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During the first half of the nineteenth century, poetry in France was dominated by Romanticism, which had broken the rules of classicism and had opened the way for freedom of poetic creation. Poetry had become emotive and descriptive; the poet had been recognized as an isolated individual alienated from society by his genius. Materialistic bourgeois society had been rejected by the poets. As the century progressed, French poetry evolved into three main schools or styles—Parnassianism, Decadence, and Symbolism. The Parnassians took as their credo the art-for-art’s-sake theory of poetry by Théophile Gautier, in which form mattered more than idea. Purity of form and emotional detachment permeated the Parnassians’ works, which treated subjects from antiquity or described exotic places. The Decadents exploited the darker traditions of Romanticism and showed a preference for morbid and erotic subjects. The extreme dislike of the bourgeoisie, the pleasure in shocking them, the idea of the poet as alienated from society, and the preoccupation with death were major elements of their poetry. They regularly used opium, hashish, and absinthe to find an inscrutable truth beyond reality. The Symbolists rejected the sentimental effusion of emotion over nature and did not accept this world as the true reality. Their poems expressed states of mind, moods, and sensations, evoking inner experiences and communication with a transcendental other world. The musicality of the verse became an essential element of their poetry. Much of the poetry of the nineteenth century, especially that of Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud, combined characteristics of Decadence and Symbolism.

The two great poets of the first third of the twentieth century in France were Paul Valery and Paul Claudel. It is instructive to contrast them, for they are precisely opposites in almost every respect. Claudel was a public man in terms of personality and profession; Valery was a private man. Valery was a poet of the self and mind; his poetic method was hyperconscious, he rejected the idea of poetic inspiration, and his total output of forty-three poems is exquisitely polished, rigidly controlled, and desperate in search of abstract purity. Claudel was a poet not of the self but of man and God. His literary output is staggering: over a hundred volumes of all kinds of writing. He frankly relied on enthusiasm and inspiration; he inevitably avoided the abstract, or transmuted it into lush sensual imagery; and while his poetry achieved its own kind of form, it is not polished and precise, but bardic and overflowing. Both poets used the sea as an important symbol in their poetry. Valery’s sea is a still, crystalline equivalent for changeless, abstract thought; Claudel’s sea is a swelling, turbulent force, almost impossible to control, representing God, life, grace, inspiration, and poetry itself.

Poet. Arthur William Symons was born on February 28, 1865, in Milford Haven, Wales, to Wesleyan minister Mark and mother Lydia Pascoe Symons. Most remarkable about his early literary leanings is that he could not read until he was nine, as he “absolutely refused to learn” to do so. However, he was passionate about literature, absorbing it by way of those who read to him, and was ferocious in his first years at school—once, that is, he was admonished that he would be judged against others—writing his first poem at nine years old.

Formalism is an analytical model used in literary theory and criticism. It concentrates on formal elements, such as plot, structure, narrative strategy, motifs, themes, word choice, the use of rhetorical devices, and writing style. These elements are carefully analyzed to form a text-centered interpretation and evaluation of the work being studied. At its core, formalism is concerned with what differentiates literary writing from other forms of writing. It seeks to define and explore the specific aspects of literary works that elevate them above the level of lower genres of writing.

Symbolism, or the symbolist movement, developed as a literary style in the nineteenth century. It originated during the 1850s and lasted until around 1900. Its early proponents included French poets Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud.

The Symbolist aesthetic was born out of a revolt against the conventions of the day. Whether through poetry, fiction, drama, criticism, or painting, the Symbolists wished to liberate themselves from the norm, from common, everyday reality. Out of this grandiose approach to creativity, Symbolists expressed themselves in very personal ways. The inner life of the mind and the spirit guided them in each of their creative endeavors. For them, reality could not be quantified or neatly unraveled. Furthermore, the late nineteenth century saw a general intellectual trend away from materialism and scientific rationalism.