Arthur Symons
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia:
Top
Arthur William Symons
(born Feb. 28, 1865, Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire, Eng.died Jan. 22, 1945, Wittersham, Kent) English poet and critic. He contributed to The Yellow Book, an avant-garde journal, and edited The Savoy (1896). His Symbolist Movement in Literature (1899), the first English work championing the French Symbolist movement in poetry, summed up a decade of interpretation and influenced William Butler Yeats and T.S. Eliot. His poetry, mainly disillusioned in feeling, appears in such volumes as Silhouettes (1892) and London Nights (1895). He also translated the poetry of Paul Verlaine and wrote travel pieces. After a nervous breakdown in 1908, he produced little apart from Confessions (1930), a moving account of his illness.
For more information on Arthur William Symons, visit Britannica.com.
Symons, Arthur (sĭm'ənz), 1865-1945, English poet and critic. A leader of the symbolists in England, Symons interpreted French decadent poetry to the English through translations, criticism, and his own imitative poems. He was editor of the Savoy (1896) until a period of insanity, movingly described in his Confessions (1930), incapacitated him from 1908 to 1910. After that time he was forced to live very quietly. His chief critical work is The Symbolist Movement in Literature (1899); others are The Romantic Movement in English Poetry (1909) and studies of Baudelaire, Blake, and Rossetti. His poetry includes Days and Nights (1889), Poems (1902), and Love's Cruelty (1923).
Bibliography
See biography by K. Beckson (1987); studies by J. M. Munro (1969) and L. W. Market (1987).
American Heritage Dictionary:
Top
Sy·mons
, Arthur 1865-1945.British poet and literary critic who translated many French symbolist works into English and wrote The Symbolist Movement in Literature (1899).
Quotes By:
Top
Arthur Symons
Quotes:
"What we ask of him is, that he should find out for us more than we can find out for ourselves. He must have the passion of a lover."
Wikipedia on Answers.com:
Top
Arthur Symons
Arthur William Symons (28 February 1865 – 22 January 1945), was a British poet, critic and magazine editor.
|
Contents
|
Life
Born in Milford Haven, Wales, of Cornish parents, Symons was educated privately, spending much of his time in France and Italy. In 1884–1886 he edited four of Bernard Quaritch's Shakespeare Quarto Facsimiles, and in 1888–1889 seven plays of the "Henry Irving" Shakespeare. He became a member of the staff of the Athenaeum in 1891, and of the Saturday Review in 1894, but his major editorial feat was his work with the short-lived Savoy.
His first volume of verse, Days and Nights (1889), consisted of dramatic monologues. His later verse is influenced by a close study of modern French writers, of Charles Baudelaire, and especially of Paul Verlaine. He reflects French tendencies both in the subject-matter and style of his poems, in their eroticism and their vividness of description. Symons contributed poems and essays to the Yellow Book, including an important piece which was later expanded into The Symbolist Movement in Literature, which would have a major influence on William Butler Yeats and T. S. Eliot. From late 1895 through 1896 he edited, along with Aubrey Beardsley and Leonard Smithers, The Savoy, a literary magazine which published both art and literature. Noteworthy contributors included Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, and Joseph Conrad.
In 1892, The Minister's Call, Symons's first play, was produced by the Independent Theatre Society – a private club – to avoid censorship by the Lord Chamberlain's Office.[1]
In 1902 Symons made a selection from his earlier verse, published as Poems. He translated from the Italian of Gabriele D'Annunzio The Dead City (1900) and The Child of Pleasure (1898), and from the French of Émile Verhaeren The Dawn (1898). To The Poems of Ernest Dowson (1905) he prefixed an essay on the deceased poet, who was a kind of English Verlaine and had many attractions for Symons. In 1909 Symons suffered a psychotic breakdown, and published very little new work for a period of more than twenty years. His Confessions: A Study in Pathology (1930) has a moving description of his breakdown and treatment.
Verse
- Days and Nights (1889)
- Silhouettes (1892)
- London Nights (1895)
- Amoris victima (1897)
- Images of Good and Evil (1899)
- Poems in 2 volumes.(Contains: The Loom of Dreams in the second Volume, 1901), (1902)
- Lyrics (1903) An anthology of poetry published in the USA only.
- A Book of Twenty Songs (1905)
- The Fool of the World and other Poems (1906)
- Knave of Hearts (1913). Poems written between 1894 and 1908.
- Love's Cruelty (1923)
- Jezebel Mort, and other poems (1931)
(A Selection of) Essays
- An Introduction to the study of Browning (1886)
- Studies in Two Literatures (1897)
- Aubrey Beardsley: An Essay with a Preface (1898)
- The Symbolist Movement in Literature (1899; 1919)
- Cities (1903), word-pictures of Rome, Venice, Naples, Seville, etc.
- Plays, Acting and Music (1903)
- Studies in Prose and Verse (1904)
- Spiritual Adventures (1905)
- Studies in Seven Arts (1906).
- Figures of Several Centuries (1916)
- Cities and Sea-Coasts and Islands (1918)
- Studies in the Elizabethan Drama (1919)
- Charles Baudelaire: A Study (1920)
- Dramatis Personae (1925 - US edition 1923)
- From Toulouse-Lautrec to Rodin (1929)
- Studies in Strange Souls (1929)
- Confessions: A Study in Pathology (1930). A book containing Symons's description of his breakdown and treatment.
- Wanderings (1931)
- A Study of Walter Pater (1932)
References
- ^ Arthur Symons: 1865–1945 - A Chronology accessed 15 January 2009
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
External links
 |
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Arthur Symons |
 |
Wikisource has original works written by or about: |
- Poems by Arthur Symons
- Snakeskin: The Arthur Symons Page: includes several poems by Symons
- Works by Arthur Symons at Project Gutenberg
- London nights Cornell University Library Historical Monographs Collection. {Reprinted by} Cornell University Library Digital Collections
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
Post a question - any question - to the WikiAnswers community:
Copyrights:
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 1994-2012 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more
Columbia Encyclopedia
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/.
Read more
American Heritage Dictionary
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Read more
