Symbolism in modern poetry

‎The symbolist movement in literature originated during the 1850s in France and lasted until about 1900. Symbolism exerted a profound influence on twentieth century literature bridging the transition from Realism to Modernism. Charles Baudelaire was its founder and Arthur Rimbaud, Stephane Mallarme Paul Verlaine and Paul Valery forming a group that almost created a completely symbolic world. They were trying to evoke states of feeling or awareness often without discernable concrete meanings and suggesting things without stating them directly. The symbolists sought to convey very personal irrational and dreamlike states of consciousness relying heavily on metaphorical language.

‎ The literary ideals developed in symbolism were as a reaction against the dominance of positivism which emphasized rational thought objectivity and scientific method. Symbolism represented a reaction against Realism and Naturalism in literature which sought to accurately represent the external world of nature and human society through descriptions of objective reality. Stylistically the symbolists emphasized the inherent musicality of language developed the use of vers libre (free verse) and modernized the existing form of the prose poem. The symbolists were greatly influenced by the poetry of Charles Baudelaire whose Les fleurs du mal (1857; Flowers of Evil) embodied many of their literary ideals. In addition to Baudelaire the central figures of French Symbolism were the poets Stephane Mallarme Paul Verlaine, and Arthur Rimbaud. French Symbolism affected international literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in particular inspiring the Russian symbolist Japan movement which developed in the 1880s. The literature of Germany pan the United States and Turkey was also influenced by Symbolism. Though poetry dominated the symbolist movement great works of fiction and drama were also written by adherents of Symbolism.

‎The Aesthetic Movement is a 19th century emphasized aesthetic values over moral or social themes in literature fine art the

‎decorative arts and interior design. Generally speaking it represents the same tendencies that symbolism or decadence stood for in France or Decadentismo stood for in Italy and may be considered the British branch of the same movement. It belongs to the anti Victorian reaction and had post Romantic roots and as such anticipates modernism. It took place in the late Victorian period from around of Oscar Wilde in 1895. to have ended with

‎The use of imagery by the symbolist poets often exemplifies states of mind the imagination the human psyche and dreams Free in verse or Vers libre was developed by the symbolist poets as a form of verse liberated from the traditional formal requirements of French poetry such as meter and rhyme. The symbolists felt the formal Beary qualities of a poem should emerge from its content rather than being imposed upon it by the rules of tradition. Free verse poetry thus tends to be structured according to the rhythms of everyday speech. French symbolist poets Jules Laforgue and Gustave Kahn were the first to develop free verse. Critical response to the development of Symbolism was itself an important contribution to the symbolist movement as many of the literary critics and leading theorists of Symbolism were themselves symbolist writers. These critics contributed to the shaping definition and dissemination of the movement. A discussion of critical responses to Symbolism is thus also a historical narrative of the development of the movement.

‎ II. DEBATE ‎

‎Symbolism in Modern Poetry: Origin and Characteristics

‎The symbolist movement was formally launched in 1886 when the poet Jean Moreas (1856-1910) published a manifesto in the major Parisian newspaper Le Figaro. Moreas described symbolism as the enemy of teaching of declamation of false sensitivity of objective description Symbolic poetry seeks to clothe the Idea in a perceptible form that nevertheless will not be the ultimate goal in itself but which even as it serves to express the Idea remains subject to it. The itself to be deprived sumptuous robes of external analogies: for the essential character of symbolic art is never to reach the Idea itself. Accordingly in this art. the depictions of nature the actions of human beings, all the concrete phenomena would not manifest themselves; these are but pearances perceptible to the senses destined to represent their symbolism rejects all attempts to represent the perceptible world esoteric affinities with primordial ideas. Moreas version of directly or instruct the reader straightforwardly. Instead Moreas

‎advocates allusive language that will allow the idea to be intuited by readers through a series of analogies. Moreas makes clear that for symbolism the important subject matter lies beyond the perceptible world. In addition in the manifesto Moreas advocates new kinds of verse no longer bound by traditional rules of poetic composition.

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‎Moreas manifesto served many purposes. On one hand it was a declaration of the direction modern poetry should take and thus part of a wider attempt on the part of young writers to find cultural legitimacy while declaring themselves outside the traditional French academy. This general trend toward establishing an independent literary milieu is perhaps most clearly evidenced in the plethora of literary magazines that emerged in the mid 1880s. While in some sense declaring his independence from tradition Moreas also wanted to distinguish wha what he called Symbolism from the approach of other non traditional writers and artists he designated as Decadent. There is a great deal of overlap between decadence and symbolism. Both reject the value of empirical descriptions of the natural world and look to the artist's heightened sensitivity and imagination for the source of creativity. The aim of decadence however more often seems to be the rejection of bourgeois values and everyday morality in favour of detailed explorations of socially marginal and exotic subject matter the occult debauchery extreme artifice and aestheticism. Conversely symbolism while sometimes overlapping in subject matter is more seriously concerned with the search for a new approach to poetic literary or artistic form drawing on the experimentations of an older generation of writers such as Baudelaire Edgar Allan Poe Mallarme Rimbaud and Verlaine.