Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin

in poetry and other arts.

In literature, the style originates 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 the source of many stock tropes and images. The aesthetic was
developed by Stphane Mallarm and Paul Verlaine during the 1860s and 1870s. In the 1880s,
the aesthetic was articulated by a series of manifestos and attracted a generation of writers. The
name "symbolist" itself was first applied by the critic Jean Moras, who invented the term to
distinguish the Symbolists from the related 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.

Etymology[edit]
The term "symbolism" is derived from the word "symbol" which derives from the Latin symbolum,
a symbol of faith, and symbolus, a sign of recognition, in turn from classical Greek
symbolon, an object cut in half constituting a sign of recognition when the carriers
were able to reassemble the two halves. In ancient Greece, the symbolon was a shard of pottery
which was inscribed and then broken into two pieces which were given to the ambassadors from
two allied city states as a record of the alliance.

Precursors and origins[edit]

Symbolism was largely a reaction against naturalism and realism, anti-idealistic styles which
were attempts to represent reality in its gritty particularity, and to elevate the humble and the
ordinary over the ideal. Symbolism was a reaction in favour of spirituality, the imagination, and
dreams.[1] Some writers, such as Joris-Karl Huysmans, began as naturalists before becoming
symbolists; for Huysmans, this change represented his increasing interest in religion and
spirituality. Certain of the characteristic subjects of the Decadents represent naturalist interest in
sexuality and taboo topics, but in their case this was mixed with Byronic romanticism and the
world-weariness characteristic of the fin de sicle period.
The Symbolist poets have a more complex relationship with Parnassianism, a French literary
style that immediately preceded it. While being influenced by hermeticism, allowing freer
versification, and rejecting Parnassian clarity and objectivity, it retained Parnassianism's love
of word play and concern for the musical qualities of verse. The Symbolists continued to
admire Thophile Gautier's motto of "art for art's sake", and retained and modified
Parnassianism's mood of ironic detachment.[2] Many Symbolist poets, including Stphane
Mallarm and Paul Verlaine, published early works in Le Parnasse contemporain, the poetry
anthologies that gave Parnassianism its name. But Arthur Rimbaud publicly mocked prominent
Parnassians and published scatological parodies of some of their main authors,
including Franois Coppe misattributed to Coppe himself in L'Album zutique.[3]
One of Symbolism's most colourful promoters in Paris was art and literary critic
(and occultist) Josphin Pladan, who established the Salon de la Rose + Croix. The Salon
hosted a series of six presentations of avant-garde art, writing and music during the 1890s, to
give a presentation space for artists embracing spiritualism, mysticism, and idealism in their
work. A number of Symbolists were associated with the Salon.

Movement[edit]
The Symbolist Manifesto[edit]
Henri Fantin-Latour, By the Table, 1872,
depicting: Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, Lon
Valade, Ernest d'Hervilly and Camille
Pelletan(seated); Pierre Elzar, Emile Blmont
and Jean Aicard (standing).

Symbolists believed that art should represent absolute truths that could only be described
indirectly. Thus, they wrote in a very metaphorical and suggestive manner, endowing particular
images or objects with symbolic meaning. Jean Moras published the Symbolist Manifesto ("Le
Symbolisme") in Le Figaro on 18 September 1886 (see 1886 in poetry). The Symbolist
Manifesto names Charles Baudelaire, Stphane Mallarm, and Paul Verlaine as the three
leading poets of the movement. Moras announced that symbolism was hostile to "plain
meanings, declamations, false sentimentality and matter-of-fact description", and that its goal
instead was to "clothe the Ideal in a perceptible form" whose "goal was not in itself, but whose
sole purpose was to express the Ideal."
Ainsi, dans cet art, les tableaux de la nature, les actions des humains, tous les
phnomnes concrets ne sauraient se manifester eux-mmes ; ce sont l des
apparences sensibles destines reprsenter leurs affinits sotriques avec des Ides
primordiales.
(In this art, scenes from nature, human activities, and all other real world phenomena will
not be described for their own sake; here, they are perceptible surfaces created to
represent their esoteric affinities with the primordial Ideals.)[4]
In a nutshell, as Mallarm writes in a letter to his friend Cazalis, 'to depict not the thing but the
effect it produces'.

Philosophy[edit]
Schopenhauer's aesthetics represented shared concerns with the symbolist programme; they
both tended to consider Art as a contemplative refuge from the world of strife and will. As a result
of this desire for an artistic refuge, the symbolists used characteristic themes of mysticism and
otherworldliness, a keen sense of mortality, and a sense of the malign power of sexuality,
which Albert Samain termed a "fruit of death upon the tree of life."[12] Mallarm's poem Les
fentres[13] expresses all of these themes clearly. A dying man in a hospital bed, seeking escape
from the pain and dreariness of his physical surroundings, turns toward his window but then turns
away in disgust from
Pornocrates, by Flicien Rops, etching and aquatint, 1878

l'homme l'me dure

Vautr dans le bonheur, o ses seuls apptits
Mangent, et qui s'entte chercher cette ordure
Pour l'offrir la femme allaitant ses petits,
( the hard-souled man,
Wallowing in happiness, where only his appetites
Feed, and who insists on seeking out this filth
To offer to the wife suckling his children, )
and in contrast, he "turns his back on life" (tourne lpaule la vie) and he exclaims:
Je me mire et me vois ange! Et je meurs, et j'aime
Que la vitre soit l'art, soit la mysticit
A renatre, portant mon rve en diadme,
Au ciel antrieur o fleurit la Beaut!
(I marvel at myself, I seem an angel! and I die, and I love
Whether the glass might be art, or mysticism
To be reborn, bearing my dream as a diadem,
Under that former sky where Beauty once flourished!)

Symbolists and decadents[edit]

The symbolist style has frequently been confused with decadence. Several young writers were
derisively referred to[by whom?] by the press as "decadent" during the mid-1880s. A few of these
writers embraced the term while most avoided it. Jean Moras' manifesto was largely a response
to this polemic. By the late 1880s, the terms "symbolism" and "decadence" were understood to
be almost synonymous.[14] Though the aesthetics of the styles can be considered similar in some
ways, the two remain distinct. The symbolists were those artists who emphasized dreams and
ideals; the Decadents cultivated prcieux, ornamented, or hermetic styles, and morbid subject
 matters.[15] The subject of the decadence of the Roman Empire was a frequent source of literary
images and appears in the works of many poets of the period, regardless of which name they
chose for their style, as in Verlaine's "Langueur":[16]
Je suis l'Empire la fin de la Dcadence,
Qui regarde passer les grands Barbares blancs
En composant des acrostiches indolents
D'un style d'or o la langueur du soleil danse.
(I am the Empire at the end of the decadence, who watches the large, white barbarians
passing, while composing lazy acrostic poems in a gilded style in which the languor of
the sun dances.)

SYMBOLISM (ARTS)
In-text: (En.wikipedia.org, 2017)
Your Bibliography: En.wikipedia.org. (2017). Symbolism (arts). [online] Available at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolism_(arts) [Accessed 22 Jul. 2017].