A picture of Impression of Sunrise by French painter claude monet (1840 ~ 1926) was exhibited in an art exhibition held in Paris on 1874, which was ridiculed by critics. From then on, this school of painters got the name of "Impressionism". This name conveys the creative attitude of some painters in this school. They believe that the painter's task is only to record the direct and perceptual impressions they experience when observing objects, rather than to process the painted objects according to knowledge beyond direct visual experience. Therefore, impressionist painters try their best to capture the light feeling given by the scenery, rather than describing the inherent morphological characteristics of things, and the outlines of objects in their works are often blurred.
Since then, impressionist painting has spread to other art categories, mainly music. The representative figure of impressionist music is French musician Claude Debussy (1862 ~ 19 18). Many of his works are so-called "acoustic poems", which "describe" the feelings and impressions caused by things (mainly landscapes) through the superposition of timbre and melody fragments.
Literary historians believe that impressionism entered literature after the 1970s of 19. However, there are different opinions on how impressionism is expressed in literature and which writers and poets belong to impressionism. To be sure, some writers in western Europe did have a creative method similar to impressionist painting and music at the end of 19 and the beginning of the 20th century, that is, they devoted themselves to capturing vague and fleeting sensory impressions. Due to the particularity of literary creation, impressionism in literature pays more attention to how this instant feeling experience can be transformed into an emotional state. Just like the Impressionists in painting and music, they are also opposed to the logical or rational refining and processing of the relationship between the things described, so they themselves have become the intermediary between conveying external stimuli and instinctive reactions. Impressionist literature and symbolism literature are similar, and they are both literary schools of formalism. However, there are also differences between them, mainly because Impressionism opposes the use of symbolic means to express ideas and prefers the description of feelings. Some poets who are usually regarded as symbolism are actually more inclined to impressionism. For example, the famous poem The Art of Poetry by Paul Welland, one of the leading figures of symbolism, is not so much symbolism as impressionism declaration.
There has never been a clear-cut impressionism in the history of French literature. Literary historians regard the Gonggur brothers as the representatives of impressionist novels and call their style "artistic writing", which is characterized by the description of fragmentary impressions and the uncertainty of meaning. But most of their works are exquisite in writing and elegant in style. Pierre loti, another French poet and novelist, is regarded as a representative of Impressionism. Some of his poems are really like impressionist painters, but not all of them.
Many western literary works believe that some French writers in the 20th century were deeply influenced by Impressionism, such as the novels of Sidoni-Gabriel Colette, the poems of Anna de Noyes and Leon-Paul Fargot, etc. In particular, Jean Giraudoux tried to "get rid of" the theme and plot clues in his early novels, leaving only the vague pursuit of feeling and impression, and was regarded as the successor of the typical impressionist style.
Many literary historians believe that Impressionism is a very powerful trend in English literature at the end of 19, but its characteristics are not obvious because it coexists with aestheticism and symbolism. In some works of Oscar Wilde and others, the tendency of impressionism is more obvious.
London 19 12 to 19 18 imagist poets, like impressionism, emphasize the description of sensory impressions, but they claim to pursue a "clear and tough" image. They think that the ambiguity and ambiguity of images are the lingering wind of romanticism, so they attack with all their strength. However, theoretical differences sometimes exist in creative practice.
In German literature, the situation is similar. Literary historians can't identify impressionist schools with clear boundaries. 19 At the end of the 20th century, a group of poets headed by Stefan Georg advocated "Impressionism" in their magazine "Pages of Art", but in fact they pursued aestheticism. Another group of German poets, headed by Detlef von Lilienkren, include Richard Daimer and Gustav. It is considered to be the most obvious impressionism in Germany, but they emphasize recording the feelings and experiences of things truthfully to poets, so they are close to naturalism. In addition, many poems, such as Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Arnold Holtz, are also impressionistic to varying degrees.
Impressionism also refers to a kind of literary criticism, which is called impressionism criticism, that is, perceptual criticism. This criticism refuses to make a rational and scientific analysis of the works, but emphasizes the aesthetic intuition of the critics. It believes that the best criticism is only to record the process of the critic's feeling of beauty, and at most to point out how and under what conditions this impression of beauty is produced. Therefore, impressionism criticism is a vague criticism of "interpreting poetry with poetry". Moreover, it is often written in the form of prose poems, and literary criticism becomes an artistic category that is not essentially different from literary creation, and the person who writes this criticism is often the poet or writer himself. Franciscans of France, Jules Lemaitre, Virginia Woolf of England and others have written many impressionist comments, which are essays with special themes.
Impressionist criticism existed long before the appearance of impressionist painting. In fact, impressionist criticism has existed since its own literary criticism, such as that of British writers William Hazlitt and Charles Lamb. However, this criticism was very popular in western Europe at the end of 19. It was during this period that some literary theorists, such as Walter Horatio Pater in Britain, tried to establish the aesthetic basis of this criticism theoretically. So impressionist literature and art are related to impressionist criticism.