The Symbolists

1. The Symbolists The Missing Link

2. The symbolists • Link Romantics with Modernists • Yearning found in Transcendentalists manifested in a more hedonistic way • A running theme of dusk and dawn and waking and sleep, a lucid state of in-betweens • Synaesthesia – using one sense to describe another • The “sound” matters, much like music • Art and aesthetics above message • Took their cue from the French (Baudelaire, Mallarme, Verlaine, Rimbaud)

3. The Symbolists • Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) – “Chanson”; “Impression du Matin”; “Harmony”; The Picture of Dorian Gray • W.B. Yeats (1865 – 1939) – “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”; “Towards the Break of Day”; “Broken Dreams”; “Leda and the Swan”; “Sailing to Byzantium” • Arthur Symons (1865 – 1945) – “White Heliotrope”; “Colour Studies”; “Perfume” • T.S. Eliot (1888 – 1965) – “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”; “Ash Wednesday”

4. Chanson A ring of gold and a milk-white dove Are goodly gifts for thee, And a hempen rope for your own love To hang upon a tree. For you a House of Ivory, (Roses are white in the rose-bower)! A narrow bed for me to lie, (White, O white, is the hemlock flower)! Myrtle and jessamine for you, (O the red rose is fair to see)! For me the cypress and the rue, (Finest of all is rosemary)! For you three lovers of your hand, (Green grass where a man lies dead)! For me three paces on the sand, (Plant lilies at my head)!

5. Impression du Matin • The Thames nocturne of blue and goldChanged to a Harmony in grey:A barge with ochre-coloured hayDropt from the wharf: and chill and cold • The yellow fog came creeping downThe bridges, till the houses' wallsSeemed changed to shadows and St. Paul'sLoomed like a bubble o'er the town. • Then suddenly arose the clangOf waking life; the streets were stirredWith country waggons: and a birdFlew to the glistening roofs and sang. • But one pale woman all alone,The daylight kissing her wan hair,Loitered beneath the gas lamps' flare,With lips of flame and heart of stone.

6. The lake Isle of Innisfree I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made: Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee; And live alone in the bee-loud glade. And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet's wings. I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, I hear it in the deep heart's core.

7. Leda and the Swan A sudden blow: the great wings beating still Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill, He holds her helpless breast upon his breast. How can those terrified vague fingers push The feathered glory from her loosening thighs? And how can body, laid in that white rush, But feel the strange heart beating where it lies? A shudder in the loins engenders there The broken wall, the burning roof and tower And Agamemnon dead. Being so caught up, So mastered by the brute blood of the air, Did she put on his knowledge with his power Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

8. White Heliotrope The feverish room and that white bed, The tumbled skirts upon a chair,    The novel flung half-open, where Hat, hair-pins, puffs, and paints are spread; The mirror that has sucked your face Into its secret deep of deeps, And there mysteriously keeps Forgotten memories of grace; And you half dressed and half awake, Your slant eyes strangely watching me, And I, who watch you drowsily, With eyes that, having slept not, ache; This (need one dread? nay, dare one hope?) Will rise, a ghost of memory, if Ever again my handkerchief Is scented with White Heliotrope

9. The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock The Love Song of J.AlfredPrufrock