Symbolism
Symbolism was one of the most important literary movements of the late 19th century. It originates from France and Belgium. In a literary manifesto published in 1885, Jean Moréas defined this new style as "enemy of teaching, declamation, false sensitivity and objective description". For the symbolists, the world is a mystery to be deciphered, and for this the poet must trace the hidden correspondences that unite sensible objects (for example, Rimbaud establishes a correspondence between vowels and colors in his sonnet Vowels). For this, the use of synesthesia is essential.
The movement has its origins in The Flowers of Evil, the emblematic book by Charles Baudelaire. The writer Edgar Allan Poe, whom Baudelaire greatly appreciated, also had a decisive influence on the movement, providing him with most of the images and literary figures that he would use. The aesthetic of Symbolism was developed by Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine in the 1870s. By 1880, the movement had attracted a whole generation of young writers tired of the realist movements. Although the movement arises in France and Belgium, it spread to other nations. Associated above all with literature, however, it also covers sculptors and painters.
Evolution
Origins and precursors
Symbolism was in its beginnings a literary reaction against naturalism and realism, anti-idealist movements that exalted everyday reality and placed it above the ideal. These movements provoked a strong rejection in the Parisian youth, leading them to exalt spirituality, imagination and dreams. The first writer to react was the French poet Charles Baudelaire, today considered the father of modern poetry and the starting point of movements such as Parnassianism, decadentism, modernism and symbolism. His works, including The Flowers of Evil, Little Poems in Prose and Artificial Paradises, were so innovative that some of them They were banned for being considered dark and immoral, by openly portraying drug use, sexuality and Satanism. The first movement descending from this post-romantic ideology would be Parnassianism.
The symbolists separated from Parnassianism because they did not share its devotion to perfect verse. Symbolism leaned more towards hermeticism, developing a freer model of versification and disdaining the clarity and objectivity of Parnassianism. Nevertheless, several Parnassian characteristics were welcomed, such as his taste for puns, musicality in verses and, above all, Théophile Gautier's motto of art for art's sake. The movements were completely separated when Arthur Rimbaud and other poets mocked the Parnassian perfectionist style, publishing several parodies of the writing of its most prominent figures.
The arrival of the cursed poets
Two other precursors of symbolism were the Frenchmen Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine. These two poets, who at that time had a risky love relationship, were decisive in starting the movement. Rimbaud, who was 17 years old, was the most influential, seeking what he called his alchemy of the verb in which he tried to become a seer by means of the derangement of all the senses. With this pretext he went on to plunge, along with Verlaine, into a whole wave of excesses. He wandered day and night through the streets of Paris to later show up at literary meetings with dirty clothes or in an alcoholic state, events that quickly gave him a bad name and the nickname of enfant terrible . His most representative works were A Season in Hell and Illuminations .
As for Verlaine, his book of literary criticism The Cursed Poets became the most influential written within Symbolism up to that time, showing the true essence of the movement. It featured essays on Tristan Corbière, Arthur Rimbaud, Stéphane Mallarmé, Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, and "Poor Lelian" (anagram of Verlaine himself), poets that Verlaine baptized as cursed.
Verlaine explained that within their individual and unique way, the genius of each of them had also been their curse, alienating them from other people and thus leading them to embrace secrecy and idiosyncrasy as forms of writing. They were also portrayed as unequal to society, leading tragic lives and often indulging in self-destructive tendencies; all this as a consequence of the literary gifts of him. Verlaine's concept of the cursed poet was partly borrowed from Baudelaire's poem Blessing, which opens his book The Flowers of Evil.
After this, Paul Verlaine became the leader of decadentism (sister literary movement of Symbolism) and Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) became the most representative figure of Symbolism, especially after publishing his book A roll of the dice will never abolish chance, creating a hermetic language close to the old Spanish culteranismo and the syntax of English and gathering dozens of followers of the movement in his house every week.
Movement
Definition and styling
Symbolist poetry seeks to dress the idea in a sensitive way, it has metaphysical intentions, it also tries to use literary language as a cognitive instrument, which is why it is impregnated with mystery and mysticism. It was considered in his time by some as the dark side of Romanticism. As for the style, they based their efforts on finding perfect musicality in their rhymes, leaving the beauty of the verse to the background. They were trying to find what Charles Baudelaire called the theory of "correspondences," the secret affinities between the sensible world and the spiritual world. For this they used certain aesthetic mechanisms, such as synesthesia.
The Symbolist Manifesto
The symbolists believed that art should aim to capture the most absolute truths, which could only be obtained by indirect and ambiguous methods. In this way, they wrote in a highly metaphorical and suggestive style. The symbolist manifesto, published by Jean Moréas, defined Symbolism as the enemy of teaching, declamation, false sensibility, objective description and pointed out that its objective is not in itself, but rather in expressing the Ideal: là des apparences sensibles destinées à representer leurs affinités ésotériques avec des Idées primordiales".
- (In this art, the scenes of nature, the actions of human beings and all other existing phenomena will not be appointed to express themselves; they will be rather sensitive platforms designed to show their esoteric affinities with the primordial Ideals.
Prose and symbolist theater
In contrast to its importance in poetry, Symbolism had a lesser impact on narrative and theater. Even so, novels appeared such as Against the grain, by Joris-Karl Huysmans, which explored various themes related to symbolist aesthetics. This novel, in which there is almost no plot, exposes the decadent tastes of the reclusive and rebellious Count Des Esseintes. Oscar Wilde imitated this novel in numerous passages of his work The Picture of Dorian Gray . Another important work in Symbolist prose is Villiers de L'Isle-Adam's Cruel Tales.
As for the theater, the emphasis on the life of dreams and fantasies promoted by the symbolists made it difficult for critics and contemporary currents to fully accept it. However, the play Axël, also by Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, was definitely the play most influenced by Symbolism. In the play, after an initial conflict, a prince and princess fall in love and spend hours making wonderful plans for the future. But then, accepting that life could never fulfill these illusions and expectations, they both commit suicide. Another play with a great symbolist charge is the tragedy Salomé by Oscar Wilde.
Most representative poets
- Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867)
- Count of Lautréamont (1846-1870)
- Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898)
- Jean Moréas (1856-1910)
- Germain Nouveau (1851-1920)
- Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891)
Coin tablecollective portrait of the symbolists. Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud sitting on the left by Henri Fantin-Latour. - Albert Samain (1858-1900)
- Paul Valéry (1871-1945)
- Paul Verlaine (1844-1896)
- Villiers de L'Isle-Adam (1838-1889)
- Marceline Desbordes Valmore
Influence on Hispanic Literature
Hispanic literary symbolism, with some important peninsular antecedents such as Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer and Salvador Rueda, was subsumed into a more general movement known as Modernismo, which began in Spanish America.
Symbolism is already found in the Cubans Julián del Casal and José Martí, in the Colombian José Asunción Silva, in the Mexican Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera and other American post-romantic authors such as the Argentine Leopoldo Lugones, the Uruguayan Julio Herrera y Reissig, Ricardo Jaimes Freyre, Amado Nervo, Salvador Díaz Mirón, Guillermo Valencia, or the Peruvian, José María Eguren; the Nicaraguan Rubén Darío, great introducer of Modernism in Spain, assimilated and spread it.
In Spain it was cultivated by Antonio and Manuel Machado, Juan Ramón Jiménez, Francisco Villaespesa and Ramón Pérez de Ayala among the most important.
Symbolism in other arts
Parallel to the concern of impressionism for painting in the open air against official academicism and the attempts of scientific construction of painting by the so-called pointillism, a new conception of the function and object of painting is developed. The symbolists —whose precedents are found in William Blake, the Nazarenes and the Pre-Raphaelites— advocated a painting with a poetic content.
The symbolist movement reacts against the values of materialism and pragmatism of industrial society, vindicating the inner search and universal truth and for this they use dreams that, thanks to Freud, they no longer conceive only as unreal images, but as a means of expressing reality.
Symbolism could not develop through a unitary style; Therefore, it is very difficult to define it in a general way. It is rather a conglomeration of individual pictorial encounters.
He needed from the beginning an abstractive pictorial language. Consequently, the painters made use of a vocabulary of linear and ornamental forms and of an anti-naturalistic composition of the painting. It is especially these abstractive elements and accentuated in linearity, as well as the compositional relationships immanent in the painting, which make Symbolism the precursor of the so close Modernism. In Gustave Moreau there is a particular vision of beauty, love and death. Pierre Puvis de Chavannes seems to perpetuate the clarity and compositional rigor of classicism combined with flat, light colours. His works seem empty of movement and light. Odilon Redon directs his efforts towards the representation of ideas, in such a way that his work approaches what will later be the surrealist aesthetic.
Symbolism is a trend that transcends nationalities, chronological limits and personal styles. To further complicate the issue, Symbolism will lead to a beautiful and everyday application deeply rooted in European art at the end of the XIX century and early 20th century: Art Nouveau. Symbolism tries to restore meaning to art, which had been deprived of it with the impressionist revolution. While other Neo-Impressionists lean towards scientific or political branches, Symbolism leans towards a spirituality that is frequently close to religious and mystical positions. Fantasy, intimacy, exalted subjectivity replace the pretentious objectivity of impressionists and neo-impressionists. They continue with the romantic intention of expressing through color, and not staying only in the interpretation. There we find the link with the rest of neo-impressionists, since the theories of local color and the effects derived from the juxtapositions of primary colors, complementary colors, etc., will be very useful when composing their images, very emotional., as in the almost violent vision of amorous passion that Klimt offers in his Dánae.
The Symbolists found parallel support in writers: Charles Baudelaire, Jean Moréas, against Zola's stark naturalism. As for sculpture, Rodin was the closest to his ideas, and despite everything, closely linked to the assumptions of the great impressionist sculptor Edgar Degas. Very close to the approaches of Symbolism, within which it is inscribed, is the Pont-Aven School, one of the first to define itself as such. Pont-Aven is a small rural town in French Brittany, where a group of neo-impressionist painters went in 1886. The first of all was Émile Bernard, who tried to recover the integrity of the rustic, of the archaic, in a region totally alien to the advances of modern life. Bernard cultivated a very personal style of flat colours, perfectly defined in silhouetted outlines.
Symbolist sculpture
Symbolism has an academic aesthetic, and lends itself more to avant-garde sculptural achievements. Along with Rodin, Aristide Maillol (1861–1944) stands out, who is the great master of symbolist sculpture. Night, Île-de-France, Flowers in the meadow, Venus, Flora, The river. Also noteworthy are Adolf von Hildebrand, Equestrian Statue of the Prince Regent, Medardo Rosso, Sick Child, Child's Head, Antoine Bourdelle, Archer Hercules.
Symbolist painting
In the field of painting, symbolism finds exponents such as Gustave Moreau (French who was born in 1826 and died in 1898). The most outstanding paintings of him are & # 34; Jupiter and Semele & # 34;, & # 34; Europa and the bull & # 34; and "the unicorns". There is also the artist Odilon Redon, another Frenchman who was born in 1840 and died in 1915. As important works, we must highlight "The chariot of Apollo", "Druida" and "winged old man with a long beard". We must also highlight "Los Nabis", a group of three artists who are Félix Vallotton (Swiss, 1865-1925) (work: "La pelota"), Pierre Bonnard (French, 1867-1947) (work: "Women in the Garden") and Edouard Vuillard (French 1868-1940) (works: "Public Gardens" and "The Two Schoolchildren"). In Spain, through Manuel Bujados in the magazine La Esfera and finally with Néstor Martín-Fernández de la Torre, symbolism disappeared after his death, since he always represented it in all his paintings.
Pictorially, the most relevant characteristics are the following:
- Color: sometimes strong colors were used to highlight the dream sense of the supernatural. In the same way the use of pastel colors, by some artists, along with the difumination of color, persecuted the same objective.
- Thematic: Pervive an interest in the subjective, the irrational, as in romance. They do not remain in the mere physical appearance of the object, but through it they reach the supernatural, which is linked to a special interest in religion. The painters and poets no longer intend to portray the outside world but their dreams and fantasies through the allusion of the symbol. The painting is proposed as a means of expression of the mood, emotions and ideas of the individual, through the symbol or the idea.
One of the most important novelties, at a thematic level, is that of the femme fatale. The union between Eros and Thanatos arises and a new relationship between the sexes underlies it.
Painting is defined with concepts such as ideista (of ideas), symbolist, synthetic, subjective and decorative.
- Techniques: What unites artists is the desire to create a painting that is not subject to reality, in opposition to realism, and where each symbol has its own concretion in the subjective contribution of the spectator and the painter. There is no single reading, but each work can refer things different from each individual. Its originality, therefore, is not in the technique, but in the content.
The Spanish Symbolists were strongly influenced by the art of their forerunners, including Gustave Moreau, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Arnold Böcklin, Edward Burne-Jones, and Rodolphe Bresdin.
Many opted only for the authentic exponent of Symbolism. Odilon Redon, who cultivated a style of pure colors and a fantasy theme, sought a synthesis between dreams and life. However, these ideas had already manifested themselves in the Gauguin of the Pont-Aven School and in his followers.
Later, the Nabis, the second symbolist generation, aspired to translate these ideas into a way of life and active reforms. Unlike Impressionism, a specific school located basically in France, Symbolism was a great movement that also spread to Spain. It spread from 1890, and adopted different interpretations. In Catalonia, the work of Juan Brull, Adrià Gual and Santiago Rusiñol from the mid-2023s stands out. Within Symbolism, a trend also took shape that accentuated certain lines of their figurations, which unbalanced the objectivist representation of the things in a strongly expressive sense.
In Belgium, it is worth noting the work of Jean Delville, Fernand Khnopff and William Degouve de Nuncques, in line with the cult of the mysterious. This tendency, which has a clear precursor in the Belgian Félicien Rops, is represented by Jan Toorop, one of the key figures, along with Klimt, of pictorial Symbolism.
In Italy, by contrast, Symbolism had a strong base of painstaking realism in the work of Gaetano Previati, Giovanni Segantini and Pellizza da Volpedo.
Also in Germany, symbolist art was characterized by a very realistic technique, but with an idealistic theme; Ferdinand Hodler (Swiss) stands out here.
In Scandinavian countries it is characterized by an austere vision and a pronounced expression of loneliness, with artists such as Vilhelm Hammershøi, Harald Sohlberg, Thorárinn B. Thorláksson and Magnus Enckell. The exception would be the late Akseli Gallen-Kallela, inclined towards mythology.
Symbolism had a marked influence on later movements, such as Art Nouveau or Surrealism.
The representatives
- Gustave Moreau (1826–1898): great sketcher and great technical virtuosity. He's a dream narrator and strange visions. Its main source of inspiration is mythology.
- Gustav Klimt (1862–1918): certainly one of the most important representatives of the Symbolism, whose works could be highlighted. The kiss, Beethoven's frieze, Palas Atenea, Judith I, The three ages of women, Nuda Veritas and Danae. Most of their paintings are loaded with a lyric-decorative sense and portray fatal, young, red and sensual women.
- Odilon Redon (1840–1916) is the purest of the symbolists. It represents the magical, the visionary and the fabulous. The dream, The Sphinx, The Birth of Venus, The flowers of evil, Woman and flowers.
- Pierre Puvis Chavannes (1824–1898) is the most idealist of the group. It uses flat inks, subordinated to a good drawing. The poor fisherman, Sacred forest, Inspiring Muslims.
- Carlos Schwabe is a painter of great imagination to translate onirical images. It is the precursor of modernism. Spleen and ideal, The wedding of the poet and the muse.
- Leon Spilliaert: The crossing.
- Edward Robert Hughes: A dream idyll.
- Herbert James Draper: I'm sorry about Icarus..
- Franz von Stuck: Sin.
- Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach (1851–1913): A symbolist who found the perfect place of his utopia in Capri.
- Nestor Martin-Fernández de la Torre: Considered the last symbolist, with him died symbolism.
The Pont-Aven school
Since 1873, the town of Pont-Aven has been frequented by students of the School of Fine Arts in Paris. In 1886 Gauguin arrived and in 1888 a group of painters willing to follow his teachings outside the Academy settled. They participate in the Café Volpini exhibition in 1889. That same year, Gaugujn leaves for Tahiti and the group vanishes.
His works are characterized by the free use of color —they can paint the grass red if they feel like it—, which is applied in large spots and with flat colors. They use cloisonnism. The result is a highly decorative work. Knowledge of primitive art and Japanese prints has greatly influenced this way of painting. There is a will to synthesize forms. They are a synthesis between the Impressionist and Symbolist styles, which is why they can be considered Symbolists, due to their spirit.
Among the foremost painters of Pont-Aven are Emile Bernard: Bretons Dancing on the Meadow, Charles Laval: Self-portrait, Meijer de Haan: Bretons Weaving hemp, Paul Sérusier: Still Life with Ladder, Émile Schuffenecker: The Cliffs of Concarneau, Cuno Amiet, Louis Anquetin and Roderic O'Conor.
The Nabis
The nabis are followers of the aesthetic ideas of the Pont-Aven school, but do not belong to the Academy, or are dropouts. Nabis means prophets, in Hebrew. They tried to bring Impressionism closer to Symbolism, which is why they can be considered symbolists. Its aesthetic conception is fundamentally decorative, so what is reflected in the painting is a game of sensations, rather than an intellectual construction.
They use flat colors, with a great aesthetic sense. They have absolute freedom when it comes to using color and compositions. They used all kinds of materials in their paintings, paint, glue, cardboard, etc., to differentiate textures, but without reaching collage. They projected stained glass windows and used lithographs and engravings to express themselves.
They decorated theaters, book covers, magazines and anything else they were asked to do, working to order. This implied, on the one hand, that his works were widely known and, on the other, that they were not unique, but that they were printed and repeated, giving the work of art a new dimension. The work of art is no longer unique, despite this they did not create a school.
Among the Nabis, painters such as Pierre Bonnard: Portrait of Nathanson and Mrs. Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard: Self-portrait, Maurice Denis: Landscape with green trees, Félix Vallotton: The reader, Ker Xavier Roussel: Lots by the sea, Henri-Gabriel Ibels, and Paul Ranson. The three great symbolists, Gustave Moreau, Odilon Redon and Chavannes can also be considered nabís.
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