Category

Symbolist

A group of late 19th-century French writers, including Arthur Rimbaud and Stéphane Mallarmé, who favored dreams, visions, and the associative powers of the imagination in their poetry.

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  • Glossary Terms

    Symbolist poets

    A group of late 19th-century French writers, including Arthur Rimbaud and Stéphane Mallarmé, who favored dreams, visions, and the associative powers of the imagination in their poetry. They rejected their predecessors’ tendency toward naturalism and realism, believing that the purpose of art was not to represent reality but to access greater truths by the “systematic derangement of the senses,” as Rimbaud described it. The translated works of Edgar Allan Poe influenced the French Symbolists.

  • Author

    Charles Baudelaire

    Charles Baudelaire is one of the most compelling poets of the 19th century. While Baudelaire’s contemporary Victor Hugo is generally—and sometimes regretfully—acknowledged as the greatest of 19th-century French...
  • Author

    Stéphane Mallarmé

    Stéphane Mallarmé was recognized as one of France’s four major poets of the second half of the 19th century, along with Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, and Arthur Rimbaud. Much of his poetry was acknowledged...
  • Author

    Kahlil Gibran

    Though he considered himself to be mainly a painter, lived most of his life in the United States, and wrote his best-known works in English, Kahlil Gibran was the key figure in a Romantic movement that transformed...
  • Author

    Arthur Symons

    British poet, critic, and translator Arthur Symons was born in Wales and educated by private tutors. At 16, Symons moved to London, where he joined a vibrant literary community and participated, alongside ...
  • Poem

    poetry-magazine

    To a Grey Dress

    By Arthur Symons
    There's a flutter of grey through the trees:
       Ah, the exquisite curves of her dress as she passes
       Fleet…
  • Author

    Paul Verlaine

    A major influence on the Symbolist movement, French poet Paul Verlaine was born in Metz, France in 1844. Verlaine was also one of the models for the Decadent movement that began in the 1870s. His numerous …
  • Author

    Anna Akhmatova

    Anna Akhmatova is regarded as one of Russia’s greatest poets. In addition to poetry, she wrote prose including memoirs, autobiographical pieces, and literary scholarship on Russian writers such as Aleksandr…
  • Author

    Arthur Rimbaud

    The impact of Arthur Rimbaud’s poetry has been immense. His influence on the Surrealist movement has been widely acknowledged, and a host of poets, from André Breton to André Freynaud, have recognized their…
  • Poem

    Clotilde

    By Guillaume Apollinaire
    Anemone and columbine
    Where gloom has lain
    Opened in gardens
    Between love and disdain

    Made somber by…
  • Poem

    Mirabeau Bridge

    By Guillaume Apollinaire
    Under Mirabeau Bridge the river slips away
              And lovers
        Must I be reminded
    Joy came always after pain
    …
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