The Symbolist Movement

Late 19^th Century - Today

Originating in France, the significance of this movement’s name is due to the use of “emblems” to represent elements of reality in a more abstract and creative fashion, giving those words or elements a more supernatural significance.

Founding Poets: Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé, Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, and Paul Valéry are considered the founders of this movement. It is said that the works of Edgar Allen Poe influenced the Symbolists.

Left: Baudelaire; Right: Mallarmé

Symbolism started in France in the late 19^th century as a reaction to Naturalism, which was a movement that humbled aspects of reality rather than romanticized them.

The Symbolist Manifesto states that art is meant to represent absolute truths that can only be stated in an indirect manner. Symbolist poets wanted to bring more freedom to their writing through this movement, as opposed to being confined to direct representation.

Obviously, one would find an abundance of symbolic elements within a piece from this school. Free-verse is fairly common with this movement, as well as romantic and fantastical elements.

Calm by Charles Baudelaire

Have patience, O my sorrow, and be still.
You asked for night: it falls: it is here.
A shadowy atmosphere enshrouds the hill,
to some men bringing peace, to others care.
While the vile human multitude
goes to earn remorse, in servile pleasure’s play,
under the lash of joy, the torturer, who
is pitiless, Sadness, come, far away:
Give me your hand. See, where the lost years
lean from the balcony in their outdated gear,
where regret, smiling, surges from the watery deeps.
Underneath some archway, the dying light
sleeps, and, like a long shroud trailing from the East,
listen, dear one, listen to the soft onset of night.

This has a romantic tone to it. Many elements are represented in a way that almost embellishes their significance, as if one were reading a passage from a fantasy novel of some sort. Elements like “The shadowy atmosphere” are most certainly symbolic and represent something far greater than what they literally mean.

http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Sherry.html

By Miles Robinson