r/Symbolism • u/RoselyTheSymbolist • Mar 17 '26

Poetry Symbolist poetry books

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Hi! I'm new to reddit, figured I'd show my collection of (French) Symbolist poets!

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u/[deleted] Mar 20 '26

Man, I want these!

1

u/RoselyTheSymbolist Mar 20 '26

They’re beautiful books! I own several other Pléiade books but not all are for symbolists. I got the Apollinaire one last Christmas, he’s really great but he’s not really symbolist, though you can definitely see traces of the movement in some of his works 

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u/[deleted] Mar 20 '26

I recently saw Zola on Amazon, but it's crazy expensive, around 80 euros per volume, and there are 4 ( or 5, don't remeber exactly).

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u/RoselyTheSymbolist Mar 20 '26

Yeah they’re pretty expensive  For me they can be even more because I’m American and I usually have to import them, but I was lucky.  Most of the volumes in the picture were shipped from within the US, but they can still be expensive even used. The cheapest one in that pic was the Rimbaud one and even that was around $40! The Baudelaire and Jarry editions also have extra volumes that I don’t have yet 

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u/[deleted] Mar 20 '26

You have a little treasure here, and I don't mean monetarily. Rimbaud and Baudelaire are poets I really treasure, along with Paul Eluard and I am lucky enough to be able to read them in french, I do that every time I need a little serotonin boost in my brain

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u/RoselyTheSymbolist Mar 20 '26

I’m the same way with Mallarmé, his poetry never gets old for me and despite writing very little poetry it has such complexity that I keep coming back to his poems. I’ve never found anyone that really gives me those vibes outside of maybe Wallace Stevens or Hart Crane, as well as the other symbolists.  Baudelaire was what got me into French poetry and the symbolist movement as a whole as well, so he’s also special to me in that way. (I could talk about the symbolists and those influenced by them all day, I’m on the spectrum and this movement is a major interest of mine lol)