Symbolism

Symbolist poetry

• Les poetes maudits

After reading a couple of poems written in Verlaine's anthology, I didn't find them that much interesting. When I heard the name 'poetes maudits' I was sure I was going to like these poems a lot because the name suggests they are very dark and mysterious but I didn't feel the poems were. Some of them are interesting like, 'Dusk', but still not as much as the name suggested.

Also, to me, I know it is, but poems written in vers libre don't seem to me that much like poems, I know they are, but without the rythm and the rhymes and all of that I don't see the point in these poems.

• Endre ady

I really liked his poems. They are very deep and I know I'm not understanding all of it but I am. I mean that I don't know what are and what the symbols in the poem mean but I loved these poems a lot and specially 'Life terrifies me'. Great poem, great rhyme, just awesome to me.

• Stephen Crane

I liked the poems but not as much as Ady's. but they are good poems and I like what they say. But, again, I don't find the poetic writing in prose poems but they are good. And I think his short novels are better because he writes very well and interstingly in prose.



Imagism in the U.S. and Great Britain

Probably prose poems work but only when they are very short as the imagists often did them.

The three principles, in my opinion, cuouldn't be better for a poem. Especially the second one, because sometimes really really long poems which say few thing can be very boring. I still think, even if it is in musical phrase, not following a meter and rhymes in poems doesn't work that well.

Although, the first principle, I think goes a bit out of symbolism when you give direct treatment of the 'thing'.



Paul Gauguin

Finally an artist who was middle-class or above, before he left of course, all the others are poor or just junkies and I was starting to lose hope.

Although, I would like to travel as much as he did and you can clearly see the symbols of an angel beating what looks to me like a herald, I don't particularly like his paintings because they do not look very realistic and there are some odd shapes in people and things. The one that I did like was 'The seed if the Areoi' because the background and the flowers are very nice.




Pictorialist photography

In my opinion, photography should've been taken as an art form right from the beginnign without the need of movements trying to prove what photography could do and to prove that it could be art. Photography is not at all like paintings but you can still do a lot with a photograph and play with all the possibilities.

It is in fact, no less artificial than any other art form, less that some actually, I think. And some of these pictures are very cool and they should've been enough to prove that photography could be an art form at that time.

I really likes 'Struggle' because it looks just like a painting. Also, I liked Stieglitz's 'Spring showers', 'Winter' and 'Dirigible' a lot because they look very dark and interesting and taken from a horror flim. Stieglitz is probably my favourit pictorialist photographer.

Symbolism in music

• Arnold Schoenberg

To be honest the song made me laugh a little because, first I can't understand a thing but also because the lady seems to be so off tone with what the instruments are playing, but you get the idea of sprechstimme . Although, it gets stuck in your head and you start to like it after a few.