THE SYMBOLIST MOVEMENT IN LITERATURE
BY
ARTHUR SYMONS
AUTHOR of
"Cities of Italy," "Plays, Acting and Music," "The Romantic
Movement in English Literature," "Studies in Seven
Arts," "Colour Studies in Paris," etc.
REVISED AND ENLARGED EDITION
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
681 FIFTH AVENUE
1919
CONTENTS
Introduction
Balzac
Prosper Mérimée
Gérard De Nerval
Théophile Gautier
Gustave Flaubert
Charles Baudelaire
Edmond and Jules De Goncourt
Villiers de l'Isle-Adam
Léon Cladel
A Note on Zola's Method
Stéphane Mallarmé
Paul Verlaine
I. Joris-karl Huysmans
II. the Later Huysmans
Arthur Rimbaud
Jules Laforgue
Maeterlinck As a Mystic
Conclusion
Bibliography and Notes
Translations
THE SYMBOLIST MOVEMENT IN LITERATURE
THE SYMBOLIST MOVEMENT
INTRODUCTION
"It is in and through Symbols that man, consciously or unconsciously,lives, works, and has his being: those ages, moreover, are accountedthe noblest which can the best recognise symbolical worth, and prize ithighest." Carlyle
Without symbolism there can be no literature; indeed, not evenlanguage. What are words themselves but symbols, almost as arbitraryas the letters which compose them, mere sounds of the voice to whichwe have agreed to give certain significations, as we have agreed totranslate these sounds by those combinations of letters? Symbolismbegan with the first words uttered by the first man, as he namedevery living thing; or before them, in heaven, when God named theworld into being. And we see, in these beginnings, precisely whatSymbolism in literature really is: a form of expression, at the bestbut approximate, essentially but arbitrary, until it has obtainedthe force of a convention, for an unseen reality apprehended by theconsciousness. It is sometimes permitted to us to hope that ourconvention is indeed the reflection rather than merely the sign of thatunseen reality. We have done much if we have found a recognisable sign.
"A symbol," says Comte Goblet d'Alviella, in his book on The Migrationof Symbols, "might be defined as a representation which does not aimat being a reproduction." Originally, as he points out, used by theGreeks to denote "the two halves of the tablet they divided betweenthemse