French Symbolism Research Articles

Frenglish shop signs in Singapore

The presence of French in advertising communication within largely non-French speaking communities has been noted by a few linguists. Haarmann (1984, 1989) found that French is used in Japanese advertisements as ethno-cultural hieroglyphs which connote refinement, poshness, style and tastefulness – stereotypes of France and French culture. The unintelligibility of French to Japanese patrons is perceived as a non-issue, as social or symbolic meanings are deemed to be more vital to attract patrons than denotational meanings. A parallel case was found in British advertisements of food, fashion and beauty businesses where French symbolism or linguistic fetish is seen as attractive to largely non-French, English-speaking patrons (Kelly-Holmes, 2005). Notably, French symbolic meanings are sometimes accompanied by elaborative messages in English. Kelly-Holmes (2005) noted that English is used only where message comprehension is important for explicit communication. Curtin (2009) documented the fact that ‘vogue’ or ‘display’ French shop names favored by high-end restaurants and beauty salons in Taipei occurred concomitantly with vogue English. Vogue English is relatively more ubiquitous across the city's linguistic landscape due to its connotations being exploited in a wide span of applications vis-à-vis the chic prestige of French, which is tied to food, beauty and fashion businesses. The Taipei case shows that non-idiomatic French is employed as a socio-commercial accessory, similar to the case of decorative English used in Japan (Dougill, 1987) and in Milan, Italy (Ross, 1997). However, a more recent study on Tokyo shop signs gleaned linguistic patterns other than vogue English and vogue French (MacGregor, 2003), such as French + Japanese and English + French + Japanese. A recent study by Serwe et al. (in press) found that French and French-like shop names are increasingly in currency, with local shop owners keen to stand out and appeal to the increasingly cosmopolitan and sophisticated clientele in Singapore, who are nevertheless overwhelmingly non-French speaking. They further found that French and French-inspired shop signs of food businesses can be classified into four categories, namely, monolingual French, French + another language, French function words + another language, and coinages, noting that there are idiomatic usages and non-idiomatic usages in the first three categories. In this paper, we throw the spotlight on coinages, which we argue are mostly explicable as French-English code-switched blends. We focus on localized nominal concoctions used by shop owners across food and beauty commercial entities within Singapore. We borrowed the term ‘Frenglish’ from Martin's (2007) study to refer to the French-English blends. However, we noted that Martin's study focused on the use of English in advertising communication in France, where English is the minority language that is largely sidelined by the Toubon Law. Contrastively, English in Singapore is de facto the national language, while French is a foreign language with few speakers.

A Plea for Living Metaphors: Conflictual Metaphors and Metaphorical Swarms

Now that the cognitive turn has highlighted the role of consistent and shared metaphorical concepts in human cognition and language, a comprehensive vision demands that living metaphors are paid due attention. The most typical and revealing instances of living metaphor are not poetic rewordings of shared and consistent metaphorical concepts but textual interpretations of conflictual meanings of complex expressions. Conflictual metaphors document the creative potential of linguistic expressions and shed light on the structure of metaphorical transfer and projection. Moreover, the complex network of inferences triggered by a living metaphor may generate a set of conflictual expressions consistent with it—a “metaphorical swarm”—which is open to empirical investigation. The final section of this article is an illustration of the metaphorical swarm of liquid light in English Romanticism and French Symbolism.

The Cambridge Companion to German Romanticism (review)

Reviewed by: The Cambridge Companion to German Romanticism Dennis F. Mahoney Nicholas Saul, ed., The Cambridge Companion to German Romanticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. xx + 335 pp., 2 illustrations. German romanticism, with its penchant for crossing boundaries and its ever-shifting groupings of artists and intellectuals, is a phenomenon that calls for interdisciplinary, collaborative scholarship. Nicholas Saul, who has done pathbreaking work as scholar and editor on what he has called the “Aesthetic Humanism” of the period from 1790 to 1830, has here assembled a distinguished team of scholars from British, Irish, German, and American universities to take a fresh look at German romanticism. After Azade Seyhan’s introduction to the historical, philosophical, and literary origins and essential features of early romanticism, Ricarda Schmidt traces differing notions of human fulfillment in love and art from early to late romanticism, while also taking note of the triadic concept of historical development that distinguishes the romantic writers from their predecessors and successors. Then follow concise, informative chapters on the narrative, lyric, and dramatic productions of German romanticism, written respectively by Anthony Phelan, Charlie Louth, and Roger Paulin, which are complemented by John McCarthy’s ensuing reflections on the forms and objectives of romantic criticism as a “a fourth generic category” (114). Both in these chapters and throughout the volume as a whole, it is encouraging to encounter more than just the “usual suspects” of literary histories of German romanticism. McCarthy discusses, for example not only the Schlegels and Hardenberg/Novalis, but also Görres and Adam Müller, while Louth includes treatments of Hölderlin and Günderode in his interpretations of the romantic lyric. Kleist’s works are treated in the chapters on romantic prose and drama; likewise, Zacharias Werner’s works appear not only in this latter chapter, but also in Saul’s essay “Love, Death and Liebestod in German Romanticism.” Here Saul makes a convincing case for re-examining in its capacity “as a central focus of Romantic thought” (166) a theme that opponents of romanticism long regarded as evidence of its life-denying nature, but which in recent decades has been less in the forefront of critical attention. First, though, in his capacity as editor he provides three further wide-ranging and insightful contributions from Jane Brown (“Romanticism and Classicism”), Gesa Dane (“Women Writers and Romanticism”), and Carl Niekerk (“The Romantics and Other Cultures”). The next five chapters form a subunit in their discussions of romantic philosophy and religion (Andrew Bowie), romantic politics and society (Ethel Matala de Mazza), romantic science and psychology (Jürgen Barkhoff), German romantic painters (Richard Littlejohns), and romanticism and music (Bowie’s second contribution to the volume). Littlejohns deserves particular praise for providing an overview of romantic artists and their achievements in the areas of landscape, political, and religious art that also gives a vivid sense of individual paintings and drawings—so much so that it seems as though there were more illustrations provided than the two black-and-white reproductions of Caspar David Friedrich’s Das Kreuz im Gebirge (1808) and Runge’s Morgen (1803). The volume concludes with Margarete Kohlenbach’s survey “Transformations of German Romanticism 1830–2000,” which ranges from Heine and Nietzsche through French symbolism and neo-romanticism (with a special focus on Hugo von Hofmannsthal) to the Frankfurt School and contemporary writers like Botho Strauß and Peter Handke. [End Page 327] With the exception of Saul (less) and Kohlenbach (slightly more), each author has written essays between fifteen and twenty printed pages in length. All the contributions are scholarly and accessibly written, with observations of value both to specialists and to individuals seeking a good preliminary guide to the topic at hand. Some chapters have more extensive notes than others, but all conclude with select bibliographies of relevant scholarship for those readers interested in further investigations. In addition, Saul provides a concise but well chosen guide to further reading (291–304) for the volume as a whole, subdivided into sections on editions, works in English translation, and secondary literature relating to general topics, authors, genres, and themes. Similarly user-friendly is the extensive index (305–35), which includes entries not only for authors and their works, but...

The Theology of Jean Daniélou: Epochs, Correspondences, and the Orders of the Real

AbstractAfter a survey of the life and work of Jean Daniélou considered as the classic theologian of twentieth century ‘ressourcement’, his theological method is explored under three headings: ‘epochs’ indicates his reliance on the theology of history as developed by ‘biblical theology’; ‘correspondences’ his cosmic aesthetics, indebted to French Symbolism, and invoked theologically by way of typology; ‘orders’ his Pascalian emphasis on a distinction between levels of reality and the variety of epistemological approaches they require. The article concludes by applying Daniélou's method, so understood, to the heart of his theological doctrine, his account of God in Jesus Christ.

Georgette Donchin (1922-2008)

SEER, Vol. 8j. No. i,January 20oy Georgette Donchin (1922-2008) Georgette Donchin did not originally intend to become a Slavist, but both background and external circumstances eventually impelled her in that direction. Born in Lodz in Poland, she attended secondary school in the town (1932-38), and then the French school inWarsaw (1938-39). Her own mother died when she was very young, but she acquired a loving stepmother, through whom she learnt Russian. Shortly before thewar the family visited relatives in Egypt with a view tomoving there, but returned to Poland, only to find that the outbreak of war after all dictated their return. In Cairo her eye-doctor father set up a practice and Georgette attended the French Lycee (1940-42). She took the French baccalaureate specializing inmathematics, and intended to pursue the subject at a French university. The war made higher education an impossibility, and instead she went to work as a Russian and Polish Monitor for the Radio Monitoring Section of the UK Ministry of Information, Middle East Forces. Here she perfected GEORGETTE DONCHIN IOI her knowledge of English, incidentally meeting her future husband, George Lewinson, who was the sergeant in charge of her section. He proposed but, determined on getting a degree, she turned him down. At the end of the war chaotic conditions made study at a French university unfeasible, but in any case her world had changed, with mathematics giving way to Russian literature. Seeing friends from her section opting for London University, she too applied and was accepted at SSEES in 1946 for the BA in Russian with English subsidiary. Her studies were supported by a grant from the Polish Committee for Education. By the time she graduated with a first class degree in 1949, itwas clear that her future lay with academic research. Awarded a London University scholarship, she began researching the largely uncharted subject of French Symbolism and its impact on Russian poetry. In 1950 she agreed to marry George Lewinson who was living in Australia. Both of them completed their doctorates at the same time three years later in 1953. This was a key year for them both, since just a month after being awarded her PhD, Georgette gave birth to their son, David. In 1955 she started work as a cataloguer in SSEES library on the magnificent salary of ?475 per annum. At the same time she was preparing her PhD for publication; The Influence ofFrench Symbolism onRussian Poetry came out with Mouton in 1958, and was followed by a number of related articles on the subject. She also undertook major translations: five volumes of the letters inRussian of Chaim Weizmann and Cizevskij's History ofRussian Literaturefrom the Eleventh Century to the End of the Baroque (i960), as well as introductions to texts, large numbers of bibliographical surveys and book editing (for example, Russian Literary Attitudesfrom Pushkin to Solzhenitsyn [1976], edited with R. Freeborn and N. Anning). In all of these areas she displayed a characteristic thoroughness and attention to detail. The publication of her book not only established Georgette Donchin as a major authority in this important area, but also led at last to an academic post in the Russian Department at SSEES in i960. As a teacher Georgette was determined that her students should aim high. Her own preparation was thorough, and she wanted students to do the same. At the undergraduate level her perceptive and illuminating teaching of literature took for granted that the student would read widely, including critical literature in the original. In particular, her special subject course on Pushkin and Gogol' gave students an excellent in-depth understanding of both authors. She had a good sense of humour and tutorials could be fun, but only if the student had fulfilled his or her side of the bargain, by preparing properly for the class. Nonetheless, however exasperated she might have been with backsliders, she maintained a keen interest in all the students, their 102 GEORGETTE DONCHIN progress, problems and fates. Itwould be with considerable reluctance and after all other avenues had been exhausted that she agreed that Mr X orMiss Y would have to leave SSEES. Her care for her postgraduates, attracted...

Dreams, Nightmares, and Lunacy in En rade: Odilon Redon's Pictorial Inspiration in the Writings of J.-K. Huysmans

This essay illuminates selected aesthetic approaches that are symptomatic of the key role that Symbolist art played in the evolution of the poetic topoi of folly and madness in fin de siecle French culture, as nineteenth-century Romantic representations of exalted poetic frenzy gradually moved towards twentieth-century Modernist visions of nightmarish absurdity. Arguably, while the former may lead to meaningful prophetic insight, the latter often trigger an acknowledgement of life’s meaninglessness, in European literature and painting alike. In the process of transition, French Symbolism paved the way for such major twentieth-century figures as Joyce or Yeats, among many others. Within this evolution, Huysmans’s novel En rade (1886), written during the author’s Symbolist phase, is a seminal text. For Huysmans in particular, Symbolism was in many ways defined as an antithesis to Naturalism: more specifically, he applied the former to his prose writing as an artistic method that focused on the irrational world of emotions, fantasies, and dreams. In En rade, similarly to the famous A rebours (1884) that preceded it as Huysmans’s first non-Naturalist novel, the Symbolist outlook finds expression in the protagonist’s rejection of contemporary society, nostalgia for the past, and escape from reality into elaborate fantasy and dream (which is often a decadent nightmare). Indeed, the foolishness (folly) of human society puts the protagonist of En rade, Jacques Marles, on the verge of insanity, or even lunacy. The procedure of inter-art comparison is essential for seeing the novel’s symbolic coherence, since the protagonist is assailed by grotesque nightmares that are largely inspired by Odilon Redon’s phantasmagoric drawings and lithographs of the late 1870s and the 1880s. Huysmans praises the latter in A rebours and in his prose poetry volume Croquis parisiens (second edition, 1886).

«Vous avez bu l'amour et la mort». Il mito di Tristano e Isotta nella rilettura di Bédier e Martin

I Joseph Bedier’s Roman de Tristan et Iseut is studied in relation with the scientific and epistemological point of view of the author, and also with his antigermanism. The narration modernizes the formularity and corality typical of medieval poems, and shows characteristics belonging to the French symbolism, especially to Mallarme’s poetry and its clarte , in opposition to Wagnerian obscurity. In Le vin herbe Frank Martin intensifies the tendency to clarte and corality, the antiwagnerian implications of the romance, composing, during the second world war, his masterpiece, a hymn to consolation and solidarity. II The purpose of this study is to put Le vin herbe in the context of Martin’s long creative iter and of its related, complex cultural frame, and to reassess the common opinion of the composer’s neoclassical relationship with the great musical and literary works of art of the past, who so deeply fascinated him. A relationship which can be better understood in the light of Martin’s peculiar aptitude for approaching the past through some splendid creative interpretation of his own time.

All Roads Come from Zen: Busshinji as a Reference to Buddhism

This paper explores the historical role of Busshinji temple as a center of Buddhism in Brazil for non-Japanese. Busshinji was established by Sotoshu as a betsuin (branch temple) in the city of Sao Paulo in 1956. Drawing on interviews with early adherents, I intend to argue that many first attended Busshinji as it was the only Buddhist temple offering meditation in Sao Paulo. For these followers, it was their first point of contact with Buddhism. Many later left to become leading figures of other Buddhist schools in Brazil. It is thus my contention that Busshinji played a significant historical role in the expansion of Buddhism in Brazil. keywords: Sotoshu - Busshinji - non-Japanese Brazilians In September 1955, Rosen Takashina Roshi visited Brazil for three months, travelling extensively to the many towns where Japanese migrants settled in the states of Sao Paulo and Parana, which lie in southern Brazil. At the time, he was the zenji (abbot) in charge of both main monasteries of the Sotoshu School: Eiheiji (located in the Fukui Prefecture) and Sojiji (in Yokohama). Takashina came to Brazil by invitation of those Japanese migrants who adhered to the Sotoshu and wished to have a temple in their new country. Until the Second World War, Japanese migrants still intended to return to Japan once they had acquired enough wealth. However, when Japan lost the war they had to rethink their plans and settled permanently in Brazil. In addition to this, after the war the Brazilian government lifted the ban on the arrival of official Japanese Buddhist missions to Brazil. Given this climate, Takashina was not alone in making the long trip to Brazil with the prospect of establishing a mission in the 1950s. Other traditional Buddhist schools such as Jodoshu, Jodo Shinshu, Shingonshu, and Nichirenshu sent official missions to Brazil at the same time. However, unlike other Japanese religions, Sotoshu would soon have special appeal to an unexpected cohort of followers: non-Japanese Brazilians. In October 1956, Sotoshu sent Shingu Roshi to Brazil to be the first sokan (Superintendent-General) of South America. He was there to establish Busshinji temple as the betsuin (the headquarters of the mission) in Sao Paulo. This paper explores the historical role of Busshinji temple as a center of Buddhism in Brazil for non-Japanese. Drawing on interviews with early adherents, I argue that many of these followers first went to Busshinji as it was the only Buddhist temple that offered meditation in Sao Paulo. For them, Busshinji was their first point of contact with Buddhism. Many later left Busshinji to become leading figures of other Buddhist schools in the country. Thus, it is my contention that Busshinji played a significant historical role in the expansion of Buddhism in Brazil. From the outset, Sotoshu missionaries worked on the expansion of the mission amongst Japanese Brazilians. They travelled to the countryside where many Japanese migrants lived in order to conduct funerals and memorials, and to teach Japanese language and culture.1 At the same time, in the late 1950s and 60s, some non-Japanese Brazilians were reading about Zen in newspaper articles written by the Brazilian foreign correspondent of the daily newspaper Jornal do Brasil, who was writing from New York City. Others were following the development of an important Brazilian poetic movement called Concretista. These poets were influenced by Ernest Fenollosa's (1853-1908) The Chinese Written Character (1968), the writings of the American poet Ezra Pound (1885-1972), and French Symbolism. They argued for a visual poetry where words as they appear on paper would be as important in expressing ideas as their meaning, rhythm, and rhyme. For the Concretistas, such visual poetry was epitomized in the Japanese character. This poetic movement thus brought the Orientalist ideas of Japan and Zen to educated Brazilians. In 1961, D. T. Suzuki's Introduction to Zen Buddhism was published in Portuguese. …

Leaving Parnassus: The Lyric Subject in Verlaine and Rimbaud (review)

Reviewed by: Leaving Parnassus: The Lyric Subject in Verlaine and Rimbaud Adrianna M. Paliyenko Whidden, Seth. Leaving Parnassus: The Lyric Subject in Verlaine and Rimbaud. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007. Pp. 230. ISBN 978-90-420-2210-2. Seth Whidden, who has recently produced excellent modern editions of Marie Krysinska's Rythmes pittoresques (Exeter up, 2003) and Wallace Fowlie's translation of Rimbaud's complete works (u of Chicago p, 2005), makes a valuable contribution to modern nineteenth-century poetry studies with his new book on the crisis of the lyric subject in Verlaine and Rimbaud. The Parnassian movement, taken as the historical point of departure for the study and as the core point of æsthetic reference for Verlaine and Rimbaud's respective poetic projects, provides a fresh critical framework for an illuminating analysis of each poet's subversion of a unified creative voice. This study, which eschews biographically inflected interpretation to focus on discursive practice, charts pivotal departures from Parnassian poetry in Verlaine and Rimbaud as crystallizing, æsthetic turns in their modern conceptions of poetic subjectivity. Introductory comments sketch out salient features of semiotic approaches to poetic language à la Kristeva et Meschonnic that, together with recent "genetic criticism" focused on textual stages of a creative work, inform the emphasis in this study on the organic construction of poetic subjectivity as an æsthetic, rather than a biographical, stance. "For both Verlaine and Rimbaud," Whidden argues, "the destabilized situation of the lyric subject is a direct response to and reaction against the traditional modes of subject/object relations that characterized Parnassian poetry" (14). Chapter 1, "The Dominance of Parnassian Poetry," cogently presents not only the origins and tenets of le Parnasse, but also offers historical and textual evidence that extends this "neo-classical movement" beyond the advent of French Symbolism into the latter decades of the century (19, 23-43). This incisive broadening of the traditional chronology of the dominant poetic movements in the nineteenth century squarely places aspiring poets Verlaine and Rimbaud in the Parnassian shadow and offers an intriguing vantage point from which to view, at the level of poetic discourse, their respective sujets-en-procès. In Chapter 2, "Verlaine's Identities," Whidden reconsiders Verlaine's Parnassian phase, as encapsulated by several poems from "Melancholia" (from the 1866 collection Poèmes saturniens), to reveal "there lies a poet searching for his voice underneath the Parnassian exterior, unsure of his recently adopted poetic identity" (46-47). With discerning textual readings of subversive prosodic practice in Verlaine's Parnassianera poems that blurs the crisp distinction between the Parnassian subject and object, Whidden shows that "Verlaine's poetry involves the poetic subject's search for identity through interaction with its object" (68). For Whidden, "this project extends throughout Verlaine's entire poetic work and is but one phase within the larger context of a constantly evolving search for poetic subjectivity" (68), from La Bonne Chanson to Romance sans paroles to Femmes/Hombres. In his sustained analysis of "an æsthetics composed of an unstable subject who defines his self [. . .] in terms of his object" (69), from the sublime to the profane, Whidden exposes multiple paths of poetic expression departing from le Parnasse while leading to the "degeneracy of the lyric subject in Verlaine's poetry" (117). The third and final chapter, "Rimbaud, Beyond Time and Space," demonstrates [End Page 341] against the Parnassian grain a novel way of thinking through the construction of the lyric subject in Rimbaud, from his early verse to the Illuminations. Whidden frames the displacement of traditional categories of time and space in Rimbaud with an astute reading of the voyant's celebrated dictum, "Je est un autre" and, through ensuing close textual analysis of Rimbaud's æsthetic stance, productively illustrates that "Rimbaud situates the lyric subject not only as an other, but also in another place, in a place that is other, particularly in terms of time and space" (125). Drawing on painstaking research in dictionaries and his thorough knowledge of Rimbaud criticism, Whidden aptly opens up along temporal and spatial lines Rimbaud's "dérèglement de tous les sens" (125-31). Initial ruptures with standard categories of time and space and, by extension, from the strictures of...

A Smile in His Mind's Eye: A Study of the Early Works of Lawrence Durrell (review)

Reviewed by: A Smile in His Mind’s Eye: A Study of the Early Works of Lawrence Durrell Julius Rowan Raper Ray Morrison. A Smile in His Mind’s Eye: A Study of the Early Works of Lawrence Durrell. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2005. xii + 529 pp. Like Walt Whitman, Lawrence Durrell (1912–1990) contained multitudes, an expansiveness reflected by the body of his work. For starters, his fiction contains the Egyptian world of The Alexandria Quartet with which many readers are familiar, the French world of the Avignon Quintet that fewer have visited, plus the largely forgotten [End Page 912] worlds of his early poetry, his minor works, and three pre-World War II novels that range in setting from Bangladesh and Greece to London. It is chiefly to the third group, the often forgotten work, that Ray Morrison limits his immense study. In its roughly 275,000 words, his book similarly contains worlds—or at least the materials for four monographs. Even though the size of Morrison's investigation may dictate that it will most often be used as a reference work read one large chapter at a time as students of Durrell investigate individual novels or groups of poems, the various parts do develop a unified vision of the poet-novelist as he evolved from a neophyte symbolist into a post-World War II master novelist who embraced the vision of Taoist thinkers Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu. In fact, Morrison's title plays on Durrell's own brief Taoist-informed autobiography, A Smile in the Mind's Eye (1982). Morrison's argument runs as follows: that all Durrell's work was one single "book" (21) and that "during the first part of his literary career" (38–39), his apprenticeship, his "major influence" was French symbolism (63). Like Paul Verlaine, Durrell, in the early poems, privately printed as Quaint Fragment: Poems Written between the Age of Sixteen and Nineteen (1931), seems to reject any naturalistic grounding as "all that garlic from the lowly kitchen" (52). The poems pursue the loftiness of music, symbols and dreams (52–53) and are less metrical than musical. But theirs is an elusive music to "convey the hidden spirit of the world" (66–67). Morrison's suggestions will help any reader who has struggled to find in these verses a clear setting, character, action or even theme to pin them down and render them accessible. Morrison's symbolist approach appears less helpful when he turns to Durrell's apprentice fiction, Pied Piper of Lovers. Here he quotes, then ignores, symbolist critic Anna Balakian's warning, in Critical Appraisal, "that 'the symbolist novel is a contradiction in terms' . . . for the symbolists rejected all narrative forms." Morrison, nonetheless, goes in quest of what Balakian termed "certain vestigial aspects of symbolist technique in the novel" (79), a search that produces a 40,000 word decoding of Durrell's largely autobiographical novel into ideas found in the works of Remy de Gourmont and Arthur Schopenhauer. One problem with this approach is that, since all words are symbols, a novel unlike a poem contains far too many possible signs for interpretation. Another difficulty is that because the key symbols of a novel are its characters, settings, action, structure, and recurring images, an analysis has to focus primarily on these naturalist dimensions. One could argue that Morrison spends too few words on the latter elements and too many on possible allusions to the ideas of Gourmont and Schopenhauer, especially since he must later admit [End Page 913] that Durrell both "remains strangely quiet about the influence of Gourmont on his own work" and maintains his "silence on the impact of Schopenhauer" (439). Consequently, Morrison's book remains less an influence study than a collection of parallel readings of Durrell, Gourmont, Schopenhauer and the Taoists in the form of an influence study. In defense of Morrison, we must remember that Durrell later disowned his first two novels and that he was famously playful in his treatment of ideas and that having played, he moved on. Gourmont and Schopenhauer may have become tools and toys he left behind. Despite the limitations of Morrison's method, it produces numerous helpful...

The symbolism of Paul Gauguin: erotica, exotica, and the great dilemmas of humanity

In this magisterial book, Henri Dorra synthesizes more than fifty years of study to present a comprehensive examination of Paul Gauguin's symbolism. Drawing on his profound grasp of the artistic and social contexts in which worked, Dorra provides new, complex insights into and interpretations of Gauguin's multilayered symbolism. Symbolism of Paul Gauguin is lavishly illustrated with a major visual compendium of the artist's prodigious output. The highly readable narrative, based on a sophisticated understanding of Gauguin's oeuvre, offers a masterly interpretation of recurrent images and their interrelationships in the contemporaneous artistic and social context. Dorra discusses Gauguin's iconography and the artist's treatments of similar themes in various media, from prepatory drawings for paintings to related ceramics and wood carvings. He traces Gauguin's meanings in literary sources from classical mythology and the Bible to late ninetheenth-century literature. He also links the form and content of the artist's work to his unusual ancestry and upbringing. As the final scholarly work by an internationally recognized expert on nineteenth-century French symbolism, this book provides a profound new perspective on and his work.

Myth in Valery Bryusov's Verse: Restoring the Missing Links with J.-M. de Heredia and Gustave Moreau

Myth, presented here as the ultimate vessel for the eternal essence of poetry, is a key to Bryusov’s verse, with its outstanding cross-cultural versatility, tendency for dramatic plots and visionary plasticity. For an in-depth understanding of Bryusov’s mythological poetry, it is illuminating to consider it in the context of the poet’s French models. Much has been written about Bryusov’s connection to major French Symbolists such as Mallarme, Verlaine and Rimbaud; yet two fi gures that constitute maybe equally vital links between the Russian poet and French Symbolism have been largely overlooked or underestimated hitherto: Jose-Maria de Heredia (1842–1905), a key exponent of the Parnassian poetic school, and Gustave Moreau (1826–1898), often recognized as a pioneer in the Symbolist use of myth in painting. Moreau’s art was deeply inspirational for Heredia’s sonnet collection Les Trophees (1893), which went on to infl uence Bryusov in his adaptation of the French Symbolist aesthetic to Russian poetry. Bryusov knew the primary mythological material extremely well, especially classical mythologies. Yet the poetic transformation of myth in his art was greatly indebted to the French artists, who were among the fi rst to contribute to the fi n de siecle resurgence of myth. I shall argue that a consideration of Bryusov’s mythological verse in the light of selected works by Heredia and Moreau enables us to reconcile two apparently incompatible tendencies in the Russian poet’s work: on

(review)

534 Reviews One of the many unquestionable merits of her ambitious study is that by defining for fellow scholars a distinctive area of novel-writing she opens the door to further re? search, provoking new readings ofworks in a narrative formof rich social significance. University of Valladolid Maria Jesus Garcia Garrosa Borrowed Words: Translation, Imitation, and the Making of the Nineteenth-Century Novel in Spain. By Elisa Marti-Lopez. London: Associated University Presses. 2002. 193 pp. ?22.02. ISBN 0-8387-5520-8. This book concerns two fundamentally important and interrelated aspects of literary life in mid-nineteenth-century Spain: the writing and publication of socially con? cerned misteriosinspired by Sue, and the prominence of (often quite free) translations of foreign works. As Elisa Marti-Lopez points out, both of these have been neglec? ted because they are considered detrimental to the development of modern Spanish culture, rather than as serious contributions to the emergence of the modern novel. In Marti-Lopez's view, the dependence of criticism on models of strong originality conspires against an appreciation of Spaniards' dialogistic engagement with foreign models and of subtler forms of differencefrom and similarity to non-Spanish cultures. The author argues that Spanish intellectuals were faced with two key problems: the turbulent establishment of a Liberal state and corresponding nation-building, and the hegemony of Paris and London as European publishing centres, based around an author-publisher relationship, and exporting heavily to foreign markets (like Spain). The pursuit of modern forms of culture and politics required emulation and depen? dence; national identity, and distinct circumstances, required difference. Such were the conditions within which the dialogue with Sue's mysterestook place. In saying this, Marti-Lopez rightlyemphasizes that Spanish culture ofthe mid-nineteenth cen? tury was not dominated by Conservative nationalism; nor was interest in the mysteres confined to the Left. This book does not, however, provide an interpretation of many Spanish misterios. Given that the genre was often cultivated by leftists, as Marti-Lopez says, it seems peculiar that the only two texts to receive extended consideration are by Conserva? tive Liberals (Cortada's translation of Les Mysteres de Paris, Mila de la Roca's Los misterios de Barcelona). In terms of the wider panorama, Progressive concern with culture as a vehicle of the public good is discussed, but not connected to a political philosophy that had moved on from the Enlightenment. Perhaps in consequence, Marti-Lopez's threefold equation of Schlegel's legacy, Conservatism, and the idea of a national spirit, all supposedly opposed to the misterios,misrepresents the complex exchanges of ideas in Spain. None the less, this book is a welcome contribution to and rectification of modern Spanish literary history. University of Edinburgh Andrew Ginger Between theMaternal Aegis and theAbyss: Woman as Symbol in thePoetry ofRosalia de Castro. By Michelle C. Geoffrion-Vinci. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dick? inson University Press; London: Associated University Presses. 2002. 161 pp. ?24.95. ISBN 0-8386-3913-5. This is a brave book, but its argument is not entirely convincing because of the author's tendency to slip into biographical readings of Rosalia de Castro's poetry and MLR, 100.2, 2005 535 the lack of a sufficiently developed theoretical framework to sustain such a radical rereading. Nevertheless, Michelle C. Geoffrion-Vinci is to be congratulated for tak? ing Castro criticism in new and exciting directions. After providing an informative overview of critical studies to date, the author rightly draws attention to the curious fact that gender in Castro's poetry has yet to be examined in depth. This book aims to make good the lack by focusing on female symbolism, in particular the figureofthe mother. This includes examining the relationship between female procreativity and literary creativity; the maternal body and the concept of fertility;matriarchy and na? tionalism; veil imagery and spiritual redemption; and Christian symbolism employed to celebrate female desire. The scope ofthe study ranges across Castro's poetry, from A mi madre (1862) to En las orillas del Sar (1884). The book begins by making connections between Castro's poetry and end-ofcentury French symbolism, the point being that, although Castro's imagery is to a large extent conventional, it...

Ken Russell's The Debussy film (1965)

First telecast on 18 May 1965 as part of the BBC's Monitor series, The Debussy Film was Ken Russell's first fully-realized composer biopic—‘one of Russell's major contributions to the art of film b...

El modernismo en España: algunos conceptos críticos

This article offers a new understanding of Spanish «Modernismo» which places this concept in that wider trend of Western culture at the beginning of the 20 th century generally known as «Modernism» in the anglo-saxon world. Beauty is the central concept in this context; it includes characteristics inherited from the French parnasianism and symbolism and, at the same time, it involves a transcendental dimension which derives from the philosophical and theological Modernism, which is contemporary to the literary one. From this theoretical perspective, I aim to analyze a number of critical approaches derived from the concept of beauty, such as metafiction, identity, time or form. They are described briefly through the words of well-known Modernists such as Unamuno, Azorin, Baroja, Valle-Inclan or Machado.

Review: The Poetry of Hugo von Hofmannsthal and French Symbolism * Robert Vilain: The Poetry of Hugo von Hofmannsthal and French Symbolism

Journal Article Review: The Poetry of Hugo von Hofmannsthal and French Symbolism Robert Vilain : The Poetry of Hugo von Hofmannsthal and French Symbolism Get access Forum for Modern Language Studies, Volume 39, Issue 2, April 2003, Page 240, https://doi.org/10.1093/fmls/39.2.240 Published: 01 April 2003

Entre el modernismo y la modernidad: La poesía de Manuel Machado (Alma y Caprichos)

Entre el modernismo y la modernidad: La poesia de Manuel Machado (Alma y Caprichos). By Rafael Alarcon Sierra. Spain: Diputacion de Sevilla, 1999. 602 pages. The of Manuel Machado has been the subject of increasingly positive recognition and critical attention both by Spanish poets of the 1980s and by literary critics in the 1980s and 1990s. In this reawakening of interest in one of the best modernist poets of his day, Rafael Alarc6n Sierra has been prominent in the past decade and is already well known to us for his several first-rate articles in Insula, and also in Quimera and in Hispanic Review, as well as his splendid editions of both Manuel Machado's Caprichos, El Mal Poema (Madrid: Castalia, 2000) and prose, Impresiones, El Modernismo: Articulos, cr6nicas y resenas (1899-1909), (Valencia: PreTextos, 2000). Now he has provided us with a monumental study of two of the poet's most important early works (Alma and Caprichos), and, in the process of this illuminating investigation, he both broadens and deepens our insight into important aspects of the symbolist modernist movement in general. This study is based upon the thesis, superbly and convincingly argued, that in a very few years Manuel Machado became a central figure of the most genuine current of symbolist modernism, with the publications of Alma (1902) and Caprichos (1905), and that, therefore, he is an indispensable figure for understanding the development and evolution of the modern tradition in twentieth-century Spanish poetry. His early work is likewise seen to be crucial for understanding the essential character of symbolist modernism. Noteworthy is the very scholarly knowledge and understanding of the origins of fin-de-siecle Spanish in European romanticism and, most importantly, in French symbolism and Latin American modernism, which permits the author of this study to identify very precisely the particular modalities of Machado's symbolism, whether romantico-simbolista, parnasiano-simbolista, romancillo ligero y popularista, or simbolistadecadente. Rafael Alarcon Sierra, through painstaking research, situates the of Manuel Machado always within its historical, literary, and biographical context, documents abundantly the tradition of themes, motifs, and poetic forms from which it emerges, analyzes meticulously its process of gestation, identifies its originality, and shows how it points ahead to the future development of the poet's creative work as well as to twentiethcentury Spanish lyric in general. This book is divided into five chapters: 1. Hacia el Alma de Manuel Machado (1874-1902), 2. cetro y simbolo finisecular (y el ejemplo de Manuel Machado), 3. Analisis de Alma, 4. Hacia Capri chos (1902-1905), and 5. Analisis de Caprichos. During the course of these chapters, we find the most complete and best documented account yet of the poet's life from the year of his birth, 1874, to the publication of Caprichos in 1905: his years in Madrid, Seville, and Paris, his friendships, his daily life in cafes, tertulias, and nightclubs, and his participation in journals and literary polemics of the time, in defense of the poetry and of new aesthetic ideals. Alarcon Sierra's analysis of Alma and Caprichos, the poetic composition and structure of each, the various subsections that comprise each, the many masks and disguises adopted by the poetic personality in its quest for identity, constitutes by far the best treatment yet of these complex works. …

Dance of the Marionettes

"How can we know the dancer from the dance?" In poems such as "Javanese Dancers" and in many prose texts (including fiction) Symons (1865-1945) offers a gloss on that well-known line by his friend and fellow-Celt, Yeats. This paper explores the relationship between Symons's views on theatre and those of Edward Gordon Craig (1872-1966); the two men commented on each other's work. There is a trajectory from Symons's response to dance (owing something to the popular native English tradition of music-hall, as well as to the more sophisticated developments of French Symbolism), towards Craig's theory of the Übermarionette, which found so little favour in Edwardian England - Symons apart - but was hugely influential in mainland Europe, anticipating Brecht's Verfremdungseffekte and providing a strong intellectual basis for the avant-garde Polish theatre of Tadeusz Kantor. Symons is clearly a key figure in the challenge to naturalism and to other forms of naïve representationism, including crudely emotional identification with characters and 'star' actors. I conclude with a brief reference to the non-naturalistic (but didactic) Edinburgh 'masques' of the Scottish polymath Patrick Geddes (1854-1932).

Evil, madness, and the occult in Argentine poetry

Melanie Nicholson brings to light three of Argentina's most respected twentieth-century poets within a literary and cultural tradition that traces its roots to German Romanticism. She examines each poet's work under the broadly defined rubric of literary esotericism - the rhetorics of the occult (Olga Orozco), of evil (Alejandra Pizarnik), and of madness (Jacobo Fijman). In doing so, she connects these authors to the European esoteric tradition while illuminating how this tradition is reformulated in a twentieth-century Spanish American context. Nicholson argues that while these poets draw heavily on certain principles of literary esotericism, their work also reveals the contradictions inherent in such an approach for twentieth-century poetry. Although several studies published in recent years point to the esoteric tradition in European literature as a subject of ongoing critical interest, the role of esoteric thought in Latin American literature has yet to be fully developed. Nicholson contributes to the contemporary discourse on the legacy of the avant-grade in Spanish-speaking countries. She traces esotericism from a historical perspective, emphasizing the Modern period, from German Romanticism to French Symbolism and Surrealism in particular. Each chapter focuses on various forms of the esoteric: Gnosticism and hermeticism; alchemy, divination and magic; madness and mysticism; and the literature of evil. Recent scholarship on these poets in particular has also neglected esotericism as a fundamental aspect of their vision and aesthetic attitudes. Building upon the work of such critical thinkers as Paz, Bataille, Foucault, and Felman, Nicholson argues that they maintain an ironic and critical stance with regard to the very precepts that inform their work. The tension created by their strong belief in the magical power of language and the acknowledgment that the logos ultimately fails to change the world is emblematic of their modern re-imagining of esotericism.

Symbolism, Decadence and the Fin de Siecle: French and European Perspectives

Contents: Part 1: Mallarme and siecle finissant, Peter Dayan disinterested Narcissus - play of politics in decadent form, Jennifer Birkett experiment in women's writing in fin de siecle, Alison Finch poetry of symbolism and decadence, Clive Scott difficult distance - Mallarme and symbolist stage, Michael Holland kinaesthetics of chance - Mallarme's Un Coup de des and avant-garde choreography, Dee Reynolds Villiers, Verne, Lumiere - business of immortality, Ian Christie text and image, allegory and symbol in Gustave Moreau's Jupiter et Semele, Peter Cooke between medicine and hermeticism - the unconscious in fin de siecle. Part 2: primitivism, celticism and morbidity in Atlantic fin de siecle, Scott Ashley Belgian symbolism and question of Belgian literary identity, Patrick Laude temporary aesthetes - decadence and symbolism in Germany and Austria, Robert Vilain war of wor(l)ds - symbolist decadent literature and discourses of power in finisecular Spain, Richard A. Cardwell French symbolism and Italian poetry, 1880-1920, Shirley W. Winall from Mallarme to Pound - Franco-Anglo-American axis, Patrick McGuinness.