Edith Sitwell's Forest of Symbols: A Symbolist Study of her Poetry

Abstract

The works of Edith Sitwell must be set against a background of spiritual despair and personal frustration. Her poetry reveals a shrinking from the external world, and the substitution of an artistic world of fancy. Moreover, in her poetry, one hears the voice of a young poetess seeking to express the moral discontent and the aesthetic aspirations of a generation in revolt against the tyranny and the establishments of the pre-1914 world. Like other modernist poets, Sitwell lives in an age of rapid changes and intense artistic experimentations that reflects the anxiety of the artists and their attempts to make sense of this chaotic world. This resulted in the emergence of many artistic movements and trends, among which is symbolism- the subject matter of the present paper.