It is on this side that symbolism discloses its kinship with the Russian
novel,--with the mystic quietism of Tolstoy and the religion of
self-sacrifice in Dostoievsky; and its sharp antagonism to the
Nietzschean gospel of daemonic will and ruthless self-assertion, just
then being preached in Germany. The two faiths were both alive and both
responded to deep though diverse needs of the time; but the immediate
future, as we shall see, belonged to the second. They had their first
resounding encounter when Nietzsche held up his once venerated master
Wagner to scorn as the chief of 'decadents' because he had turned from
the superhuman heroism of Siegfried and the boundless passion of
Tristram to glorify the mystic Catholicism of the Grail and the
loveliness of the 'pure fool' Parzifal.

Outside France symbolism found eager response among young poets, but
rather as a literary than as an ethical doctrine. In Germany Dehmel, the
most powerful personality among her recent poets, began as a disciple of
Verlaine; in Italy, D'Annunzio wove esoteric symbols into the texture of
the more than Nietzschean supermanliness of his supermen and superwomen.
More significant than these, however, was the symbolism of what we call
the Celtic school of poets in Ireland. For here both their artistic
impressionism and their mystic spirituality found a congenial soil. The
principal mediating force was Mr. Arthur Symons, friend of Verlaine and
of Yeats, and himself the most penetrating interpreter of Symbolism,
both as critic and as poet.[14] And to the French influence was added
that of Blake, a poet too great to be included in any school, but allied
to symbolism by his scorn for 'intellect' and for rhetoric, and by his
audacities of figured speech. But Mr. Yeats and 'A.E.', the leaders of
the 'Celtic' group, are in no sense derivation voices. They had the
great advantage over the French of a living native folklore and faery