The Symbolist Movement in Literature
Encyclopedia
Arthur Symons
's The Symbolist Movement in Literature, first published in 1899, and with additional material in 1919, is largely credited with bringing French Symbolism
to the attention of Anglo-American literary circles. Its first two editions were vital influences on W. B. Yeats
and T. S. Eliot
--a note that, for nothing else, would assure its historical place with the most important early Modernist criticism. Richard Ellmann
has contributed an Introduction to most modern editions.
A few years later adverts were placed for The Decadent Movement in Literature to be published imminently as a book in its own right. In 1896, an advert appeared in The Savoy
, which Symons served as literary editor for and Leonard Smithers published. The advert, placed by Smithers himself (for he was hoping to publish it), stated the book to be 'in preparation'. In 1897, Smithers placed an identical advert in his bijou edition of Pope's Rape of the Lock. One assumes that Symons was working on an expanded version of his 1893 article, to be published in a single volume under the same name. How and when Symons decided to change the title word of 'Decadent' to 'Symbolist' is unclear. What is clear, however, is that between 1893 and 1899, Symons' own perception of and sensibility towards literary Decadence changed.
Many of the essays in the 1899 edition of The Symbolist Movement in Literature were initially published as individual articles between 1897 and 1899 in periodicals such as The Star or The Athenaeum, before being revised and collated for the final monograph.
in his 1908 edition. Essays on English authors were added for Symons's 1924 Collected Works.
was a close friend of Yeats, and the mutual influence was probably just as much one of conversation as of letters. Its dedicatory note (to Yeats) opens:
T. S. Eliot, whose relationship with the book was significantly less dialectical—he discovered its second edition in bookshop while at Harvard, though he did eventually write to Symons—was perhaps even more influenced by it:
Its importance for other contemporary writers was also, of course, profound. Richard Ellmann, James Joyce
's most preeminent biographer, argues that Symons was a major influence for Joyce's decision to emigrate to Paris. In a later generation Symons' book was responsible, for example, for alerting the young British poet David Gascoyne
to the appeal of French poets such as Rimbaud and Baudelaire, some of whom he was to memorably translate.
Arthur Symons
Arthur William Symons , was a British poet, critic and magazine editor.-Life:Born in Milford Haven, Wales, of Cornish parents, Symons was educated privately, spending much of his time in France and Italy...
's The Symbolist Movement in Literature, first published in 1899, and with additional material in 1919, is largely credited with bringing French Symbolism
Symbolism (arts)
Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...
to the attention of Anglo-American literary circles. Its first two editions were vital influences on W. B. Yeats
William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and playwright, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years he served as an Irish Senator for two terms...
and T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
--a note that, for nothing else, would assure its historical place with the most important early Modernist criticism. Richard Ellmann
Richard Ellmann
Richard David Ellmann was a prominent American literary critic and biographer of the Irish writers James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, and William Butler Yeats...
has contributed an Introduction to most modern editions.
Textual history
While The Symbolist Movement in Literature was first published in monograph book form in 1899, its origins can be traced back to previous essays and articles published by Symons. In 1893, Symons' article The Decadent Movement in Literature appeared in the November volume of Harper's New Monthly Magazine. This ten page article touched on many of the authors subsequently discussed in "The Symbolist Movement in Literature", such as Huysmans, Maeterlinck, Verlaine and Villers de L'Isle-Adam. The 1893 essay also mentioned the English writers Pater and Henley.A few years later adverts were placed for The Decadent Movement in Literature to be published imminently as a book in its own right. In 1896, an advert appeared in The Savoy
The Savoy (periodical)
This article is about the former British magazine, for other uses, see Savoy The Savoy was a magazine of literature, art, and criticism published in 1896 in London. It featured work by authors such as W. B. Yeats, Max Beerbohm, Joseph Conrad, and Aubrey Beardsley. Only eight issues of the magazine...
, which Symons served as literary editor for and Leonard Smithers published. The advert, placed by Smithers himself (for he was hoping to publish it), stated the book to be 'in preparation'. In 1897, Smithers placed an identical advert in his bijou edition of Pope's Rape of the Lock. One assumes that Symons was working on an expanded version of his 1893 article, to be published in a single volume under the same name. How and when Symons decided to change the title word of 'Decadent' to 'Symbolist' is unclear. What is clear, however, is that between 1893 and 1899, Symons' own perception of and sensibility towards literary Decadence changed.
Many of the essays in the 1899 edition of The Symbolist Movement in Literature were initially published as individual articles between 1897 and 1899 in periodicals such as The Star or The Athenaeum, before being revised and collated for the final monograph.
Contents
Symons's book is a collection of short essays on various authors. A list of contents is useful, among other reasons, for determining the time and trace of its influence. Eliot, for instance, would not have read about BaudelaireCharles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...
in his 1908 edition. Essays on English authors were added for Symons's 1924 Collected Works.
1899 and 1908
- Gérard de NervalGérard de NervalGérard de Nerval was the nom-de-plume of the French poet, essayist and translator Gérard Labrunie, one of the most essentially Romantic French poets.- Biography :...
- Villiers de L'Isle-AdamAuguste Villiers de l'Isle-AdamJean-Marie-Mathias-Philippe-Auguste, comte de Villiers de l'Isle-Adam was a French symbolist writer.-Life:Villiers de l'Isle-Adam was born in Saint-Brieuc, Brittany, to a distinguished aristocratic family...
- Arthur RimbaudArthur RimbaudJean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud was a French poet. Born in Charleville, Ardennes, he produced his best known works while still in his late teens—Victor Hugo described him at the time as "an infant Shakespeare"—and he gave up creative writing altogether before the age of 21. As part of the decadent...
- Paul VerlainePaul VerlainePaul-Marie Verlaine was a French poet associated with the Symbolist movement. He is considered one of the greatest representatives of the fin de siècle in international and French poetry.-Early life:...
- Jules LaforgueJules LaforgueJules Laforgue was an innovative Franco-Uruguayan poet, often referred to as a Symbolist poet. Critics and commentators have also pointed to Impressionism as a direct influence and his poetry has been called "part-symbolist, part-impressionist".-Life:...
- Stéphane MallarméStéphane MallarméStéphane Mallarmé , whose real name was Étienne Mallarmé, was a French poet and critic. He was a major French symbolist poet, and his work anticipated and inspired several revolutionary artistic schools of the early 20th century, such as Dadaism, Surrealism, and Futurism.-Biography:Stéphane...
- The Later HuysmansJoris-Karl HuysmansCharles-Marie-Georges Huysmans was a French novelist who published his works as Joris-Karl Huysmans . He is most famous for the novel À rebours...
- MaeterlinckMaurice MaeterlinckMaurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck, also called Comte Maeterlinck from 1932, was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who wrote in French. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911. The main themes in his work are death and the meaning of life...
as a Mystic
Additions in 1919
- BalzacHonoré de BalzacHonoré de Balzac was a French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of short stories and novels collectively entitled La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the 1815 fall of Napoleon....
- Prosper MériméeProsper MériméeProsper Mérimée was a French dramatist, historian, archaeologist, and short story writer. He is perhaps best known for his novella Carmen, which became the basis of Bizet's opera Carmen.-Life:...
- Théophile GautierThéophile GautierPierre Jules Théophile Gautier was a French poet, dramatist, novelist, journalist, art critic and literary critic....
- Gustave FlaubertGustave FlaubertGustave Flaubert was a French writer who is counted among the greatest Western novelists. He is known especially for his first published novel, Madame Bovary , and for his scrupulous devotion to his art and style.-Early life and education:Flaubert was born on December 12, 1821, in Rouen,...
- Charles BaudelaireCharles BaudelaireCharles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...
- Edmund and Jules de GoncourtGoncourt brothersThe Goncourt brothers were Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt , both French naturalist writers. They formed a partnership that "is possibly unique in literary history...
- Léon CladelLeon CladelLéon Cladel , French novelist, was born at Montauban . The son of an artisan, he studied law at Toulouse and became a solicitor's clerk in Paris. Cladel made a reputation in a limited circle by his first book, Les Martyrs ridicules , a novel for which Charles Baudelaire, whose literary disciple...
- A Note on ZolaÉmile ZolaÉmile François Zola was a French writer, the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism...
's Method
Influence
Arthur SymonsArthur Symons
Arthur William Symons , was a British poet, critic and magazine editor.-Life:Born in Milford Haven, Wales, of Cornish parents, Symons was educated privately, spending much of his time in France and Italy...
was a close friend of Yeats, and the mutual influence was probably just as much one of conversation as of letters. Its dedicatory note (to Yeats) opens:
May I dedicate to you this book on the Symbolist movement in literature, both as an expression of a deep personal friendship and because you, more than any one else, will sympathise with what I say in it, being yourself the chief representative of that movement in our country? France is the country of movements, and it is naturally in France that I have studied the development of a principle which is spreading throughout other countries, perhaps not less effectually, if with less definite outlines....
T. S. Eliot, whose relationship with the book was significantly less dialectical—he discovered its second edition in bookshop while at Harvard, though he did eventually write to Symons—was perhaps even more influenced by it:
I owe Mr. Symons a great debt: but for having read his book I should not, in the year 1908, have heard of LaforgueJules LaforgueJules Laforgue was an innovative Franco-Uruguayan poet, often referred to as a Symbolist poet. Critics and commentators have also pointed to Impressionism as a direct influence and his poetry has been called "part-symbolist, part-impressionist".-Life:...
or RimbaudArthur RimbaudJean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud was a French poet. Born in Charleville, Ardennes, he produced his best known works while still in his late teens—Victor Hugo described him at the time as "an infant Shakespeare"—and he gave up creative writing altogether before the age of 21. As part of the decadent...
; I should probably not have begun to read VerlainePaul VerlainePaul-Marie Verlaine was a French poet associated with the Symbolist movement. He is considered one of the greatest representatives of the fin de siècle in international and French poetry.-Early life:...
; but for reading Verlaine, I should not have heard of CorbièreTristan CorbièreTristan Corbière , born Édouard-Joachim Corbière, was a French poet born in Coat-Congar, Ploujean in Brittany, where he lived most of his life and where he died....
. So the Symons book is one of those which have affected the course of my life.
Its importance for other contemporary writers was also, of course, profound. Richard Ellmann, James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
's most preeminent biographer, argues that Symons was a major influence for Joyce's decision to emigrate to Paris. In a later generation Symons' book was responsible, for example, for alerting the young British poet David Gascoyne
David Gascoyne
David Gascoyne was an English poet associated with the Surrealist movement.-Early life and Surrealism:...
to the appeal of French poets such as Rimbaud and Baudelaire, some of whom he was to memorably translate.
External links
- The Symbolist Movement in Literature, a digitized copy of the "revised and enlarged" edition of 1919 from the Internet ArchiveInternet ArchiveThe Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
. - Review by The New York Times (1919)