French Symbolist Poets: First and Second Periods

The Cursed Poets (First Period)

• Misunderstood: Society often despised them and made no effort to understand their work.
• Elite Over Society: Their intelligence meant their writing required education for proper interpretation, leading to societal distance.
• Excessive Lifestyles: Many indulged in excesses like prostitution (leading to syphilis), alcohol, and opium, resulting in early deaths.

Charles Baudelaire

• He sought to intimidate the bourgeoisie, and he succeeded.
• Flowers of Evil: This work was banned as obscene. It involves both the reader and the poet in an acknowledgement of human weakness and hypocrisy. A famous line asks: “Hypocritical reader — my fellow — my brother.”
• He found beauty in the sordid and the grim.

Paul Verlaine

• Known for a difficult personality and poor attitude; he physically abused his wife and child.
• He achieved fame within literary circles.
• He admired Arthur Rimbaud, and they became lovers. Verlaine shot Rimbaud (though he did not kill him), leading to Verlaine's imprisonment.
• Fêtes Galantes: This work emphasizes suggestion over explicit sensation, uses musical references (piano, violin, flute), employs specific consonants (m, n, r), and features rhythm without strict rhyme. It was considered innovative poetry.

Arthur Rimbaud

• All of his poetry was written between the ages of 15 and 20.
• His style evolved from aggressive, cynical realism to a vision of magical perfection.
• He viewed poetry as a higher calling than that of a seer (supernatural insight).
• A Season in Hell: An autobiography vividly describing his effort to reach the unknown through pure hallucination and a deliberate derangement of all the senses.

Second Period

• Focus shifted toward ordinary life.
• Abolishing Reality: Poets became interested only in references that led away from a reality that was no longer considered important.
• Words should serve only to suggest; if they cannot, they are deemed inappropriate.

Stéphane Mallarmé

• Advocated for a naked and essential form of poetry.
• He focused on eliminating useless words, resulting in work that is often difficult to understand.
• His style was evocative and provocative.
• Disordered layout and significant use of white space were characteristic features.
• A Throw of Dice Will Never Abolish Chance: This work suggests there must always be an enigma in poetry; the goal of literature is to evoke objects.

Charles Baudelaire (Revisited)

• Transcending Reality: He expressed reality, though not always in pleasant terms.
• The poem is never truly finished; the reader is expected to understand and complete it, allowing imagination to extend further.
• He explored the correspondence between external reality and his own internal emotions.

Paul Valéry

• Championed pure poetry, focusing on poetry itself.
• His goal was the pursuit of absolute poetry.
• He emphasized the power of poetry through a poetic universe of evocation.
• Language is the primary tool for poetry, used for both practice and static effect.
• Poetic language, in his view, should minimize or eliminate adjectives, prepositions, and articles.
• Charmes