Symbolism was an art movement that began in the late 1800s in France and Belgium. It appeared in poetry and other forms of art and aimed to show important ideas using symbols and metaphors. This movement was a response to naturalism and realism.
In literature, the style started with the 1857 publication of Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal. The works of Edgar Allan Poe, which Baudelaire greatly admired and translated into French, had a big influence and introduced many common themes and images. The style was further developed by Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine during the 1860s and 1870s. In the 1880s, the style was explained in a series of writings and inspired many writers. The term "symbolist" was first used by the critic Jean Moréas, who created the term to separate the Symbolists from the related Decadents in literature and art.
The movement spread to other types of art, not always linked to the original literary movement. Symbolist painting, in particular, became popular worldwide and appeared in many different styles.
Etymology
The word "symbolism" comes from the word "symbol." The word "symbol" is based on the Latin word "symbolum," which means a sign of faith, and "symbolus," which means a sign used to recognize someone. These words come from the Greek word "symbolon," which refers to an object that was broken into two pieces. In ancient Greece, this object was a piece of pottery that had writing on it. The pottery was broken into two parts, and each part was given to ambassadors from two cities that were allies. This helped the cities remember their agreement.
Precursors and origins
Symbolism was a response to naturalism and realism, styles that aimed to show real life in detail and focused on everyday people and situations rather than perfect or ideal ideas. Symbolism, instead, valued spirituality, imagination, and dreams. Some writers, like Joris-Karl Huysmans, started as naturalists but later became symbolists. For Huysmans, this change showed his growing interest in religion and spiritual ideas. Some Decadent writers explored topics like sexuality and forbidden subjects, similar to naturalism, but combined these with romantic themes and a sense of tiredness common in the late 1800s.
Symbolist poets had a complicated connection with Parnassianism, a French literary style that came before Symbolism. While influenced by secret or mysterious ideas and using more flexible poetry forms, Symbolists avoided Parnassianism’s focus on clear and objective writing. They still admired Parnassianism’s love for wordplay and the musical sounds of poetry. Symbolists also supported Théophile Gautier’s belief that "art exists for its own sake" and kept Parnassianism’s tone of staying emotionally distant. Many Symbolist poets, such as Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine, published early works in Le Parnasse contemporain, the poetry collections that defined Parnassianism. However, Arthur Rimbaud openly criticized famous Parnassians and created humorous, crude parodies of their work, including pieces falsely attributed to François Coppée, in L'Album zutique.
In Paris, Joséphin Péladan, an art and literary critic who also studied the occult, was a key supporter of Symbolism. He founded the Salon de la Rose + Croix, which held six events in the 1890s featuring avant-garde art, writing, and music. These events provided a space for artists who included spiritualism, mysticism, and idealism in their work. Many Symbolists were connected to the Salon.
Movement
Jean Moréas published the Symbolist Manifesto ("Le Symbolisme") in Le Figaro on September 18, 1886. The manifesto named Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé, and Paul Verlaine as the main poets of the movement. Moréas stated that symbolism opposed "plain meanings, loud emotions, false feelings, and simple descriptions." Instead, symbolism aimed to "give form to the Ideal" so that the goal was not the form itself, but to express the Ideal.
Mallarmé explained in a letter to his friend Henri Cazalis that the goal was "to show not the thing itself, but the effect it creates."
In 1891, Mallarmé described symbolism as follows: "Naming an object takes away much of the joy of a poem, which is the pleasure of guessing slowly. To suggest, not to explain, is the dream. The perfect symbol is when an object is shown step by step to reveal a feeling of the soul, or when an object is chosen to show a feeling through careful steps. Poetry must always have mystery."
Michael and Erika Metzger wrote about the friendship between French symbolists Paul Verlaine and Stéphane Mallarmé and German poet Stefan George during the late 1800s. They noted that the French symbolists believed "art for art's sake" was a serious and sacred goal because beauty itself represented a higher meaning. The French symbolists were close to the ideas of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, who believed in the importance of truth, goodness, and beauty. This idealism was what attracted George to the movement.
Symbolist poets wanted to change how poems were written to allow more freedom and "fluidity." They supported free verse, a style seen in the works of Gustave Kahn and Ezra Pound. Symbolist poems focused on evoking feelings rather than describing things directly. Symbolic images were used to show the poet's inner state. T. S. Eliot was influenced by poets like Jules Laforgue, Paul Valéry, and Arthur Rimbaud, who used symbolist techniques. Some say that Imagism, a style associated with Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot, was also connected to symbolism. Symbolist poets valued synesthesia, or the mixing of senses like smell, sound, and color.
In Baudelaire’s poem Correspondences, which mentions "forests of symbols," and in Rimbaud’s poem Voyelles, both poets linked one sense experience to another. Earlier Romantic poets used symbols, but these were special and meaningful objects. Symbolists went further, giving symbolic meaning to things like vowels and perfumes. The physical world was seen as a kind of language that invites people to interpret it, though it does not give one clear message but many connections. Symbolist symbols are not meant to represent things directly; they are meant to evoke feelings. In Mallarmé’s poem Le cygne ("The Swan"), the main subject is a swan trapped in a frozen lake. The word cygne in French sounds like signe, meaning "sign." The poem focuses on overwhelming whiteness, and the story is told indirectly.
Paul Verlaine’s 1884 essays on poets like Tristan Corbière, Arthur Rimbaud, Stéphane Mallarmé, Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, Gérard de Nerval, and "Pauvre Lelian" (a name based on Verlaine’s own) were influential. Verlaine argued that these poets, called "accursed poets," were isolated from others because of their genius. They did not avoid difficult writing styles or strange ideas. They were often seen as troubled and struggled with their lives. Verlaine’s idea of the "accursed poet" came from Baudelaire, who wrote about a poet who remains calm despite being disliked by others.
Verlaine’s ideas about genius and the poet’s role were influenced by the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, who believed art’s purpose was to offer a temporary escape from life’s struggles. Both Schopenhauer and the symbolists saw art as a way to reflect on life and find peace. Symbolist themes often included mysticism, death, and the power of sexuality. Mallarmé’s poem Les fenêtres clearly shows these themes. A dying man in a hospital looks out a window but turns away in disgust, saying, "I turn my back on life."
Symbolist style was sometimes confused with the Decadent movement, a term used by critics in the 1880s to describe writers who focused on personal desires and taboo topics. While some writers accepted the term, most avoided it. Jean Moréas’ manifesto was partly a response to this criticism. By the late 1880s, "symbolism" and "decadence" were often used interchangeably. Though their goals were similar, symbolists focused on dreams and ideals, while Decadents preferred ornate, mysterious styles and dark themes.
Important literary magazines linked to symbolism included La Vogue (started in 1886), Le Symboliste (founded by Jean Moréas, Gustave Kahn, and Paul Adam in 1886), and Mercure de France (edited by Alfred Vallette, started in 1890 and lasting until 1965). Other symbolist magazines were La Conque, La Revue blanche, La Revue wagnérienne, La Plume, and La Wallonie.
Rémy de Gourmont and Félix Fénéon were critics connected to symbolism. The symbolist and Decadent styles were mocked in a book of poetry called Les Déliquescences d'Adoré Floupette, published in 1885 by Henri Beauclair and Gabriel Vicaire.
In other media
Symbolism in literature is different from symbolism in art, even though they share some similarities. In painting, symbolism was a return to mystical ideas from the Romantic tradition and was closely connected to the decadent movement, which focused on dark and private themes.
Many different groups of Symbolist painters and artists existed, including Paul Gauguin, Gustave Moreau, Gustav Klimt, Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis, Jacek Malczewski, Odilon Redon, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Henri Fantin-Latour, Gaston Bussière, Edvard Munch, Fernand Khnopff, Félicien Rops, and Jan Toorop. Symbolism in painting spread to more places around the world than symbolism in poetry. It influenced artists in Russia, such as Mikhail Vrubel, Nicholas Roerich, and Frida Kahlo in Mexico, as well as artists in the United States, including Elihu Vedder and David Chetlahe Paladin. Auguste Rodin is sometimes considered a Symbolist sculptor.
Symbolist painters used images from myths and dreams. The symbols they used were not common icons but personal, private, and unclear references. Symbolism was more of a philosophy than a specific art style. It influenced the Art Nouveau style and the group known as Les Nabis.
Symbolism also affected music. Many Symbolist writers and critics were early fans of Richard Wagner’s music, which they linked to the ideas of philosopher Schopenhauer.
Claude Debussy was deeply influenced by Symbolist themes. His operas and songs often used texts from Symbolist writers, such as Charles Baudelaire and Maurice Maeterlinck. His famous work, Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, was inspired by a poem by Stéphane Mallarmé. Symbolism also influenced composers like Alexander Scriabin, Lili Boulanger, Arnold Schoenberg, and Richard Strauss.
Symbolism was less suited for storytelling in novels than in poetry. Joris-Karl Huysmans’ novel À rebours explored themes linked to Symbolism. Oscar Wilde was influenced by this book when writing Salomé, and the novel appears in The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Paul Adam was a key Symbolist novelist. His work Les Demoiselles Goubert helped bridge the gap between naturalism and Symbolism. Few Symbolists wrote novels, but Gustave Kahn and Georges Rodenbach did. Rodenbach’s novella Bruges-la-Morte used Symbolist contrasts, such as a dead city and intense emotions.
Symbolist theater focused on dreams and internal life, making it harder to fit with modern trends. Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam’s play Axël is a classic example. Maurice Maeterlinck, another Symbolist playwright, wrote Pelléas et Mélisande and The Blue Bird.
Eugénio de Castro is considered a key figure in Symbolism in the Iberian Peninsula. He wrote Belkiss, a dramatic work about the Queen of Sheba.
Lugné-Poe, a theater director, helped spread Symbolist ideas. He founded the Théâtre de l'Œuvre and produced Symbolist plays, including Ubu Roi by Alfred Jarry.
Later works by Anton Chekhov were influenced by Symbolist themes. Directors like Konstantin Stanislavski and Vsevolod Meyerhold also used Symbolist techniques in their plays.
Symbolist plays were an important part of the Théâtre de l'Œuvre and the Théâtre d'Art.
Effect
Black night. White snow. The wind, the wind! It will not let you go. The wind, the wind! Through God's whole world it blows. The wind is weaving the white snow. Brother ice peeps from below. Stumbling and tumbling, people slip and fall. God pity all!
Night, street, and streetlight. Drug store. The purposeless, half-dim, drab light. For all the use, living on a quarter century—nothing will change. There's no way out. You'll die—and start all over, live twice. Everything repeats itself, just as it was: Night, the canal's rippled icy surface, the drug store, the street, and streetlight.
Among English-speaking artists, the closest counterpart to symbolism was aestheticism. The Pre-Raphaelites lived at the same time as the early symbolists and shared many similarities with them. Symbolism had a major influence on modernism. Remy de Gourmont considered the Imagists to be its descendants. Its traces can also be found in the work of many modernist poets, including T. S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Conrad Aiken, Hart Crane, and W. B. Yeats in the anglophone tradition, and Rubén Darío in Hispanic literature. The early poems of Guillaume Apollinaire were similar to symbolism. Early Portuguese Modernism was strongly influenced by Symbolist poets, especially Camilo Pessanha. Fernando Pessoa had many similarities to Symbolism, such as spiritual ideas, musical poetry, personal expression, and beliefs about the spiritual world.
Edmund Wilson's 1931 book Axel's Castle focuses on the connection between symbolism and several important writers of the early twentieth century, with special attention to Yeats, Eliot, Paul Valéry, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, and Gertrude Stein. Wilson concluded that the symbolists represented a dreamlike retreat into things that are dying—the whole literary tradition of Renaissance culture, perhaps, forced to become more and more specialized as industrialism and democratic education pushed it inward.
After the beginning of the 20th century, symbolism had a major effect on Russian poetry, even as it became less popular in France. Russian symbolism started as a copy of the French style but later changed under the influence of Vyacheslav Ivanov until it became something completely different. Influenced by Eastern Orthodoxy and the Christian mystical philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov, it helped launch the careers of several major poets, such as Alexander Blok, Andrei Bely, Boris Pasternak, and Marina Tsvetaeva. Bely's novel Petersburg (1912) is considered the greatest example of Russian symbolist prose.
The style of Russian Symbolism was mainly influenced by the mystical poetry and philosophy of Fyodor Tyutchev and Solovyov, the novels of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, the operas of Richard Wagner, the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche, French symbolist and decadent poets (such as Stéphane Mallarmé, Paul Verlaine, and Charles Baudelaire), and the dramas of Henrik Ibsen.
The style was largely started by Nikolai Minsky's article The Ancient Debate (1884) and Dmitry Merezhkovsky's book On the Causes of the Decline and on the New Trends in Contemporary Russian Literature (1892). Both writers promoted extreme individualism and the act of creation. Merezhkovsky was known for his poetry and a series of novels about god-men, including Jesus Christ, Joan of Arc, Dante, Leonardo da Vinci, Napoleon, and (later) Adolf Hitler. His wife, Zinaida Gippius, also a major poet of early symbolism, opened a salon in St. Petersburg, which became known as the "headquarters of Russian decadence." Andrei Bely's Petersburg, a portrait of the social groups in the Russian capital, is often cited as a late example of Symbolism in 20th-century Russian literature.
In Romania, symbolists directly influenced by French poetry first gained influence during the 1880s, when Alexandru Macedonski brought together a group of young poets associated with his magazine Literatorul. Polemicizing with the established Junimea and overshadowed by the influence of Mihai Eminescu, Romanian symbolism was rediscovered as an inspiration during and after the 1910s, when it was shown in the works of Tudor Arghezi, Ion Minulescu, George Bacovia, Mateiu Caragiale, Tristan Tzara, and Tudor Vianu, and praised by the modernist magazine Sburătorul.
The symbolist painters were an important influence on expressionism and surrealism in painting, two movements that directly come from symbolism. The harlequins, paupers, and clowns in Pablo Picasso's "Blue Period" show the influence of symbolism, especially of Puvis de Chavannes. In Belgium, symbolism became so popular that it was called a national style, especially in landscape painting: the strange stillness of painters like René Magritte can be seen as a direct continuation of symbolism. The work of some symbolist visual artists, such as Jan Toorop, directly affected the curvilinear forms of art nouveau.
Many early motion pictures also used symbolist visual imagery and themes in their staging, set designs, and imagery. The films of German expressionism owed much to symbolist imagery. The "good girls" seen in the cinema of D. W. Griffith and the "bad girls" portrayed by Theda Bara both show the continuing influence of symbolism, as do the Babylonian scenes from Griffith's Intolerance. Symbolist imagery lasted longest in horror films: as late as 1932, Carl Theodor Dreyer's Vampyr showed the clear influence of symbolist imagery; parts of the film resemble living tableaus of the early paintings of Edvard Munch.
Symbolists
English language authors from Portugal and Brazil who were influenced by symbolism or who influenced others in the symbolism movement include: