It is common to hear the use of the expression "art for art's sake," although in truth it is "art for art's sake," the origin of which is still in disagreement; some attribute it to the French philosopher Victor Cousin, while others attribute it to the writer Benjamin Constant, both at the beginning of the 19th century. What is certain is that it picks up an ideal that has been haunting human consciousness at different times, and is somehow announced in Immanuel Kant's philosophy. This motto defines the French movement that we will deal with here, as a milestone in the development of literary modernity, known as Parnasianism.

As we have said, France had become - and was so throughout the 19th century - the great confluence of the most important manifestations of aesthetic modernity. Romanticism had predominated since the 1930s, leaving its intense and extensive imprint on the culture and spirit of artists and the public. Without romanticism being displaced, and perhaps giving reason to its historical sense (later we will speak of the "tradition of rupture", as Octavio Paz calls it), realism emerges and develops, becoming a historical moment. Parnasianism will, to a large extent, be a reaction to both. It distances itself from the sentimentalism and spontaneity of certain romantic expressions, on the one hand, and advocates the detachment of all servility from art, including the separation of all social purpose, thus ignoring realism. This disposition and ideas are what are condensed in the motto "art by / for art".

_{Poets of the Parnassus, painting by Paul Chabas, "At the home of Alphonse Lemerre (first, editor of Le Parnasse Contemporain) Source}

The first signs of that consciousness appeared in full romanticism, specifically in 1835, when Théophile Gautier, who had identified with that movement, in the preface to his novel Mademoiselle de Maupin writes in an ironic and vehement style:

Nothing that is beautiful is indispensable to life. If flowers were suppressed, the world would not suffer materially; and yet who would want there to be no more flowers? (...) And what use are music, painting, plastic arts? Who would have the madness to prefer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to Alexis Carrel, and Michelangelo to the inventor of the white mustard? The only truly beautiful thing that exists is what can't be used for anything. Everything that is useful is usually ugly, because it is the expression of some need, and man's needs are ignoble and repugnant, like his poor and sickly nature.

With this impetuous pronouncement in which he encourages the autonomy of the beautiful and his rejection of the utilitarian in art, Gautier advocated the ideal of that trend that in the 1950s received its name from the title of the magazine in which its representatives are manifested: Le Parnase contemporain. Because of its attraction for Greek art, but without being conceived as neoclassical, Parnassus was named after the sacred mountain where, according to mythology, inhabited the muses, lesser goddesses inspiring artistic creation.

_{The Parnassus, by Nicolas Poussin (1630) Source}

The artistic work will be conceived as the product of a creative impulse that will have in the artist's hard work its true inspiration (and the word "work" so reaffirms it); hence one of the most enhanced arts of ancient Greece is sculpture, to synthesize the dedicated, arduous trade that from raw material works the beautiful work.

In this way, the Parnasian proposal thinks of poetry as an achievement of external quality, of the search for aesthetic form, interested in cultivating the plastic and sonorous (musical) contributions of the word. For this reason, it departs from the merely sentimental and intimate; it seeks a poetry that inclines to the impersonal to the "impassive", although we know that this cannot be an absolute real achievement.

_{Apollo Sauróctono, by Praxitheles, 4th century B.C. Source}

In the same way, its demand for a poetry that reaches its end in itself, that does not need to justify its existence by an external end (social, political, moral, didactic, etc.), in a certain way, proud of its isolation. However, it admitted an ethical reason. As Riquer and Valverde maintain:

The gesture of alienation from the human here represents a search for another form of humanity, free of contingencies, something, in short, that better or worse occupies the place of lost beliefs and dubious ideals.

The Parnasianism will extend to the decade of 1860, and will have several names among its cultivators and followers. Next to Gautier, its great promoter, the names of Théodore de Banville, Leconte de Lisle, Catulle Mendés and José María de Heredia stand out.

It should be noted that Parnasianism, which provides keys that will have many influences on modern literature, paves the way for Symbolism (a trend, movement or school that we will deal with in a future post); it is no coincidence that Baudelaire, Verlaine and Mallarmé were published in their magazine.

Théophile Gautier, the forerunner

Born in 1811 and died in 1872, Gautier was a poet, novelist, art critic and journalist. He shared the ideas of French romanticism, and became friends with Victor Hugo and Nerval, great figures of that movement, but also with Balzac, identified with the realist current. After his position in the preface already mentioned, the other relevant fact is the publication in 1852 of the book of poetry Esmaltes y Camafeos, in whose title the Parnassian aesthetic vision already appears; a book of a high formal level, which had a great influence on literary evolution.

_{Théophile Gautier, photo Félix Nadar, 1854 Source}

The expression of sensoriality can be observed, but with a certain degree of distance and impassibility, but also the formal elegance, the inclination for the pictorial and the sonorous reaches.

And of his poem "The art":

(…)
Let's run away from false restraints!
But remember, O Muse, to fit,
a tight coturno that squeezes you.

Always shy away from any comfortable rhythm
like a shoe that's too big
that every foot can get into.

And you, sculptor, reject softness
of the mud that the thumb can shape,
while inspiration floats far away;

it is better that you measure yourself with carrara
or with hard and demanding stoppages,
that guard the purest contours;

(…)

Everything happens. Only strong art
possesses eternity. Only
the bust survives the city.

And the rustic and austere currency
that a peasant has found underground,
remember there was an emperor.

Even the gods themselves finally die.
But the perfect verses remain
and last longer than bronze images.

Artist, sculptor, lime or zincela;
may your fluctuating dream be sealed
in the block that puts up resistance.

_{Modern artist (Sofialakis) sculpting Goddess Demeter Relief Source}

In this poem, in addition to the presence of the features indicated for the previous one, we notice a "poetic art", that is to say, a text in which the way of understanding and assuming poetry (or art in general) is spoken of. In the aforementioned poem Gautier reveals, to a large extent, the Parnassian conception already alluded to: the work resulting from hard work, demanding, carved with the best materials, and its permanence in time. This self-awareness of art will be an extremely important character in modern creation.

Lisle's Leconte, the master

_{Photograph of Leconte de Lisle Source}

Leconte de Lisle (1818-1894), whom the father of Hispano-American Modernism called "Pontiff of the Parnassus", was the author of three important books of poetry: Ancient poems (1852), Barbaric poems (1862) and Tragic poems (1884), in which the parasitic and post-romantic spirit is expressed in a decisive way.

One of his poems, "De los modernos", is significant of that severe and melancholic vision that marks his work and a certain Parnassian atmosphere.

You live in rebellion, but without dreams, without destiny,
older, more decrepit than this infertile world,
castrated from the cradle by the murderous century
of all noble, vigorous and profound ardor.

Your mind is as empty as your fate,
and you have sullied this miserable world
with a corrupted blood, with a harmful breath,
and death grows alone in this filthy mud.

Men, hunters of gods, the times are near,
where the great pillars of gold will become muddy,
where the fertile sun will gnaw at the largest rocks.

Unfaithful in day and night without remedy,
born in the stulta nothing of the supreme tedium,
you die stupidly when you open your mouths.

_{Waiting (1930), by Julio dos Reis Pereira Source}

And with this vision of the modern, typical of a poet who saw the values of beauty sink and the humanist and religious spirit in which it was formed (Greece and India), we close this post, until a new delivery where we will continue approaching the pillars of literary modernity.

Bibliographic references

Friedrich, Hugo (1974). Structure of modern lyric. Spain: Edit. Seix Barral.
French Romantic poets. Anthology. (1999). Spain: Edit Planeta.
Riquer, Martin de and Valverde, José M. (1979). History of Universal Literature (Volume III). Spain: Edit Planeta.
Todó, Lluís (1987). Symbolism. The Birth of Modern Poetry. Spain: Edit. Montesinos.

Authored by @josemalavem