Axël by Villiers de L’Isle-Adam and the symbolist theater in the late nineteenth century

Abstract

In the late nineteenth century, the rules governing the artistic creation collapse and the artist experiences the crisis of representation once art no longer seeks to imitate nature but to wrest man of his earthly condition to elevate him towards the Absolute. Nevertheless, the society, attached to bourgeois and materialist values, does not share this longing so the artist exiles himself in his creation, his ivory tower. Poetry is, therefore, claimed as the way of conducting to this Absolute. In drama, poetry establishes a new kind of theater, which no longer has the intention to communicate, but to suggest. The line between arts merges so theater seeks to become a temple of meditation. Then, there comes Axël, written by the French writer Villiers de L’ Isle- Adam. Classified as a dramatic poem in prose, Axël reverberates all these questions aesthetically worked by the Symbolist-Decadent movement and its protagonist becomes the prototype of the hero who takes refuge in the ivory tower and prefers inaction to life, turning away from the pettiness of bourgeois society.