Symbolism arises only after objects have lost immediate meaning
Evidence
It will be observed that modern literature has developed special techniques, elaborate methods of symbolism, in the express hope of giving meaning to such stubbornly resistant things, of assimilating them to the humanized substance of the work of art. And symbolism as such is a central phenomenon of modern literature: we will discuss it later at more length. For the moment it is enough to say that whatever the merits of symbolic and symbolizing modes of thought as a solution to this dilemma, their presence in the work always stands as an indication that the immediate meaning of objects has disappeared: the process would not arise in the first place if objects had not already become problematical in their very nature. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 349
Categorization
- XREF: The symptomatic reading of symbolism — form as evidence of a social diagnosis — is the hallmark of Jameson’s Frankfurt-School method and echoes Adorno’s aphorisms and Benjamin’s allegory (Trauerspiel). — connects to: Symbolism signals a class unable to take stock of its own reality — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 682; Allegory dominates expression when things are sundered from meaning — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 157; A painting loses its meaning as symbolic act once its originating situation is lost (+3 more)
Broader Connections
- A painting loses its meaning as symbolic act once its originating situation is lost
#corroborates(0.85) - Crystallization and decrystallization shift the symbolic value of objects I perceive
#qualifies(0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1382 - Cultural symbols carry no fixed meaning; meaning shifts with the social field
#corroborates(0.72) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 1012 - The shift from Symbol to allegory marks the modernism-to-postmodernism break
#expands(0.70) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 391