Richard Wagner’s Aesthetics and the Musical Turn of Symbolism
Li Guohui
Author information+
the School of Humanities, Taizhou University
{{custom_zuoZheDiZhi}}
About authors:
Li Guohui, Ph.D., is a professor in the School of Humanities, Taizhou University. His academic interest includes modernist poetics and comparative poetics.
{{custom_authorNodes}}
{{custom_bio.content}}
{{custom_bio.content}}
{{custom_authorNodes}}
Show less
History+
Published
2022-02-22
Issue Date
2022-02-22
Abstract
Wagner’s musical aesthetics, because of its concentration on reverie, appeals to symbolists from Baudelaire onward. Such aesthetics informs the musical turn of symbolism. Unlike Wagner’s music which has a foothold in the musical sound and its structure, symbolist literature, inherently an art of language, puts emphasis on feeling and experiencing the world, employs the language of rationality, and produces symbolic imageries, all of which makes it impossible for symbolists to integrate musical features into poetry but to create new forms of expression. Abstracting the spirit of music, symbolist poets have developed such conceptualization as symbolic music, which refers to the suggestive power of images, and the theory of emotional music, which involves the spontaneity of images and impressions. Although symbolist musical turn differs from Wagner’s model, it is informed by the latter and has regarded it as the main reference.
PDF(1736 KB)
