Parnassianism (or Parnassism) was a French
literary
Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to includ ...
style that began during the
positivist period of the 19th century, occurring after
romanticism
Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate ...
and prior to
symbolism. The style was influenced by the author
Théophile Gautier as well as by the philosophical ideas of
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer ( , ; 22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher. He is best known for his 1818 work ''The World as Will and Representation'' (expanded in 1844), which characterizes the phenomenal world as the prod ...
.
Origins and name
The name is derived from the original Parnassian poets' journal, ''
Le Parnasse contemporain'', itself named after
Mount Parnassus
Mount Parnassus (; el, Παρνασσός, ''Parnassós'') is a mountain range of central Greece that is and historically has been especially valuable to the Greek nation and the earlier Greek city-states for many reasons. In peace, it offers ...
, home of the
Muse
In ancient Greek religion and mythology, the Muses ( grc, Μοῦσαι, Moûsai, el, Μούσες, Múses) are the inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge embodied in th ...
s of
Greek mythology
A major branch of classical mythology, Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the Ancient Greece, ancient Greeks, and a genre of Ancient Greek folklore. These stories concern the Cosmogony, origin and Cosmology#Metaphysical co ...
. The anthology was first issued in 1866 and again in 1869 and 1876, including poems by
Charles Leconte de Lisle,
Théodore de Banville
Théodore Faullain de Banville (14 March 1823 – 13 March 1891) was a French poet and writer. His work was influential on the Symbolist movement in French literature in the late 19th century.
Biography
Banville was born in Moulins in Allier, ...
,
Sully Prudhomme,
Stéphane Mallarmé
Stéphane Mallarmé ( , ; 18 March 1842 – 9 September 1898), pen name of Étienne Mallarmé, was a French poet and critic. He was a major French symbolist poet, and his work anticipated and inspired several revolutionary artistic schools of ...
,
Paul Verlaine
Paul-Marie Verlaine (; ; 30 March 1844 – 8 January 1896) was a French poet associated with the Symbolist movement and the Decadent movement. He is considered one of the greatest representatives of the ''fin de siècle'' in international an ...
,
François Coppée
François Edouard Joachim Coppée (26 January 1842 – 23 May 1908) was a French poet and novelist.
Biography
Coppée was born in Paris to a civil servant. After attending the Lycée Saint-Louis he became a clerk in the ministry of war and won ...
,
Nina de Callias, and
José María de Heredia.
The Parnassians were influenced by Théophile Gautier and his doctrine of "
art for art's sake
Art for art's sake—the usual English rendering of ''l'art pour l'art'' (), a French slogan from the latter part of the 19th century—is a phrase that expresses the philosophy that the intrinsic value of art, and the only 'true' art, is divorc ...
". As a reaction to the less-disciplined types of romantic poetry and what they considered the excessive sentimentality and undue social and political activism of Romantic works, the Parnassians strove for exact and faultless workmanship, selecting exotic and (neo-)classical subjects that they treated with rigidity of form and emotional detachment. Elements of this detachment were derived from the philosophical work of Schopenhauer.
The two most characteristic and most long-lasting members of the movement were
Heredia and
Leconte de Lisle.
Transnational influences
Despite its French origins, Parnassianism was not restricted to French authors. Perhaps the most idiosyncratic of Parnassians,
Olavo Bilac
Olavo Brás Martins dos Guimarães Bilac (16 December 1865 – 28 December 1918), known simply as Olavo Bilac (), was a Brazilian Parnassian poet, journalist and translator. Alongside Alberto de Oliveira and Raimundo Correia, he was a member ...
,
Alberto de Oliveira's disciple, was an author from
Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
who managed carefully to craft verses and metre while maintaining a strong emotionalism in them.
Polish
Polish may refer to:
* Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe
* Polish language
* Poles, people from Poland or of Polish descent
* Polish chicken
*Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin scree ...
Parnassians included
Antoni Lange,
Felicjan Faleński,
Cyprian Kamil Norwid and
Leopold Staff. A Romanian poet with Parnassian influences was
Alexandru Macedonski.
Florbela Espanca was a Parnassian Portuguese poet (Larousse), as was
Cesário Verde
Cesário Verde (25 February 1855 – 19 July 1886) was a 19th-century Portuguese poet. His work, while mostly ignored during his lifetime and not well known outside of the country's borders even today, is generally considered to be amongst the mo ...
.
British poets such as
Andrew Lang
Andrew Lang (31 March 1844 – 20 July 1912) was a Scottish poet, novelist, literary critic, and contributor to the field of anthropology. He is best known as a collector of folk and fairy tales. The Andrew Lang lectures at the University o ...
,
Austin Dobson
:''This article describes the English racing driver. For the English poet, see Henry Austin Dobson''.
Austin Dobson (19 August 1912 in Lodsworth, Sussex – 13 March 1963 in Cuckfield, Sussex) was a racing driver from England. He was the ...
and
Edmund Gosse
Sir Edmund William Gosse (; 21 September 184916 May 1928) was an English poet, author and critic. He was strictly brought up in a small Protestant sect, the Plymouth Brethren, but broke away sharply from that faith. His account of his childhood ...
were sometimes known as "English Parnassians" for their experiments in old (often originally French) forms such as the
ballade, the
villanelle
A villanelle, also known as villanesque,Kastner 1903 p. 279 is a nineteen-line poetic form consisting of five tercets followed by a quatrain. There are two refrains and two repeating rhymes, with the first and third line of the first tercet re ...
and the
rondeau, taking inspiration from French authors like Banville.
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Gerard Manley Hopkins (28 July 1844 – 8 June 1889) was an English poet and Jesuit priest, whose posthumous fame placed him among leading Victorian poets. His prosody – notably his concept of sprung rhythm – established him as an innovat ...
used the term ''Parnassian'' pejoratively to describe competent but uninspired poetry, “spoken ''on and from the level'' of a poet’s mind”. He identified this trend particularly with the work of
Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was an English poet. He was the Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria's reign. In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of his ...
, citing the poem "
Enoch Arden
''Enoch Arden'' is a narrative poem published in 1864 by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, during his tenure as England's poet laureate. The story on which it was based was provided to Tennyson by Thomas Woolner. The poem lent its name to a principle in ...
" as an example.
Many prominent Turkish poets of Servet-i Fünun were inspired by Parnassianism such as
Tevfik Fikret,
Yahya Kemal Beyatlı and Cenap Şahabettin.
See also
*
Zutiste
References
Citations
Sources
In France
* Maurice Souriau, ''Histoire du Parnasse'', ed. Spes, 1929
* Louis-Xavier de Ricard, ''Petits mémoires d'un Parnassien''
* Adolphe Racot, ''Les Parnassiens'', introduction and commentaries by M. Pakenham, presented by Louis Forestier, Aux Lettres modernes: collection ''avant-siècle'', 1967.
* Yann Mortelette,
Histoire du Parnasse', Paris : Fayard, 2005, 400 p.
*
Le Parnasse. Mémoire de la critique', ed. Yann Mortelette, Paris : PUPS, 2006, 444 p.
* André Thérive, ''Le Parnasse'', ed. PAUL-DUVAL, 1929.
* Luc Decaunes, La Poésie parnassienne Anthologie, Seghers, 1977.
In Brazil
Bilac, Olavo. Complete WorksOLIVEIRA, Alberto. 20 sonets
Essays and criticisms
* AZEVEDO, Sanzio de. Parnasianismo na poesia brasileira. Fortaleza: Ceará University, 2000.
* BOSI, Alfredo. An intuição da passagem em um soneto de Raimundo Correia, in --- (org). Leitura de Poesia. São Paulo: Ática, 2003.
* CANDIDO, Antonio. No coração do silêncio. in: ---. Na sala de aula. São Paulo: Ática, 1985.
* CAVALCANTI, Camillo
Fundamentos modernos das Poesias de Alberto de Oliveira doctoral thesis at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, 2008.
* FISCHER, Luis Augusto
Parnasianismo brasileiro Porto Alegre: Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, 2003.
* MAGALHÃES Jr., Raymundo. Olavo Bilac. Rio de Janeiro: Americana, 1974.
* MARTINO, Pierre. Parnasse et symbolisme. Armand Colin, 1967. (Parnaso y symbolismo, Ed. Ateneo)
{{Schools of poetry
French poetry
Genres of poetry
Literary movements
Symbolism (arts)