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Symbolism, Impressionism and ‘Exteriority’

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Poetry, Painting and Ideas, 1885–1914

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Abstract

Chapter 1 offered a critical vocabulary and a philosophical model for empathetic and abstract expressionist Symbolism. This dual perspective will now be utilised to investigate the immediate context of ideas and influences for the period 1908–14 on which this study focuses. The key theme is the determined rejection of the dispassionate objectivity of the prevailing Naturalist aesthetic and consequent emergence of the varieties of anti-materialist aesthetics which dominated all pre-war movements in art and poetry.

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Notes

  1. For a pioneer exploration of this topic, see Douglas Cooper, Introduction to The Courtauld Collection: A Catalogue and Introduction (1954) 29–45.

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  2. See A. G. Lehmann, The Symbolist Aesthetic in France 1885–1895, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1968) 37–50.

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  3. See Tom Gibbons, Rooms in the Darwin Hotel (Nedlands, Western Australia, 1973) 1–20. R. C. K. Ensor in England 1870–1914 (Oxford, 1936) 140–1, 307, gives a more sceptical account of the Anglo-Catholic movement.

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  4. Samuel Hynes, The Edwardian Turn of Mind (1968) 138–45, 148, 164.

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  5. Yeats, Uncollected Prose, I, 322–3 (emphasis added). See also Yeats’s comments on ‘externality’ from 1900 and 1898 in Essays and Introductions, 155, 169, 189– 92.

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  6. See Yeats: Autobiographies, 81–3, 114–17, 123, 124–5, 133, 168–70, 173, 279; Uncollected Prose, I, 322–5, 344–6. For a thorough and stimulating account of the development of Yeats’s artistic pantheon see the excellent article by D. J. Gordon and Ian Fletcher, ‘Symbolic Art and Visionary Landscape’, in their W. B. Yeats: Images of a Poet (Manchester, 1961) 91–107; and Ian Fletcher, ‘Poet and Designer: W. B. Yeats and Althea Gyles’, in Yeats Studies No. 1, ed. Robert O’Driscoll and Lorna Reynolds (Shannon, 1971) 42–79.

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  7. See Yeats: Autobiographies, 115–6, 90, 155–9; and Letters, 150, 154, 170. In the Art Review for 1890 Symons published an article in similarly programmatic vein, ‘A French Blake: Odilon Redon’, contrasting this ‘visionary’ with the tepid Naturalism of Bouguereau (the Bastien-Lepage of the previous generation — see infra, n. 67).

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  8. For an examination of some aspects of this English tradition, see John Dixon Hunt, The Pre-Raphaelite Imagination 1848–1900 (1968).

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  9. Ian Fletcher has drawn attention to Image’s articles in the two essays cited in n. 6.

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  10. G. F. Watts, ‘The Present Conditions of Art’, Nineteenth Century, VII (Feb 1880) 235–55; Symons, ‘Watts’, Fortnightly Review, n.s., LXVIII (Aug 1900) 193.

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  11. Richard Ellmann, Yeats: The Man and the Masks (1961) 12

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  12. Yeats’s good friend Katherine Tynan also contributed to the 1888 volume of this periodical.

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  13. Yeats: ‘William Blake and his Illustrations to “The Divine Comedy”: I. His Opinions upon Art’, Savoy, 3 (July 1896) 41; Uncollected Prose, II, 342–5.

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  14. Watts, ‘The Present Conditions of Art’, Nineteenth Century, VII, 235–40.

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  15. Ibid., 240–4.

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  16. Ibid., 251–2.

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  17. G. F. Watts, The Aims of Art’, Magazine of Art, XI (June 1888) 253–4. Cf. Yeats: ‘William Blake and the Imagination’ (1896), repr. in Essays and Introductions, 111–15; and ‘Mr Rhys’ Welsh Ballads’ (1898), repr. in Uncollected Prose, II, 91–2.

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  18. G. F. Watts, ‘More Thoughts on our Art of To-Day’, Magazine of Art, XII (June 1889) 253–6.

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  19. His friends York Powell, Katherine Tynan and Lionel Johnson all contributed to the Centuy Guild Hobby Horse, which carried much congenial material on Blake, Calvert and the Pre-Raphaelites. Cf. Yeats, Letters, 65, 67, 115, on Yeats’s friendship with the magazine’s editor, Herbert Horne, and perusal of back-numbers.

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  20. Yeats, Autobiographies, 168–9.

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  21. Selwyn Image, ‘A Lecture on Art’, Century Guild Hobby Horse, pt I (Apr 1884) 37–8, 41, 45–7.

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  22. Ibid., 48.

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  23. Selwyn Image, ‘On the Theory that Art should represent the surrounding life’, and ‘On Art and Nature’, Century Guild Hobby Horse, I (1886) 16, 18.

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  24. Francis Bate, ‘The Naturalistic School of Painting’, Artist and Journal of Home Culture, VIII (1886) 67–9, 99–101, 131–3, 163–5, 211–12, 243–4, 275–7, 307–10. Gordon and Fletcher, Yeats: Images of a Poet, 95, indicate the likely importance to Yeats of Image’s attack on Bate; see also Fletcher’s Yeats Studies No. 1, 49.

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  25. Bate, ‘The Naturalistic School’, Artist and Journal of Home Culture, VIII, 67.

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  26. Ibid., 131–2.

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  27. Ibid., 163; cf. conclusion on 310.

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  28. Ibid., 275, 244.

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  29. See Ch. 1, n. 3.

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  30. Artist and Journal of Home Culture, VIII, 307, 308.

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  31. Selwyn Image, ‘A Note on a Pamphlet Entitled, “The Naturalistic School of Painting”, by Francis Bate’, Century Guild Hobby Horse, III (1888) 119–20.

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  32. Yeats, Variorum Poems, 162–3, 169–70.

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  33. Ibid., 155–6.

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  34. On this see Allen R. Grossman, Poetic Knowledge in the Early Yeats (Charlottesville, Va, 1969).

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  35. Yeats, Variorum Poems, 154.

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  36. Ibid., 161; James Joyce, Chamber Music (1907; repr. 1971) 40.

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  37. Yeats, Variorum Poems, 172. My interpretation is supported by the poem’s original publication in the Savoy as a pendant to what was then termed ‘The Shadowy Horses’, that other poem of sexual experience analysed above, which was similarly written for Olivia Shakespear.

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  38. Yeats, Variorum Poems, 77–8.

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  39. Ibid., 79–81; see particularly lines 13–20. ‘The Sad Shepherd’ (ibid., 67–9) further displays Yeats’s awareness of the Romantics’ anxious relationship with, in this case, an unsympathetic natural world.

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  40. In retrospect Monet’s development appears signalled as early as the Belle-Ile and Êtretat paintings of 1886, becoming unequivocal in the series of Haystacks (1889–91) and Poplars on the Epte (1890–1). See Alan Bowness, Modern European Art (1972) 27, 30; and Robert Goldwater, Symbolism (1979) 2–4.

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  41. D. S. MacColl, ‘The New English Art Club’, Spectator, LXVI (18 Apr 1891) 544.

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  42. James Abbott McNeill Whistler, The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, 2nd, enlarged edn (1892; repr. New York, 1967) 8.

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  43. Ibid., 127. This argument was repeated by Charles Furse of the NEAC in ‘Impressionism — What It Means’, Albemarle, II, 2 (Aug 1892) 50–1.

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  44. See ‘Mr P. Wilson Steer on Impressionism in Art’, repr. in D. S. MacColl, Life, Work and Setting of Philip Wilson Steer (1945) 177; D. S. MacColl, ‘The Old Water-Colour Society’, Spectator, LXVII (12 Dec 1891) 846.

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  45. C£, for example, Joshua Reynolds, Discourses on Art, ed. Robert R. Wark (New York, 1966) 45–6, 47–8, with 202–3, 212–14, and particularly 228.

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  46. Ibid., 205, 211 (emphasis added).

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  47. Ibid., 50–1, 56–7, 169–72, 174, 176, 177, 179.

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  48. Ibid., 208–9 (emphasis added).

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  49. Ibid., 236, 239.

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  50. Whistler, The Gentle Art, 144.

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  51. Walter Sickert, ‘Preface’, repr. in MacColl, Life, Work and Setting of Steer, 176.Cf. ‘The New English Art Club Exhibition’, Scotsman, 24 Apr 1889, 8; ‘The Whirlwind Diploma Gallery. II and III’, Whirlwind, I (19, 26 July 1890) 51, 67.

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  52. Steer, in MacColl, Life, Work and Setting of Steer, 177.

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  53. Walter Sickert, ‘Art’ and ‘Literature’, Whirlwind, I (28,June 1890) 6, 13.

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  54. See Walter Sickert, ‘Modern Realism in Painting’, in Jules Bastien-Lepage and his Art. A Memoir by André Theuriet (1892) 133–43. Bastien-Lepage’s selection as scapegoat was logical if somewhat unfair, dictated by the strategic requirement of an instantaneously familiar example of the tendency under attack; a further arbitrary factor was doubtless the infighting in the NEAC between Sickert’s London Impressionists and the followers of Bastien-Lepage: Clausen and the ‘Newlyn School’. Bastien-Lepage was, ironically in view of Sickert’s polemic, influenced by Millet, with whom his work shares an undeniable pathos, erring if anything on the side of mawkishness rather than lack of sentiment, although some paintings do display a rather irritatingly strenuous effort towards naturalistic exactitude.

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  55. Ibid., 135–6, 141, 135.

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  56. Furse, ‘Impressionism — What It Means’, Albemarle, II. 2, 49.

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  57. Joseph Hone, The Life of George Moore (1936) 179; Men and Memories: Recollections of William Rothenstein 1872–1900 (1934) 171; MacColl, L ife, Work and Settting of Steer, 66.

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  58. Walter Sickert, ‘Mr George Moore on Painting’, Academy, 1 (19 Dec 1896) 555; Douglas Cooper, ‘George Moore and Modern Art’, Horizon, XI (1945) 124.

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  59. Rothenstein, Men and Memories, 240–3; D. S. MacColl, ‘Modern Painting’, Spectator, LXXI (18 Nov 1893) 720–1.

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  60. For the background to Moore’s rejection of Naturalism, see Hone, Life of Moore, 130–4, 142–4; and the account of Moore in Ruth Z. Temple, The Critic’s Alchemy: A Study of the Introduction of French Symbolism into England (New York, 1953).

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  61. See Douglas Cooper, ‘George Moore and Modern Art’, Horizon, XI (1945) 113–29.

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  62. Wendy Baron, Sickert (1973) 18, 24–5, and Sickert: Paintings, drawings and prints of Walter Richard Sickert 1860–1942 (1977) 8–9. See also Ronald Pickvance, ‘The Magic of the Halls and Sickert’, Apollo, LXXVI (April 1962) 107.

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  63. Its devotees included Symons, Moore, Dowson, Davidson, Gray, Le Gallienne, Image, Horne, Johnson, Headlam, Beerbohm, Wilde, Lord Alfred Douglas, Havelock Ellis and Gordon Craig.

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  64. Arthur Waugh, ‘Reticence in Literature’, Yellow Book, I (Apr 1894) 203–5, 209, 212–17 (emphasis added). Cf. Hubert Crackanthorpe’s carefully argued ‘Reticence in Literature: Some Roundabout Remarks’, Yellow Book, II (July 1894) 260–1. Moore’s famous ‘Degas’ essay — Imfiressions and Opinions (1891) 298–323 — valuable in defending work much maligned on moral grounds, as the later controversy over L’Absinthe demonstrated, is thus largely a literary appreciation of Degas’s ability to rise above sordid treatment of risqué subjects. On the Degas controversy, see The New Fiction (A Protest Against Sex-Mania) and Other Papers by The Philistine [J. A. Spender] (1895).

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  65. Moore, ‘The New Pictures in the National Gallery’, Impressions and Opinions, 324–46.

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  66. Ibid., 328–32.

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  67. Quoted by Cooper, The Courtauld Collection, 34. Moore’s indebtedness to Degas’s dismissal of Bastien-Lepage is revealed in his quotation in ‘The Grosvenor Gallery’, Hawk, 13 May 1890, 553, of ‘C’est le Bougureau [sic] du mouvement moderne’. Cf. his Reminiscences of the Impressionist Painters (Dublin, 1906) 32.

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  68. Cf. Moore: ‘The Grosvenor Gallery’, Hawk, 13 May 1890, 553; ‘The Royal Academy’, Fortnightly Review, n.s., LI (June 1892) 831–2 (quotation from 832); ‘A Book about Bastien-Lepage’, Speaker, V (20 Feb 1892) 227; ‘The Glasgow School’, Speaker, VI (10 Dec 1892) 707–8; Modern Painting (1893) 207–8; and The New Gallery’, Speaker, IX (12 May 1894) 526.

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  69. Moore, ‘Meissonier’, Speaker, VII (22 Apr 1893) 452–3 (emphasis added). See also his ‘Exteriority’, Speaker, XI (22 June 1895) 684–6; ‘A Diary of Moods’, Speaker, VIII (9 Dec 1893) 641; ‘Mr Steer’s Exhibition’, Speaker, IX (3 Mar 1894) 249; and ‘The New Gallery’, Hawk, 20 May 1890, 583. He had earlier made similar remarks on literature in Impressions and Opinions, 68, 140.

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  70. Moore, ‘Values’, Speaker, VI (27 Aug 1892) 258–9; ‘An Orchid by Mr James’, Speaker, VII (17 June 1893) 687; and ‘The Royal Academy’, Speaker, IX (5 May 1894) 500.

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  71. Moore, ‘The New Gallery’, Speaker, VI (8 Oct 1892) 436–7; Modern Painting, 116–17; ‘The Royal Academy’, Fortnightly Review, n.s., LI 835–6.

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  72. Moore, ‘Two Landscape Painters’, Speaker, IV (26 Dec 1891) 776. Cf. his forceful criticism of Monet’s ‘exteriority’ in ‘Claude Monet’, Speaker, XI (15 June 1895) 658; and ‘The New English Art Club’, Speaker, VII (15 Apr 1893) 423.

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  73. Moore, ‘Decadence’, Speaker, VI (3 Sep 1892) 285–6 (quotations from 285).

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  74. D. S. MacColl: ‘The Royal Academy [Second Notice]’, Spectator, LXVI (9 May 1891) 660–1; and ‘The Royal Academy. — II’, Spectator, LXVIII (14 May 1892) 677. See also his ‘Three Exhibitions’, Spectator, LXVII (21 Nov 1891) 728.

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  75. D. S. MacColl, ‘The New English Art Club’, Spectator, LXVII (5 Dec 1891) 809. MacColl adopts a more balanced perspective on Monet in Nineteenth Century Art (Glasgow, 1902) 162–6.

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  76. D. S. MacColl, ‘Painting and Imitation’, Spectator, LXVIII (18 June 1892) 846. Cf. his ‘Notes on a Recent Controversy’, Spectator, LXX (1 Apr 1893) 421; and Image’s remarks on design as self-sufficient pictorial arrangement in ‘On Design’, Century Guild Hobby Horse, II (1887) 117–18.

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  77. D. S. MacColl, ‘The New English Art Club’, Spectator, LXIX (26 Nov 1892) 769; see also his ‘Handling: A Reply’, Spectator, LXIX (24 Dec 1892) 925.

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  78. D. S. MacColl, ‘Notes on a Recent Controversy’, Spectator, LXX (1 Apr 1893) 421.

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  79. See Illustrated Memoir of Charles Wellington Furse, A. R. A., [ed. D. S. MacColl] (1908) 55–6; emphasis added.

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  80. C. J. Holmes, ‘Nature and Landscape’, Dome, n.s., II (Feb 1899) 140.

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  81. Walter Pater, The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry (1873), 5th edn (1910) 205–7, 210–13, 218–24 (quotations from 211).

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  82. Symons, ‘George Meredith’s Poetry’, Westminster Review, 128 (Sep 1887) 696. See W. S. Peterson, ‘Arthur Symons as a Browningite’, RES, XIX (1968) 148–57, and Karl Beckson and John M. Munro, ‘Symons, Browning, and the Development of the Modern Aesthetic’, Studies in English Literature 1500–1900, X (1970) 687–99.

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  83. Symons, An Introduction to the Study of Browning (1886) 6–7, 9, 11, 53, 72 (emphasis added). See also his ‘Browning’s Last Poems’, Academy, XXXVII (11 Jan 1890) 19.

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  84. For details of Symons’s new French contacts, see Temple, The Critic’s Alchemy, 123; and Roger Lhombreaud, Arthur Symons: A Critical Biography (1963) 61, 66, 68.

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  85. Symons: ‘Browning’s Last Poems’, Academy, XXXVII (11 Jan 1890) 19; review of Verlaine’s Bonheur, Academy, XXXIX (18 Apr 1891) 362–3.

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  86. Lhombreaud, Arthur Symons, 77.

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  87. Cf. his enthusiastic comments on Moore’s Modern Painting in The Painting of the Nineteenth Century’, Fortnightly Review, n.s., LXXIII (Mar 1903) 522.

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  88. Review in Academy, XXXIX (21 Mar 1891) 274.

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  89. See Lhombreaud, Arthur Symons, 92.

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  90. Symons, ‘Mr Henley’s Poetry’, Fortnightly Review, n.s., LII (Aug 1892) 190.

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  91. Ibid., 184; cf. his ‘The Decadent Movement in Literature’, Harper’s Monthly Magazine, 522 (Nov 1893) 867.

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  92. W. E. Henley, Poems (1921) 135–6. Robert L. Peters, ‘Whistler and the English Poets of the 1890s’, Modern Language Quarterly, XVIII (1957) 260, indicates the parallel with Whistler.

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  93. Henley, Poems, 192–8 (quotations from 196–8).

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  94. Symons, ‘Paul Verlaine’, Black and White, I (20 June 1891) 649; and ‘Paul Verlaine’, National Review, XIX (June 1892) 501, 503. Cf. Symons’s comments on Romances sans paroles in ‘The Decadent Movement in Literature’, Harper’s Monthly Magazine, 522, p. 861.

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  95. Ibid., 858–9.

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  96. Ibid., 862, 859, 860, 866–7, 859.

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  97. Ibid., 864.

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  98. See Symons, ‘At the “Chat Noir”’, Black and White, IV (24 Dec 1892) 736–7; and ‘Paul Verlaine’, National Review, XIX, 503. Edward Baugh in his unpublished PhD thesis, ‘A Critical Study of the Writings of Arthur Symons with Particular Reference to his Poetry and Literary Criticism’ (Manchester University, 1964) 156, also indicates this parallel.

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  99. Symons, The Decadent Movement in Literature’, Harper’s Monthly Magazine, 522, pp. 864–5. See also his ‘An Apology for Puppets’, Saturday Review, LXXXIV (17 July 1897) 55–6; and ‘Pantomime and Poetic Drama’, Dome, n.s., I (Oct 1898) 67–9. The subjective, ‘suggestive’ element in ‘impressionism is emphasised in Symons’s distinction between ‘impressionism’ and simple observation or description in ‘Richard Jefferies’, Studies in Two Literatures (1897) 225–6.

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  100. Symons, Silhouettes, 1st edn (1892) 81.

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  101. Paul Verlaine, Œuvres poétiques, ed. Jacques Robichez (Paris, 1976) 154, 156.

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  102. Symons: Silhouettes, 2nd edn (1896) 15; Silhouettes, 1st edn, 29; London Nights (1895) 16. See also his ‘Pastel’, Silhouettes, 1st edn, 13; ‘At the Cavour’, Silhouettes, 2nd edn, 27; the first two lines of ‘Renée’ and the first stanza of ‘On the Stage’, London Nights, 6, 15.

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  103. Symons, Silhouettes, 1st edn, 8–9; rev. version, Silhouettes, 2nd edn, 7.

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  104. Symons, ‘For a Picture by Walter Sickert (Hotel Royal, Dieppe)’, Academy, XLIV (23 Sep 1893) 252; rev. version in London Nights, 32.

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  105. Symons’s ‘In Autumn’, Silhouettes, 1st edn, 89, also employs the year’s decline as a sympathetic metaphor for the poet’s emotional desolation.

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  106. Ibid., 4–5.

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  107. Verlaine, Œuvres poétiques, 36–40, 158.

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  108. Letter from Dowson to Arthur Moore, c. 1891, quoted in Desmond Flowers, Introduction to his edn of The Poetical Works of Dowson (1934) xxii.

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  109. Symons, Silhouettes, 1st edn, 86. See also his ‘Veneta Marina’, London Nights, 53; the feeble pastiche Verlaine of ‘Absinthe. (Souvenir de Dieppe)’, Senate, II (Oct 1895) 384; and For a Picture of Watteau’, Silhouettes, 1st edn, 94–5. Cf. Verlaine, Œuvres poétiques, 92, 83, 147–8, 149.

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  110. Symons, Silhouettes, 1st edn, 56.

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  111. Ibid., p. 7. Cf. Symons’s ‘Twilight’, Amoris Victima (1897) 26.

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  112. For details of the personal factors involved, see John M. Munro, ‘Arthur Symons and W. B. Yeats: the Quest for Compromise’, Dalhousie Review, XLV (1965) 140–2, and his Arthur Symons (New York, 1969) 40, 54–5, 61–3; Lhombreaud, Arthur Symons, 171–2.

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  113. See William M. Murphy, Prodigal Father: The Life of John Butler Yeats (1839–1922) (Ithaca, NY, and London, 1978) 581.

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  114. Symons, ‘Maeterlinck as a Mystic’, Contemporary Review, n.s., LXXII (Sep 1897) 351.

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  115. Symons first restricted ‘decadence’ to this stylistic acceptation in ‘A Note on George Meredith’, Fortnightly Review, n.s., LXII (Nov 1897) 677. Prudence, following Wilde’s conviction and the collapse of the Savoy, doubtless counselled Symons’s revision of the original title as advertised in the Savoy, 8 (Dec 1896) 93. For detailed and balanced evaluation of the volume, see Temple, The Critic’s Alchemy, 153–65; Frank Kermode, Romantic Image (1971) 122–32; John M. Munro, Arthur Symons, 64–70.

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  116. Symons, The Symbolist Movement in Literature (1899) 10.

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  117. Symons, Silhouettes, 1st edn, 41–2; dated ‘Paris October 1, 1889’ in a manuscript at Harvard (Lhombreaud, Arthur Symons, 311).

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  118. Symons, London Nights, 24. Symons’s later ‘The Dance of the Daughters of Herodias’ employs dance as a metaphor for the sexually destructive power of all women; see his Images of Good and Evil (1899) 42–8.

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  119. Symons, London Nights, 5; cf. the gestural description of ‘Renee’, ibid., 6.

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  120. Symons, London Nights, 7–8.

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  121. Ibid., 22.

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  122. See Kermode’s masterly Romantic Image, 81–7; and ‘Poet and Dancer Before Diaghilev’, Partisan Review, XXVIII (1961) 48–75, particularly 55–73. Jan B. Gordon’s ‘The Danse Macabre of Arthur Symons’ London Nights’, Victorian Poety, IX (1971) 429–43, deals stimulatingly with the topic, as does Ian Fletcher, ‘Explorations and Recoveries — II: Symons, Yeats and the Demonic Dance’, London Magazine, VII (June 1960) 46–60. See also Baugh, ‘A Critical Study of the Writings of Arthur Symons’, 101–23. For Mallarmé’s account of the symbolic quality of dance, see Œuvres complètes, ed. Henri Mondor and G. Jean-Aubry (Paris, [1951]), 295–7, 303–7, and on Loїe Fuller in particular 307–9, 311–12.

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  123. See Symons: ‘A New Art of the Stage’, Monthly Review, VII. 3 (June 1902) 157–62; and ‘The Price of Realism’, Academy, LXIII (23 Aug 1902) 199–200. Cf. Yeats, Uncollected Prose, II, 250–1, 292–3, 391–4, 401.

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  124. Cf. nn. 98 and 99; Symons, The Symbolist Movement, 153–4, 158–9; and his ‘Eleonora Duse’, Contemporary Review, LXXVIII (Aug 1900) 199–202.

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  125. See Symons: ‘Ballet, Pantomime and Poetic Drama: Theories of Art’, Dome, n.s., I (Oct 1898) 65–71; and ‘Bayreuth: Notes on Wagner’, Dome, n.s., IV (Sep 1899) 146–9.

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  126. Symons, ‘The World as Ballet’, Dome, n.s., I (Oct 1898) 67 (emphasis added).

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  127. Symons, London Nights, 7.

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  128. Yeats, Uncollected Prose, II, 285. For Yeats’s interest in the stylization of Todhunter’s poetic dramas and the hieratic acting style of Florence Farr, see Letters to the New Island, 112–14, 115–17, 134, 217–18.

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  129. Comments from 1902 and 1903, repr. in Yeats, Explorations, 87, 109 (emphasis added). See also ibid., 110.

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  130. See Symons: ‘Mr Yeats as a Lyric Poet’, Saturday Review, LXXXVII (6 May 1899) 553; and ‘Mr Yeats’ New Play’, Saturday Review, XC (29 Dec 1900) 825.

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  131. Symons, ‘The Lesson of Parsifal’, Dome, n.s., I (Oct 1898) 71, 69.

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  132. Ibid., 69–70; cf. Symons’s The Price of Realism’, Academy, LXIII (23 Aug 1902) 200. Yeats describes the conception of the ‘stage picture’ in Uncollected Prose, II, 250; and Explorations, 178–9.

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  133. Symons, ‘Bayreuth’, Dome, n.s., IV, 149.

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  134. Ibid., 147–8; cf. the remarks on ‘elemental music’ on 149. By 1904 at least Symons was familiar with Schopenhauer’s aesthetic, but probably read much earlier Haldane and Kemp’s translation of The World as Will and Idea (1883–6), a favourite text of the fin de siècle; cf. Symons’s Studies in Seven Arts (1907) 193–7. In March 1899 William Ashton Ellis had published an article in the Fortnightly Review (to which Symons regularly contributed) on Wagner’s use of Schopenhauer’s ideas, placing both in an anti-materialist context; see David S. Thatcher, Nietzsche in England 1890–1914 (Toronto, 1970) 183.

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  135. Symons, ‘Rodin’, Fortnightly Review, n.s., LXXI (June 1902) 957 (emphasis added).

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  136. Yeats, Essays and Introductions, 268–9; this section was originally entitled ‘A Banjo Player’.

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  137. Symons, ‘Rodin’, Fortnightly Review, n.s., LXXI, 957–8, 960, 967. He reiterated this animistic argument forcefully apropos Rodin and Carrière in Studies in Seven Arts, 46–8.

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  138. D. S. MacColl, Nineteenth Century Art, 67, 68; similar remarks are made on Corot on 79–80. Cf. Arthur Symons, ‘The Painting of the Nineteenth Century’, Fortnightly Review, n.s., LXXIII (March 1903) 524–6.

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  1. Alan Robinson
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© 1985 Alan David Robinson

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Robinson, A. (1985). Symbolism, Impressionism and ‘Exteriority’. In: Poetry, Painting and Ideas, 1885–1914. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-07190-6_2

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