Arthur Symons: Selected Letters, 1880-1935

by Karl Beckson, John M. Munro (Editor)

Selected letters of Arthur Symons (1865-1945), British poet, critic, and magazine editor.

289 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 1989

Reviews

[Jim Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wrote part of my undergraduate thesis on the poetry of Arthur Symons, but never really got a sense of the man. Symons was a champion of the English and French Decadent Movements in Literature, an outstanding critic, and a minor poet who shocked with his verse praising prostitutes and music hall dancers. Over ten years after his heyday, Symons suffered a total mental breakdown from which he never fully recovered. His life is fascinating, and this thoughtfully curated book of his correspondence helped me better identify his motivations and personality. He grew up in a stodgy and religious, middle class, Welsh home, and even as a teen, he re-imagined himself as a mover and shaker in the literary world. His fascination with Art for Art’s Sake, theatre, women, drugs, and living a “poetic” life were all a rejection of his upbringing. One could say he was made for the Decadence and the Decadence was made for him (I kept thinking of Steve Strange and the Blitz Kids as a modern day parallel!). Despite the decidedly second-rate quality of Symon’s poetry, he shocked society and helped a great number of authors who were in sympathy with his goals. Reading his early letters, we see him willing himself into the consciousness of the London literary elite. A tireless self-promoter, his letters, reviews, and articles were used to befriend people like John Addington Symonds, George Moore, Walter Pater, and Edmond Grosse--the movers and shakers of the age. He quickly achieved his goal and became a leader of the Rhymer’s Club and the editor of the successor of the Yellow Book, The Savoy. But after Wilde’s arrest, the Decadent Movement and Symons’ career both petered out. He found himself thoroughly out of date—a relic of the 1890’s, and he struggled to convince publishers and readers that he was still relevant. The pressure to make money to support his new wife, his identification with an era that the Edwardians wanted to forget, and a genetic predisposition for mental illness all helped put him in the asylum. The letters he wrote during his breakdown are scrambled eggs with words and difficult to read (luckily only a few are printed here). After a slow recovery, Symons tries to write and publish, but his new material is rambling and we clearly see that he is no longer capable of being at the center of anything.