Silentiaires fin-de-siècle : émergence et épuisement d’un motif poétique
Fin-de-siecle Silencers : rise and fall of a poetical motive

Summary/Abstract: The parallel urge of introspection and meditation which comes with the evocation of silence acts as landmark for a whole current of fin de siecle literature. The symbolist era gives the impression that its actors were obsessedwith silence. Symbolist poetry took possession of silence as a way to encapsulate the ineffability of feelings and the various states of mind it explored, leaning towards an aesthetical mysticism. Yet that tendency soon turned into a form of cliché that opened a path towards parody, silence becoming a stigma of the ideological shortcomings of symbolism in the eye of its detractors. The attempt to seize the silence led to a harsh confrontation with void.

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