THE SYMBOLIST MOVEMENT IN LITERATURE BY ARTHUR SYMONS AUTHOR of _"Cities of Italy," "Plays, Acting and Music," "The Romantic Movement in English Literature," "Studies in Seven Arts," "Colour Studies in Paris,"_ etc. _REVISED AND ENLARGED EDITION_ NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 681 FIFTH AVENUE 1919 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION BALZAC PROSPER MÉRIMÉE GÉRARD DE NERVAL THÉOPHILE GAUTIER GUSTAVE FLAUBERT CHARLES BAUDELAIRE EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT VLLLIERS DE L'ISLE-ADAM LÉON CLADEL A NOTE ON ZOLA'S METHOD STÉPHANE MALLARMÉ PAUL VERLAINE JORIS-KARL HUYSMANS ARTHUR RIMBAUD JULES LAFORGUE MAETERLINCK AS A MYSTIC CONCLUSION BIBLIOGRAPHY AND NOTES TRANSLATIONS THE SYMBOLIST MOVEMENT IN LITERATURE THE SYMBOLIST MOVEMENT INTRODUCTION "It is in and through Symbols that man, consciously or unconsciously, lives, works, and has his being: those ages, moreover, are accounted the noblest which can the best recognise symbolical worth, and prize it highest." Carlyle Without symbolism there can be no literature; indeed, not even language. What are words themselves but symbols, almost as arbitrary as the letters which compose them, mere sounds of the voice to which we have agreed to give certain significations, as we have agreed to translate these sounds by those combinations of letters? Symbolism began with the first words uttered by the first man, as he named every living thing; or before them, in heaven, when God named the world into being. And we see, in these beginnings, precisely what Symbolism in literature really is: a form of expression, at the best but approximate, essentially but arbitrary, until it has obtained the force of a convention, for an unseen reality apprehended by the consciousness. It is sometimes permitted to us to hope that our convention is indeed the reflection rather than merely the sign of that unseen reality. We have done much if we have found a recognisable sign.