My Paris is a land where twilight days
Merge into violent nights of black and gold;
Where, it may be, the flower of dawn is cold:
Ah, but the gold nights, and the scented ways!
    from 'Paris'

Arthur William Symons (1865-1945) is a haunting poet of the modern city, catching its dangerous, complex beauty in works that first introduced the imagery of the urban underworld into English poetry. He was a champion of the French Symbolists. Yeats, Pound and Eliot acknowledged their debt to him and were influenced by his sense of the city as the essential landscape of modernity. As a poet and critic, in his own right, though, Symons has come into his own in recent years.

This selection is taken from the full range of Symons' poetry and prose, revealing an experimental writer exploring art, literature and music. Roger Holdsworth's introduction sets Symons in his context as both an 1890s Decadent and a precursor of Modernism.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Further Reading

Note on the Text



POETRY

from Days and Nights (1889)

The Fisher's Widow

Scenes de la Vie de Boheme: Episode of a Night of May

The Street-Singer

The Opium-Smoker



from Silhouettes (1892; 2nd ed., 1896)

At Dieppe

After Sunset

On the Beach

Requies

Pastel: Masks and Faces

Morbidezza

Maquillage

Impression

On the Heath

At the Cavour

In the Haymarket

The Absinthe-Drinker

Javanese Dancers

April Midnight

During Music

Tears

At Burgos

For a Picture of Watteau



from London Nights (1895; 2nd ed., 1897)

Prologue

Nora on the Pavement

Violet

Decor de Theatre

Behind the Scenes: Empire

The Primrose Dance: Tivoli

La Melinite: Moulin Rouge

Autumn Twilight

Colour Studies

At Dieppe

At Glan-y-Wern

Stella Maris

Hallucination

Hands

White Heliotrope

Nerves

Celeste: The Prelude

Song

Clair de Lune

Paris

Biance: Presages

Epilogue: Credo



From Amoris Victima (1897)

Amoris Exsul

Moonrise

In the Forest of Arques

Twilight

Arques: Night

Amor Triumphans: The Dance



From Images of Good and Evil (1899)

from The Dance of the Daughters of Herodias

Sould in the Balance: Mater Liliarum

Opals

In Ireland

By the Pool at the Third Rosses

In the Wood of Finvara

Palm Sunday: Naples

The Last Memory



From The Loom of Dreams (1901)

The Loom of Dreams

Isolation



From The Fool of the World (1906)

Time and Beauty

London

For a Picture of Rossetti

The Armenian Dancer

The Andante of Snakes

Song of the Sirens



From Knave of Hearts 1894-1908 (1913)

Venice

Peau d'Espagne

The Tarot Cards



From Love's Cruelty (1923)

Studies in Strange Sins (After Beardsley's Designs): The Woman in the Moon

For Des Esseintes: Tragic Dawn



TRANSLATIONS

From Theophile Gautier

Posthumous Coquetry (1889)



From Paul Verlaine

Fetes Galantes (1896)

Pantomine

L'Allee

Fantoches

Mandoline



From Stephane Mallarmé

Sea-Wind

Anguish



PROSE

From 'The Decadent Movement in Literature' (1893)

From 'Dancers and Dancing' (1897)

From ' The World as Ballet' (1898)

From The Symbolist Movement in Literature (1899)

From 'The Choice' (1900)

From 'A Paradox on Art' (1900)

From 'What is Poetry?' (1901)

From 'Fact in Literature' (1902

From 'A Prelude to Life' (1905)

From London: A Book of Aspects (1909)

From 'Impressionistic Writing' (1923)

From 'Fantin-Latour and Whistler' (1925)

From 'Aubrey Beardsley' (1929)

From 'Unspiritual Adventures in Paris' (1931)