I'm assuming everybody knows what a symbol is - something that by general consensus and common usage represents something else. One example is the use of combinations of letters to represent elements in the periodic table. I particularly like the less obvious ones (usually derived from their Latin names), such as Hg for mercury (hydrargyrum), K for potassium (kalium), Na for sodium (natrium) and Pb for lead (plumbum). Then there are those commonly recognised symbols or signs representing the twelve phases of the zodiac. Apparently I'm a water-bearer, whatever that signifies (and I'm not particularly interested).
Beyond those sets of symbols and other internationally-accredited codes that transcend languages - such as road traffic signs and hazardous product labelling - many everyday objects have acquired symbolic significance in our culture: the red rose is generally recognised as a symbol of love, the dove and the olive-branch as symbols of peace and the scythe or sickle as a symbol of death and so on. Colours are also frequently employed to express common emotions - red variously for love, anger or danger, green for both jealousy and naivety/naturalness, blue for sadness, white for purity, yellow for happiness, orange for spirituality, purple for power, black for doom.
I could go on, although I won't. Symbolism is rife in art, in religious iconography, in heraldry, in secret societies...
Under The Eye
...but what about in mainstream literature? Allegorical narrative is symbolism of a sort, as in the Fables of Aesop, Dante's Divine Comedy, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress but Symbolism as a literary movement, and a poetic one at that, is generally conceded to be a French phenomenon, originating somewhere around the middle of the 19th century and being driven by such luminaries as Baudelaire, Mallarme, Valery, Verlaine and Rimbaud. Their common artistic or poetic intent was to strive to evoke mood rather than meaning through their work. They were interested in the emotional spell language could cast. They rejected the prosaic in favour of poetry rich in private symbols whose power came from being suggestive rather than explicit.However, there was a lesser-regarded but equally interesting and important school of symbolist poetry which flourished 1,500 miles to the east in Russia, which counted Fyodor Tyutchev, Dmitry Merezhkovsky and Vladimir Solovyov among its first exponents.
Solovyov (1853-1900) was an historian, philosopher and theologian as well as being one of the principal poets of the Symbolist movement in pre-revolutionary Russia. Something of a natural mystic, he was a friend of Dostoyevsky and an inspiration to Tolstoy as well as to the three Bs' Bely, Blok and Bryusov, writers who gained international recognition in the first quarter of the 20th century.
Solovyov, like all seekers after truth, had flirted with Buddhism, Gnosticism and Rationalism before electing to champion intuition over realism. He developed a philosophy in which regard for the eternal feminine force of the universe, also known as Sofia (or divine wisdom), was paramount. He recognised Sofia as his Muse and his greatest poetry celebrates his apprehension of her in the beauty of the natural world.
The Sound Of A Distant Waterfall
The distant sound of a waterfall
Resounds through the forest,
Quiet joy wafts down
From the dusky heavens.
Just the white vault of the sky
Just the white dream of the earth...
My heart obediently fell silent,
All my worries drifted away.
Slow joy,
Everything flows together as in in sleep,
The distant sound of a waterfall
Resounds in the silence.
Vladimir Solovyov
Solovyov sought a unifying principle in everything, and longed for a mystic union with creation - he borrowed the Greek word syzygy for this sense of alignment; (a most useful word in both hangman and scrabble). Sad to report that for all his learning and undoubted artistry, Solovyov died a homeless pauper at the dawn of the 20th century. He was buried in Moscow's Novodevichy Convent, now a UNESCO World Heritage site, which may be some small compensation for his soul. His fellow symbolists wrote works of an increasingly apocalyptic nature in the run up to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and afterwards reconsidered their artistic position, most accepting Soviet Realism as the inevitable corollary to the seismic historical events in their motherland.
I'm going to round out this blog with a short new poem of my own - not itself an exercise in symbolism, you'll be relieved to know, but indirectly prompted by the above, suggestive of the act of writing (which is the setting down of symbols on paper after all) and a collection of old ink bottles...
His Nibs
A haunting of empty ink bottles,
closest a man of letters comes
to conceding his addiction.
Nightly in his study,
his dark habit an outpouring
of quixotic fiction.
He, who never fumbled
under farthingales or tumbled
in the wain, writes with compunction
of unrequited love; his yearning
for Sofia, inscribed in trembling hand,
thrills in the depiction.
Thanks for reading. Have a good week, S ;-) Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to Facebook
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