Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898)

These carefully-curated writings span from 1863-97.

“Apparition” (1863) establishes him as an obvious genius right out of the gate. Some of its heart-rending imagery includes “vaporous flowers,” “dying violins,” “white sobs,” “the perfume of sadness,” and “white bouquets of perfumed stars.” (That last one is its final line, and you can see how it seamlessly brings together three topics used previously in the poem.)

The next year, he picked up right where he left off with “The Azure” (1864), which is tumultuously exciting. This homage to the blue canopy lurking above us culminates alarmingly with
“It travels ancient through the fog, and penetrates
Like an unerring blade your native agony;
Where flee in my revolt so useless and depraved?
For I am haunted! The Sky! The Sky! The Sky! The Sky!”

The translation of “Sigh” (1864) somewhat reconfigures it, boldly taking it from 10 lines to 14 while keeping the same approximate number of words. The translator, Frederick Morgan, manages to brilliantly tease out some rhymes (“sky” & “eye,” “leaves” & “cleave”) that weren’t necessarily set up to rhyme in the original structure. I’m guessing this is why he decided to mold the clay on the way that he did. I can’t recall ever seeing this done before.

The enigmatic and dreamlike effort “Lace Passes Into Nothingness…” (1884) could be called ambient poetry. Its pacing and precision brings to my mind Emily Dickinson.

The collection concludes spectacularly with the avant-garde “Dice Thrown Never Will Annul Chance” (1895), using an array of font sizes and text splashed across the pages to truly throw the gauntlet down. This proto-Dadaist splurge, superior to Ginsberg’s “Howl” in my opinion, even has its own two-page preface, by Mallarmé himself.

This book presents each poem except for “Dice…” in French on the left pages and English on the right. (The prose is only given in English.) Evidently Mallarmé’s writing style is challenging to translate, as fifteen different translators were recruited, each giving his or her own twist to each item, so it helps to know a good bit of French, as I luckily do.

As Eliot, Baudelaire, and Neruda did to me some years ago, this slim book has rekindled my love of the written word and fired up my imagination to levels that should be illegal. It’s that great. Now to acquire everything this guy ever put to paper…

RIYL: Baudelaire, Neruda, Shakespeare’s sonnets, Jim Morrison, 1980s gothic rock / ethereal wave lyricists… (more)

There's much in Mallarme that I'm not particularly fond of: portentous art-for-art's-sakeness, tiring decadence, and the combination of those two, naturally.

On the other hand, this excellent little volume gives you the French, with not entirely awful English translations, at a reasonable price, and the French gives even poor French readers like myself the means to find the gold in Mallarme. Being able to see the full range of his poetry, in French, meant that I could finally place him where he deserves to be, among the great nineteenth century poets in English, to wit, Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, and G. M. Hopkins. And maybe Browning.

The problem with 19th century poetry, for me, is its extraordinary inability to take seriously either humor, or other people (excluding those people you were or would like to be schtupping), and the dreariness of its forms, all harnessed towards some very boring end. Enough with the elegies, people. I'd thought Mallarme was one of them, albeit a very talented one. Instead, it turns out, Mallarme is a nonsense poet with a rather inflated sense of the importance of poetry. Consider the first stanza of "Prose" (pour des Esseintes):

Hyperbole! de ma memoire
Triophalement ne sais-tu
Te lever, aujourd'hui grimoire
Dans un livre de fer vetu:

On the one hand, it combines both of my pet peeves; on the other, it's only slightly more meaningful than outgrabing mome raths, and just as much fun to read.

This gleeful nonsensicality is everywhere, but mostly in the occasional or obviously minor poems. In "Billet," Mallarme manages to rhyme rebattu and tutu.

Of course Un Coup de des is a masterpiece and forward thinking and all that. But give me the glee.… (more)