How was Imagism different from the French Symbolist movement?

Although Imagism was a successor to the French Symbolist movement, the two movements differed significantly in their aesthetic goals and artistic analogies.

While Symbolism sought an affinity with music, Imagism sought an analogy with sculpture. Symbolist poets aimed to evoke the ineffable intuitions and sense impressions of an individual's inner life through a highly personal, suggestive use of language and metaphors. In contrast, Imagists emphasized direct, sparse language and the "direct treatment of the 'thing'" to create verse of dry clarity and hard outline, where an exact visual image served as the total poetic statement.123

Ultimately, Imagism represented a revolt against the careless thinking and Romantic optimism of the era, prioritizing precision and economy of words—insisting that no word be used that did not contribute to the presentation—whereas Symbolism focused on communicating the underlying mystery of existence through subtle, symbolic language that often lacked precise meaning.32