StephenGill, Dr.
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SYMBOLISM WITH A SPECIAL REFERECNCE TO MY POETRY
Stephen Gill
The accurate representation of the feelings, thoughts,
moods, sights, ideas and a variety of emotions is a serious enigma
which poets face. Their representations are about personal opinions that are in the mind. Without going into philosophical or logical
depth, I call them the god within. Language is inadequate to bring out the god within,
because this god is intangible. In addition to a mastery over the language, communicators
need special skills and movements of hands, raising of
eyebrows, changing tones, shrugging of shoulders and other gestures. Still, communications are not fully accurate and are
likely to be misunderstood. Verbosity
does not help either. Communication becomes more difficult in poetry because it
is a form of condensed expression.
Therefore,
poets use symbols to represent the god within at a higher level
and also to add beauty. They take the help of metaphors to
represent the god within. Aristotle said that metaphor is the soul of
poetry. Metaphor is a figure of speech that is used for implied comparison. I have used this device freely in my poetry,
such as “sickles of bigotry,”1
; “pilots of words”2 ; “snakes of personal migraines”3 ; “the albatross of intolerance”4 ; and
“a pyramid of justice”5 to
quote a few.
Symbol, a higher form of
metaphor, comes from the Greek word sumbolon that
means sign, mark and token. In Greek sumballein means to put together.
Synonyms of symbolism include typology, metaphor and analogy. Symbolic poetry is visible expression of something
that is invisible-- a marriage between abstraction and concrete. This device is used to express the hidden meaning veiled by the obvious
meaning-- to express something that is abstract as tangible. This device is also used to express
something that is tangible in another tangible way.
Poetry is
not a set of general statements. It is not verbosity either. It is a short cut to convey the message. The poetry that is symbolic may have several
layers of meaning that is like peeling off the layers of an onion. It is also something like
music that produces a mood. A poet may pick up colors for non-verbal communication
that goes beyond
ink. A skilled designer of a logo or web site would be
careful to select colors because they have impact on the mind and eye. He may
keep in view that the impact of colors differs from culture to culture.
Words and
punctuation marks as well as traffic signs, such as red lights that mean to
stop, are some examples of obvious symbols.
A red rose, a traditional symbol, signifies love and fidelity. Among other traditional
symbols, a cross
signifies a follower of Christ and the
sunrise, a new beginning. The picture of
scales is often used
to represent justice. Traditionally, a lion represents bravery, a dove represents peace and purity, and the water, life. The symbol of winter or snow suggests aging
and decay.
Creative
artists also develop new,
individual or personal symbols, mainly because
they do not want to use cliché or trite
expressions. Some of these individual symbols may pose problems for readers. To
understand them, a reader may have to go over the poem more than once with close attention.
I have
presented several of my poems in this vein. I often use the wind in various
forms to symbolize my god within. Among
several, I would like to select “To a Dove”6 that appears on
page 132-133 and “Flight of a Dove”7 on pages 134-135 of the Revised
Edition of Shrine. I do not want to dissect them because
dissection mars the beauty. Here is one quote:
I am
often greeted by
the bursting flutters
of my dove
while rambling the
rayless resort
of the fears
from the scamps
of my surrounding. 7
Another
poem, “Unfair Ophelia”, is from Songs
Before Shrine.8 Ophelia is a character from Hamlet by Shakespeare. Or
take the case of “My Muse” on page 45 of the same collection:
Today
the jealous
winds outside
smite my windows
desperately
like a being
insane
while inside I am
at peace
with her.9
An
example of non-traditional symbols appears in the first canto of The Flame which is the longest poem on modern
terrorism in English. In the Preface of The
Flame, and also elsewhere, I call my poems robins and explain how I care
and nourish them. 10
Trees and
forests have appeared in different cultures as symbols. The oak has been used to signify strength, and
maple to signify balance and promise. I have taken the
assistance of several objects from nature to use this device. Tree is one of
them. When I read my poetry objectively or as a critic after publication, I
find that forests and trees have appeared often, such as “Maple
trees of compassion”11 ; and “tree of your
amazement”12 . From Shrine, my collection
before The Flame, the notable lines
are: “the dignity of the palm tree”13
; “the sobriety of the jungles,”14 ; “pineapples of happiness”15
; “the jungles of thoughts”16 ; “the maple leaf of freedoms”17
; “gangers grow a jungle of night”18 and the list can go on.
In the
first line of canto fifteen of my longest poem, The Flame “The battered body of the abode/ of my flame
/flaring in the dark…”19 builds up a picture of the night that is dark.
The night suggests loneliness and symbolizes several aspects associated with
darkness. The Flame is presented as a
human who has been murdered brutally and its parts severed. The mention of the battered body is to conjure
up horrific emotion in the reader. The whole scene suggests fear, brutality and the darkness in the soul.
Symbolic
devices provide oxygen to poetry. Symbolism becomes also a sort of double talk,
not as strutting in a confused way. It is not a talk like that of a drunk person or the distorted vision of a myopic. It is a
deliberate attempt to say something other than what it literally means. For
illustration, here
is a poem “The Meechlake
Fish”20 from Songs Before Shrine, where words like
crocodiles, fish, bathers, banks, and
waters present a scene of the sea to
express another story associated with
the Meech Lake Accord, an important part of Canadian political
history. This Accord was signed by ten premiers and the prime minister in 1987.
The Meech Lake Accord divided
To express
the inexpressible, the god within, symbolists usually select objects from
nature, usually flowers and oceans. These objects become symbols, because they
are suggestive of something else. Through this device, a poet makes the god
within, tangible. My poem “The Matchlake Fish”, is an example.
Symbolists
also refer to a major literary movement of the second half of the 19th
century from
Neverthess, the
literary experiments of Symbolism cannot be dismissed. Among these, the most
important is free verse, which resulted from a long process of dissolution of
traditional forms and has now become an important department of poetry. The
attacks the Symbolists faced were often undeserved. There existed indeed a “fin
de Siecle” or decadent” affectation and a foggy or
atmospheric type of art that were identified by some with Symbolism; but at no
time since the Renaissance have so many experiments been carried out on the
poetic values of words, and no
school of poetry
has so much enriched the technical means of poets.”21
Though the Symbolist Movement in literature
refers to poets in the later part of the nineteenth century, it has its
precursors in several religious scriptures. Symbolic literature is old and
easily traceable from the time of Plato in 400 B.C. During these years, the
literature of
Although it
is hard to pinpoint when the symbolist movement started in the history of
literature, it was, actually, Jean More'as's article,
published on September 18, 1886, in Le
Figaro, which made the literary world conscious of a new trend already
developing in France. Many attempts by different writers were made to trace the
uniform factors in the writings of the symbolists, but they failed.
In spite of their differences, the Symbolists were
unanimous in calling Charles Baudelaire
(1821-1867), their precursor. His poetry is neither philosophizing nor
didactic. The Symbolists appreciated Baudelaire's theory of "correspondences
between the senses." The same theory was applied by Rimbaud in his
sonnets. Rimbaud, like Ghil, showed extraordinary interest in the use of neologism in his poetry. It
is Mallarme (1842-1898), who brought symbolist poetry to its near perfection. His Divagations (1897) is an
important document for the symbolists. His Tuesday gatherings influenced many
younger artists who attended them. Mallarme's poetry is
an example of elusiveness. A rhythm or tone suggests the whole atmosphere. He prefers to use suggestive language and
words in their etymological sense. As a result, his symbolism has become more
private and obscure. Like Verlaine, he considers music to be
of fundamental importance in poetry. His disciples Paul Valery
who knew him personally, and Wallace Stevens, carried on his tradition.
Wallace Stevens, an American, adapted his master's
technique to the general vein
of his country's atmosphere and temperament. Paul Verlaine (1844-1896), another symbolist and also a
lyrical poet, had no theory on art to
offer. He scoffed at epithets like symbolist and decadent. But
regarding technique he had definite views which he expressed in "Art Poetique" (1874). Like Mallarme'
he believed that poems should be musical. He
preferred ambiguity to precision and a language suggestive rather than
descriptive.
The Symbolists
reacted against the poetry of that time, the Realist theatre and the Naturalist
novel in order to express with the aid of symbols the mystery of existence. The
movement was started in
The Symbolists avoided political and
public themes in their works. They rejected society and ceased to be the
official voices of their country. Therefore, With symbolism, art ceased in truth to be national and assumed the
collective premises of Western culture.
Its overwhelming concern was the non-temporal, non-sectarian, non-geographic and non-national problem of
the human condition.22
In France, men of letters
were often public figures, and literature, to a great
extent, remained a part of public life—just the opposite of the normal practice
in England. One of the chief factors
which gave impetus to this new movement of symbolism was the complete estrangement of
certain poets from the tone and attitude
of public life around them. G.S. Fraser believes In fact the traditional values of much French
literature—values of clear, rapid, sometimes superficial reasoning, of incisive generalization, of dignified
rhetoric, and pointed wit, while real virtues in
themselves were, as Baudelaire noted, anti-poetic virtues.23
The Symbolists gave art the status of
religion—it became mysterious with its own distinct language different from
that of prose. The artists became completely isolated from the general public
and their art also became more vague. They revised
their works repeatedly and thoughtfully, and so made them more and
more difficult for an average reader to understand. This is the reason why even years after its publication, Ulysses, a novel, is read
only by a microscopic minority of the intelligentsia. The Symbolists, who
attempted to bring art and life together, did not usher in a new simplicity and
clarity, but rather a new confusion. Their master, Mallarme,
himself is a difficult poet. Rimbaud is
also obscure. "He speaks in a trance like an inspired
drunkard."24
The symbolists revolted against Parnassian
poetry, yet, retained some of its concepts such as 'art for art's sake' and insistence on technical perfection. They
scoffed at the scientific view of art as it was preached by Zola and
Maupassant. They attempted chiefly to use a language that was suggestive and
evocative rather than informative. They
emphasized the careful selection of words, colours, tones, rhythms and phrases. Connotations became more
important than simple denotations. Even denotations in their hands became
tangled and vague. In art they became impersonal and believed in control. They
employed the techniques of music in their art, for they believed that by its
nature music reaches a deeper level of the unconscious. They
learnt a good deal from the musical techniques of Wagnerian drama. Mallarme and Verlaine considered
the musical elements in poetry to be of fundamental importance.
More'as
claims that Symbolism is a reaction of the soul in literature against all those
literary movements which represent things that only visibly exist, exactly as
they exist. It is, he says, a reaction against a type of language that says
rather than suggests. Symbolism, in practice, would free literature from the
bondage of rhetoric, externals, regular beat in poetry, from the cataloguing of
nature and the chance accidents of daily life, freeing the literary arts of all
elements of materialism, which hitherto have prevented the disengagement of the ultimate
essence of soul from its insignificant
externals."25
In the theatrical world presentation of
symbolism posed problems. But Antoine's production of Ibsen revealed
the possibilities of symbol on stage. Ibsen also influenced directly some
English dramatists. Like Ibsen, the English dramatists combined symbolism with
naturalism. Apart from Ibsen's plays, Villiers de 1'
Isle-Adam's Axel was staged and Maeterlinck wrote wonderful plays suffused with
a dream-like atmosphere. Alfred Jarry's highly satirical Ubu Roi (1896)
caused an uproar.
The Symbolists did not make much contribution
to fiction. Eduard Dujardin,
a minor writer, influenced James Joyce. George Moore was friendly with Joyce. On
his return to
Whereas the previous writers
deliberately emphasized
their symbols, the modern symbolists simply give
the symbols and leave the rest to the imagination of the readers. They want the
symbols themselves to speak. Also, their symbols form part of the whole structure
of their work. To understand a novel, a play or a poem, it is very important to
realize first the significance of the symbols used in it. Karl and Magalaner elaborate the difference between the traditional
and the modern use of symbols:
The difference between the two is one of emphasis, and in that area we
have, perhaps, the chief difference between the traditional use of the symbol and the twentieth-century application. In
that area, we can ascertain one of the difficulties the modern reader has when
he comes to A Portrait, or Ulysses, Mrs. Dolloway,
The Waves, Women in Love, Nostromo, etc., without any
awareness that these novels will proceed differently from the ones he is
probably accustomed to. More carefully
arranged novels, he comes to realize, need more careful
readers. The modern novelist often merely gives the materials and lets his
symbols and other devices suggest whatever the reader can make of them.
Furthermore, his symbols themselves will not always be clear—they may be in
many different forms: short incidents, casual
images, broken conversations, minor characters, peripheral scenes. And
as the now list gains in imaginative power and maturity, he refines his symbols
and makes their importance more subtly provoking. For the novelist realizes that
as new areas of knowledge open, new symbols are needed for expression; so the
reader must be on close guard or a major theme or motif may be lost; and in
novels like Nostromo, A Portrait, Ulysses, Point
Counter Point, and A Passage to India, which proceed by motifs and recurrent themes, one loses entire sequences if he is not completely
alert to what the novelist is doing.26
Often a distinction is made between
allegorical and symbolist writings. Freud's analysis shows that no symbol can
be interpreted in one way. The literary figures agree with Freud on the point that
symbols cannot be tied down to a single meaning. On the other hand, an allegory has only single
possible interpretation.
To
use Mr. Lain Fletcher's distinction between allegorical and symbolical poetry,
if a poem is allegorical, 'it works out the details of something already given, something which has received prior
justification as theology or political theory, an organization of intuitions
and judgments. Valuation of this will depend on the structure of the poem, its
music, its detail. With the poetry of symbol none of these things is of the
first importance. A symbol has been defined
as the expression of some otherwise inexpressible truth; and it is not
on the verbal music, or on the incidental
illustrations of the theme, that judgment will depend, but on the
insight which the poem accords into the life
of the soul.27
Arthur Symons, a poet-critic and also a
prominent member of the Rhymers Club, holds an
important position in the realm of modern
English Literature. During his stay in
Although unlike in method, both recorded the search for a
psychic reality which had little to do with exterior reality. Symons' book,
like Freud's, gave a name to the preoccupation with modes of half-uttered or
half-glimpsed meaning which, as we can see clearly enough now sixty years have
passed, was a principal direction in modern
thought.28
Symons' book acquainted the English
people with new literary developments in
Yet it should be remembered that Yeats was not being freshly introduced
to the nature and function of the
literary symbol of his new contacts; his study of magic, his work on
Blake, and his natural
literary inclination had already brought symbols into his early
works. The Wanderings of Oisin is
sufficient evidence. In a
letter to Katherine Tynan, written
toward the end
of 1888, he spoke of the
poem as saying several things under disguise of Symbolism.31
Among Indian poets, Gitanjali of Tagore stands out in
the gallery of symbolists. The name of W.B. Yeats conjures up with Tagore.
W.B.
Yeats, an aristocrat by birth, was a good friend of Rabindanath
Tagore, another aristocrat by birth. Yeats blue-pencilled Tagore’s Gitanjali and also nominated him for the Nobel Prize. Yeats was already a Nobel Laureate when he
nominated Tagore. Yeats was a great admirer of
Charles Baudelaire as a symbolist.
The poems that greatly mirror the influence of the Symbolists,
include Yeats’s two
Whereas W.B. Yeats wrote partly under the influence
of the French Symbolist Movement, Rabindranath Tagore wrote Gitanjali under
the influence of the centuries-old tradition of
I believe that personalities are shaped by the hands
of the environment as pots are shaped by the hands of potters Yeats was shaped to a great extent by the
French symbolists and Tagore by the early religious
poetry of
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1 Gill, Stephen. Shrine.
2-----------------. Songs
Before Shrine.
3Gill. op.cit, p.114
4Gill, Stephen. The Flame.
5--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------,
p.98
6----------------. Shrine.
7----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------134-135
8Gill, Stephen. Songs
Before Shrine.
9---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------,
p.45
10 ---------------. The Flame.
11------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------,
p.41
12
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------,
p.48
13 Gill, Stephen. Shrine.
14 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------,
p.41
15 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------,
p.44
16---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------,
p.46
17--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------,
p.55
18--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------,
93
19 ---------------. The Flame.
20 Gill, Stephen. Songs
Before Shrine.
21 Collier’s Encyclopedia,
22 Balakian,
Anna. The Symbolist Movement.
23 Fraser, G.S. The Modern Writer and His World.
24 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------,
p. 42
25 Karl,
Frederick R. & Magalaner, Marvin. A Readers Guide to Great Twentieth-Century
English
Novels.
26 Hone,
Joseph. W.B. Yeats.
27 Fraser, G.S. The Modern Writer and His World.
28 Symons,
Arthur. The Symbolist Movement in
Literature.
29 Hone,
Joseph. W.B. Yeats.
30 Fraser, G.S. The Modern Writer and His World.
31 Nathan,
Leonard E. The Tragic Drama of William
Copyright
©Stephen Gill
stephengillgazette@gmail.com