Poetic Life Picture of French Symbolism Aesthetics
The article is devoted to study the notion “poetic life picture”. At the heart of this notion is informatory poetic content in combination with all its components, one of which is the verse structure, which contributes to the transformation of words into aesthetically significant unity of the poetic discourse. The study data of our paper include the poetic texts of P. Verlaine and St. Mallarmé. The poets treat the objects of material world as the symbols of non-material presentations, as a passage from real world to the mystic world. The favorite images of poets-symbolists are dead leaves, faded flowers, the ringing of funeral bell (knell), the extinguished candle, last sparks in the hearth. The poetic life picture, representing a general aesthetic outlook of different poets with their individual particulars, depends on the concrete artistic figures and the poetical techniques, on the concrete application or modification of the verse organization features. The French symbolists realize this technique in the expression and content planes of their poetic creative work. For example, Paul Verlaine regularly makes good use of odd verses and short meters as decomposition means of normative verse structure. Stéphane Mallarmé, on the contrary, retaining the shape of the classical Alexandrine verse, decomposes the normative poetical images with unexpected components, which recompose into a generally acceptable poetical picture in the mosaic form thanks to the classical verse meter.