 | Symbolism arts: Encyclopedia II - Symbolism arts - In other media
Symbolism arts - In other media
Symbolism arts - Symbolism in the visual arts
Symbolism in literature is distinct from Symbolism in art although the two overlapped on a number of points. There were several, rather dissimilar, groups of Symbolist painters and visual artists, among whom Gustave Moreau, Odilon Redon, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Henri Fantin-Latour, Edvard Munch, Félicien Rops, and Jan Toorop were numbered. Symbolism in painting had an even larger geographical reach than Symbolism in poetry, reaching several Russian artists, as well as figures such as Elihu Vedder in the United States. Auguste Rodin is sometimes considered a Symbolist in sculpture.
Symbolism arts - Symbolist influence in music
Symbolism had some influence in music as well. Many Symbolist writers and critics were early enthusiasts for the music of Richard Wagner, a fellow student of Schopenhauer.
The Symbolist aesthetic had a deep impact on the works of Claude Debussy. His choices of libretti, texts, and themes come almost exclusively from the Symbolist canon: in particular, compositions such as his settings of Cinq poèmes de Baudelaire, various art songs on poems by Verlaine, the opera Pelléas et Mélisande with a libretto by Maurice Maeterlinck, and his unfinished sketches that illustrate two Poe stories, The Devil in the Belfry and The Fall of the House of Usher, all indicate that Debussy was profoundly influenced by Symbolist themes and tastes. His best known work, the Prélude à L'après-midi d'un faune, was inspired by a poem by Mallarmé, L'après-midi d'un faune.
Aleksandr Scriabin's compositions are also influenced by the Symbolist aesthetic. Arnold Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire takes its text from German translations of the Symbolist poems by Albert Giraud, showing a link between German expressionism and Symbolism.
Symbolism arts - Symbolist prose fiction
Je veux boire des poisons, me perdre
dans les vapeurs, dans les rêves!
"I want to drink poisons, to lose myself
in mists, in dreams!"
Diana, in The Temptation of Saint Anthony
by Gustave Flaubert.
Symbolism's cult of the static and hieratic adapted less well to narrative fiction than it did to poetry. Joris-Karl Huysmans' 1884 novel À rebours (English title: Against the Grain) contained many themes which became associated with the Symbolist esthetic. This novel in which very little happens is a catalogue of the tastes and inner life of Des Esseintes, an eccentric, reclusive antihero. The novel was imitated by Oscar Wilde in several passages of The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Paul Adam was the most prolific and most representative author of Symbolist novels. Les Demoiselles Goubert co-written with Jean Moréas in 1886 is an important transitional work between Naturalism and Symbolism. Few Symbolists used this form. One exception is Gustave Kahn who published Le Roi fou in 1896. Other fiction that is sometimes considered Symbolist is the cynical misanthropic (and especially, misogynistic) tales of Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly. Gabriele d'Annunzio wrote his first novels in the Symbolist vein.
Symbolism arts - Symbolist theatre
The same emphasis on an internal life of dreams and fantasies have made Symbolist theatre difficult to reconcile with more recent tastes and trends. Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam's drama Axel (rev. ed. 1890) is a definitive Symbolist play; in it, two Rosicrucian aristocrats fall in love while trying to kill each other, only to agree to mutually commit suicide because nothing in life could equal their fantasies. From this play, Edmund Wilson took the title Axel's Castle for his influential study of the Symbolist aftermath in literature.
Maurice Maeterlinck was another Symbolist playwright; his theatrical output includes both Pelléas and Melisande, and L'Oiseau Bleu ("The Blue Bird"), another theatrical fantasy. The later works of the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov have been identified as being deeply influenced by Symbolist pessimism. Under Symbolist influence, the Russian actor and director Vsevolod Meyerhold developed a balletic theory of acting in contrast to Konstantin Stanislavski's method acting, which focused on learning gestures and movements as a way of expressing outward emotion. Meyerhold's method was influential in early motion pictures, and especially on the works of Sergei Eisenstein.
Other related archives1884, 1885, 1886, 1890, 1931, 1932, 1965, Aestheticism, Against the Grain, Albert Giraud, Albert Samain, Aleksandr Scriabin, Alexander Blok, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Andrei Bely, Anton Chekhov, Arnold Schoenberg, Arthur Rimbaud, Arthur Schopenhauer, Arthur Symons, Auguste Rodin, Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, Axel, Babylonian, Belgian, Belgium, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Charles Baudelaire, Clark Ashton Smith, Claude Debussy, Comte de Lautréamont, Conrad Aiken, D. W. Griffith, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Decadence, Eastern Orthodoxy, Edgar Allan Poe, Edmund Wilson, Edvard Munch, Elihu Vedder, Emile Nelligan, Emile Verhaeren, English, English language, Eric Stenbock, Ernest Dowson, Ezra Pound, Francis Vielé-Griffin, French, French Symbolism, Freud, Félicien Rops, Gabriele d'Annunzio, German, German Expressionism, Gertrude Stein, Guillaume Apollinaire, Gustave Flaubert, Gustave Kahn, Gustave Moreau, Gérard de Nerval, Henri Fantin-Latour, Henri de Régnier, Intolerance, James Joyce, Jan Toorop, Jean Moréas, John Gray, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly, Jules Laforgue, Konstantin Stanislavski, L'Oiseau Bleu, L'après-midi d'un faune, Les Fleurs du Mal, Marcel Proust, Marcel Schwob, Marina Tsvetaeva, Mathias Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, Maurice Maeterlinck, Modernism, Naturalism, Odilon Redon, Oscar Wilde, Pablo Picasso, Paul Adam, Paul Valéry, Paul Verlaine, Pelléas et Mélisande, Pierre Louÿs, Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Pierrot Lunaire, Pre-Raphaelites, Prélude à L'après-midi d'un faune, Realism, René Magritte, Renée Vivien, Richard Wagner, Rimbaud, Romanticism, Rosicrucian, Rubén Darío, Russian, Russian Symbolist movement, Russian poetry, Rémy de Gourmont, Schopenhauer's aesthetics, Sergei Eisenstein, Stephane Mallarmé, Stuart Merrill, Stéphane Mallarmé, Symbolist painters, Synaesthesia, T. S. Eliot, The Devil in the Belfry, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Flowers of Evil, The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Temptation of Saint Anthony, Theda Bara, Tristan Corbière, United States, Vladimir Solovyov, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Wallace Stevens, Will, William Blake, William Butler Yeats, aesthetics, antihero, art movement, art nouveau, art songs, balletic, belle-lettristic, dreams, expressionism, free verse, genius, gothic, harlequins, hermeticism, horror film, imagination, libretti, method acting, mortality, motion pictures, music, mysticism, nineteenth century, novel, opera, pessimism, satirized, sexuality, silent movie, soul, spirituality, surrealism, tropes, twentieth century, will, À rebours
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