Symbolism and Aestheticism

CHAPTER 18 Symbolism and Aestheticism 1 Decadent Aesthetics and Literature Kant ’s aesthetics, the romantic conception of poetry, Schopenhauer ’s pessi- mism and Nietzsche ’s irrationalism exerted a strong influence on the modern concept of art, poetry and the function of the literary work. Boosted by these philosophical ideas and by the explosive growth of literary and figurative pro- duction, the second part of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries ushered in a great transformation in the idea of literature and art. During this time there appeared some of the pivotal and most influential literary works. Charles Baudelaire ’s first edition of The Flowers of Evil was published in 1857; Arthur Rimbaud ’s A Season in Hell was published in 1873; and 1922 saw the completion or publication of Rainer Maria Rilke ’s Sonnets to Orpheus and The Duino Elegies, James Joyce ’s Ulysses, Paul Valéry ’s The Graveyard by the Sea and the bulk of Marcel Proust ’s Remembrance of Things Past, only to mention some decisive works among many others. This literary and cultural period which roughly stretches from Baudelaire to Valéry is called “Decadence .” Symbolism and aestheticism are characteristic trends or attitudes of the Decadence. These are nothing but approximate terms and sometimes useful labels which neither encompass all poets who were active in that period nor explain the individual particularity of most poems. Neverthe- less, in the authors of this period we can find many works sharing certain common features. We can consider the Decadence as the extreme development of romanticism and its last manifestation.1 Actually many tenets of romantic lore about art and poetry2 are accepted and stressed in decadent poems. Usually, the decadents based their works on a more or less complex sys- tem of philosophical and aesthetic premises and reflexions, and they explic- itly discussed the role and function of poetry, and their reflection became a part or an important aspect of their work. Moreover, they wrote influential pages about art, poetry and criticism. Art criticism and theory, in their turn, have been influenced by the decadent attitude towards the literary work and by artists’ philosophy, even when this philosophy is based on vague, personal assumptions. After the Decadence , the boundary separating works of art and criticism becomes very tenuous and is often blurred. According to symbolism and aestheticism , creativity is based on philosophical reflection and true criticism hides a spark of poetry in itself. The creative principle is common to © koninklijke brill nv, leideN, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/9789004409231_018 118 chapter 18 poetry and criticism. The decadent poets will deeply influence contemporary criticism and literary theory. In general, French and English decadent poets intended to set art free from any influence and constraint. Art is free and not useful, since usefulness already implies a limit. They promoted the idea of art for art’s sake. Art is an autonomous creation, opposed to nature and immediateness, so that artifici- ality and calculation (and not spontaneity) appear to be artistic values. At the same time art is opposed to the materialistic interests of industrialized soci- ety, to the bad taste of the bourgeoisie and to the needs of the crowd. Along with the cult of useless beauty , decadents show a general interest in what is esoteric, strange, uncommon, exotic, and sensuous. Poetry is an experience of truth concerning few persons, a secret lore that only an elite can understand. This conception of poetry dates back to the Orphic tradition and then to the Neo-Platonic and Renaissance idea of poetry. The dandy who enjoys refined intellectual and sensuous pleasures, in his ivory tower, is the typical represen- tative of the Decadence . 2 Baudelaire and Symbolism We can say that modern poetry starts with the French poet Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) and his book Les Fleurs du Mal (1857 and 1861) translated as The Flowers of Evil. He is considered “the poet of modernity.” He proved “how [poetry is] possible in our commercial and technical civilization,”3 and his influence on Western literature has been deep and long-lasting. Baudelaire developed and systematically introduced in poetry the concept of symbol as the keystone of artistic experience. Nature is a temple where living pillars Murmur sometimes confused words. And Man must wander through a forest of symbols Watching him with familiar eyes. As long-drawn echoes from far away Mingle to one dark and deep unity Vast as the night and brilliant as the day, The scents and colours and sounds to each other respond.4 Nature is like a temple inhabited by a divine force, in which common things (here the trees of a wood) are nothing but the symbols of a deeper, spiritual .

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