13 Facts About Symbolist poetry

Symbolist poetry poets have a more complex relationship with Parnassianism, a French literary style that immediately preceded it.

Many Symbolist poets, including Stephane Mallarme and Paul Verlaine, published early works in Le Parnasse contemporain, the poetry anthologies that gave Parnassianism its name.

Symbolist poetry poets wished to liberate techniques of versification in order to allow greater room for "fluidity", and as such were sympathetic with the trend toward free verse, as evident in the poems of Gustave Kahn and Ezra Pound.

Symbolist poetry poems were attempts to evoke, rather than primarily to describe; symbolic imagery was used to signify the state of the poet's soul.

The earlier Romanticism of Symbolist poetry used symbols, but these symbols were unique and privileged objects.

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Symbolist poetry style has frequently been confused with the Decadent movement, the name derived from French literary critics in the 1880s, suggesting the writers were self indulgent and obsessed with taboo subjects.

Symbolism in painting was even more widespread geographically than symbolism in Symbolist poetry, affecting Mikhail Vrubel, Nicholas Roerich, Victor Borisov-Musatov, Martiros Saryan, Mikhail Nesterov, Leon Bakst, Elena Gorokhova in Russia, as well as Frida Kahlo in Mexico, Elihu Vedder, Remedios Varo, Morris Graves and David Chetlahe Paladin in the United States.

Symbolist poetry's best known work, the Prelude a l'apres-midi d'un faune, was inspired by Mallarme's poem, L'apres-midi d'un faune.

Symbolist poetry wrote Belkiss, "dramatic prose-poem" as he called it, about the doomed passion of Belkiss, The Queen of Sheba, to Solomon, depicting in an avant-garde and violent style the psychological tension and recreating very accurately the tenth century BC Israel.

Symbolist poetry wrote King Galaor and Polycrates' Ring, being one of the most prolific Symbolist theoriticians.

In Romania, symbolists directly influenced by French poetry first gained influence during the 1880s, when Alexandru Macedonski reunited a group of young poets associated with his magazine Literatorul.

Symbolist poetry painters were an important influence on expressionism and surrealism in painting, two movements which descend directly from symbolism proper.

Symbolist poetry imagery lived on longest in horror film: as late as 1932, Carl Theodor Dreyer's Vampyr showed the obvious influence of symbolist imagery; parts of the film resemble tableau vivant re-creations of the early paintings of Edvard Munch.