The Term and Concept of Symbolism in Literary History

Author(s): Ren Wellek

Source: New Literary History, Vol. 1, No. 2, A Symposium on Periods (Winter, 1970), pp. 249270
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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The Term and Concept of Symbolism

in LiteraryHistory
Rene Wellek

is so vast that it cannot even be sketchedwithinthe limits

of this paper. The word goes back to ancient Greece and
had, there, a complex historywhich has not, I suspect,
been traced adequately in the only historyof the term,Max Schlesinger's Geschichtedes Symbols,published in 1912.x
What I want to discuss is something much more specific: not
even symbol and symbolismin literaturebut the term and concept
of symbolismas a period in literaryhistory.It can, I suggest,be convenientlyused as a general term for the literaturein all Western
countriesfollowingthe decline of 19th-century
realismand naturalism
and precedingthe rise of the new avant-gardemovements:futurism,
expressionism,surrealism,existentialism,or whateverelse. How has
it come about? Can such a use be justified?
We must distinguish among differentproblems: the historyof
the word need not be identical with the historyof the concept as we
might today formulateit. We must ask, on the one hand, what the
contemporariesmeant by it, who called himselfa "symbolist"or who
wanted to be included in a movementcalled "symbolism,"and on
the other hand, what modern scholarshipmightdecide about who is
to be included and what characteristics
of the period seem decisive.In
speaking of "symbolism"as a period-termlocated in historywe must
also think of its situation in space. Literary termsmost frequently
radiate fromone centerbut do so unevenly;theyseem to stop at the
frontiersof some countriesor cross them and languish thereor, surprisingly,flourishmore vigorouslyon a new soil. A geographyof literarytermsis needed which mightattemptto account for the spread
and distributionof termsby examining rival termsor accidents of
biographyor simply the total situation of a literature.
There seems to be a widespreadagreementthat the literaryhistory
i

Berlin, 1912.

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250

NEW LITERARY

HISTORY

of the centuriessince the end of the Middle Ages can be divided into
five successive periods: Renaissance, Baroque, Classicism, Romanticism and Realism. Among these termsBaroque is a comparativenewcomer which has not been adopted everywhere,
though thereseems a
clear need of a name forthe stylethatreactedagainstthe Renaissance
but preceded Classicism.2There is, however,far less agreementas to
what termshould be applied to the literaturethat followed the end
of the dominance of Realism in the 188os and '9os. The term "Modernism" and its variants such as the German "Die Moderne"3 have
been used but have the obvious disadvantagethat theycan be applied
to any contemporaryart. Particularlyin English,the term"modern"
has preserveditsearlymeaningof a contrastto classicalantiquityor is
used for everythingthat occurredsince the Middle Ages. The Cambridge Modern History is an obvious example. The attemptsto discriminatebetweenthe "modern"period now belongingto the past and
the "contemporaneous" seem forced, at least terminologically.
"Modo," afterall, means "now." "Modernism"used so broadly as to
include all avant-gardeart obscures the break between the symbolist
movementssuch as futurism,surrealism,
period and all post-symbolist
it is used as a catchall for everything
In
etc.
the
East
existentialism,
and alienated: it has become a
as
disapproved decadent,formalistic,
term
the
set
glories of Socialist realism.
against
pejorative
The older termswere appealed to at the turnof the centuryby theoristsand slogan writers,who eitherbelieved that thesetermsare applicable to all literatureor consciouslythoughtof themselvesas reviving the styleof an older period. Some spoke of a new "classicism,"particularlyin France,assumingthat all good art mustbe classical. Croce
shares this view. Those who felt a kinship with the Romantic Age,
mainly in Germany,spoke of "Neuromantik"appealing to Friedrich
Schlegel'sdictum that all poetryis romantic.Realism also assertedits
claim, mainly in Marxist contexts,in which all art is considered
"realistic" or at least "a reflectionof reality."I need only allude to
Georg Lukaics'srecentAesthetik,in which this thesisis repeated with
obsessive urgency.I have counted the phrase "Widerspiegelungder
Wirklichkeit"in the firstvolume; it appears 1,o32 times. I was too
lazy or bored to count it in volume 2. All these monismsendanger
meaningfulschemesof literaryperiodization.Nor can one be satisfied
with a dichotomysuch as FritzStrich's"Klassik und Romantik"which
See my papers "The Concept of Baroque in Literary Scholarship" (1945) and
"Postscript" (1962) in Concepts of Criticism (New Haven, 1963), pp. 69-127.
3 Eugen Wolff, Die jiingste Literaturstr6mungund das Prinzip der Moderne
(Berlin, 1887), seems the source of this form. In 1884 Arno Holz urges "Modern
sei der Poet,/ Modern von Scheitel bis zur Sohle."
2

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THE TERM AND CONCEPT OF SYMBOLISM

251

leads away fromperiod concepts into a universal typology,a simple

division of the world into sheep and goats. For many years I have
argued the advantage of a multiple schemeof periods as it permitsa
varietyof criteria.The one criterion"realism" would divide all art
into realistic and non-realisticart and thus would allow only one
approving adjective: "real" or some variant such as "true" or "lifelike." A multiple scheme comes much closer to the actual varietyof
the process of history.Period must be conceived neither as some
essence which has to be intuited as a Platonic idea nor as a mere
arbitrarylinguistic label. It should be understood as a "regulative
idea," as a systemof norms, conventionsand values which can be
traced in its rise, spread and decline, in competitionwith preceding
and followingnorms,conventionsand values.4
"Symbolism"seems the obvious termfor the dominant stylewhich
followed nineteenth-century
realism. It was propounded in Edmund
Wilson's Axel's Castle (1931) and is assumed as a matterof course in
Maurice Bowra's Heritage of Symbolism(1943) . We must beware,of
course, of confusingthis historicalformwith age-old symbolism,or
with the view that all art is symbolic,as language is a systemof symbols. Symbolismin the sense of a use of symbolsin literatureis clearly
omnipresentin literatureof many styles,periods and civilizations.
Symbolsare all-pervasivein medieval literatureand even the classics
of realism- Tolstoy and Flaubert,Balzac and Dickens - use symbols,
often prominently.I am myselfguiltyof arguing for the crucial role
of symbol in any definitionof Romanticismand I have writtenat
lengthon the long German debate fromGoethe to FriedrichTheodor
Vischer about the meaning of the term"symbol" and its contrastto
the term "allegory."5
For our purposesI want to focus on the fortunesof the concept as
a term,firstfora school, then as a movement,and finallyas a period.
The term "symbolisme"as the designationfor a group of poets was
firstproposed by Jean Mor6as, the French poet of Greek extraction.
In 1885 he was disturbedby a journalisticattack on the decadentsin
which he was named togetherwith Mallarm6. He protested: "The
so-called decadents seek the pure Concept and the eternal Symbolin
theirart,beforeanythingelse." With some contemptforthe mania of
4 See my "Periods and Movements in Literary History," in English Institute
Annual, r94o (New York, 1941), pp. 73-93, and the chapter "Literary History" in
my and Austin Warren's Theory of Literature (New York, 1949) 5 See my paper "The Concept of Romanticism in Literary History" (1949), in
Concepts of Criticism (New Haven, 1963), pp. 128-99,and the passages on symbol
and allegory in A History of Modern Criticism,4 volumes (New Haven, 1955-65),
e.g., I, 21o-11; II, 41-42, 76, 174-75; III, 221-22.

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NEW LITERARY

252

HISTORY

criticsfor labels, he suggestedthe term "Symbolistes"to replace the

inappropriate"decadents."6In 1886 Moreas starteda reviewLe Symboliste which perished afterfour issues. On September18, 1886, he
published a manifestoof "Symbolisme"in Figaro.7 Moreas, however,
soon deserted his own brain-childand founded another school he
called "6cole romane." On September 14, 1891, in another number of

Figaro Moreas blandlyannounced that "symbolisme"was dead.8 Thus

"symbolisme"was an ephemeral name for a very small clique of
French poets. The only name still rememberedbesides Moreas's is
Gustave Kahn. It is easy to collect pronouncementsby the main
contemporarypoets repudiatingthe termfor themselves.Verlaine, in
particular, was vehementlyresentfulof this "Allemandisme" and
wrote even a little poem beginning"A bas le symbolismemythe/et
termite."9
In a way which would need detailed tracing,the term,however,
caught on in the later 80o'sand early90's as a blanketname forrecent
developmentsin French poetryand its anticipations.Before Moreas'
manifesto,Anatole Baju, in Dicadent, April lo, 1886, spoke of Mallarm6 as "the masterwho was the firstto formulatethe symbolicdoctrine."10Two critics,Charles Morice, with La Litteraturede tout a
l'heure (1889) and T6odor de Wyz6wa,born in Poland, firstin the
essay "Le Symbolismede M. Mallarme" (1887), seemed to have been
the main agents, though Morice spoke ratherof "synthese"than of
symbol,and Wyzewa thoughtthat "symbol"was only a pretextand
explained Mallarme's poetry purely by its analogy to music." As
earlyas 1894 Saint Antoine (pseudonymforHenri Mazel) prophesied
that "undoubtedly,symbolismwill be the label under which our
period will be classed in the historyof French literature."12
Moreasin XIXe
6 Paul Bourdein Le Temps,6 August1885,was the aggressor,
art . . . le pur
dans
leur
avant
tout
cherchent
"Les
prdtendusd~cadents
Sikcle,
Conceptet l'6ternelSymbole."Quoted fromGuy Michaud,Messagepodtiquedu
symbolisme(Paris,1947), II, 331.
7 Reprintedin Andr6Barre,Le Symbolisme(Paris,1911), p. 11o.
8 Quoted in M. D6caudin,La Crisedes valeurssymbolistes(Toulouse,1960), p.
22.

9 See Barre,pp. 16o-61.Verlaine'sversein Invectives(1896).

lo Quoted fromMichaud, II, 335: "Le maitre qui a formul6le premierla
doctrinesymbolique."
11 See Michaud,II, 355 ff,cf.427 ff.See also Wyz6wa,Nos Maitres (Paris,1895),
du symbolisme:
Charles
pp. 115-29. On Morice,see Paul Delsemme,Un thdoricien
Morice (Paris,1958). On Wyz6wa,Elga L. Duval, Tdodorde Wyzewa:Criticwithout a Country (Geneva, 1961).

12 Michel Decaudin,p. 15; quoted fromL'Ermitage,June,1894."Telle est sans

doute l'6tiquettesous laquelle notre p6riode sera class6 dans l'histoirede la
litteraturefrangaise."

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THE TERM AND CONCEPT OF SYMBOLISM

253

It is still a matterof debate in French literaryhistorywhen this

movementcame to an end. It was several timesrevivedexpressly,e.g.
in 1905 around a review, Vers et prose. Its main critic,Robert de
Souza, in a seriesof articles,"Oh nous en sommes" (also published
separately,1906), ridiculed the many attemptsto bury symbolismas
prematureand proudlyclaimed that Gustave Kahn, Verhaeren,Viel&Griffin,Maeterlinck and Regnier were then as active as ever.13
Valery professedso complete an allegiance to the ideals of Mallarme
that it is difficult
not to thinkof him as a continuatorof symbolism,
in
on
though 1938, the occasion of the fiftieth
anniversaryof the symbolist manifesto,Valery doubted the existence of symbolismand
denied that there is a symbolistaesthetic.14Marcel Proust in the
posthumouslypublished last volume of his great series, Le Temps
retrouve (1926), formulatedan explicitlysymbolistaesthetic.But his
own attitude to symbolistcontemporarieswas often ambiguous or
negative.In 1896 Proust had writtenan essay condemningobscurity
in poetry.15Proust admired Maeterlinck but disliked PWguyand
Claudel. He even wrotea pasticheof Regnier,a mock-solemndescription of a headcold.16When Le Temps retrouve (1926) was published
and when a fewyearslater (1933) ValeryLarbaud proclaimedProust
a symbolist,symbolismhad, at least in French poetry,definitelybeen
replaced by surrealism.17
Andre Barre's book on symbolism (1911) and particularlyGuy
Michaud's Message podtique du symbolisme(1947) as well as many
other books of French literaryscholarshiphave with the hindsightof
literaryhistorians,traced the differentphases of a vast French symbolist movement:the precursorshipof Baudelaire who died in 1867,
the second phase when Verlaine and Mallarme were at the heightof
their power before the 1886 group, the third phase when the name
became established,and then in the twentiethcenturywhat Michaud
calls "Neo-symbolisme"representedby "La Jeune Parque" of Valery
and L'Annonce faitei&Marie of Claudel, both dating from 1915.18 It
seems a coherentand convincingconception which needs to be ex13 Vers et prose. Tome I, Mars - avril - Mai 1905, p. 79. "I1 me semble d'abord
que 1'enterrementdu Symbolisme6tait un peu pr6matur6,Craignons les inhumations hitives."
14 "Existance du symbolisme" (1938) in Pleiade ed. (1957), I, 686-706.
15 "Contre l'obscurit6" in Revue blanche, 15 July 1896. Reprinted in Chroniques.
16 For details see Walter A. Strauss, Proust and Literature (Cambridge, Mass.,
1957), PP. 191-93, 204.
17 Preface to Emeric Fiser, L'Esthitique de Marcel Proust (Paris, 1933).
18 See also Michaud's paper "Symbolique et symbolisme" in Cahiers de l'Association Internationale des AEtudesFranpaises,VI (1954), 75ff-

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NEW LITERARY

254

HISTORY

tended to prose writersand dramatists:to HuysmansafterA Rebours

(1884), to the early Gide, to Proust in part and among dramatists,at
least to Maeterlinck,who, with his plays L'Intruse and Les Aveugles
(1890) and Pelleas et Melisande

(1892), assured a limited penetration

of symbolismon the stage.

Knowledge of the French movementand admirationfor it spread
soon to the otherEuropean countries.We must,however,distinguish
between reportingon French events and even admirationshown by
translations,and a genuine transferand assimilationof the French
movementin another literature.This processvaries fromcountryto
countryconsiderably;and the variation has to be explained by the
differenttraditions with which the French importation was confronted.
In English, George Moore's Confessionsof a Young Man (1888)
and his Impressionsand Opinions (1891) gave sketchyand often
poorlyinformedaccountsof Verlaine,Mallarm6,Rimbaud and Laforgue. Mallarme's poetryis dismissedas "aberrationsof a refinedmind,"
and symbolismis oddly definedas "saying the opposite of what you
mean." The three essayson Mallarm6 by Edmund Gosse, all dating
from 1893, are hardlymore perceptive.Afterthe poet's death, Gosse
turnedsharplyagainst him. "Now that he is no longerhere the truth
must be said about Mallarm6. He was hardly a poet." Even Arthur
Symons,whose book The SymbolistMovement in Literature (1899)
made the decisive breakthroughfor England and Ireland, was very
lukewarm at first.While praising Verlaine (in Academy, 1891) he
referredto the "brain-sicklittleschool of Symbolistes"and "the noisy
little school of Decadents" and even in later articleson Mallarm6 he
complained of "jargon and meaningless riddles."19But then, he
turned around and produced the entirelyfavorableSymbolistMovement. It should not, however,be overrated as literarycriticismor
account of Nerval, Villiers
history.It is a ratherlame impressionistic
de l'Isle-Adam, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Laforgue, Mallarme, Huysmans
and Maeterlinck,with emphasison Verlaine. There is no chapteron
the book was dedicated to W. B.
Bauderline.20But most importantly,
Yeats proclaiminghim "the chiefrepresentativeof that movementin
our country."Symonshad made his firsttripto Paris in 1889; he had
visited Mallarme, met Huysmans and Maeterlinck,and a year later
met Verlaine, who in 1893 became his guest on his ill-fatedvisit to
London. Symonsknew Yeats vaguelysince 1891,but theybecame close
19 For referencessee Bruce Morrissette,"Early English and American Critics of
French Symbolism," in Studies in Honor of Frederick W. Shipley (St. Louis,
Missouri, 1942), pp. 159-80.
A chapter on Baudelaire was added to the expanded edition in 1919.
20

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THE TERM AND CONCEPT

OF SYMBOLISM

255

friendsin 1895 only afterYeats had completedhis studyof Blake and

had elaborated his own systemof symbolsfromother sources: occultism,Blake, and Irish folklore.The edition of Blake Yeats had
prepared with Edwin Ellis in 1893 was introduced by an essay on
"The Necessityof Symbolism."In 1894 Yeats visited Paris in the
companyof Symonsand saw therea performanceof Villiersde 1' IsleAdams's AxIl.21 The essay "The Symbolismof Poetry" (1900) is then
Yeats' firstfull statementof his symbolistcreed.22Symons'sdedication
to Yeats shows an awarenessof symbolismas an internationalmovement: "In Germany,"he says,exaggeratinggreatly,"it seems to be
permeatingthe whole of literature,its spiritis that which is deepest
in Ibsen, it has absorbed the one new forcein Italy, Gabriele D'Annunzio. I am told of a group of symbolistsin Russian literature,there
is anotherin Dutch literature,in Portugal it has a littleschool of its
own under Eugenio de Castro. I even saw some faint stirringsthat
way in Spain."
Symonsshould have added the United States.Or could he in 1899?
There were intelligentand sympatheticreportsof the French movement veryearly. T. S. Perrywrote on "The Latest LiteraryFashion
in France" in The Cosmopolitan (1892), T. Child on "LiteraryParis
- The New Poetry"in Harper's (1896), and Aline Gorren on "The
French Symbolists"in Scribner's (1893). The almost forgottenVance
Thompson, who fresh from Paris, edited the oddly named review
M'lle New York,wroteseveral perceptiveessays,mainlyon Mallarme
in 1895 (reprinted in French Portraits, 1900oo) which convey some

accurate informationon his theoriesand attempteven some explication of his poetry with some success.23But only James Huneker
became the main importerof recentFrenchliteratureinto the United
States.In 1896 he defendedthe French symbolistsagainst the slurs in
Max Nordau's silly Entartung and began to write a long series of
articleson Maeterlinck,Laforgue and many others,not botheringto
conceal his dependence on his French master,Remy de Gourmontto
whom he dedicated his book of essays, Visionaries (1905).24 But the

See Richard Ellmann's Introduction to the 1958 New York reprint of The
21
SymbolistMovement. On Symonssee Roger Lhombreaud, Arthur Symons,A Critical
Biography (London, 1963), and Ruth Zabriskie Temple, The Critic's Alchemy:
A Study of the Introduction of French Symbolism into England (New Haven,
1953) 22
Reprinted in Ideas of Good and Evil (1903); since in Essays and Introductions
(New York, 1961), pp. 153-64.
See Morrissette'spaper quoted in note 19.
23
See
Arnold T. Schwab, J. G. Huneker, Critic of the Seven Arts (Stanford,
24
1963) -

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256

NEW LITERARY

HISTORY

actual impact of French symbolistpoetryon American writingwas

greatly delayed. Rene Taupin in his L'Influence du symbolisme
franpaissur la podsie amfricaine (1929) traced some echoes in forgotten Americanversifiers
of the turnof the centurybut only two Americans living then in England, Ezra Pound around 1908 and T. S. Eliot
around 1914, reflectthe French influencein significantpoetry.
More recentlyand in retrospectone hears of a symbolistperiod in
American literature:Hart Crane and Wallace Stevens are its main
poets, Henry James, Faulkner and O'Neill, in very differentways
and in different
with its
stagesof theircareer,show marked affinities
teshniques and outlook. Edmund Wilson's Axel's Castle (1931) was
apparentlythe veryfirstbook whichdefinitelyconceivedof symbolism
as an internationalmovementand singled out Yeats, Joyce,Eliot,
GertrudeStein, Valery,Proust, and Thomas Mann as examples of a
movementwhich,he believed, had come to an end in the time of his
writing.Here we find the conception formulatedwhich, very generally,is the thesisof this paper and the assumptionof many historians since Wilson's sketch.Wilson's sourceswere the writingsof Huneker whom he admiredgreatly,and the instructionin Frenchliterature
he receivedat PrincetonfromChristianGauss.25But the insightinto
the unity and continuityof the internationalmovement and the
selectionof the great names was his own. We mightonly deplore the
inclusion of Gertrude Stein. But I find it difficultto believe that
Wilson's book could have had any influenceoutsidethe English-speaking world.
In the United States,Wilson's reasonable and moderateplea foran
internationalmovementwas soon displaced by attemptsto make the
whole of the Americanliterarytraditionsymbolist.F. O. Matthiessen's
The AmericanRenaissance (1941) is based on a distinctionintroduced
by Goethe. Allegoryappears as inferiorto symbol: Hawthorneinferior to Melville. But in Charles Feidelson's Symbolismand American
Literature (1956) the distinctionbetweenmodem symbolismand the
use of symbolsby Romantic authors is completelyobliterated.Emerson, Hawthorne,Poe, Melville, and Whitman appear as pure symbolists avant la lettreand their ancestryis traced back to the Puritans
who, paradoxically, appear as incomplete,frustratedsymbolists.It
can be objected that the old Puritanswere sharplyinimical to images
and symbolsand that thereis a gulf betweenthe religiousconception
of signs of God's Providenceand the aestheticuse of symbolsin the
25 On Huneker see Classics and Commercials (New York, 1950), p. 114, and
The Shores of Light (New York, 1952), p. 73- On Gauss the essay introducingthat
volume.

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THE TERM AND CONCEPT

OF SYMBOLISM

257

novelsof Hawthorneand Melville and even in the Platonizingaesthetics of Emerson.26

The symbolistconception of American literatureis still prevalent
today.It owes its dominance to the attemptto exalt the greatAmerican writersto myth-makers
and providers of a substitutereligion.
Ishmael
in
James Baird,
(1956), puts it unabashedly,Melville is "the
of
artistic
creatorengaged in the act of making
the
supremeexample
new symbolsto replace the 'lost' symbolsof ProtestantChristianity."27
A very active trend in American criticismexpanded symbolistinterpretationto all typesand periods of literatureimposingit on writings
whichhave no such meaningor have to be twistedto assume it. Harry
Levin rightlycomplained in an address, "Symbolismand Fiction"
(1956), that "everyhero may seem to have a thousand faces; every
heroine may be a white goddess incognita; and every fishingtrip
turnsout to be another quest for the Holy Grail."28The impact of
ideas from the Cambridge anthropologistsand from Carl Jung is
obvious. In the studyof medieval texts,a renewedinterestin the fourfold levels of meaning in Dante's "Letter to Can Grande" has persuaded a whole group of American scholars to interpretor misinterpret Chaucer, the Pearl poet, and Langland, in these terms.29They
should bear in mind that Thomas Aquinas recognizedonly a literal
sense in a work inventedby human industryand that he reservedthe
other three senses for Scripture.30The symbolist interpretation
reaches heights of ingenuityin the writingof Northrop Frye who
began with a book on Blake and, in The Anatomy of Criticism
(1957), conceived of the whole of literatureas a self-enclosedsystem
of symbolsand myths,"existingin its own universe,no longera commentaryon life or reality,but containinglife and realityin a system
of verbal relationships."In this grandiose conceptionall distinctions
between periods and stylesare abolished: "the literaryuniverse is a
universein which everythingis potentiallyidentical with everything
Cf. Ursula Brumm,Die religibse Typologie im amerikanischenDenken (Leiden,
1963), e.g., p. 8ff.
27 Baltimore, 1956,p. xv.
28 Contextsof Criticism (Cambridge,Mass., 1957), p. 007.
26

29 I allude particularly to D. W. Robertson's A Preface to Chaucer (Princeton,

1963), and D. W. Robertson and B. F. Hupp6's Piers Plowman and Scriptural
Tradition (Princeton,1951) .
30o Cf. Morton W. Bloomfield, "Symbolism in Medieval Literature" in Modern
Philology, LVI (1958), pp. 73-81. He quotes Thomas Aquinas, Questiones
quodlibetales, VII. a. 16. "Unde in nulla scientia, humana industria inventa,
proprio loquendo, potest inveniri nisi litteralissensus; sed solum in ista Scriptura,
cujus Spiritus sanctus est auctor, homo verum instrumentum."

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258

NEW LITERARY HISTORY

else."31Hence the old distinctionsbetweenmyth,symboland allegory

disappear. One of Frye's followers,Angus Fletcher,in his book on
Allegory (1964), exalts allegoryto the centralprocedureof art, while
Frye still holds fast to symbolism,recognizingthat "the criticsare
often prejudiced against allegory without knowing the real reason,
which is that continuousallegoryprescribesthe directionof his commentary,and so restrictshis freedom."32
The storyof the spread of symbolismis very differentin other
countries. The effectin Italy was ostensiblyrather small. Soffici's
pamphlet on Rimbaud, in 1911, is usually consideredthe beginning
of the Frenchsymbolistinfluence,but therewas an earlypropagandist
forMallarme,VittorioPica, who was heavilydependenton his French
sources,particularlyT'odor de Wyz'wa. His articles in the Gazette
letteraria (1885-6) on the French poets do not use the term; but in
1896 he replaced "decadent" and "Byzantine" by "symbolist."33
D'Annunzio, who knew and used some French symbolists,would be
classed as "decadent" today, and the poets around Ungaretti and
Montale as "hermetic." In a recent book by Mario Luzi, L'idea
simbolista (1959), Pasoli, Dino Campana, and Arturo Onofri are
called symbolistpoets,but Luzi uses the termso widelythathe begins
his anthologyof symbolismwith H61derlin and Novalis, Coleridge
and Wordsworth,and can include Poe, Browning,Patmore, Swinburne, Hopkins and Francis Thompson among its precursors.Still,
his list of symbolistpoets,French,Russian, English,German,Spanish
and Greekis, on the whole,reasonable.34Onofriwas certainlystrongly
influencedby Mallarme and later by Rudolf Steiner;Pascoli, however,
seems to me no symbolistin his poetry,though he gave extremely
symbolistinterpretationsof Dante.35 It might be wiser to think of
"ermetismo"as the Italian name forsymbolism:Montale and possibly
Campana are genuine symbolists.
While symbolismat least as a definiteschool or movementwas
absent in Italy, it is central in the historyof Spanish poetry.The
Nicaraguan poet, Ruben Dario initiatedit afterhis shortstayin Paris
31 Princeton,1957, PP. 122, 124.
32 Ibid., p. 9o.
33 See Olga Ragusa, "Vittorio Pica: First Champion of French Symbolism in
Italy" in Italica, XXXV (1958), 255-61, and Luigi de Nardis, "Prospettive critiche
per uno studio su VittorioPica e il decadentismofrancese"in Revista de letterature
moderne e comparate, XIX (1966), 202-9.
34 Milano, 1959. Luzi lists besides the French Bryusov, Balmont, Ivanov, Blok,
Yeats, Eliot; George, Hofmannsthal, Rilke, Benn; Pascoli, D'Annunzio, Onofri,
Campana; Dario, Antonio Machado, Jimenez,and the Greek Chantzopoulos.
35 Pascoli, Minerva oscura (1898), Conferenzee studi dantesche (1921), etc.

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THE TERM AND CONCEPT OF SYMBOLISM

259

in 1892. He wrotepoems under the symbolistinfluenceand addressed,

for instance,a ferventhymn to Verlaine.36The influenceof French
symbolistpoetrychanged completelythe oratoricalor popular styleof
Spanish lyrical poetry. The closeness of Guillhn to Mallarme and
Valhry seems too obvious to deny and the Uruguayan poet Julio
Herrera y Reissig (1873-1909) is clearly in the symbolisttradition,
often of the obscurestmanner.37Still, the Spanish critics favor the
term "Modernismo" which is used sometimesso inclusivelythat it
covers all modern Spanish poetryand even the so-called "generation
of 1898," the prose writersAzorin,Baroja and Unamuno, whose associations with symbolismwere quite tenuous.38"Symbolism"can apply
only to one trendin modernSpanish literatureas the romanticpopular traditionwas therestrongerthan elsewhere.Garcia Lorca's poetry
can serveas the best known example of the peculiar Spanish synthesis
of the folksyand the symbolical,the gipsy song and myth.Still, the
continuityfrom Dario to Jimenez,Antonio Machado, Alberti, and
then to Guillen seems to me evident. Jorge Guillen in his Harvard
lectures,Language and Poetry (1961), finds "no label convincing."
"A period look," he argues,does not signifya "group style."In Spain
therewere,he thinks,fewer"isms" than elsewhereand the break with
the past was far less abrupt. He reflectsthat "any name seeking to
give unity to a historicalperiod is the invention of posterity."But
while eschewingthe term "symbolism,"he characterizeshimselfand
his contemporarieswell enough by expounding theircommon creed:
their belief in the marriageof Idea and Music, in short,their belief
in the ideal of Mallarme.39Following a vague suggestionmade by
Remy de Gourmont,the rediscoveryof G6ngora by Ortega y Gasset,
Gerardo Diego, DdimasoAlonso, and Alfonso Reyes around 1927 fits
into the picture: they couple G6ngora and Mallarme as the two
poets who in the historyof all poetryhave gone furthestin the search
for absolute poetry,for the quintessenceof the poetic.40
In Germany,the spread of symbolismwas far less complete than
36 "Verlaine: Responso" beginning "Padre y maestro migico, liriforo celeste."
On Dario see E. K. Mapes, L'Influence frangaise dans l'oeuvre de Rubdn Dario
(Paris, 1925).
37 Cf. Bernard Gicovate, Julio Herrera y Reissig (Berkeley, 1957).
38 See Gustav Siebenmann, Die moderne Lyrik in Spanien (Stuttgart,1965), esp.,
pp. 43ff.,and Guillermo Diaz-Plaja, Modernismo frentea Noventa y Ocho (Madrid,
1951).
39 Cambridge,Mass., 1961, p. 2144o Remy de Gourmont, Promenades littdraires,IVe s6rie (Paris, 1912). Ddmaso
Alonso, G6ngora y la literatura contempordnea (Santander, 1932); also in Estudios
y ensayos g6ngorinos (Madrid, 1955).

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NEW LITERARY

HISTORY

Symonsassumed in 1899. Stefan George had come to Paris in 1889,

had visited Mallarm6 and met many poets, but after his return to
Germany he avoided, I assume deliberately,the term "symbolism"
for himselfand his circle. He translateda selectionfromBaudelaire
(1891) and smallersamples fromMallarm6,Verlaine and Regnier in
Zeitgen*ssischeDichter (1905), but his own poetrydoes not, I think,
show very close parallels to the French masters.Oddly enough, the
seem to have left the most clearly discernible
poems of Viel6-Griffin
traceson George's own writings.41
As early as 1892 one of George's
Carl
adherents,
August Klein, protested in George's periodical,
die
Kunst,against the view of George'sdependenceon the
Bliitterfiir
French. Wagner, Nietzsche,B6cklin and Klinger,he says,show that
thereis an indigenousopposition to naturalismin Germanyas everywhere in the West.42George himselfspoke later of the French poets
as his "formerallies" and in Gundolf'sauthoritativebook on George,
the French influenceis minimizedif not completelydenied.43Among
the theoristsof the George circleFriedrichGundolf had the strongest
symbolistleanings: Shakespeare und der deutsche Geist (191i) and
with
Goethe (1916) are based on the distinctionof symbol-allegory
symbol always the higher term.44Still, the term symbolismdid not
catch on in Germanyas a name forany specificpoetic group, though
Hofmannsthal,e.g. in "Das Gesprich iiber Gedichte" (1903), proclaimed the symbolthe one element necessaryin poetry.45Later, the
influenceof Rimbaud - apparentlylargelyin German translationBut if we
on Georg Trakl can be demonstratedwith certainty.46
examine German books on twentieth-century
literature,symbolism
seems rarelyused. I found a section so called in Willi Duwe's Die
Dichtung des 2o. Jahrhunderts(1936) which includes Hofmannsthal,
41 See B. B6schenstein,"Wirkungen des franzbsischenSymbolismusauf die deutsche Lyrik der Jahrhundertwende,"in Euphorion, LVIII (1964), 375-95. Werner
Vordtriede,"Direct Echoes of French Poetry in Stefan George's Works" in Modern
Languages Notes, LX (1945), 461-68, lists trivial parallels to Baudelaire and Mallarm6. More in Claude David, Stefan George. Son oeuvre podtique (Paris, 1952).
42 Vol. I, No. 2, "Ober Stefan George, eine neue Kunst", reprintedin Die Sendung
Stefan Georges (Berlin, 1935), pp. 69-70.
43 "Stern des Bundes," quoted in David, p. 285. Gundolf, George (Berlin, 1920o),
PP. 50-51.
44 Shakespeare und der deutsche Geist (Berlin, 1914), pp. 1-2 for distinction
of symbol-allegory;and Goethe (Berlin, 1916), pp. 16, 28, for classification of
Goethe's works.
45 Prosa, II, 104.
46 See B6schenstein,quoted in note 41, and Herbert Lindenberger,"Georg Trakl
and Rimbaud," in Comparative Literature,X (1958), 21-35. Trakl read the translation by K. L. Ammer (pseudonymof Karl Klammer) published in 1907.

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THE TERM AND CONCEPT

OF SYMBOLISM

261

Dauthendey,Cale, Rilke and George,while E. H. Liith's Literaturals

Geschichte (Deutsche Dichtung von 1885 bis 1947), publishedin 1947,
treatsthe same poets under the label "Neuromantikund Impressionismus." Later, however,we find a section "Parasymbolismus"which
deals with Musil and Broch. Hugo Friedrich,in his Strukturder
modernenLyrik (1956), avoids the term and argues that the quick
successionof moderniststyles:dadaism, surrealism,futurism,expressionism,unanimism,hermetism,etc. createsan optical illusion which
hides the fact of a directcontinuitybetween Mallarmb,Valhry,Guil16n, Ungaretti and Eliot.47 The little anthologyin the back of the
book adds St. John Perse,Jiminez,Garcia Lorca, Albertiand Montale
to these names. Friedrich'slist seems to me the list of the main symbolist poets even though Friedrich objects to the name. Clearly,
German literaryscholarship has not been converted to the term,
though Wolfgang Kayser's article "Der europtiischeSymbolismus"
(1953), had pleaded for a wide concept in which he included, in
addition to the French poets,D'Annunzio, Yeats, Valery,Proust,Virginia Woolf and Faulkner.48
In Russia we findthe strongestsymbolistgroup of poets who called
themselvesthat. The close links with Paris at that time may help to
explain this,or possiblyalso the strongconsciousnessof a traditionof
symbolismin the Russian Church and in some of the Orthodox
thinkersof the immediatepast. VladmirirSolovev was thoughtof as
a precursor.In 1892 Zinaida Vengerovawrote a sympatheticaccount
of the French symbolistsfor VestnikEvropy49while in the following
year Max Nordau's Entartung caused a sensation for its satirical
account of recentFrenchpoetrywhichreverberatedas late as in Tolstoy's What is Art? (1898). Bryusovemergedas the leading symbolist
poet: he translated Maeterlinck'sL'lntruse and wrote a poem "Iz
Rimbaud" as earlyas 1892.50In 1894 he published two little volumes
under the title Russkie simvolisty.That year Bryusovwrote poems
with titlessuch as "In the spiritof the Frenchsymbolists"and "In the
manner of Stephane Mallarme" (though thesewere not published till
1935) and brought out a translationof Verlaine's Romances sans
paroles.51 Bryusov had later contacts with Rene Ghil, Mallarme's
pupil, and derived fromhim the idea of "instrumentation"in poetry
47 Hamburg, 1956,p. io8.
48 In Die Vortragsreise(Bern, 1958), pp. 287-304.
49 IX (1892), 115-43. Reprinted in Literaturnye Kharakteristiki (St. Petersburg,
1897) .
50 cf. G. Donchin, The Influence of French Symbolism on Russian Poetry (The
Hague, 1958), p. 2351 In Neizdannye stikhotvoreniya(Moscow, 1935), PP. 426, 428.

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NEW LITERARY

HISTORY

which was to play a great role in the theoriesof the Russian formalhad, in 1893,published
ists.52In the meantimeDimitri Merezhkovsky
a manifesto:"On the causes of the decline and the new trendsof contemporary Russian literature," which recommended symbolism
though Merezhkovskyappealed to the Germans: to Goethe and the
Romanticsratherthan to the French.53Merezhkovsky's
pamphletforeshadows the split in the Russian symbolistmovement.The younger
men, Blok and VyacheslavIvanov as well as Bely distancedthemselves
from Bryusov and Balmont. Blok in an early diary (1901-02) condemned Bryusovas decadent and opposed to his Parisan symbolism
his own, Russian,rootedin the poetryof Tyutchev,Fet, Polonsky,and
Soloviv.54VyacheslavIvanov in 1910o,shared Blok's view. The French
influenceseemed to him "adolescentlyunreasonable and, in fact,not
veryfertile,"while his own symbolismappealed to Russian nationalism and to the general mysticaltradition.55Later Bely was to add
occultism, Rudolf Steiner and his "anthroposophy."The group of
poets which called themselves"Acmeists" (Gumilev, Anna AkhmaThe
tova, Osip Mandelshtam) was a directoutgrowthof Symbolism.56
mere factthat theyappealed to the earlysymbolistInnokentyAnnenskyshows the continuitywith Symbolismin spite of theirdistastefor
the occult and their emphasis on what they thoughtof as classical
clarity.SymbolismdominatesRussian poetrybetweenabout 1892 and
1914 when Futurismemergedas a slogan and the Russian formalists
attacked the whole concept of poetryas imagery.
If we glance at the other Slavic countrieswe are struckby the diversityof theirreactions.Poland was earlyinformedabout the French
movement,and Polish poetrywas influencedby the French symbolist
movementbut the term "Mltoda Polska" was preferred.In Wilhelm
Feldmann's Wspdtczesnaliteraturapolska (1905) contemporarypoetryis discussedas "decadentism"but Wyspiaxiski(a symbolistif ever
there was one) appears under the chapterheading: "On the heights
All the historiesof Polish literatureI have seen
of romanticism."57
and Ghil's Traitd du
52 See Lettres de Rend Ghil (Paris, 1935), pp. 13-16, 18-20o,
verbe (Paris, 1886).
53 0 princhinakh upadka i o novykh techenyakhsovremennoyrusskoyliteratury
(St. Petersburg,1893).
54 "Yunocheski dnevnik Aleksandra Bloka" (1901-2), in Literaturnoe Nasledstvo,
XXVII-XXVIII (1937), 302.
55 "Zavety simvolizma," in Apollon, VIII (1910), 13, and in Borozdy i mezhi
(Moscow, 1916), p. 133.
56 For a good discussion see Jurij Striedter,"Transparenz und Verfremdung:Zur
Theorie des poetischen Bildes in der russichen Moderne" in Immanente Aesthetik:
AesthetischeReflexion,ed. Wolfgang Iser (Munich, 1966), pp. 263-89.
57 In Vol. III: "Na wyiynach romantyzmu."

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THE TERM AND CONCEPT OF SYMBOLISM

263

speak of "Modernism," "Decadentism," "Idealism," "Neo-romanticism" and occasionallycall a poet such as Miriam (Zenon Przesmycki)
a symbolistbut theyneverseem to use the termas a general name for
a period in Polish literature.58
In Czech literature the situation was more like that in Russia:
Bfezina, Sova, and Hlavaicekwere called symbolistsand the idea of a
school or at least a group of Czech symbolistpoets is firmly
established.
The term "Moderna" (possibly because of the periodical, Moderni
Revue founded in 1894) is definitelyassociated with decadentism,
fin de sidcle, a group representedby Arno't Prochizka. A hymnical,
optimistic,even chiliasticpoet such as Bfezina cannot and could not
be classedwith them.The greatcriticF. X. Salda wroteof the "school
of symbolists"as earlyas 1891,calling Verlaine,Villiersand Mallarm6
its masters but denying that there is a school of symbolistswith
His very firstimportant article
dogmas, codices and manifestoes.59
"Synthetismin the new art" (1892) expounded the aesthetics of
Morice and Hennequin forthe benefitof the Czechs,then still mainly
dependenton German models.60
The unevennessof the penetrationboth of the influenceof the
French movementand verystrikinglyof the acceptance of our term
raises the question whetherwe can account for these differencesin
causal terms.It sounds hereticalor obscurantistin this age of scientific explanation to ascribe much to chance, to casual contacts and
personal predilections.Why was the term so immenselysuccessful
in France, in the United States and in Russia, less so in England
and Spain and hardlyat all in Italy and Germany?In Germanythere
was even the traditionof the continuous debate about symbolsince
Goethe and Schelling; before the French movementFriedrichTheodor Vischerdiscussedthe symbolelaboratelyand still the termdid not
catch on.6xOne can thinkof all kinds of explanations: a deliberate
58 Zenon Presmycki had written an essay on Maeterlinck in 1891 (in ?wiat).
More in Henryk Markiewicz,"Mtoda Polska i 'izmy'," in Iz Problem6w literatury
polskiej XX wieku, Tome I (Warsaw, 1965), PP- 7-51, esp., p. 15; Teofil Wojefiski,
Historia literaturypolskiej (Warsaw, 1946) has a chapter entitled "Symbolism i
Neoromantyzmw Polsce"; Julian Krzyzanowski,Neoromantyzm Polski, z89o-1918
(Wroclaw- Warszawa, 1963), has a chapter, "Drama naturalistyczno-symboliczny,"
pp. 182ff.
59 "0 kole symbolistu" in Kritchkdprojevy (Prague, 1947), I, 185-86. Originally
as "Zasldno" in Literarni listy, XIII (1891), 46-68, 65-66, 85-86. See J. Pistorius,
Bibliografie dila F. X. Ialdy (Prague, 1948), p. 79.
60 "Synth6tismv nov6m um~ni," originally in Literarni listy (1891-2). A brief
discussion in my "Modern Czech Criticism and Literary Scholarship," in Essays on
Czech Literature (The Hague, 1963), pp. 179-80.
61 "Das Symbol" (1887) in Altes und Neues, Neue Folge, 1889.

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NEW LITERARYHISTORY

decision by the poets to distancethemselvesfromthe French developments; or the success of the terms"Die Moderne" and "Neuromantik." Still, the verynumberof such explanationssuggeststhat the variables are so greatthatwe cannot account forthesedivergenciesin any
systematicmanner.
If we, at long last, turn to the centralquestion: what is the exact
contentsof the term,we must obviouslydistinguishamong the four
concentriccircles definingits scope. At its narrowest,"symbolism"
refersto the French group which called itselfso in 1886. Its theory
These poets mainlywanted poetryto be nonwas ratherrudimentary.
for a break with the traditionof Hugo and
asked
i.e.
rhetorical, they
the Parnassiens.They wantedwordsnot merelyto statebut to suggest;
they wanted to use metaphors,allegories and symbolsnot only as
decorationsbut as organizingprinciplesof theirpoems; theywanted
their verse to be "musical," in practice to stop using the oratorical
cadences of the French alexandrines, and in some cases to break
completely with rhyme. Free verse - whose invention is usually
ascribed to Gustave Kahn - was possiblythe most enduringachievementwhich has survivedall vicissitudesof style.Kahn himselfin 1894
summed up the doctrine simply as "antinaturalism,antiprosaismin
poetry,a search for freedomin the effortsin art, in reaction against
the regimentationof the Parnasse and the naturalists."62
This sounds
verymeager today: freedomfromrestrictionshas been afterall, the
slogan of a great many movementsin art.
It is betterto thinkof "symbolism"in a wider sense: as the broad
movement in France from Nerval and Baudelaire to Claudel and
Valkry.We can restatethe theoriespropoundedand will be confronted
by an enormousvariety.We can characterizeit more concretelyand
say,forexample, that in symbolistpoetrythe image becomes "thing."
The relation of tenor and vehicle in the metaphoris reversed.The
utterance is divorced, we may add, from the situation: time and
place, historyand societyare played down. The innerworld,la durde,
in the Bergsoniansense, is representedor oftenmerelyhinted at as
"it," the thing or the person hidden. One could say that the grammatical predicate has become the subject. Clearly such poetrycan
easily be justifiedby an occult view of the world. But this is not
necessary:it might simplyimply a feelingfor analogy,for a web of
correspondences,a rhetoricof metamorphosesin which everything
reflectseverythingelse. Hence the great role of synaesthesia,which,
62 Decaudin, p. 15; quoted from La Socidtd nouvelle, avril, 1894. "Anti-naturalisme, anti-prosaismede la podsie, recherchede la libert6 dans des effortsdans l'art,
en reaction contre 1'enr6gimentationparnassienne ou naturaliste."

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THE TERM AND CONCEPT OF SYMBOLISM

265

thoughrooted in physiologicalfactsand found all over the historyof

poetry,became at that time merelya stylisticdevice, a mannerism
This characterizationcould be
easily imitated and transmitted.63
elaborated considerablyif we bear in mind that styleand world-view
go togetherand only togethercan definethe characterof a period or
even of a single poet.
Let me try to show, at least, how diverse and even incompatible
were the theoriesof two such related poets as Baudelaire and MallarmL. Baudelaire's aestheticis mainly "romantic"; not in the sense
of emotionalism,nature worship and exaltation of the ego, central
in French romanticism,but ratherin the English and German tradition of a glorificationof creativeimagination,a rhetoricof metamorphoses and universalanalogy. Though thereare subsidiarystrandsin
Baudelaire's aesthetics,at his finest,he graspsthe role of imagination,
"constructiveimagination,"as he calls it in a termultimatelyderived
fromColeridge.64It gives a metaphysicalmeaning,"a positiverelation
with the infinite."65Art is another cosmos which transformsand
hence humanizesnature. By his creation the artistabolishes the gulf
between subject and object, man and nature. Art is "to create a
suggestivemagic containingat one and the same time the object and
the subject, the external world and the artisthimself."66
Mallarm6 says almost the opposite in spite of some superficial
resemblancesand the common attachmentto Poe and Wagner. Mallarm6 was the firstpoet radically discontentwith the ordinarylanguage of communication;he attemptedto construean entirelyseparate language of poetryfar more consistentlythan older cultivatorsof
"poetic diction" such as the practitionersof trobarclus, or G6ngora
or Mallarme's contemporary,Gerard Manley Hopkins. His aim of
transforminglanguage was no doubt in part negative: to exclude
society,nature and the person of the poet himself.But it was also
positive: language was again to become "real," language was to be
magic,wordswere to become things.But thisis not, I think,sufficient
reason to call Mallarm6 a mystic.Even the depersonalization he
63 See the many articles by Albert Wellek, e.g., "Das Doppelempfinden in der
Geistesgeschichte,"in Zeitschriftfiir Aesthetik, XXIII (1929), 14-32; "Das Doppelempfinden im 18. Jahrhundert," in Deutsche Vierteljahrschriftfiir Geistesgeschichte und Literahurwissenchaft,XIV (1936), 75-102.
64 "Constructiveimagination" quoted in English fromMrs. Catherine Crowe, The
Night Side of Nature, in Curiositdsesthdtiques,Conard ed. (Paris, 1923), p. 27965 Ibid., p. 275. "Elle est positivementapparent6e avec l'infini."
66 L'Art romantique, Conard ed. (Paris, 1925), p. 119: "C'est cr6er une magie
suggestivecontenant A la fois l'objet et le sujet, le monde ext6rieur i l'artiste et

l'artistelui-mIme."

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NEW LITERARY

HISTORY

requires is not mystical.Impersonalityis rather objectivity,Truth.

Art reaches for the Idea, which is ultimatelyinexpressible,because
so abstractand general as to be devoid of any concretetraits.The
term"flower"seemsto him poetic because it suggeststhe "one, absent
fromall bouquets."67Art thus can only hint and suggest,not transformas it should in Baudelaire. The "symbol"is only one device to
achieve this effect.The so-called "negative" aestheticsof Mallarme is
thus nothing obscure. It had its psychologicalbasis in a feeling of
sterility,impotence and final silence. He was a perfectionist,who
proposed somethingimpossible of fulfillment: the book to end all
books. "Everythingon earth existsto be containedin a book."68Like
many poets before him, Mallarme wants to express the mysteryof
the universe but feels that this mysteryis not only insoluble and
immenselydark but also hollow, empty,silent, Nothingnessitself.
There seemsno need to appeal to Buddhism,Hegel, Schopenhaueror
Wagner to account for this.09The atmosphereof nineteenth-century
pessimismand the general Neo-Platonic traditionin aestheticssuffice.
Art searchesfor the Absolute but despairs of ever reaching it. The
essence of the world is Nothingness,and the poet can only speak of
this Nothingness.Art alone survives in the universe. Man's main
vocation is to be an artist,a poet, who can save somethingfromthe
general wreckage of time. The work or, in Mallarm6's terms,the
Book, is suspended over the Void, the silentgodless Nothingness,Poetryis resolutelycut offfromconcretereality,fromthe expressionof
the personalityof the poet, from any rhetoricor emotion, and becomes only a Sign, signifyingNothing.70In Baudelaire, on the other
hand, poetrytransformsnature, extractsflowersfromevil, creates a
new myth,reconcilesman and nature.
But if we examine the actual verse of the symbolistsof this period
we cannot be content with formulaseither of creative imagination,
suggestion,pure or absolute poetry.
67 Oeuvres completes, Pl6iade ed. (Paris, 1949), p. 368: "une fleur . . l'absente
de tous bouquets."
68 Ibid., p. 378: "Tout, au monde, existe pour aboutir Aun livre."
69 Jacques Scherer, L'Expression litteraire dans l'euvre de Mallarmd (Paris,
1947), PP- 155 ff,collects evidence for Mallarm"'s contacts with Platonism and occultism. Mallarme denied knowledge of Buddhism, Propos sur la podsie, ed. H.
Mondor (Monaco, 1946), p. 59. Hasye Cooperman, The Aesthetic of Stiphane
Mallarmd (New York, 1933), makes much of the influence of Wagner. Th-e only
evidence of concern for Hegel is a letter of Villiers d'Isle-Adam to Mallarm6,
quoted in Henri Mondor, Vie de Mallarmd (Paris, 1941), p. 222; "Quant A Hegel,
je suis vraiment bien heureux que vous ayez accorde quelque attention A ce
miraculeux genie."
70 See Guy Defel, L'Esthedtiquede Stdphane Mallarmd (Paris, 1951).

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267

On the thirdwider circle of abstractionwe can apply the term to

the whole period on an internationalscale. Every such termis arbitrary,but symbolismcan be defendedas rooted in the conceptsof the
period,as distinctin meaningand as clearlysettingoffthe period from
that precedingit: realism or naturalism.The differencefromromanticismmay be less certainlyimplied. Obviously there is a continuity
with romanticism and particularly German romanticism,also in
France as has been recentlyargued again by WernerVordtriedin his
Novalis und die franz6sichenSymbolisten (1963) .71 The direct contact of the French with the German romanticscame late and should
not be overrated. Jean Thorel in "Les Romantiques allemandes
et les symbolistsfrangaises,"seems to have been the firstto point
out the relation.72 Maeterlinck'sarticle on Novalis (1894) and his
But Wagner of
little anthology (1896) came late in the movement.73
course mediated between the symbolistsand German mythology
though Mallarme's attitude,admiring toward the music, was tingled
with ironyforWagner's subject matter.74
Early in the century,Heine,
called
a romantique defroqueas he
himself,played the role of an intermediarywhich, to my mind, has been exaggeratedin Kurt Weinberg's study: Henri Heine: heraut du symbolismefrangais (1954).75
E. T. A. Hoffmann,we should not forget,was widely translatedinto
Frenchand could supplyoccult motifs,a transcendentalview of music
and the theoryand practice of synaesthesia.
Possibly even more importantwere the indirect contacts through
English writers: through Carlyle's chapter on symbolismin Sartor
Resartus and his essay on Novalis; through Coleridge fromwhom,
Mrs. Crowe,Baudelaire drewhis definithroughanotherintermediary,
tion of creative imagination; and throughEmerson,who was translated by Edgar Quinet.76
Also French thinkersof the early nineteenthcenturyknew the theory of symbolism,at least, in the wide application to all the religions
of the world made by Creuzer whose Symbolikwas translatedinto
71 Stuttgart,1963In Entretienspolitiques et litte'raires,
September 1891.
73 In Nouvelle Revue, 1894,and Les Disciples & Sais, suivi de Fragments (Bruxelles, 1985). The article on Novalis is included in Le Trdsor des humbles (1896).

72

74 Cf. "Richard Wagner: Reverie d'un potte frangais" (1885) in PlMiade ed., pp.
541-45.
75 New Haven, 195476 A. G. Lehmann, The SymbolistAesthetic in France, 1885-1895 (Oxford, 1950),
makes good suggestions.

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268

NEW LITERARY

HISTORY

French in 1825.77 Pierre Leroux used the idea of "symbolicpoetry"

There was Edgar Allan Poe who
prominentlyin the early thirties.78
drew on Coleridge and A. W. Schlegeland seemedso closelyto anticipate Bauderlaire's views that Bauderlaire quoted him as if he were
Poe himself,sometimesdropping all quotation marks.79
The enormousinfluenceof Poe on the French demonstrates,howbetweenromanticismand symbolism.
ever,most clearlythe difference
Poe is far frombeing a representativeof the romanticworld view or
of the romanticaestheticin which imaginationis conceived as transformingnature. Poe has been aptly described as an "angel in a
machine": he combines a faith in technique and even technology,a
distrustof inspiration,a rationalisticeighteenth-century
mind with a
in
of
occult
distrust
belief
The
vague
"supernal" beauty.80
inspiration,
the enmityto nature is the crucial point which sets symbolismfrom
romanticism.Baudelaire, Mallarme, Valkryall share it; while Rilke,
a symbolistin many of his proceduresand views, appears as highly
romanticin his relianceon momentsof inspiration.This is whyHugo
Friedrichexcludes him fromhis book on the modernlyricand even
disparageshim in a harsh passage.8' This is why the attemptto make
Mallarmd a spiritualdescendantof Novalis, as Vordtriedetried,must
fail. Mallarmd, one mightgrant,aims at transcendencebut it is an
empty transcendencewhile Novalis rapturouslyadores the unity of
the mysteriousuniverse.In short,the Romantics were Rousseauists,
the symbolistsbeginningwith Baudelaire believe in the fall of man
or if they do not use the religious phraseology,know that man is
limited and is not, as Novalis believed, the Messiah of nature. The
end of the romanticperiod is clearlymarked by the victoryof positivismand scientism,whichsoon led to disillusionmentand pessimism.
Most symbolistswere non-Christiansand even atheists,even if they
tried to finda new religionin occultismor flirtedwith Oriental religions. They were pessimistswho need not have read Schopenhauer
and Eduard von Hartmann,as Laforguedid, to succumbto the mood
77 Friedrich Creuzer, Symbolik und Mythologie der alten
peared as Religions de l'antiquitd considerdes dans leurs
translatedby Guigniaut in 1825.
78 See "Du style symbolique" in Le Globe, 29 March and
a series of articles in Revue Encyclopdedique,1831. See my
Criticism,III, 27-28.

V6lker (181o) apformes symbolistes,

8 April, 1829, and
History of Modern

79 In the essay on Gautier Baudelaire reproduces "The Poetic Principle." See

also Marcel Frangon, "Poe et Baudelaire" in PMLA, LX (1945), 841-598o See my chapter in History of Modern Criticism,III, 152-63.
81 Strukturder modernenLyrik,p. 116.

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THE TERM AND CONCEPT

OF SYMBOLISM

269

or the death of God

of decadence, fin de sikcle, G6tterddimmerung,
Nietzsche.82
prophesied by
Symbolismis also clearly set offfrom the new avant-gardemovements after 1915: futurism,cubism, surrealism,expressionism,etc.
There the faith in language has crumbled completelywhile in Mallarme and Valery language preservesit cognitive and even magic
power; Val6ry'scollectionof poems is rightlycalled Charmes.Orpheus
is the mythologicalhero of the poet: charmingthe animals, treesand
even stones. With more recent art the view of analogy disappears:
Kafka has nothingof it. Post-symbolist
art is abstractand allegorical
rather than symbolic.The image, in surrealism,has no beyond: it
wells, at most,fromthe subconsciousof the individual.
Finally, thereis the highestabstraction,the wide largestcircle; the
use of "symbolism"in all literature,of all ages. But then the term,
broken loose fromits historicalmoorings,lacks concretecontentand
remains merelythe name for a phenomenon almost universal in all
art.
These reflectionsmustlead to what only can be a recommendation,
to use the third sense of our term,to call the period of European
literatureroughlybetween 1885 and 1914 "symbolism,"to see it as an
internationalmovementwhich radiated originallyfrom France but
produced great writersand great poetry also elsewhere. In Great
Britain, Yeats and Eliot; in the United States,Wallace Stevens and
Hart Crane; in Germany, George, Rilke and Hofmannsthal; in
Russia, Blok, Ivanov and Bely; in Spain and South America,Dario,
Machado and Guill6n. If we, as we should, extend the meaning of
symbolismto prose,we can see it clearlyin the late Henry James,in
Joyce, the later Thomas Mann, in Proust, in the early Gide, in
Faulkner,and in D. H. Lawrence; and if we add the drama,we recognize it in the later stages of Ibsen, Strindberg,Hauptmann and in
O'Neill. There is symbolistcriticismof distinction:an aestheticsin
Mallarm6 and Val6ry,a looser creed in Remy de Gourmont,in Eliot
and in Yeats and thereis a flourishingschool of symbolistinterpretation particularlyin the United States. Much of the French "new
criticism"is franklysymbolist.Roland Barthes'snew pamphlet,Critique et vdritd(1966), pleads for a completelibertyof symbolistinterpretation.
Still, we mustnot forgetour initial reminder.A period conceptcan
never exhaust its meaning.It is not a class concept of which the individual worksare cases. It is a regulativeidea: it struggleswith preced82 See the review of Vordtriede's Novalis by Hans Robert Jauss in Romanische
Forschungen,LXXVII (1965), 174-83.

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270

NEW LITERARY

HISTORY

ing and followingideals of art. In the time under considerationthe

strengthof the survivals was particularlygreat: Hauptmann's Die
Weber was performedin the same year (1892) as Die Bliitterfifrdie
Kunst began to appear; Blok's Poems on the Beautiful Lady were
writtenin the same year (1901) as Gorky'sLower Depths. Within
the same author and even within the same work of art the struggle
was waged at times.Edmond Jaloux called Joyce"at the same time a
The same is true of Proust and Mann.
realist and a symbolist."'83
combines
symbolismand naturalismas no other book of the
Ulysses
time into a synthesisof grand proportion and strong tension. In
Trieste Joyce lectured on two English writersand on two English
Defoe and Blake.84
writersalone: theywere characteristically
As agreementon the main periods of European literaturegrows,
so agreementto add the period term"symbolism"to the fiveperiods
now accepted should increase. But even if a differentterm should
be victorious (thoughnone I can thinkof seems to me even remotely
preferable),we should always recognizethat such a termhas fulfilled
its functionas a tool of historiographyif it has made us think not
only about individual worksand authorsbut about schools,trendsand
movementsand their internationalexpansion. Symbolismis at least
a literaryterm which will help us to counteractthe dependence of
much literaryhistoryon periodization derived from political and
social history(such as the term"Imperialism"used in Marxistliterary
histories which is perfectlymeaningless applied to poetry at that
time). Symbolismis a term (and I am quoting the wordsI applied to
Baroque in 1945) "which prepares for synthesis,draws our minds
away fromthe mere accumulationof observationsand facts,and paves
the way for a futurehistoryof literatureas a fine art."''85
YALE

UNIVERSITY

83 Quoted by Harry Levin, James Joyce (Norfolk,Conn., 1941), p. 19: "A la fois
realiste et symboliste."
84 See Richard Ellmann, James Joyce (New York, 1959), PP- 329-30. The lectures
in 1912 were called "Verismo ed idealismo nella letteraturainglese."
85 See my Concepts of Criticism,p. 114.

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