Art for art's sake in "The Palace of Art" (original) (raw)

In Tennyson's "The Palace of Art," the speaker is interested in art only for art's sake. In her "lordly pleasure-house," she devotes herself to every form of beauty, including knowledge. She has become so engrossed in aesthetic pleasures that she excludes the exterior world. The poem asserts that a soul which loves only beauty will fall into despair, self-loathing and hatred of both "death and life" (265). The poet expresses the bitter loneliness and helpless stagnation that the soul feels within the confines of its palace:

A still salt pool, lock'd in with bars of sand,
Left on the shore, that hears all night
The plunging seas draw backward from the land
Their moon-led waters white (249-252).

Questions

Compare Tennyson's representation of art in "The Palace of Art" and "The Lady of Shalott"

What is Tennyson saying about art as a mode of escape?

How does this poem relate to what would later be the French decadent movement?

Last modified 7 September 2003