc, I rouge, U vert, O bleu : of their literary gifts. Verlaines concept of the pote
voyelles. . . maudit in turn borrows from Baudelaire, who opened his
(A black, E white, I red, U green, collection Les eurs du mal with the poem Bndiction,
O blue: vowels. . .) which describes a poet whose internal serenity remains
undisturbed by the contempt of the people surrounding
[11]
both poets seek to identify one sense experience him.
with another. The earlier Romanticism of poetry used In this conception of genius and the role of the poet,
4 3 MOVEMENT

Verlaine referred indirectly to the aesthetics of Arthur ". . . the hard-souled man,
Schopenhauer, the philosopher of pessimism, who main- Wallowing in happiness, where
tained that the purpose of art was to provide a temporary only his appetites
refuge from the world of strife of the will.[12] Feed, and who insists on seeking
out this lth
To oer to the wife suckling his
3.4 Philosophy children,

Schopenhauers aesthetics represented shared concerns and in contrast, he turns his back on life (tourne lpaule
with the symbolist programme; they both tended to con- la vie) and he exclaims:
sider Art as a contemplative refuge from the world of
strife and will. As a result of this desire for an artis- Je me mire et me vois ange! Et je meurs, et j'aime
tic refuge, the symbolists used characteristic themes Que la vitre soit l'art, soit la mysticit
of mysticism and otherworldliness, a keen sense of A renatre, portant mon rve en diadme,
mortality, and a sense of the malign power of sexuality, Au ciel antrieur o eurit la Beaut!
which Albert Samain termed a fruit of death upon the
tree of life.[13] Mallarm's poem Les fentres[14] ex- I marvel at myself, I seem an
presses all of these themes clearly. A dying man in a hos- angel! and I die, and I love
pital bed, seeking escape from the pain and dreariness of Whether the glass might be art,
his physical surroundings, turns toward his window but or mysticism
then turns away in disgust from To be reborn, bearing my dream as
a diadem,
Under that former sky where
Beauty once ourished!"[9]

3.5 Symbolists and decadents

The symbolist style has frequently been confused with
decadence. Several young writers were derisively re-
ferred to by the press as decadent during the mid-1880s.
A few of these writers embraced the term while most
avoided it.
Jean Moras manifesto was largely a response to this
polemic. By the late 1880s, the terms symbol-
ism and decadence were understood to be almost
synonymous.[15] Though the aesthetics of the styles can
be considered similar in some ways, the two remain
distinct. The symbolists were those artists who em-
phasized dreams and ideals; the Decadents cultivated
prcieux, ornamented, or hermetic styles, and morbid
subject matters.[16] The subject of the decadence of the
Roman Empire was a frequent source of literary images
and appears in the works of many poets of the period,
regardless of which name they chose for their style, as in
Verlaines "Langueur":[17]

Je suis l'Empire la n de la Dcadence,

Pornocrates, by Flicien Rops. Etching and aquatint
. . . l'homme l'me dure
Vautr dans le bonheur, o ses seuls apptits
Mangent, et qui sentte chercher cette ordure
Pour l'orir la femme allaitant ses petits,
Qui regarde passer les grands Barbares blancs
En composant des acrostiches indolents
D'un style d'or o la langueur du soleil danse.
(I am the Empire at the end of
the decadence, who watches the
large, white barbarians passing,
while composing lazy acrostic po-
ems in a gilded style in which the
languor of the sun dances.[9] )
 5

3.6 Periodical literature da Vinci, Napoleon, and (later) Hitler. His wife, Zinaida
Gippius, also a major poet of early symbolism, opened
A number of important literary publications were a salon in St Petersburg, which came to be known as
founded by symbolists or became associated with the the headquarters of Russian decadence. Andrei Bely's
style. The rst was La Vogue initiated in April 1886. In Petersburg (novel) a portrait of the social strata of the
October of that same year, Jean Moras, Gustave Kahn, Russian capital, is frequently cited as a late example of
and Paul Adam began the periodical Le Symboliste. One Symbolism in 20th century Russian literature.
of the most important symbolist journals was Mercure de
France, edited by Alfred Vallette, which succeeded La
Pliade; founded in 1890, this periodical endured un-
til 1965. Pierre Lous initiated La conque, a periodi-
4 In other media
cal whose symbolist inuences were alluded to by Jorge
Luis Borges in his story Pierre Menard, Author of the 4.1 Visual arts
Quixote. Other symbolist literary magazines included La
Revue blanche, La Revue wagnrienne, La Plume and La Symbolism in literature is distinct from symbolism in art
Wallonie. although the two were similar in many aspects. In paint-
Rmy de Gourmont and Flix Fnon were literary crit- ing, symbolism can be seen as a revival of some mystical
ics associated with symbolism. The symbolist and deca- tendencies in the Romantic tradition, and was close to the
dent literary styles were satirized by a book of poetry, self-consciously morbid and private decadent movement.
Les Dliquescences d'Ador Floupette, published in 1885 There were several rather dissimilar groups of Symbol-
by Henri Beauclair and Gabriel Vicaire.[18] ist painters and visual artists, which included Gustave
Moreau, Gustav Klimt, Mikalojus Konstantinas iurlio-
nis, Jacek Malczewski, Odilon Redon, Pierre Puvis
3.7 Russian symbolism de Chavannes, Henri Fantin-Latour, Gaston Bussire,
Edvard Munch, Flicien Rops, and Jan Toorop. Sym-
bolism in painting was even more widespread geographi-
cally than symbolism in poetry, aecting Mikhail Vrubel,
Nicholas Roerich, Victor Borisov-Musatov, Martiros
Saryan, Mikhail Nesterov, Lon Bakst, Elena Gorokhova
in Russia, as well as Frida Kahlo in Mexico, Elihu Ved-
der, Remedios Varo, Morris Graves and David Chetlahe
Paladin in the United States. Auguste Rodin is sometimes
considered a symbolist sculptor.
The symbolist painters used mythological and dream im-
agery. The symbols used by symbolism are not the fa-
miliar emblems of mainstream iconography but intensely
personal, private, obscure and ambiguous references.
More a philosophy than an actual style of art, symbol-
ism in painting inuenced the contemporary Art Nouveau
Mikhail Nesterov's The Vision of the Youth Bartholomew style and Les Nabis.[12]

Primary inuences on the style of Russian Symbolism

were the irrationalistic and mystical poetry and philos-
ophy of Fyodor Tyutchev and Vladimir Solovyov, the
novels of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, the operas of Richard
Wagner, the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and
Friedrich Nietzsche, French symbolist and decadent po-
ets (such as Stphane Mallarm, Paul Verlaine and
Charles Baudelaire), and the dramas of Henrik Ibsen.
The style was largely inaugurated by Nikolai Min-
sky's article The Ancient Debate (1884) and Dmitry
Merezhkovsky's book On the Causes of the Decline and
on the New Trends in Contemporary Russian Literature
(1892). Both writers promoted extreme individualism
and the act of creation. Merezhkovsky was known for his
poetry as well as a series of novels on god-men, among
whom he counted Christ, Joan of Arc, Dante, Leonardo
4.2 Music
Symbolism had some inuence on music as well. Many
symbolist writers and critics were early enthusiasts of the
music of Richard Wagner, an avid reader of Schopen-
hauer.
The symbolist aesthetic aected the works of Claude De-
bussy. His choices of libretti, texts, and themes come al-
most exclusively from the symbolist canon. Compositions
such as his settings of Cinq pomes de Baudelaire, var-
ious art songs on poems by Verlaine, the opera Pellas
et Mlisande with a libretto by Maurice Maeterlinck, and
his unnished sketches that illustrate two Poe stories, The
Devil in the Belfry and The Fall of the House of Usher,
all indicate that Debussy was profoundly inuenced by
6 5 EFFECT
symbolist themes and tastes. His best known work, the
Prlude l'aprs-midi d'un faune, was inspired by Mal-
larm's poem, L'aprs-midi d'un faune.
The symbolist aesthetic also inuenced Aleksandr Scri-
abin's compositions. Arnold Schoenberg's Pierrot Lu-
naire takes its text from German translations of the sym-
bolist poems by Albert Giraud, showing an association
between German expressionism and symbolism. Richard
Strauss's 1905 opera Salom, based on the play by Oscar
Wilde, uses a subject frequently depicted by symbolist
artists.
4.3 Prose ction
Symbolisms style of the static and hieratic adapted less
well to narrative ction than it did to poetry. Joris-Karl
Huysmans' 1884 novel rebours (English title: Against
Nature) explored many themes that became associated
with the symbolist aesthetic. This novel, in which very lit-
tle happens, catalogues the psychology of Des Esseintes,
an eccentric, reclusive antihero. Oscar Wilde imitated the
novel in several passages of The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Paul Adam was the most prolic and most representa-
tive author of symbolist novels. Les Demoiselles Gou-
bert (1886), co-written with Jean Moras, is an impor-
tant transitional work between naturalism and symbol-
ism. Few symbolists used this form. One exception was
Gustave Kahn, who published Le Roi fou in 1896. In
1892, Georges Rodenbach wrote the short novel Bruges-
la-morte, set in the Flemish town of Bruges, which Ro-
denbach described as a dying, medieval city of mourn-
ing and quiet contemplation: in a typically symbolist
juxtaposition, the dead city contrasts with the diaboli-
cal re-awakening of sexual desire.[19] The cynical, misan-
thropic, misogynistic ction of Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly
is sometimes considered symbolist, as well. Gabriele
d'Annunzio wrote his rst novels in the symbolist man-
ner.
4.4 Theatre
The characteristic emphasis on an internal life of dreams
and fantasies have made symbolist theatre dicult to rec-
oncile with more recent trends. Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-
Adam's drama Axl (rev. ed. 1890) is a denitive sym-
bolist play. In it, two Rosicrucian aristocrats become en-
amored of each other while trying to kill each other, only
to agree to commit suicide mutually because nothing in
life could equal their fantasies. From this play, Edmund
Wilson adopted the title Axels Castle for his inuential
study of the symbolist literary aftermath.
Maurice Maeterlinck, also a symbolist playwright, wrote
The Blind (1890), The Intruder (1890), Interior (1891),
Pellas and Mlisande (1892), and The Blue Bird (1908).
Alexandre Benois' set for Stravinsky's Petrushka in 1911
Lugn-Poe (18691940) was an actor, director, and the-
atre producer of the late nineteenth century. Lugn-Poe
sought to create a unied nonrealistic theatre of po-
etry and dreams through atmospheric staging and styl-
ized acting.[20] Upon learning about symbolist theatre,
he never wanted to practice any other form. After begin-
ning as an actor in the Thtre Libre and Thtre d'Art,
Lugn-Poe grasped on to the symbolist movement and
founded the Thtre de l'uvre where he was manager
from 1892 until 1929. Some of his greatest successes in-
clude opening his own symbolist theatre, producing the
rst staging of Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi (1896), and intro-
ducing French theatregoers to playwrights such as Ibsen
and Strindberg.[20]
The later works of the Russian playwright Anton
Chekhov have been identied as being much inuenced
by symbolist pessimism. Both Constantin Stanislavski
and Vsevolod Meyerhold experimented with symbolist
modes of staging in their theatrical endeavors.
Drama by symbolist authors formed an important part of
the repertoire of the Thtre de l'uvre and the Thtre
d'Art.
5 Eect
Black night.
White snow.
The wind, the wind!
It will not let you go. The wind, the wind!
Through Gods whole world it blows
The wind is weaving
The white snow.
Brother ice peeps from below
Stumbling and tumbling
Folk slip and fall.
God pity all!

From The Twelve (1918)
Trans. Babette Deutsch and Avrahm Yarmolinsky [21]
Night, street and streetlight, drug store,
The purposeless, half-dim, drab light.
For all the use live on a quarter century
Nothing will change. Theres no way out.
You'll die and start all over, live twice,
Everything repeats itself, just as it was:
Night, the canals rippled icy surface,
The drug store, the street, and streetlight.
Night, street and streetlight, drugstore... (1912)
Trans. by Alex Cigale
Among English-speaking artists, the closest counterpart
to symbolism was aestheticism. The pre-Raphaelites
were contemporaries of the earlier symbolists, and have
much in common with them. Symbolism had a signi-
cant inuence on modernism, (Remy de Gourmont con-
sidered the Imagists were its descendandants)[22] and its
traces can also be detected in the work of many modernist
poets, including T. S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Conrad
Aiken, Hart Crane, and W. B. Yeats in the anglophone
tradition and Rubn Daro in Hispanic literature. The
early poems of Guillaume Apollinaire have strong ani-
ties with symbolism.
Edmund Wilson's 1931 study Axels Castle focuses on the
continuity with symbolism and several important writers
of the early twentieth century, with a particular emphasis
on Yeats, Eliot, Paul Valry, Marcel Proust, James Joyce,
and Gertrude Stein. Wilson concluded that the symbolists
represented a dreaming retreat into
things that are dyingthe whole belle-
lettristic tradition of Renaissance culture per-
haps, compelled to specialize more and more,
more and more driven in on itself, as industri-
alism and democratic education have come to
press it closer and closer.[23]
After the beginning of the 20th century, symbolism had
a major eect on Russian poetry even as it became The Shore of Oblivion (1889) by Eugen Bracht
less popular in France. Russian symbolism, steeped in
the Eastern Orthodoxy and the religious doctrines of
Vladimir Solovyov, had little in common with the French 6.1 Precursors
style of the same name. It began the careers of several
major poets such as Alexander Blok, Andrei Bely, and
Marina Tsvetaeva. Belys novel Petersburg (1912) is con-
sidered the greatest example of Russian symbolist prose.
In Romania, symbolists directly inuenced by French
poetry rst gained inuence during the 1880s, when
Alexandru Macedonski reunited a group of young poets
associated with his magazine Literatorul. Polemicizing
7
with the established Junimea and overshadowed by the
inuence of Mihai Eminescu, Romanian symbolism was
recovered as an inspiration during and after the 1910s,
when it was exampled by the works of Tudor Arghezi, Ion
Minulescu, George Bacovia, Mateiu Caragiale, Tristan
Tzara and Tudor Vianu, and praised by the modernist
magazine Sburtorul.
The symbolist painters were an important inuence on
expressionism and surrealism in painting, two movements
which descend directly from symbolism proper. The
harlequins, paupers, and clowns of Pablo Picasso's "Blue
Period" show the inuence of symbolism, and especially
of Puvis de Chavannes. In Belgium, symbolism became
so popular that it came to be thought of as a national style:
the static strangeness of painters like Ren Magritte can
be considered as a direct continuation of symbolism. The
work of some symbolist visual artists, such as Jan Toorop,
directly aected the curvilinear forms of art nouveau.
Many early motion pictures also employ symbolist visual
imagery and themes in their staging, set designs, and im-
agery. The lms of German expressionism owe a great
deal to symbolist imagery. The virginal good girls seen
in the cinema of D. W. Grith, and the silent lm bad
girls portrayed by Theda Bara, both show the continu-
ing inuence of symbolism, as do the Babylonian scenes
from Griths Intolerance. Symbolist imagery lived on
longest in horror lm: as late as 1932, Carl Theodor
Dreyer's Vampyr showed the obvious inuence of sym-
bolist imagery; parts of the lm resemble tableau vivant
re-creations of the early paintings of Edvard Munch.[24]
6 Symbolists
William Blake (17571827) English writer (Songs
of Innocence)
Caspar David Friedrich (17741840) German
painter (Wanderer above the Sea of Fog)
Alexander Pushkin (17991837) Russian poet and
writer (Eugene Onegin)
8 9
Salammb (1907) by Gaston Bussire
ore Markovi Koder (18061891) Serbian poet
(Romoranka)
Grard de Nerval (180855) French poet
Jules Amde Barbey d'Aurevilly (18081889)
French writer
Edgar Allan Poe (180949) American poet and
writer (The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of
Nantucket)
Mikhail Lermontov (18141841) Russian poet and
writer (A Hero of Our Time)
Charles Baudelaire (182167) French poet (Les
Fleurs du mal)
Gustave Flaubert (18211880) French writer
(Madame Bovary)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (182882) English poet and
painter (Beata Beatrix)
Christina Rossetti (18301894) English poet
6.2 Authors
(listed by year of birth)
6.3 Inuence in English literature
English language authors who inuenced or were inu-
enced by symbolism include:
REFERENCES
6.4 Symbolist visual artists
See also: Category:Symbolist painters and
Category:Symbolist sculptors
6.5 Symbolist composers
7 Gallery
Gustav Klimt - Allegory of Skulptur
Jan Toorop (18581928), The Three Brides
Fernand Khnop's Incense
Mikhail Vrubel, The Swan Princess
La mort du fossoyeur (The death of the gravedig-
ger) by Carlos Schwabe is a visual compendium
of symbolist motifs. Death and angels, pristine
snow, and the dramatic poses of the characters all
express symbolist longings for transguration any-
where, out of the world.
Franz von Stuck, Susanna
The cover to Aleksander Blok's 1909 book, Theatre.
Konstantin Somov's illustrations for the Russian
symbolist poet display the continuity between sym-
bolism and Art Nouveau artists such as Aubrey
Beardsley.
8 See also
Visionary art
9 References
[1] Balakian, Anna, The Symbolist Movement: a critical ap-
praisal. Random House, 1967, ch. 2
[2] Balakian, supra; see also Houston, introduction
[3] L'Album zutique
[4] Jean Moreas, Le Manifeste du Symbolisme, Le Figaro,
1886
[5] Conway Morris, Roderick The Elusive Symbolist move-
ment article International Herald Tribune, March 17,
2007.
[6] Untermeyer, Louis, Preface to Modern American Poetry
Harcourt Brace & Co New York 1950
[7] Pratt, William. The Imagist Poem, Modern Poetry in
Miniature (Story Line Press, 1963, expanded 2001).
ISBN 1-58654-009-2
 9

[8] Olds, Marshal C. Literary Symbolism, originally pub-
lished (as Chapter 14) in A Companion to Modernist Lit-
erature and Culture, edited by David Bradshaw and Kevin
J. H. Dettmar. Malden, MA : Blackwell Publishing, 2006.
Pages 155162.
[9] Translation for Wikipedia
[10] Paul Verlaine, Les Potes maudits
[11] Charles Baudelaire, Bndiction
[12] Delvaille, Bernard, La posie symboliste: anthologie, in-
troduction. ISBN 2-221-50161-6
[13] Luxure, fruit de mort l'arbre de la vie... , Albert Samain,
Luxure, in the publication Au jardin de l'infante (1889)
[14] Stphane Mallarm, Les fentres
Houston, John Porter, and Mona Tobin Houston,
French Symbolist Poetry: An Anthology. Blooming-
ton : Indiana University Press, 1980. ISBN 0-253-
20250-7.
Jullian, Philippe, The Symbolists. Oxford: Phaidon;
New York: E.P. Dutton, 1973. ISBN 0-7148-1739-
2.
Lehmann, A.G., The Symbolist Aesthetic in France
18851895. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1950, 1968.
The Oxford Companion to French Literature, Sir Paul
Harvey and J. E. Heseltine, eds., Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1959. ISBN 0-19-866104-5
Praz, Mario, The Romantic Agony London: Oxford
University Press, 1930. ISBN 0-19-281061-8.

[15] David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, Russian oriental-
ism: Asia in the Russian mind from Peter the Great to the
emigration, New Haven: Yale UP, 2010, p. 211
[16] Olds, above, p. 160
[17] Langueur, from Jadis et Nagure, 1884
Symons, Arthur, The Symbolist Movement in Litera-
ture , 1899, rev. 1919.
Wilson, Edmond, Axels Castle: A Study in the Imag-
inative Literature of 18701930 (Internet Archive).
ISBN 978-1-59853-013-1 (Library of America)

[18] Henri Beauclair and Gabriel Vicaire, Les Dliquescences

d'Ador Floupette (1885)
11 External links
Les Dliquescences pomes dcadents d'Ador
Floupette, avec sa vie par Marius Tapora by Henri Collection of German Symbolist art
Beauclair and Gabriel Vicaire (French)
Les Potes maudits by Paul Verlaine (French)
[19] Alan Hollinghurst, "Bruges of sighs" (The Guardian, 29
Jan. 2005, accessed 26 Apr 2009 ArtMagick The Symbolist Gallery

[20] Symbolist Movement. Encyclopedia Britannica. Re- What is Symbolism in Art Ten Dreams Galleries
trieved 3 April 2012. extensive article on Symbolism

[21] Fragment from The Twelve re-printed in The Slavonic
and East European Review Vol. 8, No. 22 (Jun., 1929),
pp. 188198
[22] de Gourmont, Remy. La France (1915)
Symbolism Gustave Moreau, Puvis de Chavannes,
Odilon Redon
Literary Symbolism Published in A Companion to
Modernist Literature and Culture (2006)

[23] Quoted in Brooker, Joseph (2004). Joyces Critics: Transi-

tions in Reading and Culture. Madison, Wisc.: University
of Wisconsin Press. p. 73. ISBN 0299196046.

[24] Jullian, Philippe, The Symbolists. (Dutton, 1977) ISBN

0-7148-1739-2

10 Further reading
Balakian, Anna, The Symbolist Movement: a critical
appraisal. New York: Random House, 1967.

Facos, Michelle, Symbolist Art in Context. Rout-

ledge, 2011.

Delvaille, Bernard, La posie symboliste: anthologie.

Paris: Seghers, 1971. ISBN 2-221-50161-6.
10 12 TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

12 Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

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