4 Chair Jean - Log Paradise en = pe. 4-22 Lom Reradise. "LOST PARADISE vanada: The Montreal suse o¢ Emeadd 4995 1. leah is ate wt Gt apa fhe rent ead te io is SI Rl La ral Aa cae ag ia her ee i ef bie res rsa Py Pi’ Ba The hang rh of ¢ ol! Sa 2a one ie Beg Ponon JEAN CLAIR ‘Spmbolism spanned a clearly defined period, from September 18, 1986. the date of Jean st manifestations of the new “avant-garde” Moréas's manifesto. tn 1905. the year of the movements. Caught hetwevn the end of Naturalism and the start ofour own era of modernity Symbolist ws ike Janus: looking bark towards the past with «nostalgia thot unexpectedly revived « ost of divinities angels and hernes whose wings and haloes Courbet an his ied thought to have amputated and doused for good (1 paint what User, | have never sect angels”) looking forward to the fete with ansiely,refisng to arknostedge the triumphs of entific progress or the achievements of « now universal technology: Painting and sculpture can create through allegory the most iapeobable chimeras. Thus dil the bieycle unite with winged gois that celebrated its grace and lightness: thus did the motorear rear up, @ reinvented Pegasus, a fourstroke phaeton erossing the star-studded heavens: thus was the digging of the Simplon Tunnel hailed by sprightly Minervas landing this vielor of man's luminous genius over darkness. And. more general the whole of turn-othe-century poster art was shot through with similar couplings, evidence ofthe mysterious marriage between Act and Science, Somewhat more problematic, given the new iconographieal repertoire of telegraph poles and wires, vas the resuscitation ofthe classical allegory of Good Tings, of the Bonns Bventas* once proclaimed by the angels. In his Hextories, Herodotus tell tow the Liphesians. besieged by Croesus, dedicated their ety to Artes and, in ode to hartess the sildess’s power, stretched a wire between her temple outside the walls and the city’s Fortifications, Long before Chappe and Edison, the hucaan min! fad one the deeam of the telegraph How: though, youl the early messengers’ luminons wings he replace by the dull handare of the Telegraph and Telephon Company? Right atthe height of the Spmbolis rnaement Teornp in Halal and Pais le hasan in his paintings for the Pacis Hotel de Mille pictured poles and wises among fields of narcisi. while later Marvel Ductamp. at the fd of his eareer but stil unter the spell of the melancholy telegranis of Jules Laforaue. insertel these same poles into his Large Gass. in order as he put ito afse by eletreity ‘The Commandments ofthe Bride”. Bride, indeed: in 1912. Ssmbolis’s Immaculate Virgins its “endless Eves", ha! detinitves espoused the new century wth ardour and conetion giving Diath to future “Eves” who seemed rather to preigure the rohat of Mefnopais than to reilrate the nebulous creatures sparmed by Burne-Jones and Fermand Khnopt. Should we ao. in fact see Symbolism as the most cireet heir of NatirphiTasophie? From Goethe's scientific writings to Stviners, ftom the revries of Sweienborg tu thse ofthe LOST PARADISE aRosierncians, the European sensibility was governed by a single Wea, the very idea that, through the spread of Wagnerism. became the souree of Symbolism, But the inter- connectedness of the world, the unique ssmbiosis between man and nature that Romautiisin Iuad celebrated to the point of postulating (rz, in the wurk of Novalis, Rute, Kerner and Siler) the spirituality of plans fvhich were sil to think, suller and recollect tke humans) ‘of suggesting that odours are not recognized by. us but rentembered in sone inmer way Through the empathy of selective affinities, that rolours are reflected in us according to an order cther than the one discovered ly Newton — in sum, the eantinnous interwoven grid linking realm to realm, mineval to vegetable, xegetabe to wnimal, the Has that was energized and inhabited by comples “correspondences”. which gave meaning fo cach of is phenomen, allthis began to dissolve and come apart under the staggering blows dell ly Positivism, The Symbulist movement, in fret, merely attempted te save what it could, Jules Vere often used Inumour to highlight those moments when man's primordial eunidenee fn his environnvent ‘what we would call today his ¢vological niche. previously seen as the perfect relletion a his ‘ovn subjectivity began fo give way to the pessimist. bitter and disenchanted questioning of a world now foreign. indilferent and governed by laws quite alien to himself. As in Le Reyow cert, for example. shea Miss Camphel's raptures over the stormy sea threaten to rival the poetry of Coleridge or Wordsworth: “The sea really doesnt have a particular eolowr. It is nothing but a vast reverberation of the sky. It can best be grasped when iis really ough, when il is dark, livid. threatening.” Then gomes the voice of the ol scientist breaking the spell “The sea! A chemnieal combination of hydrogen an oxygen. with two and a half percent sodium chloride! There is truly nothing finer than the grandeur of sodium ehloride!” It was to hall the growing ascendancy of a world evidently disillusioned and ndforsaken, hat also devoid ofall magic. good or bad. tha Symbolism em played its sorcery — visual, musical and poetic. Could words. colour sound, succeed in reuniting what seienve had torn asunder? I was at as the final bastion agains! loss of meaning. att for at's sake as the ultimate response to the emptiness of appearances. A question often asked of students when discussing Art Nouveau also arises in relation to Symbolism: Was it @ decadent movement ora modern ne? To what extent was i Like the Nazarene and Pre-Raphaelite movements that preceded ia movement af renavatio TW whal estent, Hiraugh its chromatic andl formal audacites. one of venoxatio® Was ithe conclusion of the nineteenth century or the beginning ofthe twentieth? Couched in these lerms, the question becomes gratuitous. An illustration othe fundamental Nielesehean idea that modernity is simply the most acule fear of decadence, Ssmbolism grew ont of a Kulturpessinisnvus Uhat undoubledly sax the end ofthe eentury asa decline, but a decline of ‘uncvalled brilliance. I} was a movement in which nostalgia and neophilia were inextricable interwoven, ‘The gengraphieal foundaries of Sembolism are also well defines and ils principal proponents accurately caalogued. Are we still convinced of its purportedly Eastern origins? In any case, Paris was learh nol the movements capital, Despite Mallarmé ad a Few olhers from Moréas lo Vidé-Grilfin, despite the Nabis and Gauguin, despite Mauriew Denis, Paris LOST PARADISE1nd te, hi itn. he i Thea sal rs ao i ae in de Tata EB abe all 9 tent mea OS en Br Bln remained al Une periphery of Sembolis ane nol xt is ceatee, AF fel point there has to be them Brussels is the obsious choive: capital of Lorsainw situated halfway bebeeen the ‘Germanic and the Lalin works, erasitational centre linking the German, Austeo-flungacian a! Froneh empites. i artl as a ramp, & Uhoroughtive. Flemisb-lorn writers tke Rodentia, Max Elskamp. Vorhavren ane! Maeterinck all spuke aumizable French, but gave ‘oie in a language voloure hy German Romantivism, And the same was true ofthe painters, from Khiaopl to Spitiaert, They were to Symbolist aestheties whal Grevisse, ‘Tobler= Lomunalzsch and Saussure were to the Freneh language: more Catholic than the Pope boulsiders tore concerned wih Finguistiepurily han the natives themselves, border guards, protectors of grammatical and lexical orthodoxy. But it vas also they, these interpreters of cultural inflow, who set the tone, who propasted ~ especially Les XX — the spirit that pervaded the Munich and Vienna sessions, Finally to indicate the fll extent ofa movement Ua so spre seross the whe of Europe we must sess the contribution of the Sli vrld, of Russia, and the Baltic countries. of Lithuania. Poland, and ofcourse, Seaninavia Tn these countries bates touched by Impressionist. the transition tom Naturalism to tho Iiterate and cultivated painting that Symbolism stove to be eas very smoot. Far fom the nae ~ or at least simple ~ empiriositiism of Sones dseples, far from the Imps sionism of minor sensations, which invariably amounted to nothing more than a lay af decorative effects Symbalise, rom Edvard Munch to Marcel Duchamp. proclaimed the right «paiting to remain “oteligent, tobe. as it had een inthe past, the objet ofa lege that which must be read if its message is to he grasped. understood with the mind and not simply experienced through the senses, This need fora suratve ar, for an at that informs and exalts. was ll the more ‘cute once it had been identified as a weapon in the rise of nationalism and the struggle ‘agsinst foreign influence, The visual heritage of legends, sagas. stories and epie poetry was explored and re-expoited by puters and soulpors with the same fervour that Heer. atthe avn of Romenticism, had delved into the treasures of ermeular anew to only German ational Bul let us lok a the question in even beer ters. Asa general attitude of mind symbolism i a od as humanity ite withthe desire tv rypreseat, by sound an image, an objet, even an odour the rei of something nw longer per yplible. ae the development of language. so quintessentially somdbols inthe set sense —syo-fofon —in that it establishes an apparently necessary link. either natural or arbitrary: between the world uf signs ant the world of objects ot ideas. An examination of Symbolism as/a movement ~ born fusing the nineteenth century al its height al the fin de siete and gone by the outbreak of Ue Creal War ~ cequites First disposition of the human mind to that we attempt to esplain why the universal and abitin symbolize vas laid claim: to at thal particular moment in history yy & major current in Western thought, was illustrated ina reumserihed bndy of work. was exalted and systematically explored. Why? And why there? None ofthe few and alveady remote exhibitions dlovoled to European Spmolism attempted to define the Srmbolist episteme with any LOST PARADISE 9precision, but limited themselves to simply lining up, alphabetically or chronologically. both creators and works Antithetical pairs such as idealism and realism, spiritualism and positivism, individualism and collectivism. fantasticism and rationalism cannot explain adequately either Ue distinction between Spmblisa and! Romanticism or Symbolisy’s comprehensive nature, Io fact, of all the movement's features, this last was the most truly innovative. Symbolist ideology: whieh influenced literature, musi. the visual arts, architecture, furniture design, the decorative arts — even the humanities and pure sciences — was actually the last great style (ithe sense that Meyer Sehapizo uses tbe word)’ lo have come out af Europe. the last neralizedatlempl to respond to the crisis affecting every facet of intellectual endeacour whetlier in the rvalm of aesthetics or of knowledge, Final fare of Natimphilosophve. sybolisiy was the last movement te provide a general explanation of man's postion in the natural vorld, 1 vlfer @ unified sision in which Uve human being and the total world organism, the Gesonitorganisws. were seen as interdependent, And ifthe Wagnerian notion of the total artwork, the fusion ofall the atts and all the great moths. was the Weal towards wsbich it strove, it was because, fitful to the notion of gyan-Polon. Ssmbotism saw it as the only way of combalting the compertmentalization, the fragmentation of knowledge that inereased as scien atsanced, anil the steady erumbling of confidence as the few remaining corners of darkness were illuminated by the ight of Reason But what, precisely, was ita response tot The only opposing of antithetical pairs that seems relevant here isthe one that contrasts symbolism ~ that which waites mind and world = with its opposite, diabolism (#e-bolos) literally that which divides, separates, opposes ‘The “tiabolicl” approach is the one that offers an indefinite analysis ofthe constituents of the world, an infinite dissolution of priual unity: itis the nevation of the world's coherence, of its ineligibility The symbolic approaeh. on the other hand, is the attempt to regain this lost unity: the effort to attain the greatest possible degroe of intext: its aesthetic lea) can nly be the total work of art, the Gessmtiastienk. ‘One cannot hit wonder, then. about the Basie fat that the diaboteal ~ Faustian? — clement ¥48 one ofthe permanent and constitutional features ofthe Symbolist movement, reappearing regulary like tbe seeond se ofa enin. Twas present in the work of the proton Soombolsts~ Gara. Pose, Blake ~and herame more widespread among the post-Romantie generation ~ Baudelaire, Rops. Barley Sureily” Buti abso re-emerged a he attr en of the movement, vith the followers of Ue Golden Dawa, This swinging back and forth ~ diaholisn/sembotism, separation/reunion, lucierisreiemptinn, decadence and fallrebirth and salvation ~ vas actually @ manifestation ofthe crisis mentioned earlier marked by the isruptions inthe usual structure of language fil, plastic, musial, ete.) accompanying the emergence of the new techno-seientiie culture thal ad develope between the Enlizhten- ‘mept andthe fst Industrial Revolt. This new culture no longer posite lange as a fink ~ ether anslagical, as during Une Renaissance. or logical. 8 suring the asia! period bul as the dissotation of those inks in favour of a formalized and autonomous discourse. developing quite independentty af any connections betwen man and his inaer seo" man LOST ARADISE 2. Se Myer Sai, SOW Tar nd Phinphy ft De os ge Be p.m Se Pa, Cre ew ire ie {Se Shel lL aoe Pa ae embiti he wher iar, Lak 1 fit “Lanes” p181H Saad ra,“ id ete ue Bai de ae aptgue "Pas 2 9p- 1s and the external surld, The sign Herame more obscure, evolving intw aw analyte tool, an agent operating upon malty: i no longer symbelized irmemorial ies, either natural or » joined him to the world, rational, thal man, through his use of language. hal come to bole Anil this was the sourve ofthe elles stream of extcism and rj Léon Bloy.ditected at Progeess. From them. but als from eteators such as Delacroix, De Quincey Osear Wile and tt ime the violent denunciation of scence andl technology. Diabotism, the exaltation of Evil the fore tha leads othe dissolution, the unbinding of the oH relationship of confidence that existed between man and the world, between man and colours, shapes, odours, fruits and clouds: itis everything that reduces all those realities Urough which we grasp the pleasure ofthe moveent to formulas, diagrams, equations, ‘Symbolism, by contrast. was a final and desperate attempt to testoe the natural and ancient links that man, asa thinking being, hat established withthe world. irst ofa with Wagner anil Nietzsche. it was a massive rersinder. & monumental recapitulation of the woe of man’s fabulous, legendary, wth! heritage. so vch in angible prot ofthe existence of Une links. Then, with the great sensualists hike Baudelaire and Debussy. it became an exploration of the correspondences that, in buunan physiolog. ate evidence of the harmony thal exists etweon our senses and the outside worl, Finally it nas the search, eonducted at the frontiers ofthe normal an the pathological. fer those onder states of consciousness that offer inklings ~regueloss of all the disietegrations and uncertainties ofthe feeling, thinking subjoet~of that irreducible heaet of our being that wcll variously the “sprit”, the “mind” and the “imagination” Like the Romanticism of which i was the dee deseendent, Symbolism vas ronted in the eult ofthe Selt. But it remained distinet from it othe exten tha this cult —the obsession with the individual mind, dandism, the exquisite estenuations of eawatreity ~ became the “only possible response to the threat posed to fin-de-séele man's narcissism by the invasion of an autonomous technical world that functioned quite separately from him and that was neither the reflection of his being, nor even the instrument of his power, Jul the cause of bis éstinetion. The hypertrophy of the Self atvocated by Symbolism was rater the response inthe realm of artifice ~ of paint. seulpture. musie and poetry ~ to actual disintegration in the realm of physical and psychologieal reality: of which this Sells the stim, In 1947, Fret pointed! out that curing its history hums aatvissismt hats wnt three profound humiliations." The frst the cosmological humiliation, came front man’s discovery that he was not the centee of the universe: the abandonnient of geveentristt east Aon, from Bautelaire to rman out from the heart of ereaion. The second. the biological humiliation, eame with the publication of Darwia’s writings: ta was tot made ia Go's image but was the dubious an fortuitous result of the ewlution of species. The third humiliation was psychological: the diseovery ofthe unconscious (which, we showld recall. predated Freud's theories) showed thal san is nol even master in his own house: his ego is nothing but the exposed area of a ast submerged psychologieal continent of which te Knows nothing. If we accept the analysis offered by Freud — perhaps the last of Symbotion’sintellectoat heirs = we ca. see his work san attempt to heal the wounds infited! on nareissism by the sift auvance of scien LOST PARADISEknowlege (Darwin was only litle oMer thon Freud). And it wis artiste acti rather than Scientific investigation, that was needed to effect a successful eure by restoring man tothe three crucial positions he was conselaus of having lost: to the eentre ofthe eosmos through the reactivation of the apts. lies and religious ssneretsms Ut had been the souree of this pre-eminence; tothe top of the biologie hierarchy through the exerese~ unique in the animal kingdom ~ of his eapacity for abstract thought and his avareness a his oxn deat: and to the heart of his own self through the presentinent ofthe most deeply buried seerets of his soul Mer the collapse of veigion and polis. it was art, inthe Final analysis, that was selected in witinis the science af the mint fo serve as the “satsfcton through phantasy”. {at would assuage ncdern man's wounded pride, Its a the “ull narcosis”. the “sedative solution that bears a striking resemblance to Symbolist ideolo As 4 form of resistance to the negative effects of scientific progress. then, ast acquired an imporiance unprecedented in any other century: the practice of art became a J. initiates (Seburé} aud high priests edt, and its practitioners wise: mew (Kiclor (Péladan). [nthe end. it vas the ritualized pralice of art asthe substitule for a fas-vaning religion that would lead tothe regeneration of humanity: the ideology ofthe new man — which ‘emerged at the dawn of the twentith century and which assumed subsequently so many diferent guises, all rooted i Symbolist theories ~ nourished the various branches of ‘modernist thought and took on forms both regressive (in Fascismy and Nazism, for example whose Spmbolst component. disseminated through magazines like Ostara. has often been underestimated) and progressive (socialism, anthroposophy and naturist) ‘This brief analysis has shown usa Symbolisi that began with the wandng of culture, and the associated recourse to the treasures of fable and religious syneretism, and ended at the dawn of the twentieth century with the emergence. ofan impulse towards regeneration We have also seen how: in the interim, fied with the knowledge that the Self was Beyond recovery, inherent “unknowabiliy” as writers ofthe tine, from Ernst Mach to Frew! had proclaimed ~ the search for identity and the need to construct @ sosial constiousness encouraged the more towards independence and the regaining of the homeland, Iwas this shrinking ofthe self. moreover. experienced as the agony of a eing hitherto sovereign orer Doth itself andthe emiverse. that, aided bythe sprend of Darwinism. sparked the reactive fea ewe farms, giving birt ta sital and profuse explosion. ofthe eyes of fife in infinitely pell-mell to marvels and monsters, eaving far behind imaginings of Uhe wurst borrors and alloving glimpses, hehind the veil of appearances, of the existenee of worlds invisible, or. as ‘Narvel Duchamp would soon put it, “extra-retinal™ This mownment of expansion, of een greater diffusion, led Srmbulism (o occupy ner territories, 1o emylay nex methods ~ not just the illustrated book, typography: but also Uhealre, dance, the newborn art of photography: and, from the minute il first emerged in 18965, film, We tuday still owe much lo all Uhese creations ~far re than we onee hous b 12 Se Semund Fra. Ciao and te rota os an Re and Les Si ahh th Po an jo