The earliest schools of western modernist literature and art appeared. Generally speaking, the period from 19 to the first world war was called pre-symbolism, and from then on to the 1940s it was called post-symbolism. Because it lasts the longest, it has a far-reaching impact.
This school first rose in the French literary world in the middle of19th century. Baudelaire published his poetry anthology Flowers of Evil in 1852, which marked the rise of symbolism literature. 1866, the poet Jean Mora officially raised the flag of symbolism in his works. He put forward that "symbolic poems put a perceptual coat on thoughts" and advocated that the thoughts and feelings in poems can only be expressed through symbols. At that time, poets such as Bo Han, Wei Erlun and Malamei also devoted themselves to the creation of this genre. Later, it began to spread to Europe at the end of19th century, and it had practical repercussions in various departments of literature and art, with various forms of expression.
The aesthetic foundation of symbolism is the combination of agnosticism, voluntarism, irrationalism and mysticism of Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche in the phenomenal world. They denied the realism, romanticism, naturalism and other creative methods in literature and art at that time, tried to make literature and art break away from the ugly and morbid reality and become a place where the spirit could be placed, and tried to build an "artificial paradise" by virtue of art. They believed that the real essence of real things and phenomena was hidden in the "other world" that science and reason could not grasp, and only "truth" and "beauty" existed. The purpose of poetry is to imply the existence of this nothingness, the theme of the work and the development of things, and to convey the author's hidden thoughts and feelings. In literary creation, they emphasize personal psychology, feelings and images, and demand to use obscure language to stimulate people's mysterious associations, and then form images to achieve the effect of communicating the two worlds. In order to show people's thoughts and images in detail and accurately, they advocate expressing mutual induction of feelings through "counterparts" and conveying "transfer of feelings", so that the expression and pursuit of "synaesthesia" become some style symbols symbolizing literature. They emphasize subjective illusion, imagination and suggestion, while ignoring objective objects, realism and organization, so the images they create are often chaotic and trivial. But some poems are vivid and full of music; Some are subtle and ingenious, giving people room for aftertaste.
Symbolism in the field of drama and plastic arts generally pays attention to the mysterious effect of virtuality, symbolism and fantasy, which has great subjective randomness and patchwork, and has obvious formalism tendency, such as the creations of Belgian maeterlinck, French Shawan, Jenny, Donglai and French Stick. Ye Zhi, Pound, Eliot, Rilke and Montalais are the representatives of late symbolism. Symbolism, which appears in the face of anti-tradition, has certain pioneering significance in the scope of subject matter, expression techniques and artistic skills, and should be affirmed.