SOURCE: "'La Symphonie en blanc majeur': An Interpretation," in L'Esprit Créateur. Vol. III, NO. 1, Spring, 1963, pp. 26-33.

In the following essay, Van Eerde explores the meaning of the inclusion of the color red at the end of Gautier's otherwise all-white poem and finds that the color communicates emotional need.

Marie-Antoinette Chaix, in La Correspondance des arts dans la poésie contemporaine (Paris, 1919), considers Théophile Gautier's poem, "La Symphonie en blanc majeur" (1849), a literary exercise. H. Van Der Tuin, in L'Evolution psychologique, esthétique et littéraire de Théophile Gautier (Paris, 1933), calls it decorative art. Joanna Richardson describes it as a linguistic "tour de force" in Théophile Gautier, His Life And Times (New York, 1959). This article would address itself to the matter of Gautier's introduction in the last strophe of pink into an otherwise all-white tableau and its significance for an interpretation of the poem...