KAREN ALKALAY-GUT- appears everywhere. In part, this initiative can be traced back to many of
Walter Pater's influential statements in the essays that he published from
Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873) onward. Pater, after all,
remarked that "each art may be observed to pass into the condition of
some other art ... a partial alienation from its own limitations, through
which the arts are able, not indeed to supply the place of each other, but
reciprocally to lend each other new forces." 23 In his impressive poetry,
Symons - more cosmopolitan, self-analytical, and traveled than most poets
of this period - often explored the art-form of dance, the techniques of
impressionist painting, and the tones of modern music. The transformation
of life into art - indeed, the patterning of life through apparently sponta-
neous movement that Symons explores in his essay "The World as Ballet"
(1907) - would soon become one of the hallmarks of literary Modernism.
Like Dowson, Symons wished to accentuate sensuous pleasure. In the
octave of his sonnet titled "The Opium Smoker" (1889), he both describes
and imitates a drug-induced synesthesia:
I am engulfed, and drown deliciously.
Soft music like a perfume, and sweet light
Golden with audible odours exquisite,
Swathe me with the cerements for eternity.
Time is no more. I pause and yet I flee (AS I, 92)The sestet, however, overturns these multifaceted pleasures. Quite unex-
pectedly, the last six lines itemize in cold and objective terms the reality
that apparently remains insignificant to the oblivious addict:
Also I have this garret which I rent,
This bed of straw, and this that was a chair,
This worn-out body like a tattered tent,
This crust, of which the rats have eaten part,
The pipe of opium; rage, remorse, despair;
This soul at pawn and this delirious heart."The Opium Smoker" is a representative example of how in his poetry
Symons compares and contrasts two significant elements: cultivated neu-
rosis and careful observation. In his noteworthy essay, "A Prelude to Life"
(1905), he writes:
If there ever was a religion of the eyes, I have devoutly practised that religion.
I noted every face that passed me on the pavement; I looked into the
omnibuses, the cabs, always with the same eager hope of seeing some
beautiful or interesting person, some gracious movement, a delicate expres-
sion, which would be gone if I did not catch it as it went. The search without
an aim grew almost a torture to me ... I grasped at all these sights with the246