There are similarities between impressionism literature and symbolism literature. They are both literary schools of formalism. But there are also differences between them, mainly because Impressionism opposes the use of symbolism to express ideas and tends to describe feelings. Some poets, who are usually regarded as symbolism, are actually more inclined to impressionism. For example, the poem The Art of Poetry by Paul Welland, one of the leaders of symbolism, is not so much about symbolism as an impressionism declaration.
French literary historians regard the Gongur brothers as the representatives of impressionism novels, and pierre loti, another French poet and novelist who is regarded as the representative of impressionism, indeed, some of his poems "capture the instant feeling and impression" like impressionism painters, but not all of his works are like this. In the 2th century, some French writers were seriously influenced by Impressionism, and only the vague pursuit of feeling and impression remained in some novels.
In some works by Oscar Wilde and others in Britain at the end of 19th century, the impressionism tendency is obvious. From 1912 to 1918, a group of British and American poets in London, like Impressionism, emphasized the description of feelings and impressions, but they claimed to pursue a "clear and tough" image. They think that the ambiguity and ambiguity of the image are the remnants of romanticism, so they attack it with all their strength. However, the theoretical differences are sometimes difficult to detect in creative practice. For example, many works of American poets such as Ai Lowell, Xi doolittle and John Gauld Fletcher in the Imagist school are inseparable from impressionist poems.
The situation is similar in German literature, and literary historians can't identify impressionism schools with clear boundaries. Headed by Detlef von Lillinkron, including Richard Daimer, Gustav falk and others, it is considered to be the most obvious impressionist school in Germany, but they emphasize on truthfully recording the feelings and experiences of things to poets, so they are close to naturalism. In addition, many poems such as Hugo Feng Hofmannsthal and Arno Holtz also have impressionistic tendencies to varying degrees.
impressionism also refers to a kind of literary criticism, which is called impressionism criticism, that is, perceptual criticism. This kind of criticism refuses to make a rational and scientific analysis of the works, but emphasizes the critic's aesthetic intuition. It holds that the best criticism is only to record the process of the critic's feeling of beauty, and at most to point out how the impression of beauty was produced and under what conditions. Therefore, impressionism criticism is a kind of vague and unclear criticism of "explaining poetry with poetry", and it is often written in the form of prose poetry, so literary criticism becomes an art category that is not essentially different from literary creation, and the person who writes this kind of criticism is often a poet or writer himself.