CORNELL
UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE" ENDOWMENT FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY

HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE

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r.

£?!."*" University Library

1908
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Cornell University Library

The

original of this

book

is in

the Cornell University Library.

There are no known copyright

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THE SYMBOLIST MOVEMENT
IN LITERATURE

THE

SYMBOLIST MOYEMENT IN LITERATURE
I
BY

ARTHUR SYMONS

LONDON ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE
1908

isf

CO. Ltd.

First Edition, 1899

Second Edition, Revised, 1908

Printed by BAILAHXINE,

Hanson &•

Co.

At the Ballantyne

Press,

Edinburgh

TO W.
May I dedicate to B.

YEATS

you

this

book on the Symbolist move-

metit in literature, both as

an expression of a deep personal else, friendship and because you, more than any one

will

sympathise with what I say in representative is

it,

being yourself the chief

of

that movement in our country ? it France

the country

of movements, and

is

naturally in France principle which less that is I have

studied the development

of a

spreading throughout other countries, perhaps not if with less definite outlines. is effectually,

Your own

Irish

literary

movement

one of

its

expressions; your it own

poetry and A. E.'s poetry belong to sense. in the

most intimate

In Germany

it

seems

to

be permeating the whole

of it literature, its spirit is that which is deepest in Ibsen,

has

absorbed the one new force
I

in

Italy,

Gabriele in d'Annunsio.

am

told

of a group of

Symbolists

Russian
Portugal

literature, there is it another in Dutch