Euro-American Correspondence: Poe, Baudelaire, Valéry, Wilson and the Construction of Symbolism

Abstract

This article revisits a complex theme in Western literary history, the construction of symbolist poetics in the nineteenth century, which was a decisive step towards establishing modernity. To this end, the relationship between Edgar Alan Poe and Charles Baudelaire who, with his pioneering translations, presented the American author to the French literary world. The approach is stimulated by Paul Valéry's interpretation of the authors’ relationship, as well as by Edmund Wilson's interpretation of the Anglo-Saxon romantic literary framework. Symbolism, in the light of these authors’ reflections, would be the result of a supra-national action, a policy of poets, whose purpose was to overcome the social and cultural limitations of specific countries, of nation-states.