The Strangeness of the Symbolists

For years, now, I have to tried to understand the Symbolist movement that appeared in France during the late 19th Century, that went on to influence art, poetry, fiction, and theatre in Europe, in the United Kingdom, and especially in pre-revolutionary Russia. My difficulty was that no one seemed to have any down-to-Earth, non-contradictory definition that could match the work of so many varied poets and writers. Any attempt to define Symbolist intentions felt like pouring raw egg yolks into an open picture frame, and then mounting that frame on a wall: the result, inevitably, was a mess.

Book after book failed to give me any firm concept of what the Symbolists had tried to do, but I gained a sudden insight when I returned to a book I had read earlier in the century, and had, for the most part, forgotten: THE TECHNIQUES OF STRANGENESS IN SYMBOLIST POETRY, by James L. Kugel (Yale University Press, 1971.)

Kugel admits that the term "Symbolist" is vague, contradictory, and perhaps inappropriate. Yet what the Symbolists did have in common was an evocation of Strangeness:

"These... poems have within them the seeds of two central ideas.... The first, briefly stated, is this: that the mysteriousness [of these] poems is a peculiarly Symbolist phenomenon -- that, in fact, after seventy-five years of this kind of verse, what we mean by the term Symbolism is this poetic strangeness.... The second idea is that... Symbolism changed our whole notion of what poetry is, changed the reader's expectations in approaching a poem, and that is where modern poetry begins."

Kugel offers, as "the first poem to achieve this symboliste effect in the French language," a well-known verse from 1853:

EL DESDICHADO
Gérard de Nerval.

Je suis le Ténébreux, -- le Veuf, -- l’Inconsolé,
Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la Tour abolie :
Ma seule Étoile est morte, -- et mon luth constellé
Porte le Soleil noir de la Mélancolie.

Dans la nuit du Tombeau, Toi qui m’as consolé,
Rends-moi le Pausilippe et la mer d’Italie,
La fleur qui plaisait tant à mon cœur désolé,
Et la treille où le Pampre à la Rose s’allie.

Suis-je Amour ou Phœbus ?... Lusignan ou Biron ?
Mon front est rouge encor du baiser de la Reine ;
J’ai rêvé dans la Grotte où nage la Syrène...

Et j’ai deux fois vainqueur traversé l’Achéron :
Modulant tour à tour sur la lyre d’Orphée
Les soupirs de la Sainte et les cris de la Fée.

[GÉRARD DE NERVAL ŒUVRES I. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Librairie Gallimard, 1960.]

My roughest of rough translations:

"I am the tenebrous -- the widower -- the inconsolable, the prince of Aquitaine in the destroyed tower: my one Star is dead, and my constellated lute bears the black sun of Melancholy.

"In the night of the Tomb, you, who comforted me, give me back Posillipo and the sea of Italy, the flower that pleased so much my desolate heart, and the trellis where the Vine and the Rose unite.

"Am I Love or Phoebus? Lusignan or Biron? My forehead remains red from the kiss of the Queen; I have dreamt in the grotto where the Siren swims...

"And twice, as conqueror, I have crossed Acheron: modulating, in turn, on the lyre of Orpheus, the sighs of the Saint and the cries of the Fay."

Kugel explains that the poem is full of "allusions to nowhere." Before the Symbolists arrived, poems often alluded to historical, mythical, religious places, events, or figures that readers would have recognized. As an example, he quotes from Shakespeare's THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. Literate readers would understand this passage as a reference to THE AENEID:

"In such a night
Stood Dido with a willow in her hand
Upon the wild sea-banks, and waft her love
To come again to Carthage."

What Gérard de Nerval has done, instead, is to mention people and events for which readers have no reference. He offers no clues to context or meaning, no way to make sense of his clearly-stated yet mysterious allusions. This makes the reader feel like an "eavesdropper" who has "caught snatches of a conversation" that will never become clear.

Kugel adds:

"This is the genius of Nerval's poem, and the fundamental discovery of the Symbolist poets. They were the first to seek out systematically this effect of witheld information, recognizing in mystery a source of beauty and depth not known in poetry before....

"The point of the poem is that we read it again and again, that we read it until the simple message -- veuf, inconsolé, Mélancolie -- is enough for us to glide on, until we can get so much into the poem that we can accept all its words and love their mystery."

Reading de Nerval's poem again made me think of a later poem, equally famous, equally filled with "allusions to nowhere":

THE LISTENERS
by Walter de La Mare.

‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
Of the forest’s ferny floor:
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Traveller’s head:
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
By the lonely Traveller’s call.
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
’Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head: --
‘Tell them I came, and no one answered,
That I kept my word,’ he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone.

[THE LISTENERS AND OTHER POEMS. Constable and Company Ltd, London, 1912.]

Like "El Desdichado," "The Listeners" explains none of its mysteries. Who is the Traveller? What was his promise? He seems aware of the ghosts, but what connection do these ghosts have to the people he had hoped to find? Where and when does any of this take place?

Walter de la Mare provides no answers, but his poem, like the poems of the Symbolists, remains lodged in the mind primarily through its denial of answers.

As I read Kugel again, I realized that I understood what the Symbolists had intended, because I had heard the echoes of their Movement all throughout my reading life. I had only needed one clear guide to show me what I already knew.

Too Stupid to Understand Symbolism

Because I lack the intellect to be intellectual, I read essays and manifestoes on some aesthetic movement (in this case, 19th Century Symbolism), only to find vague terms, contradictions, definitions that go 'round and 'round until they plunge into their own event horizons, and a linguistic fog that gives me a clear impression of misty conditions, but of not much else.

"What do you see out there?"
"Nothing."
"That's the weather."

As a result, I find more value in looking at methods. Methods, at least, are clear on the page; methods, at least, can be studied and applied. What sort of words does a writer use? How are they used? Are the words abstractions, or specific nouns? Are they specialized, common, technical, archaic? Is the prose or verse primarily visual, primarily sonorous, or a mixture? Highly metaphorical, or plain?

These approaches can be taken apart, examined, learned, even by someone with my own limited intellect. So please forgive me if I set aside scholarly books of academic intent, and read what the writers and poets have to say in their own stories and poems.

Thomas M. Disch, THE GENOCIDES

Richard Powers, 1965. Click for a better jpeg.

In 1984, science fiction writer Thomas M. Disch surprised many readers when he published a full-blown novel of the supernatural, THE BUSINESSMAN: A TALE OF TERROR. Yet right from the start of his writing career, he had used horrific imagery and nightmarish concepts in many stories: in "Descending" (1964), in "The Roaches" (1965), and especially in his first novel, THE GENOCIDES (1965).

This American book followed the example of many British "catastrophe stories" of the kind written by H. G. Wells, John Wyndham, and J. G. Ballard. Like Ballard, Disch took this form into new, personal directions; also like Ballard, he wrote without compromising the logic of his concept. Ballard's catastrophes offered his protagonists a psychological fulfillment, a liberation of the mind and emotions. Catastrophe in THE GENOCIDES offers escalating horrors and a cruel, inescapable extinction for humanity.

That a book so disturbing, so bleak, should be so light on its feet and effortlessly readable is a testament to the writer's artistry. The prose maintains a tonal consistency from beginning to end; it is clean, clear, understated, even when it deals with topics like mass murder and cannibalism:

"The fish were all eaten, and Blossom began gathering the bones. The moment everyone had been waiting for -- the dreadful moment of the main course -- could be put off no longer. While Blossom brought round the bowl of steaming polenta into which were stirred a few shreds of chicken and garden vegetables, Lady herself distributed the sausages. A hush fell over the table.

"Each of them had a single sausage. Each sausage was about nine inches long and three-quarter inch in diameter. They had been crisped over the fire and came to the table still sizzling.

"There is some pork in them, Alice reassured herself. I probably won't be able to tell the difference.

"Everyone's attention turned to the head of the table. Anderson lifted his knife and fork. Then, fully aware of the solemnity of the moment, he sliced off a piece of hot sausage, put it in his mouth, and began to chew. After what seemed a full minute, he swallowed it.

"There, but for the grace of God . . . Alice thought.

"Blossom had turned quite pale, and under the table Alice reached for her hand to lend her strength, though Alice didn't feel an excess of it just then.

"'What's everyone waiting for?' Anderson demanded. 'There's food on the table.'

"Alice's attention drifted toward Orville, who was sitting there with knife and fork in hand, and that strange smile of his. He caught Alice's look -- and winked at her. Of all things! Or was it at her?

"Orville cut off a piece of the sausage and chewed it consideringly. He smiled beamishly, like a man in a toothpaste ad. 'Mrs. Anderson,' he announced, 'you are a marvelous cook. How do you do it? I haven't had a Thanksgiving dinner like this since God knows when.'

"Alice felt Blossom's fingers relax and pull out of hers. She's feeling better, now that the worst is over, Alice thought.

"But she was wrong. There was a heavy noise, as when a bag of meal is dropped to the ground, and Mae Stromberg screamed. Blossom had fainted."

By focusing on what interests him, and by leaving out the rest, Disch keeps the book in swift motion. (In his SF IMPULSE review from January 1967, Brian Aldiss called this method of telling a story in "rapid bursts," a "staccato" style; Disch makes the method work well.) The result is a short book that covers a lot of ground rapidly. Boring, bloated writers of today could learn from this.

The book gained positive reviews by Aldiss, Judith Merril, and E. C. Tubb. Its best-known detractor was Algis Budrys, who, in his review column in GALAXY, December 1966, complained about the influence of J. G. Ballard (despite Ballard's very different methods, intentions, and style). He accused Disch of being an "apt pupil" of Ballard, and supposed that THE GENOCIDES "reflects a deep and dedicated study of the trappings of a book everybody says is good." (As if Disch had no imagination and purpose of his own.)

This non-review, an insult to Disch, an insult to Ballard, should have been a terminal embarrassment to Budrys. It brought up the notion that science fiction "takes hope in science and in Man," and proclaimed that optimism should win out over pessimism. (As if science fiction had any reality beyond the writings of disparate individuals with their own perspectives on life and art.)

For me, this matter of "pessimism versus optimism" is not only a waste a time, it avoids a more searching question: "How much of the real world do we expect in a science fiction story?"

For Disch, as for so many writers associated with the magazine NEW WORLDS during the 1960s, science fiction was a forceful way to confront reality. Like Aldiss, Ballard, Michael Moorcock, John Sladek, and Norman Spinrad, Disch was compelled to face the realities of contemporary politics, economics, media, imperialism, warfare, art; these provided the energy, the drive, to write science fiction that engaged in speculation without ignoring the crises and possibilities of the day. Disch, like the others, took on this challenge in his own fashion, and worked in his own ways -- ways that often echoed or contrasted with methods used in the past.

For example: when H. G. Wells wrote THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (serialized in 1897, published as a book in 1898), he made explicit connections between his invading Martians and the imperialism of his own times; he also had his Martians killed by an earthly ecosystem for which they, given their evolution on a distant planet, were unprepared.

Disch implies more than he spells out, but those who read THE GENOCIDES might be reminded of American imperialism, of American military force being used to impose the will of American corporations (like United Fruit) over the economic and agricultural needs of third world countries. At one point in the book, Disch includes a bureaucratic memo written by the unseen aliens that reads exactly like a corporate request for "excessive force" to be used against the natives.

Unlike the Martians of Wells, the aliens of Disch target not only human beings, but the entire ecosystem of planet Earth. Their monoculture crop out-competes and smothers local plants, and leads to the extinction of animals and birds. Again, readers of the book might be reminded of corporate assaults on natural environments here and now.

There is more to the book, and more that makes it hauntingly relevant to the American "polycrisis" of today. Disch offers no heroes, no experts with sudden solutions at the height of disaster; instead, he pits ordinary people of the cities against ordinary people of the countryside, authoritarian religious communities against atheists and outsiders. He shows the danger of stupid people who take on "leadership," and the frustration of basically-decent people whose efforts to help each other are thwarted by aggressive morons. America, in this book, is divided, conflicted in ways familiar to us now, and like today's America, as it faces collapse, it lashes out against its own people and against the world, with isolating policies, pointless retreats into solipsistic fantasy, and of course, genocide.

Above all, genocide.

Ripeness is All

EDGAR:
Away, old man; give me thy hand; away!
King Lear hath lost, he and his daughter ta'en:
Give me thy hand; come on.

GLOUCESTER:
No farther, sir; a man may rot even here.

EDGAR:
What, in ill thoughts again? Men must endure
Their going hence, even as their coming hither;
Ripeness is all: come on.

GLOUCESTER:
And that's true too.

Exeunt

Robert Silverberg, DOWNWARD TO THE EARTH

Frank Frazetta, 1970. Click for a better jpeg.

Having waded for too many years through too many stories by Robert Silverberg, I was done with suffering. Yet in 1979, I had set one of his books above the rest: a book with a consistency of tone, a concern for visual detail, and an unsuspected emotional engagement that cracked his robotic facade.

The book was DOWNWARD TO THE EARTH, from 1969. Reading it now, I find it better than much of the supposedly ambitious work he had written up to his retreat to the safe zone in the 1980s, and vastly better than his bland, smoothly competent yet risk-free, emotionally-detached, endlessly-repetitive stories from that decade onward.

DOWNWARD TO THE EARTH is more than competent. I could recommend it as one model for anyone who wants to craft a visually-detailed story with understated, economical, straight-forward and transparent prose.

A typical passage:

"Generally now the mist was light at ground level, and often there was none at all for an hour or more. But it congealed far overhead as an unbroken veil, hiding the sky. Gundersen became accustomed to the barren soil, the angular branches of so many bare trees, the chilly penetrating dampness that was so different from the jungle’s humidity. He came to find beauty in the starkness. When fleecy coils of mist drifted like ghosts across a wide gray stream, when furry beasts sprinted over glazed fields of ice, when some hoarse ragged cry broke the incredible stillness, when the marchers turned an angle in the path and came upon a white tableau of harsh wintry emptiness, Gundersen responded with a strange kind of delight. In the mist country, he thought, the hour is always the hour just after dawn, when everything is clean and new."

Another:

"The mist came in close, bringing jewels of frost that hung from every tree, every hut; and by the brink of the leaden lake Gundersen cremated Cullen’s wasted body with one long fiery burst of the fusion torch, while sulidoror looked on, silent, solemn. The soil sizzled a while when he was done, and the mist whirled wildly as cold air rushed in to fill the zone of warmth his torch had made. Within the hut were a few unimportant possessions. Gundersen searched through them, hoping to find a journal, a memoir, anything with the imprint of Cedric Cullen’s soul and personality. But he found only some rusted tools, and a box of dried insects and lizards, and faded clothing. He left these things where he found them."

Hardly brilliant, but never bad: clear, functional prose.

Yet even as I read this book with respect (and relief -- I had not wanted to squirm and yawn through another typically-repetitive Silverberg typing session), I still felt the nagging tug of other writers with styles more lively, more engaging, more compelling.

For all of its undeniably good qualities, the prose of DOWNWARD TO THE EARTH is impersonal. It has a job to do, and it gets the job done, but with little hint of any human face at work behind the pages.

What do I mean by hint?

Quite often, you can sense the personality of a writer through the play of metaphor. Consider this:

"Evening shadows came across the spaceport in long strides. It was the one time of day when you could almost feel the world rotating. In the rays of the sinking sun, dusty palms round the spaceport looked like so many varnished cardboard props. By day, these palms seemed metal; by evening, so much papier mache. In the tropics, nothing was itself, merely fabric stretched over heat, poses over pulses."

That was the opening of VANGUARD FROM ALPHA (in the UK, EQUATOR), which is nowhere near the best work by Brian W. Aldiss, but which does come to life with sparks of metaphor in a recognizably Aldiss way. Yet the visual detail in DOWNWARD TO THE EARTH is not presented metaphorically, but through direct comparisons with creatures, plants, and landscapes that we know.

Nor does Robert Silverberg (in this book at least) allow himself to write omniscient comments, like those of Brian Aldiss; instead, he remains within the focus and thoughts of his protagonist. This is good traditional story-telling, but it also means that he cannot offer passages like this one, from Elizabeth Bowen's "The Disinherited."

"Autumn had set in early. While the days were still glowing, the woods took on from a distance a yellow, unreal sheen, like a reflection from metal; their fretted outlines hardened against the blond open hills that the vibrations of summer no longer disturbed. In the early mornings, dew spread a bright white bloom between long indigo shadows; the afternoon air quickened, but after sunset mists diluted the moon. The first phase of autumn was lovely; decay first made itself felt as an extreme sweetness: with just such a touch of delicious morbidity a lover might contemplate the idea of death."

These are not the observations of the story's protagonist, but the comments of Elizabeth Bowen "the implied narrator." Silverberg's approach in DOWNWARD TO THE EARTH avoids any such glimpse behind the mask, which is good for the story, but which also limits what he can write. In this case, I agree with Silverberg, but I also find Bowen more fun to read.

Writers can also reveal their personalities by their choice of rhetorical methods. Here is Avram Davidson, being himself in THE PHOENIX AND THE MIRROR:

"Cyprus was another world.

"The city of Paphos might have been designed and built by a Grecian architect dreamy with the drugs called talaquin or mandragora: in marble yellow as unmixed cream, marble pink as sweetmeats, marble the green of pistuquim nuts, veined marble and grained marble, honey-colored and rose-red, the buildings climbed along the hills and frothed among the hollows. Tier after tier of overtall pillars, capitals of a profusion of carvings to make Corinthian seem ascetic, pediments lush with bas-reliefs, four-fold arches at every corner and crossing, statues so huge that they loomed over the housetops, statues so small that whole troops of them flocked and frolicked under every building’s eaves, groves and gardens everywhere, fountains playing, water spouting....

"Paphos."

Note the disciplined use of alliteration (dreamy with the drugs), parallel clauses (marble yellow, marble pink, marble green), assonance (veined marble and grained marble), the nouns and verbs that make the passage vivid (statues that loom, statues that flock and frolic).

You could argue that rhetorical exuberance would have no place in a sober, sombre story like DOWNWARD TO THE EARTH, and I would probably agree. One of the stylistic strengths of that book is consistency of tone, which in itself is a fine achievement. (How many writers fail to maintain consistency, even within paragraphs? I could name a few....)

As I have said many times, the ways to write badly are limited and easy to label, but the ways to write well might almost be infinite. Objectively, I would say that Robert Silverberg wrote DOWNWARD TO THE EARTH quite well, but subjectively, I still find more to savour, more to love, in the styles of other writers.

Energy and passion in prose are qualities hard to measure, harder to describe, but for all of their will-o'-the-wisp nature, I know them, I feel them when I see them. I can also feel their absence, which is one of the many reasons why Silverberg, even at what is clearly his best, has never been someone I could read with passion.