Parnassus

A French literary movement which emerged during the second half of the 19th century around the figure of Leconte de Lisle. The movement was opposed to Romanticism and the bourgeois idea of the individual. According to the Parnassian movement art finds it true meaning not in political commitment but in contemplation of the beautiful. There is no other outcome for art than the beautiful. The Parnassians thus looked for no utility for art and believed in the principle of ‘art for art’s sake’, from which arises the reference to Antiquity through the word Parnassus, the mountain of Apollo and his nine muses. The name appeared in 1866 when the first edition of Parnasse contemporain was published.