Symbolism was a literary movement that developed in France between 1885 and 1895. Symbolism involved the quest for a reality beyond the physical world. Symbolist poets developed the musical suggestiveness of words, experimenting with existing verse forms. Symbolism inspired innovative works in music, painting, and the theater.
The symbolist movement was inspired by the French poets Charles Baudelaire, Stephane Mallarme, Arthur Rimbaud, and Paul Verlaine. Baudelaire’s famous sonnet “Correspondences” evokes the world as “a forest of symbols” that speak mysterious words to the poet. Leading theorists of symbolism included Rene Ghil, Jules Laforgue, Gustave Kahn, and Jean Moreas. The most prominent symbolist poet was Paul Valery. Other symbolist poets included Henri de Regnier, Emile Verhaeren, Maurice Maeterlinck, Francis Viele-Griffin, and Stuart Merrill.
Some symbolists were called decadents because of their preoccupation with death and decay. These tendencies were typified by Joris-Karl Huysmans’ novel A Rebours (Against Nature, 1884) and the play Axel (about 1885) by the Comte de Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, a French nobleman. Symbolism’s pessimistic tone was influenced by the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer.
