LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Symbolist Movement: Poets
built 607 days ago
Good introductions to Symbolist literature are: The Symbolist Movement (1970) by W.K. Cornell, The Heritage of Symbolism (1943) by C.M. Bowra and The Symbolist Movement in the Literature of European Languages edited by A. Balakian (1982). Useful bibliographies follow the Symbolism entry in The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (1993). For anthologies you'll probably have to consult the collected works of individual poets, or search the older shelves of libraries and antiquarian booksellers.
Source:
The Symbolist movement survived well into the 1890s, in the works of such French poets as Jules Laforgue and Paul Valéry, as well as those of the writer and critic Remy de Gourmont. Pelléas et Mélisande, by the Belgian playwright Maurice Maeterlinck, is one of the few Symbolist dramas. From France, Symbolism spread worldwide—notably to Russia, where it was evidenced in the work of the poet Aleksandr Blok—and had great influence on the shaping of 20th-century literature.
Source:
The major representatives of the Symbolist movement affecting Debussy are the French poets Verlaine and Mallarme. As the name implies, among the primary goals of the symbolist movement was the usage of symbols, images to represent reality, and to evoke meanings beyond the material world, falling into the higher realities of the world of illusion, of dreams. Water suggested calm tranquillity, introspection. Fire was a symbol of passion, rage, etc. Symbolism is technically considered to be a literary school, popular in Paris in the 1880's and '90s, gaining attention for its "ambiguity of indirect communication; affiliation with music and decadent spirit." The symbolist movement in literature truly closely paralleled the impressionistic aspects in music,
Source:
By 1892, when Salome was published in France and England, the tenets of the Symbolist movement had been outlined by several different theorists, among them Mallarmé and Maeterlinck. The unifying thread behind their agenda was a belief in the importance of poetry: they held that literature should concern itself with creating links, through symbolic language, to the ideals of a different, often transcendental reality. This stands in marked contrast to the Naturalist school, against whose reality-based simplicity of language the Symbolists were revolting; it is ... quite different from the traditional poetic realism of the nineteenth century, whose superficiality and tranquility the Symbolists abhorred.
Source:
A selection of over one hundred masterpieces offer an overview of the Symbolist movement which spread all over Europe during the latter part of the nineteenth century. The exhibition includes work by British artists (Dante Gabriel Rossetti), French, Belgian (Fernand Khnopff) and many other artists from all over Europe. Arranged in both a chronological and thematic order, the paintings, sculptures and drawings witness to the different subjects that recur in the rich Symbolist production: life and death, the fleetingness of time, dream and meditation, mystery and myth. The exhibition opens with the works of the forerunners - Gustave Moreau, Puvis de Chavannes, Böcklin and Rossetti, continues with the great Symbolist season, that of Gaugin, Redon and the "Generation 1886" and ends with the protagonists of the secessions: Klimt, Munch, Hodler and Mondrian who take the poetics of Symbolism to the beginning of the 20th century.
Source:
Along with La Plume, Mercure de France, and La Revue Blanche, this was one of the four main organs of the Symbolist movement. Like its peers it devoted space to historical, philosophical, and sociological topics as well as poetry, literary essays and reviews, and theatrical and fine arts articles. Founded by Henri Mazel, it was later edited by Stuart Merrill, Louis le Cardonnel, and Hughes Rebell. Some other contributors include Tailhade, Viélé-Griffin, Maurras, Régnier, and Rambosson.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Poets