Although Impressionism and Symbolism are but two of the numerous ‘-isms’ found in Paris in Debussy’s early years, these two movements are invariably associated with him. This chapter defines the symbolist literary style in France and surveys its development through some of its leading figures as well as its diffusion through some of its main institutions (Mallarmé’s salon, cafés, journals, bookstores). The author distinguishes between two phases in Debussy’s creative output: 1882–1902, when French-speaking literary symbolism clearly dominated the composer’s inspiration, and 1902–1917, when he became receptive to a wider range of poetry (especially that of French poets from the 15th to the 17th centuries). Important Debussy landmark pieces inspired by Symbolist writers (mélodies, the orchestral piece Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, and the opera Pelléas et Mélisande) are situated within the context of other musical works equally inspired by the same writers (Fauré, Bonheur, Bréville, Chabrier, Charpentier, Chausson, Duparc, Ravel).

“Paris Encountered” is concerned with Joyce’s first period in Paris in 1902 and 1903. The chapter reads chronologically works that have been addressed primarily under the aspect of their later appearance in Joyce’s works: Poem XXXV from Chamber Music, which Joyce sent on a photo-postcard from Paris to Dublin; his aesthetic essay and notes on Aristotle and Hegel in the Paris/Pola Notebook held at the National Library of Ireland; and the short piece of prose poetry later known as Epiphany 33. Drawing upon new sensory studies of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Paris, “Paris Encountered” uncovers Joyce’s preoccupation with sensation in this period. It argues that his writing undergoes a crucial evolution as he moves from his declaration in the aesthetic essay that art must banish desire and reestablish the autonomy of the intellect to a writing that undercuts objective observation and judgment with an indiscriminate and ineluctable sensory permeation. Necessary for this evolution are the new literary forms developed by Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, and Émile Zola to address the sensory impact of contemporary Paris as well as Joyce’s discovery of pseudo-Aristotle’s Problems, an unsystematic, zetetic text that models a radically open-ended inquiry into the body and the mind understood as consubstantial, porous, and processual.