7. Symbolism

SYMBOL A word that has been, and still is, used in very different ways. For literary purposes, as opposed to those of the mathematician, grammarian, or computer programmer, it may profitably be distinguished from sign and simile to give an imprecise but usable meaning. Signs are purely conventional: green stands for Go, red for Stop, by agreement not by nature. In a simile some natural affinity between the two parts is presupposed but the difference is equally important, and the figurative part is not meant to be 'really' like its referent. The symbol, however, draws together different worlds, usually tangible and intangible, into a unity that purports to be more real than either. It tends to be less precise than a sign and more pretentious than a simile - and more powerful when the pretensions turn out to be justified. The symbol, therefore, may be thought of as a metaphor that purports to be more than 'merely metaphorical'. In practice, this means that metaphors apparently having a number of referents and an indefinite reverberation of suggestions tend to be distinguished as symbols. Thus Blake's 'Sick Rose' seems to be a rose, a vulva, jealousy and corruption at least, but, rather than inviting translation into any or all of these, it offers itself as a complex unity of which they are all inseparable parts.

SYMBOLISM A term specifically applied to the work of late-19th-century French writers who reacted against the descriptive precision and objectivity of realism and the scientific determinism of naturalism. It was first used in this sense by Jean Moreas in Le Figaro in 1886. Baudelaire's sonnet 'Correspondances' and the work of Edgar Allan Рое were important precursors of the movement, which emerged with Verlaine's Romances sans paroles (1874). Other Symbolist writers included the poets Rimbaud and Laforgue, the novelists Joris-Karl Huysmans (ARebours, 1884) and Edouard Dujardin, the dramatist Maurice Maeterlinck and the critics Remy de Gourmont and Marcel Schwob. Its influence on the other arts can be seen in the music of Debussy (who wrote many settings of Mallarme's poems, and the paintings of Odilon Redon, Gustave Moreau, Van Gogh and Gauguin.

Symbolism emphasized the primary importance of suggestion and evocation in the expression of a private mood or reverie. The symbol was held to evoke subtle relations and affinities, especially between sound, sense and colour, and between the material and spiritual worlds (although in the works themselves these were often antagonistic). The notion of affinities led to an interest in esoteric and occult writings (notably Swedenborg and the cabbala) and to ideas about the 'musicality' of poetry which, combined with the Wagner cult, stressed the possibility of orchestrating the theme of a poem through the evocative power of words.

Outside France T. S. Eliot, Yeats, Pound, Joyce, Virginia Woolf and Wallace Stevens were all variously interested in Symbolism. The most significant work was Arthur Symons's The Symbolist Movement in Literature (1899), an introduction to the French literature which Eliot found 'a revelation'. It characterized Symbolism as a reaction against naturalism and realism, and as an 'attempt to spiritualize literature'. It was to be a reflection, not merely a sign, of spiritual reality: 'a kind of religion, with all the duties and responsibilities of the sacred ritual'. Yeats, the dedicatee of the book and himself a poet using symbols of the occult, agreed that Symbolism was 'the recoil from scientific materialism'. His essay, "The Symbol- ism of Poetry', emphasized the importance of rhythm. In their poetry, however, both Yeats and Eliot returned to what the latter called the 'music latent in the common speech of its time'.

AESTHETIC MOVEMENT

• a movement of mind or shift in sensibility, arising in 1880.

Its credo – “Art for Art’s sake”.

Anti-bourgeois, escapist, flamboyant, placing form before content and ever seeking aesthetic originality, the movement progressively stressed pure sensation and intensity of the moment.

Talents varied as:

Oscar Wild

Lionel Johnson

Ernest Dowson

Young Yeats

Arthur Symons

The Yellow Book and The Savoy, both short-lived publications, were important outlets of the movement.

NEOROMANTICISM

A term applied to the English literary works of late 19^th century. The works of the representatives of this movement were based on the juxtaposition:

THE EVILS of the bourgeois SOCIETY - THE BELIEF in the strong and genuine PERSONALITY

Neoromanticism flavors the ingenuity of the dramatic situations, the acuteness of the phsychologism, fantastic elements, the exotics of the settings, strong passions. The writers draw attention to the moral problems.

Neoromanticists revive the tradition of the adventure story genre with a new vigor, they bring in a poetry of wandering, a dream of travelling. In order to escape grim reality the neoromantic character seeks for exotics.

THE MAJOR EXPONENTS:

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

“Markheim” (1885)

“The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” (1886 )-shows the inner conflict of humanity’s sense of good and evil.

“Treasure Island” (1883)

“Kidnapped” (1886)

“The Black Arrow” (1888)

Joseph Conrad (1857-1924)

“Typhoon” (1902), “Nostromo” (1904),“Lord Jim” (1900)

“Heart of Darkness” (1902)

“Under Western Eyes” (1911)

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930)

“The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” (1891)

“The Hound of the Baskervilles” (1902)

“The Return of the Sherlock Holms” (1905)

Joseph Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

“Plain Tales from the Hills” (1887), “Soldiers Three” (1888)

“The Bronkhorst Divorce Case”

“The Jungle Book” (1894), “The Second Jungle Book” (1895)

“Wee Willie Winkie and Other Stories” (1887)

“The Light that Failed” (1890)