What is Symbolism?

186 Pages·2004·13.864 MB·English

by  Peyre, Henri

What Is Symbolism?
BOOKS BY HENRI PEYRE
PUBLISHED BY rrHE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS
The French Literary Imagination and Dostoevsky
and Other Essays (1975)
What Is Romanticism? (1977)
What Is Symbolism? (1980)
Victor Hugo: Philosophy and Poetry (1980)
HENRIPEYRE
What Is Symbolism?
TRANSLATED BY EMMElT PARKER
THEUNIVERSITYOFALABAMAPRESS
TUSCALOOSA,ALABAMA
LibraryofCongressCatalogingin Publication Data
Peyre, Henri, 1901
What is symbolism?
Translation ofQu'est-ce que Ie symbolisme?
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. French poetry-19th century-History and criticism.
2. Symbolism in literature. I. Title.
PQ439.P413 841'.8'0915 79-4686
ISBN978-0-8173-5631-6(pbk. :alk. paper)
ISBN978-0-8173-8486-9(electronic)
Translated into English from
Qu'est-ceque Ie symboIisme?
Copyright © 1974by
Presses Universitaires de France
English Translation and Addenda
Copyright © 1980 by
The University ofAlabama Press
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATESOF AMERICA
CONTENTS
Introduction
1. The Word and Its Antecedents 6
2. Baudelaire 21
3. Rimbaud, or the Symbolism ofRevolt 33
4. The Tragic Impressionism ofVerlaine 48
5. Mallarme 63
6. The Symbolists 82
7. In Search ofthe Morbid and the Strange:
The Decadents and Laforgue 98
8. Symbolism, Painting, and Music 112
9. The Heritage ofSymbolism in France and Outside France 128
151
Appendix
153
Notes
160
Bibliographical Survey
169
Index

What Is Symbolism?

INTRODUCTION
Literary and artistic criticism would have long since been reduced to silence if
the terms that designate movements, periods, tendencies, or various styles were
all so precise that their meaning could be agreed upon once and for all time.
Productive misunderstandings would be avoided and a dull uniformity would
reign over the comparative history of the arts and letters if the ambitious and
misleading terms by which a given language (often, in modern Europe, that of
France, the country mostendowed with literary legislators and manufacturers of
literarycatch-phrases)designatesthe Rennaissance, mannerism, classicism, exis
tentialism, were placidly accepted by intellectuals and professors in other coun
tries. Interchangeable labelswould be applied to productsthatone mightbelieve
to be ofone and the same kind.
Such, as we know, is not at all the case. From the Alexandrian, Roman, and
medieval rhetoricians toTaine, to Emile Hennequin (whodied young in 1888),
the authorofa book on La Critique scientifzque published in the very middle of
the period that we call symbolist, to the linguists and structuralists closer to us,
the attemptstofix critical judgmentonafirm scientificfoundation and toendow
itwith objectivity have given more proofofstubborn daringthan happy results.
Ofall these terms, born in the heat ofpolemics, symbolism is without doubt
the one mostoften subjectto confusion. Its use wastime-honored in mythology,
theology, anthropology, and psychology; but the most influential of French
philosophersoftheearlyyearsofthetwentiethcentury, Henri Bergson, clothesit
with a meaning exactly opposite that given it by the poets. The symbolists of
1888-95 were in agreement, even in their disputes, on many points other than
the use ofsymbols. One ofthe difficulties ofthe word symbol lay precisely in its
being both too restrictive and too vague. In the poetics and the poetry ofthose
years of innovative intellectual ferment, there is also literary impressionism
(barely related at all to the impressionism of the painters), hermeticism, the
cultivation ofthe bizarre, decadence, or the showy pretense ofdecadence, dec
orative graciousness, exasperated romantic subjectivism, the desire to renew
versification and language. One or the other of these aspects of Parisian and
Belgian symbolismwasto radiate itsprestigeabroad. Forthefirsttimeperhaps, it
was in the form ofexpression (prose style, liberated verse form, the musicality of
words) of the new French literature that foreigners were to seek models or
encouragement. The French Renaissance, following the Italian, had laid little
claim to innovation. La Fontaine's versification, Racine's, or even Hugo's had
exercised less attraction outside France than·-alas!-Boileau's. The Parnas
sians' example had been much more appealing, doubtless because it filled a
need at the time for the Germans, the Russians, the poets ofthe Americas. For
we shall haveoccasionto notethatin Francealone and in afew manifestoesand