Symbolism:

Symbolism, a literary and artistic movement that originated with a group of French poets in
the late 19th century, spread to painting and the theatre, and influenced the European and
American literatures of the 20th century to varying degrees. Symbolist artists sought to
express individual emotional experience through the subtle and suggestive use of highly
symbolized language.
Several English Romantics, notably Blake, Coleridge and Shelley, used both conventional
and private symbols persistently in their poetry, and they might loosely be called symbolist
poets. But the Symbolist Movement usually refers to French poets of the second half of the
nineteenth century (Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Mallarmé and Paul Valery). In
literature, Symbolism originated with the 1857 publication of Charles Baudelaire's “Les
Fleurs du mal”. The works of Edgar Allan Poe, which Baudelaire admired greatly and
translated into French, were a significant influence and source of many of his stock tropes
and images. The movement was developed by Stephane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine
during the 1860s and 1870s. Such masterpieces as Verlaine’s “Romances sans
paroles”(“Songs Without Words” in 1874) and Mallarmé’s “L’Après-midi d’un faune”
(1876) sparked a growing interest in the nascent innovations of progressive French poets.
A Symbolist manifesto was published by Jean Moréas in 1886 in which he applied the term
“Symbolist” for the first time. He invented the term to distinguish the Symbolists from the
Decadents of literature and of art. Distinct from, but related to, the style of literature,
Symbolism in art is related to the gothic component of Romanticism and Impressionism.
Symbolism followed Impressionism chronologically, but it was the antithesis of it, as the
emphasis was on the meaning behind the shapes and colours. On the other hand,
Impressionism emphasized the reality of the created paint surface itself. However, major
Symbolist poets were also Impressionists.
One of the major characteristics of Symbolism is that it adds levels of meaning, creating
depth in a text. Symbolists believed that art should present absolute truths that could be
described indirectly. Thus, they wrote in a very metaphorical and suggestive manner,
endowing particular images and objects with symbolic meaning. For example, Joseph
Conrad uses different symbols in “Heart of Darkness”. Fog, in the novel, is a sort of
corollary to darkness. The symbols of light and darkness are so abundant as they become
motifs. Even characters are symbolic. Mr. Kurtz is the symbol of greed and corrupt
mentality of modern man.
Symbolism gives universality to the characters and the themes of a piece of literature. The
Symbolist poets are convinced that the transient objective world is not a true reality but a
reflection of the invisible absolute. They believe that art should reflect an opinion or idea
rather than represent the natural world in the objective and scientific manner. That is why
Symbolism was in many ways a reaction against Realism and Naturalism. Symbolism was
also a reaction against the moralism, rationalism, and materialism of the 1880s. This “fin-
de-siècle” period was a period of malaise. Artists felt a need to go beyond naturalism in art.
Symbolism served as a means of this escape.
In terms of subject matter, the Symbolists combined religious,mystic, the perverse, the
erotic, and the decadent. Symbolist subject is typically characterized by an interest in the
occult, the morbid, the dream world, melancholy, evil, and death.
Moréas announced that Symbolism was hostile to “plain qmeanings, declamations,false
sentimentality and matter-of-fact description”, and that its goal instead was to “clothe the
ideal in a perceptive form” whose “goal was not in itself, but whose sole purpose was to
express the ideal.” For example, The nominal subject of Mallarmé's "Le cygne" ("The
Swan") is of a swan trapped in a frozen lake. Significantly, in French, cygne is a homophone
of signe, a sign. Malarmé expressed the ideal of whiteness and purity through Sean.
T.S.Eliot also presents a picture of whole modern civilization in “The Waste Land”. He uses
private symbols of dog, Red Rock and The Daughters of Thames to express different ideas.
Symbolist poets focused on the inner life. They explored strange cults and countries. They
wrote in allusive, enigmatic,musical and ambiguous styles. Rimbaud deranged his senses
and declared “Je est in autre” (“I is something else”). Valéry retired from the world as a
private secretary,before returning to mastery of traditional French verse. Mallarmé
developed his art of suggestion, which he called his “fictions”. Rare words, syntactical
intricacies, private associations and baffling images were introduced. Malarmé's Une saison
en enfer (A Season in Hell) and Illuminations are famous for his disavowal of tradition,
unconventional syntax, and indirect expression.
Another characteristic of Symbolism was that Symbolist writers extended the evocative
power of words to express the feelings, sensations and state of mind that lie beyond
everyday awareness. The open-ended symbols created by Charles Baudelaire brought the
invisible into being through the visible, and linked the invisible though other sensory
perceptions by applying Synaesthesia which is another characteristic Hallmark of Symbolist
poetry. Synaesthesia is the description of a sense impression in terms more appropriate to
a different sense; Symbolists focused on achieving the musical quality in their verse and
believed that through blurring the senses and mixing images they depicted a higher reality.
Synaesthesia was a prized experience,poets sought to identify and confound the separate
senses of scent,sound, and colour. Baudelaire’s poem “Correspondences” which is
considered to be the touchstone of French Symbolism mentions forts de symboles- forests
of symbols-
 “There are perfumes that are fresh like children’s flesh,
Sweet like oboes, green like Meadows
-And others, corrupt, rich, and triumphant,
Having the expansiveness of infinite things,
Like amber, musc, benzoin, and incense,
Which sing of the raptures of the soul and senses.”
Here, Baudelaire links the sense of smell with senses of touch, sight and hearing.
The Symbolist poets wished to liberate techniques of versification in order to allow greater
room for “fluidity”, and as such were sympathetic with the trend toward free verse, as
evident in the poems of Gustave Kahn and Ezra Pound. Symbolist poets used symbolic
imagery to signify the state of the oul. T.S. Eliot was influenced by the poet’s Jules Laforgue,
Paul Valery and Rimbaud and therefore the technique of symbolic imagery can be observed
in “The Waste Land” by Eliot.
In Symbolist poetry, time was suspended, and the usual supports of plot and narrative were
removed. Even the implied poet faded away. This feature of symbolism can be found in
“The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot.
Symbolism in literature is distinct from Symbolism in art although the two were similar in
many aspects. In painting, symbolism can be seen as a revival of some mystical tendencies
in the Romantic tradition, and was close to the self-consciously morbid and private
Decadent movement. Some Postimpressionist painters such as Gauguin and Vincent van
Gogh as well as the Nabis may be regarded as Symbolists in certain aspects of their art.
However, the painters who are truly representative of Symbolist aesthetic ideals include
three principal figures: Gustave Moreau, Odilon Redon, and Pierre Puvis de Chavannes.
Moreau was a figurative painter who created scenes based on legendary or ancient themes.
Symbolism in painting was even more widespread geographically than symbolism in
poetry. Auguste Rodin is sometimes considered a symbolist sculptor.The symbolist
painters used mythological and dream imagery. The symbols used by symbolism are not
the familiar emblems of mainstream iconography but intensely personal, private, obscure
and ambiguous references.
Symbolist criteria were applied most successfully to the novel by Joris-Karl Huysmans and
to the theatre by the Belgian Maurice. One of the few successful Symbolist novels was “À
rebours” 1884 (“Against Nature”) by J.K. Huysmans. Paul Adam was the most prolific and
representative author of symbolist novels. “Les Demoiselles Goubert” (1886), co-written
with Jean Moréas, is an important transitional work between Naturalism and Symbolism.
Georges Rodenbach wrote the short novel “Bruges-la-morte”, set in the Flemish town of
Bruges, which Rodenbach described as a dying, Medieval city of mourning and quiet
contemplation In a typically symbolist juxtaposition, the dead city contrasts with the
diabolical re-awakening of sexual desire. One of Symbolism's most colourful promoters in
Paris was art and literally critic Josephine Planning, who established “Salon de la Rose +
Croix”.
Symbolist works had a strong and lasting influence on much British and American literature
in the 20th century. Their experimental techniques greatly enriched the technical repertoire
of modern poetry, and Symbolist theories bore fruit both in the poetry of W.B. Yeats and
T.S. Eliot and in the modern novel as represented by James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, in
which word harmonies and patterns of images often take preeminence over the narrative.
Symbolism also left an impact on Expressionism, Dadaism and Surrealism.
Thus, Symbolism can also be seen as being at the forefront of modernism, in that it
developed new and often abstract means to express psychological truth and the idea that
behind the physical wold lies a spiritual reality.