Symbolism
Quick answer: Symbolism is the sustained use of symbols to carry a poem's deeper meaning, and the name of a major French poetic movement. Definition, history, examples.
Symbolism is the sustained use of symbols in a poem, letting images and objects carry meanings larger than their literal sense, and it is also the name of a specific literary movement that began in late nineteenth-century France. As a technique, symbolism is as old as poetry itself. As a movement, it belongs to poets like Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, and Stephane Mallarme, who wanted verse to suggest rather than state.
Knowing both senses saves confusion. When a teacher says a poem is rich in symbolism, they mean the technique. When a critic calls Yeats a Symbolist, they mean he inherited the French movement's belief that the visible world hints at an invisible one, and that music and image reach truths plain statement cannot. Either way, the reader is being asked to trust suggestion over explanation.
Symbolism as a Technique
Technically, symbolism means organising a poem so its objects do double duty. One symbol makes a moment; a network of symbols makes a worldview. Consider this original sketch of the method: 'The ferry crossed at dusk, its one light swinging. On the far bank, someone I could not see was waiting.' Read literally, it is a river crossing. Read symbolically, the crossing, the failing light, and the unseen figure assemble into a poem about dying, or faith, or love, depending on what the rest of the poem tunes the reader to expect.
The technique asks discipline of the writer. Every symbolic object must still behave like a real object, and the symbolic meanings should cohere rather than scatter.
The Symbolist Movement
The movement grew from Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal, which treated the world as a forest of symbols where scents, colours, and sounds answer one another. Verlaine prized musicality above message; Rimbaud pursued a deliberate derangement of the senses to reach visionary images; Mallarme pushed suggestion so far that his late poems approach pure pattern. Jean Moreas gave the group its manifesto in 1886.
Its influence crossed the Channel and the Atlantic. W. B. Yeats absorbed Symbolist doctrine through Arthur Symons, Rilke carried it into German, and T. S. Eliot credited French Symbolists with shaping his early style. Much of what modern readers take for granted, that a poem should evoke rather than explain, is the movement's legacy.
How to Use Symbolism in Your Own Poems
Work in networks, not single trophies. Choose a small family of images that belong together, water, thresholds, and light, for instance, and let them recur so the poem builds its own private dictionary. Trust the reader with unglossed images; the moment you explain a symbol you spend it. In competition settings this restraint tends to pay: Writory judges score language and creativity, and a poem that suggests confidently almost always outranks one that decodes itself in the final stanza.
What poets can take from this
- Build a small network of related symbols rather than relying on one image.
- Never explain a symbol inside the poem; explanation cancels suggestion.
- Read Baudelaire, Verlaine, and early Yeats to feel the movement's method firsthand.
- Anchor every symbol in believable physical detail before letting it mean.
- Keep symbolic meanings consistent across the poem so readers can tune in.
Try it yourself
Choose three images that feel connected in your mind but have no obvious link, perhaps a stairwell, a moth, and a glass of milk. Write a poem where each appears twice, and let the connections stay implied rather than stated.
Questions
What is the difference between symbol and symbolism?
A symbol is a single image or object carrying meaning beyond its literal sense. Symbolism is the broader practice of using such symbols throughout a work, and also the name of the French literary movement built around that practice.
What was the Symbolist movement?
It was a French literary movement of the late nineteenth century, led by poets like Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, and Mallarme. It held that poetry should suggest moods and hidden correspondences through music and image rather than describe or argue directly.
How do I identify symbolism in a poem?
Look for concrete images that receive more attention than the literal situation needs, that recur with variation, or that appear at charged moments like openings and endings. Then test what larger meaning stays consistent if the image stands for it.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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