Baudelaire and Symbolism

The new school of symbolism is a reaction from the naturalistic movement in literature. The pendulum had swayed too far to the West, and it must be forced back to the East, the land of symbolism. There is a deep vein of mysticism in the new movement, and though the spirit which sneers at mysticism is no doubt much in evidence at present, it is none the less a sign of intellectual shallowness and servitude to convention which affords little solid ground for self-gratulation. To symbolize is to evoke, not to tell, narrate or paint. To suggest is its aim. For the exact translation of its synthesis it needs an arch-type, a complex form. "Our expression is the symbol of our dream, our dream is the symbol of our thought," so says Morice.

This latest movement in European literature has been called by many names, " Decadence," "Symbolism," "Impressionism," non of them quite exact or comprehensive. Verlaine objects to being called a decadent, Maeterlinck to being called a symbolist, Huysmans to being called an impressionist. What they seek is not general truth, but " la verité vraie," the very essence of truth. The symbolist would flash upon you the soul of that which can be apprehended only by the soul. The finer sense of things unseen, the deeper meaning of things evident.

Baudelaire, the avant-courrier of the symbolists, is called "one of the curiosités romantiques." The poet of "Les Fleurs du Mal" loved what was improperly called "le style décadent," which is nothing more than an art arrived at the point of extreme maturity-an ingenious, complicated, learned style, full of shading and research, assimilating colors from all palettes, as well as notes from all key boards. It expresses new ideas in new forms, and in words not heard before. It was because of a strange fascination of the horrible, sickly, that the poet felt obliged to depict suffering humanity, but he has no abiding place there. He soars again to spiritual realms of the purest blue. As Gautier says, "If Baudelaire's bouquet is composed of strange flowers, metallic in color and peculiar in perfume, in the calix of which instead of dew are bitter tears, he will answer you, Undoubtedly roses and violets are more agreable spring flowers, but they do not grow very well in the black mud of the pavements in a large city. This phase of life at once attracts and repels him; he acquires deep melancholy (for he judges himself no better than others), and he suffers at seeing the pure dome of the heavens and the chaste skies veiled by these poisonous vapors." But to use the poet's own words, "Poetry, as little inclined as one is to interrogate his own soul to recall these souvenirs, has no other aim than itself ; it cannot have any other. And no poem will be so grand, so noble, so trult worthy of the name poem, as that one which shall have been written entirely for the pleasure of writing a poem." — Emma K. S. Sawyer, French Symbolism : In Poetry and in Painting.