sembolizm

Sembolizm, or Symbolism, is a late 19th-century artistic and literary movement that sought to convey inner realities and transcendent truths through symbols, metaphor, and suggestion rather than direct depiction. It originated in France in the 1880s as a reaction against naturalism and realism, with Jean Moréas’s Symbolist Manifesto in Le Figaro (1886) helping to define its poetics. The movement spread across Europe and beyond, influencing poetry, drama, painting, and music.

Central to Sembolizm is the primacy of mood, idea, and the ineffable over literal description. Practitioners used symbolic language, musicality of expression, and rich, often ambiguous imagery to evoke states of mind, mysticism, and the beyond. Works frequently employ dreamlike, mythic, and atmospheric imagery, drawing on spirituality, eroticism, and art for art’s sake. The aim is to suggest meanings rather than to spell them out, inviting readers and viewers to interpret multiple levels of signification.

Key figures include French poets such as Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine, with influence from Charles Baudelaire; the drama of Maurice Maeterlinck; and Russian Symbolists like Dmitry Merezhkovsky, Zinaida Gippius, and Valery Bryusov. In the visual arts, painters such as Odilon Redon and Gustave Moreau helped translate Symbolist ideas into image, while in music composers like Claude Debussy and Alexander Scriabin drew on its sensibilities.

Legacy of Sembolizm lies in its impact on Modernism, informing later movements such as Decadence, Surrealism, and various strands of modern poetry and theater. It is often studied as a precursor to approaches that favor symbol, ambiguity, and the exploration of psychology and myth, though it has faced critique for mysticism and perceived vagueness.