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ABSTRACT
THE PROSE POEMS OF STEPHANE MALLARME:
AN EXEGESIS
BY

Ursula Franklin

This study is an explication of the thirteen prose
poems, entitled "Anecdotes ou Poemes," in Stéphane Mallarmé's

jinagations, his collected prose work published in 1897.

 

The interpretation of these prose poems is based on a
adetailed analysis of each piece, following the order in
'which the author himself placed them in Divagations. The
critical approach of the study is contextual rather than
comparative. That is, the study is not primarily concerned
‘with genre, periodization, literary traditions, sources or
influences, but rather with the inner logic, the unified
aesthetic structure of the prose poems in themselves, in
their relations with each other, and in their relations with
the verse poems as well. A major aim of the study is to
situate these prose poems in Mallarmé's intensely structured
poetic universe. To this end the analyses have been internal
and 25; M, involving first the study of vocabulary and

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comparison of parallel passages which serve to demonstrate
the part that this imagery plays in the unity of Mallarmé's
entire aesthetic fabric.

The analysis has revealed certain essential parallels
among the poems of the recueil. The pieces have important
structural similarities: each consists of an anecdote
which serves as a vehicle for the work's themes. And each
prose poem is characterized by an antithetical play of
opposites, which creates its characteristic tension.

The exegesis has revealed distinct imagistic and
thematic patterns in the prose poems, and has thrown light
on the interrelationships of these patterns within the
group as well as with the poet's other work in verse and
prose. The thirteen pieces emerge as a thematically uni—
fied whole, a cycle. The theme of this cycle is the story
of the poet; that is, on the one hand, the poet's relation
to the contingent phenomena of human experience, and on the
other the transformation of that experience into an ordered
artistic universe through the poet's vision. Since approxi-
mately thirty years separate the earliest pieces from the
latest, the cycle clearly reflects the development of
.Mallarmé's prose style. But it does more than reflect this
«develOpment; it comments on it (especially in "Un Spectacle
Interrompu"), expresses the artistic necessity for the
development of a new style to convey the poet's expanding

‘flision. and consequently makes the stylistic evolution one

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of the very themes of the cycle. Further, within the recueil
itself, the poet formulates his own definition of the prose
poem, and demonstrates the new poetic form as well as the
new style in the pieces of the second half of the cycle.

So the prose poem cycle reflects vividly the poet's
artistic development and the crises associated with it, as
‘well as the major themes found in his other works, verse and
prose. At the beginning of the recueil. in those early
pieces which express discouragement and hesitation before
both life and the poetic vocation, the influence of Baudelaire
is pervasive and dominating. It is as if the poet were
clinging to Baudelaire as an artistic crutch while he was
yet unsure of his own creative powers and direction. But
certain of the early poems (especially "Le Démon de l'Analogie")
likewise reflect the artist's "crise de Tournon," that early
metaphysical crisis from which the young Mallarmé emerged
both as atheist and as committed poet. It was this crisis,
incidentally, whose resolution was achieved and recorded in
Mallarmé's Igitur. The prose poems subsequent to "Le Démon
de l'Analogie" begin to show a new, unreserved commitment to
poetry. The poet gradually moves from rejection to acceptance
of Nature, and defines the role of Nature in his poetic uni—
‘verse: his stature is enhanced from that of harlequin and
showman to that of consecrated poet-priest; he comes to
recognize his paradoxical love and hate for the crowd, and

consciously to acknowledge his need for Mankind, whom it is

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his ideal function to serve. These themes, elaborated in
an ever-increasingly terse and obscure manner with the
maturing of his style, reflect a world view which sees life
as disorderly and meaningless until given order and meaning
by the poet's vision. The study demonstrates, in sum, that
the central preoccupation of the cycle of prose poems is

poesis and its attendant problems.

THE PROSE POEMS OF STEPHANE MALLARME:

AN EXEGESIS

BY

Ursula Franklin

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Romance Languages

1971

© Copyright by
URSULA FRANKLIN

1972

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I gratefully acknowledge contributions of the follow—
ing people: Richard Berchan, Charles Blend, Joseph Donohoe,
Eugene Gray, Herbert Josephs and Maria—Elizabeth Kronegger,
my teachers, who guided and encouraged me in my study of
French literature. I wish to indicate my deepest gratitude
to Laurence Porter, who first introduced me to the poetry
of Mallarmé, and who directed this dissertation from its
inception. It is his continuing confidence in me which

'helped me to sustain my own confidence in the worth of what

I was doing.

 

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER
I. INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . .
II. LE PHENOMENE FUTUR . . . . . .
III. PLAINTE D'AUTOMNE. . . . . . .
Iv. FRISSON D'HIVER. . . . ._. . .
V. LE DEMON DE L'ANALOGIE . . . .
VI. PAUVRE ENFANT PALE . . . . . .
VII. LA PIPE. . . . . . . .‘. . . .
VIII. UN SPECTACLE INTERROMPU. . . .
IX. REMINISCENCE . . . . . . . . .
X. LA DECLARATION FORAINE . . . .
XI. LE NENUPHAR BLANC. . . . . . .
XII. L'ECCLESIASTIQUE . . . . . . .
XIII.LAGLOIRE...........
XIV. CONFLIT. . . . . . . . . . . .
XV. CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . .
BIBLIOGRAPHY. . . . . . . . . . . . .

iv

Page

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34
53
73
103
.132
154
186
205
233
259
277
303
354
375

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CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION

Despite the abundance of excellent scholarship devoted
to his work during the past fifty years, Stéphane Mallarmé
continues to provide fruitful fields for study. The sig-
nificance of his position as a culminating figure in 19th-
century European poetry, as well as one of the most seminal
forces of modern Western literature, makes him an almost
inexhaustible object of critical interest, an interest which
has been increasing with the past decades. His lyrical
poetry attracted critical attention during the poet's life-
time, and more intensively since the twenties with the second
edition of Albert Thibaudet's La Poésie de Stéphane Mallarmé.1
But it is only in the last few years that Mallarmé's prose,
a substantial portion of his work, has begun to receive the
attention it deserves and demands.

In a recent essay, Dieter Steland2 points out that
Mallarmé's prose works cannot be indiscriminately designated
as kritische Schriften, that is to say as solely analytical
critical essays, for even his critical prose is a special
type of poetry. An early example of this critical poetry is

the "Symphonie Littéraire," a group of three essays devoted

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to Gautier, Baudelaire, and Banville, which Mallarmé him-

3 The Divagations,

self referred to as ”poemes en prose."
Mallarmé's collected prose work, published under his super—
vision in 1897, introduces a new prose genre, the "poeme
critique," which term appears in the "Bibliographie" of the
Divagations, where the poet explains:

Les cassures du texte, on se tranquillisera, observent

de concorder, avec sens et n'inscrivant d'espace nu que

jusqu'a leurs points d'illumination: \une forme, peut-
étre, en sort, actuelle, permettant, a ce qui fut

_ longtemps 1e poeme en prose et notre recherche,
d'aboutir, en tant, si l'on joint mieux 1es mots, que
poeme critique. Mobiliser, aptour d'une idee, les
lueurs divgrses de l'esprit, a distance voulue, par
phrases...

I have chosen to investigate a body of prose which
seems to me to stand half—way between Mallarmé's lyric verse
poetry and the poeme critique, namely his prose poems, which
are not interpretative in the manner of the poetic essay.

By the term "prose poems," I refer not only to the twelve
prose pieces first published separately in various reviews
from 1864 to 1887, then gathered together in Pages of 1891,
and finally incorporated in the Divagations of 1897.
Although it is these twelve that the Pléiade (Mondor and
Jean-Aubry) edition6 of the oeuvre has grouped together
under the heading "Poemes en Prose," my study points out
that there are not twelve, but thirteen, "prose poems,"
namely the thirteen pieces entitled "Anecdotes ou Poemes"
in Divagations, a work which established the author's own

structural determination of his prose work a year before his

death.

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My concern will not be the position of these prose
poems in the development of the genre. Nor does my study
examine them from the point of View of periodization in the
larger sense of literary movements, that is as a moment in
the development of Symbolism or Impressionism. This
"literary history" type of approach is represented by Guy
Michaud, who in his vast Message Poétique du Symbolisme7
devotes a chapter to Mallarmé's work in general. Suzanne
Bernard's monumental study, Le Poeme en Prose de Baudelaire
jusgu'a nos jour§,8 traces not only the beginnings and
subsequent manifestations of the form in some of the greatest
poets of the nineteenth century, but also its impact, extend-
ing well into the middle of our own century. She devotes a
substantial chapter to Mallarmé, including in her discussion
"Un Coup de dés." However, she necessarily views his work as
'but one stage of a historical process. Kurt Wais, who is
probably Germany's foremost authority on Mallarmé, has dis-
cussed the prose poems along with the verse poetry in his
.Mallarmé,9 linking the various pieces to different moments of
.Mallarmé's private life; and the poet's biography, in turn,
is tied to the development of the oeuvre. Wais usually
restricts himself to an intelligent paraphrasing and at times
to the translation of passages of the pieces, without ana—
lyzing any one of them thoroughly. The most interesting
recent French critic of Mallarmé's work, Jean-Pierre Richard.

in his immense study, L'Univers Imaginaire de Mallarmé,10

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touches upon each prose poem in the course of his discussion
of Mallarmé's major themes and motifs, but without discussing
any single one of them as an organic whole. Finally, the
poet's most significant critic, Robert Greer Cohn, who with
his L'Oeuvre de Mallarmé: Un Coup de Dés and Toward the Poems

of Mallarméll gives a decisive orientation to the reading of

 

all of Mallarmé's poetry, does not discuss our poems specifi—
cally. American and English critics have done no analyses
of the prose poems.12

There is, then, to my knowledge, no study which inter-
prets Mallarmé's prose poems separately, let alone any which
treats them as parts of a coherent cycle. That these prose
poems do indeed constitute a cycle, rather than a conglomera-
tion of separate elements, is one of my more significant
findings.

As the material under investigation covers almost the
whole span of the poet's productive life, from the early
pieces of 1864 to the closing poem of 1895, this study—-aside
from dealing with thematic aspects—-must account for the
marked stylistic break, so much more apparent in Mallarmé's
prose than in his verse, which separates his early from his
mature work. It will hence show how that mature prose style
Characteristic of the Divagations is related to the thematic
development of these prose poems. As my work has convinced

me of the very close interrelationship of style and theme,

or form and function, in the thirteen pieces, they are not

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anywhere discussed from a purely stylistic point of View.
The identification of Mallarmé's characteristic stylistic

deVices has been done in Jacques Scherer's painstaking

Wtéraire dans l'oeuvre de Mallarmé, 3 which

cOvers, as its title suggests, all of the poet's production.

Norman Paxton's much more recent The Development of

%rmé's Prose Stylel4 constitutes an analysis, often an

emalteration, of the variants in some of Mallarmé's prose work.

FUrther , though my interpretation is founded on a thorough

VOCabulary analysis, I am not concerned with statistical
compilations of word frequency in the manner of Monique

Parent. ' s Saint-John Perse et quelque devanciers, études sur

Le poeme en prose.15

Principally I aim to explore these prose poems' signifi-

cance in Mallarmé's poetic universe. Any such exegesis must

Involve the examination and comparison of parallel passages,
t ° . .
hat 18 the study of imagery not only within each poem as an

ind . .
ependent unit, but also Wlth reference to the other prose

Poem . ,
s as well as the verse poetry. For just as Mallarme

beli
eved that all myths can be reduced to the solar drama. so

he is
attracted to a style of composition which is made up

ofa
In fact, I

E ew carefully selected patterns of imagery.

have
3 . .
Qund this oeuvre to be so close-knit a structure, so

Very e:
fro 3‘ I11:hetic, that I have quoted only selected echo passages
mo
Gard“ atside the cycle. I believe, with such critics as
3b
Davies, that this poet uses a fairly limited number

 

 

 

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of images repeatedly to create a symbolic language. This
highly synthetic aspect of the oeuvre is, moreover,
acCentuated by Mallarmé himself:

Jamais pensée ne se présente a moi, détachée, je n'en
ai pas de cette sorte et reste ici dans l'embarras;
les miennes formant le trait, musicalement placées,
d‘ un ensemble et, a s'isoler, je les sens perdre
jusqu'a leur vérité et sonner faux: apres tout, cet
aveu, pent-’étre, en figure-t-il une, propre au feuillet
blanc d'un album (0C p. 883) .

Variant readings and bibliographic information will be dis-
cuSsed only when they aid in the understanding of the text.
M051; of this information is readily available in the Pléiade
edition -

My analysis of the prose poems is based on a careful
Vocabulary examination, because Mallarmé himself has repeatedly
stresséd the importance of lg _m_o_t_§ as the basic ingredients

of the Poet's working material:

L ' 9euvre pure implique la disparition élocutoire du
po ete, ui cede l'initiative aux mots, par le heurt de
gun: inegalité mobilisés; ils s'allument de reflets

§ciproques comme une virtuelle trainée de feux sur des
p3=~erreries, remplacant la respiration perceptible en
ancien souffle lyrique ou la direction personnelle
enthousiaste de la phrase (0C p. 366) .
1: “Les mots, d'eux-m’émes, s'exaltent a mainte facette
s e<20nnue la plus rare ou valant pour l'esprit, centre de
& uépens vibratoire; qui’les percoit independamment de la
Ci lte ordinaire, projetes, en parois de grotte, tant que
Dare leur mobilite ou principe, etant ce qui ne se\dit
r .. 8 du discours: prompts tous, avant extinction, a une
eiprocité de feux distante ou presentée de biais comme

QQ
ntingence (OC p. 386).

And
my
tea: vocabulary analysis is based on ,the monumental con-
!)on .
in 186 by dictionary of Emile Littré, whose publication began
3

and terminated in 1872. Not only is this dictionary

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Contemporary with Mallarmé's work, but it is moreover certain
that the poet utilized it in the creation of his language.
where each word is carefully chosen not only for its sound-
1°Ok aspect and customary significance, but also for its less
appai'en‘l: and often completely unfamiliar meanings. Charles
Chassé has devoted a whole book to Littré's influence on
Mallarmé '3 poetry,16 thus revealing an indispensable key for
not only the verse but also the prose. Therefore, all my
lexical references, unless otherwise indicated, are to
Littré - a dictionary which the poet himself, moreover, men—

tiOns in LA DERNIERE MODE: *

- :- - grand Dictionnaire de la Langue Francaise par
LII—titre dans toute bibliotheque serieuse (OC p. 828)

Particular attention has been paid to etymologies, so im-
portant to the poet, as we also know from Chassé's work.

And it is for the etymological wealth of his vocabulary, too.
that Mallarme consulted Littré.

My reading and interpretation of these prose poems
I'ESpths their order in Divagations, which is also that of
them edition, except for the editors' unfortunate
omission of the culminating piece.

have where not only imagistic, but also thematic, patterns

merged, their relationship with both the verse poetry

and Ma
Q. larmé's prose work is examined. But the principal aim

has be
Frog an to ascertain whether there is a thematic unity and
re
a - , , .
to ea g lon Within the prose poems themselves, relating them
ch

other and thus constituting an artistic unity.

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Furthermore, though it is clear that we are dealing primarily
with a great poet, and not even secondarily with a philosopher,
it is nevertheless true that the oeuvre is enclosed by two
wOrks of an overwhelmingly metaphysical significance; the body
of Mallarmé's mature work begins with M and ends with
"Un Coup de dés." Therefore, this reading also aims to show
Whether these prose poems reflect Mallarmé's philosophic
stance, and if so, how. Igitur has come down to us in frag-
ruelitany)? form, but the poet's last and most significant work,
the "Coup de dés," might itself be considered the culminating
achievement of the prose poem, while, at the same time, it
Constitutes a departure from that gggge. In his "Préface" to
the "Coup de dés," Mallarme situates the unprecedented form
of thi S poem midway between the gem; gr; p_ro_se_ and the m
fill—9.: the two new phenomena in the literature of his day,
the latter of which he had, however, never adopted himself:
A113] ourd'hui ou sans présumer de l'avenir qui sortira
d ' ici, rien ou presque un art, reconnaissons aisément
que la tentative participe, avec imprévu, de poursuites
E’ailfticulieres et cheres a notre temps, le vers libre

e1; 1e poeme en prose... (0C p. 456)

The influence of Igitur, which constitutes the purgation

a metaphysical crisis undergone by the young poet,

Hamel
§ the "crise de Tournon," already makes itself felt in

80me
' 0
Yea ‘15 the early prose poems, Whlch were written several
1‘8
out L‘2’efore. These poems reflect Mallarmé's stance of
°1<>

meat S"alcal questioning, directly revealed in the Igitur frag—
8'

aJud seen indirectly through the veil of anecdote in

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the prose poems. They also presage, as early as 1864, some
of the existential anguish which caused that crisis to erupt

'3 few years later in Mallarmé's life. Our analysis of the
Prose poems will show that many of the key images and symbols
of Igitur, such as the room, the mirror, the clock, and most

of all the solitary, anguished hero, hesitating before life
and tempted by suicide and madness, are identical with those

of some of the early prose poems.

Even after this descent and return, however, the death
of the persona's former self and his rebirth as atheist and
Poet, the human personality which emerges from the mature
prose poems, as well as from the verse poetry, is that of a
man tortured by a nostalgia for that Eden which he now knows
not to exist. And so Mallarmé's final and culminating poetic
venture , the "Coup de dés," again, as the early Igitur,
expreSSes both Man's metaphysical yearnings and the ultimate
fufi-lity and failure of a quest which must end in annihila-
tion_ The threat both of the early voyage into the inner

de 1;

p he of the self, as well as of the final one into cosmic
Spaces
Poem

is already vaguely foreshadowed in an early prose

0

whose hero dares not look into the deep mirror of his

nor through the windows which shield him from the vast

spaCe
beyond. Nevertheless, the search for meaning and

s
Poet a1'1<ience is carried on through the stormiest seas: the
19
QXt, Venture is not abandoned until ultimate shipwreck and
“Ch -

10n. The undertaking is hopeless, and the poet knows

 

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10

this, but he perseveres _a_s__i_f_ it were not. And as the early
Prose poems reflect Igitur and the poet's inner drama, so

the late ones move progressively toward the outside, toward

an acceptance of both life and nature. But this acceptance

is on the poet's terms: he transforms the world and confers

mefining onto contingency and chaos by means of his Art, the

suli’reme fiction of the Orphic, that is the Poetic, explana-

tion of the universe,

qui est le seul devoir du poete et le jeu littéraire
Par excellence (0C p. 663).

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INTRODUCT ION

NOTES
1 Albert Thibaudet, Le Poésie de Stéphane Mallarme (Paris:

Gallimard, 1912 and 1926).

2 Dieter Steland, Dialektische Gedanken in Stéphane

Millarmés "Divagations" (Mfinchen: Wilhelm Fink Verlag,

1965 ) .

3 Henri Mondor, Stéphane Mallarmé Correspondance 1862—1871

I (Paris: Gallimard, 1959), p. 113; in a letter to
Albert Collignon, of April 11, 1864, Mallarmé writes:

Je vous envoie aujourd'hui quelques poemes en prose
dont vous aimez les inspirateurs.

The " inspirateurs" are Gautier, Banville, and Baudelaire.

4 Stephane Mallarmé, Divagations (Paris: Biblioth‘egue

Cherpentier, 1897).
Mallarme, Divagations, P- 373'

H . .
enrl Mondor and G. Jean-Aubry, Oeuvres Completes de

8 e‘ ’
t\k‘hane Mallarme (Paris: Gallimard, 1945). All ref-

et‘ ’
eil'lees to Mallarme's work, unless otherwise indicated,

"L
l 1 be to this edition.

7
Ga}...
1 Michaud, fleggage Poétique du Symbolisme (Paris: Nizet,
96 e

) pp. 159—98, "Les poetes maudits: Mallarmé."

O

"2"5 Estate,

   
 

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scape: .
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an. A... . ‘ -

 

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12

8 Suzanne Bernard, Le Poeme en Prose de Baudelaire jusqu'a

nos jours (Paris: Nizet, 1959), pp. 252-330, "Mallarmé

et la Métaphysique du Langage."

9 Kurt Wais, Mallarmé (Mfinchen: Beck'sche Verlagsbuchhand-

lung, 1938 and 1952) .

1‘0 Jean—Pierre Richard, L'Univers Imaginaire de Mallarmé

(Paris: Ed. du Seuil, 1961).

11 Robert Greer Cohn, L'Oeuvre de Mallarme: Un Coup de Dés

(Paris: Librairie Les Lettres, 1951) and Toward the Poems

of Mallarmé (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1965).

12 The only specific analysis of one of these prose poems by

an English critic is that of A. R. Chisholm, "Le Démon

‘13 1 ' Analogie," ESSAYS IN FRENCH LITERATURE, (1964), 1—5.

1 . . , .
3 Jaeglues Scherer, L'Expression Litteraire dans l'oeuvre de

W (Paris: Droz, 1947).

14 N I
orman Paxton, The Development of Mallarme's Prose Style
(G en‘eve: Droz, 1968) .

15 M
on
igue Parent, Saint—John Perse et quelgLes devanciers,

ét‘ :-
Wsur 1e poeme en prose (Paris: Belles Lettres,
198 0 )

16
Che tr
1&3 Chassé, Les clefs de Mallarmé (Paris: Aubier,
195% _)

 

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CHAPTER II
LE PHENOMENE FUTUR

This piece occupies the first place in all the editions
of the collected prose poems, though it was one of the
latest in order or composition of the six poems written in
1854. 1' And the reason why Mallarmé always placed "Le

Phénom‘ene Futur" at the head of the recueil is probably due
to its prophetic character, for it presages and announces in
a blinding vision his own unique poetry. The anecdote of

the P0 em, whose impact is primarily that of an impressionistic
W, tells about a showman who displays before a
dull aJ-Ilciience, which represents a tired and late civilization.
the marvel of a woman of yore, a wonder of by—gone times
preserVed by "la science souveraine." And her brilliant
beauty contrasts with the bleakness of the world in which she
appears. while in the audience none but the poets have the
Strength to understand what they are contemplating.
begin A careful study of the vocabulary of the piece must
with the title itself, the key to the poem, as it were.

To 1110
a , . .
t readers of Mallarme, "phenomena" would probably sug-

96.3
tthe t '1 fH 1' h'l h 2 '

initi ermino ogy o ege 1an p 1 osop y, to Wthh he was
3

Adam ed through his friends, above all Villiers de l'Isle-

an he met in 1864. And no doubt, the poet's

13

 

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is d;e,
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.
.... ..,....p

-...: .asaavdb a CC:-

.
_ fi“~-O thv
-... VGUu-p‘ s.n\-s

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v
n-

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mus: 3e: me E:

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f—-~....E :: “V" ‘
VA 4.

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C“...'

with a:

14

predilection for such terms as "1a notion," "la notion pure,"
and "l'idée" is due, at least in part, to this influence;
further, Hegel does seem to have influenced some of Mallarme's
poetry, and above all the early Igitur, which would be very
obscure without a consideration of Hegelian influences.

One ought, therefore, to keep in mind the association
of the title with "phenomenology" referring to the science of
ideas which derive from sense perception. But at the same
time, Littré's fifth definition of "phénoméne," namely "chose
ou personne extraordinaire qu'on montre a la foire; pheno-
mene vivant," with an added citation making reference to "de
montreurs de phenomena," sets the scene of the poem, as it
were, from the point of view of matiere, while the philosoph-
ical association might enlighten its gens. 'We should further
keep in mind the Greek root of the word "phenomenon," i.e.
that which appears, for the poem's central image and symbol
is, indeed, an apparition of preternatural character.

The fairground setting announced by the title emerges
only gradually; for at first we find ourselves in the vaguely
dream—like atmosphere of sky, a dying sun, water, and earth
approaching their final hour. And while the title indicates
that this spectacle is of the future, the verbs of the first
paragraph are in the present tense, because it constitutes
an impressionistic tableau in which we are already beholding
What is to come, and where, moreover, rather than distin-

guishing sharp outlines, we at first perceive somewhat swaYing

:9! DAG-es, 3;
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13.5... CS: a1”;

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Soti

"h. Q .vfihA-" '
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., .... .1" 1A 9:; ‘
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15

colors and tones, with Mallarmé's two most important ones,
white and red, already predominating.

The pale sky is fagé, has lost its freshness:3 but mean—
ings are almost always multivalent for this poet, and in a
dying world where miracles are no longer understood, the
very concept of "sky" has paled also, with the splendor of
ancient astronomy and its diverse crystaline spheres moving
the heavenly bodies irretrievably lost to a modern and pro-
gressive Weltanschauung.

In its s0phistication, the world has turned senile:
the pale sky might disappear not only in the clouds, it might
vanish along with them, for darkness is impending. But it
is a bloody death, "lambeaux de la pourpre usée" not only
suggesting that the splendor of former sunsets has faded,
but at the same time evoking the image of torn flesh: for
though "lambeaux" is a soft-sounding word, its meaning inti—
mates the harsh tearing of "arraché" and "déchiré." And so
a violent death is evoked, but the memory of it has now
faded, along with the crimson and royal splendor of by—gone
sunsets, and along with everything else in this tired world.
A worn sun, thus, weakened somehow by too many deaths, sinks
into a watery extinction,5 which creates an impressionisti-
cally vague fusion of water and light at the horizon.

Of the four basic elements of ancient natural philosophy,
fire, air, water, and earth, the poet has used the first

three to paint the sunset, one of the pervasive motifs in his

r. ‘. " .0'." V
1.4.... ...A- ‘

 

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16

total poetic universe, and which will also recur prominently
in these prose poems.6 And as our eyes now turn to the
earth, they encounter night and darkness there; for we can
barely make out the foliage of the tired trees; it, too, is
no longer green, but faded out, as it were, on this earth

so old that it is reduced to dust, the very symbol of disso—
1ution. Not the dust of the roads, but that of time and age,
"1a poussiére des siECles," has turned the personified,
senile trees white. And "temps," already alluded to in the
title with "future," plays throughout this piece in the form
of a duration, which is limited, juxtaposed with that which
is unlimited, perhaps eternal. Just as the day is ending,
the dust of the foliage suggests the end of summer, and this
double impact of the solar drama reflects the human one:
sickness and sin announce the end of the human race. For
‘with the next generation the earth will die. The obsession
with devouring time is reminiscent of Baudelaire, as is the
poem's setting, which recalls Baudelaire's prose poem, "Le
Vieux Saltimbanque." And Baudelairean also is the whole 0p-
position of Art and Nature, and the jeu de contrastes employed
throughout the piece.

As the streetlights gradually illuminate the scene in
the falling dusk, we recognize the fairground with canvas
tent and showman, which we know from "Le Pitre Chatié," and
‘which we will encounter again in these prose poems. The scene

‘has shifted, and the sky's vault is replaced by that of the

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tent, the sun, source of its own light, by the reflected
light of gaslamps, an image of modernity often used by
Mallarme, and which shall also reappear in the prose poems.
And now man appears: an anonymous showman and an anonymous
crowd. Time again irrupts: the showman specializes in
curiosities of the past. The light in our tableau has be—
come vague and uncertain, the very root of "crépuscule,"

creperus, pointing to the doubtful, the uncertain. Twilight,

 

lamplit dusk, momentarily revives the faces of a vulgar
death-bound throng, whose only claim to immortality is its
sickness, for they are "vaincu par la maladie immortelle."
.And the showman now seems to rise out of that crowd like the
poets of "Le Guignon"--that early verse poem so reminiscent
of Baudelaire's "Bénédiction"--who also towered:

Au-dessus du bétail ahuri des humains.
The "péché des siecles" is an echo both of Baudelaire and
Schopenhauer, namely the very sin of perpetuating the human
race.7 Are not the women of this crowd "accomplices" of
their mates, thus participants in crime? Women, "chétives,"
sickly, but by the term's etymology, captivus, also slaves
of their men, of whom they bear the miserable offspring, that
last generation of men. And the image of these "hommes prés
de leurs chétives complices enceintes des fruits misérables
avec lesquels périra 1a terre" recalls a verse poem, preceding
our prose piece by two years, "Sonnet," where we also find

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particularly woman in her reproductive function:
.Un.niais met sous lui sa femme froide et séche.

The imminent catastrophe presaged by a perishing sun,
namely the end of the world, is reflected by the anguished
silence, whose momentary tension is now relieved by "1e
simple boniment," that is the salestalk of the Showman.
Significantly "Montreur" is capitalized: he alone rises
above the dumb crowd, he alone speaks at this last silent
hour of humanity. But, at the same time, there is a highly
derogatory tone in "boniment," which is a "parade de charla—
tan," and designated moreover as "mot tres vulgaire." Is
the poet, then, undercutting "Le Phénoméne" by presenting it
in a "boniment?" Or is it that humanity, at this hour, no
longer understands any language but “salestalk?"

Whereas the setting had been supplied by an omniscient
author, we see the "Femme d'autrefois" by means of the Show-
man's words alone: and, as he proclaims, no painter could
give even a sad reflection of the marvel: only his words,
then, can describe her.

In this world which appears to be in the very process
of dying, he has a "phenomene vivant" to show, a living woman,
not of this age indeed, but of a golden age long past, again
reminiscent of Baudelaire and his mystique of "La Vie
.Antérieure." The marvelous woman has been preserved, mysteri—
ously, over the centuries: she alone is not subject to time -

in this death-bound world, but capable of survival, and

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eternally young. For she is not a natural wonder at all,
thus not subject to the laws of nature; she is the product
of "la science souveraine," its very creature. On the narra—
tive level of the poem, this supreme as contrasted to natural
science is to be accepted as part of the Showman's magic.

The description of the woman opens up a series of basic
and recurring images of Mallarmé's poetic universe: the
hair, living gold, so reminiscent of Hérodiade's; hair which
will be celebrated also in another prose poem in the form of
an interpolated sonnet.8 And frequently in this poetry, the
hair's gold fuses with that of the sunset. Our "Phénoméne's"
hair appears living gold, and was not "l'or vivant" of the
alchemists fire imprisoned in matter? "Originelle et naive,"
the latter an etymological doublet of "native," this hair is
a wonder not of this age; it is hardly recognizable at first
as a matter of fact. And the Showman, impressionistically,
describes its properties first, culminating in the "extase
d'or," which she, the woman, then identifies by calling it
her hair. "Extase" again suggests the supernatural, for it
is a mystical term designating a state in which communication
with the material, the natural world has been severed. And
the blood imagery of the poem's opening is now taken up again
in the description of the red lips, this red then juxtaposed
with the white of the nude body. The very opposite of fggé,
this woman with her eyes sparkling like precious gems, an

image familiar from the verse poetry, her lithe legs still

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20

moist from the sea, her virginally hard and pointed breasts,
which, however, at the same time are pregnant with maternal
milk, recalls Botticelli's Aphrodite at the moment of her
birth.

After the "boniment" which has cut through the night
like a flash of lightning, the omniscient author contrasts
this with a willfully narrative, anecdotical ending, which
skillfully establishes a contrast with the overwhelming
apparition. Further, the real women are now contrasted with
the ideal, and while the latter seemed an image of eternal
youth with flaming hair, the former are rendered as bald,
and "morbides."

The concluding paragraph breaks sharply with the body
of the poem, almost in the manner of the "moral" terminating
an old fable, which break is partly accomplished by the
shift to the future perfect tense, placing the future events
described in the poem, and which we had seen in the present,
into the past. For now humanity has already contemplated the
miracle of the Showman, and most men return to looking at
the shadows in the Cave. Yet there are some who are vaguely
moved by a mysterious force, and they weep. But even in
these last days, there shall be poets, who will feel a glory
mysteriously, an intoxication, the breath of Terpsichore.
Haunted by the vision, they forget their doomed age and turn
to their lamp, the light of art replacing natural light, and

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In "Las de l'amer repos," a verse poem of the same year as
our piece, there is a lonely poet persona, whose lamp is his
only companion:

Et ma lampe qui sait pourtant mon agonie.

A passage from one of Mallarme's much later and most
poetic prose pieces beautifully demonstrates how this vision
of "les poétes de ces temps," embodied magnificently for him
in Villiers de l'Isle—Adam, did not change throughout his
life. In his commemorative lecture for his friend, the poet
says:

... Une question d' heure, en effet, étrange et de grand

intéret mais qu 'ont occasion de se poser peu d' hommes

ici-bas, a savoir que peut— -etre lui ne serait point
venu a la sienne, pour que le conflit fut tel. Si!

a considérer 1' Histoire il avait été ponctuel, devant

1' assignation du sort, nullement intempestif, ni re-

prehensible: car ce n 'est pas contemporainement a une

epoque, aucunement, que doivent, pour exalter le sens,
advenir ceux que leur destin chargea d' en étre a nu

1' ex ression; ils sont projetés maint siecle au—dela,

stupefaits, a témoigner de ce qui, normal a 1' instant

meme, vit tard magnifiquement par le regreL et trouvera
dans l' exil de leur nostalgique esprit tourné vers 1e

passe, sa vision pure (0C pp. 495- 96).

The echoes of imagery of "Le Phénoméne Futur" in the
early verse poetry are too abundant to be quoted. The bleed—
ing sunsets as well as the poet persona's disgust with the
human throng surrounding him, and his isolation from it, ap-
pear again and again. But of that early verse poetry,"Le
Pitre Chfitié," of the same year as the prose poem, shows the
most striking kinship with it: for not only does it have the
fairground setting and the showtent, but also a poet persona

in the role of a showman, "l'histrion," who is most reminis-

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22

The most significant work Mallarmé undertook in 1864
‘was surely "Hérodiade," an analysis of which would be a study
in itself, but which would reveal significant relationships
with "Le Phénoméne Futur." From the point of view of imagery,
the opening of "Hérodiade" echoes our poem: it also cele-
brates the solar drama, autumn, the purple sky, though of a
sunrise rather than a sunset, but evoking nevertheless crime
and blood and death:

Crime! bufiher! aurore anciennne! supplice!
Pourpre d'un ciel! Etang de la pourpre complice!

Again the sky's purple is reflected in the water, somehow
reminiscent of the drowning of the sun in the water of our
prose poem. Contrasting with this violent red is the white
chastity of Hérodiade's room, "1e neigeux jadis" and the
nurse's gown, "ma robe blanchie." And there is again an
evocation of the last hour:

A l'heure d'agonie et de luttes funébres!
and the end of the world:

Lever du jour dernier qui vient tout achever.
The most striking resemblance, however, is that of the two
main symbols of these poems, the golden-haired women:
Hérodiade calls her hair:

Le blond torrent de mes cheveux immaculés.
The eyes of both resemble precious stones, the Phénoméne's
"les yeux semblables aux pierres rares," and the other
"Hérodiade au clair regard de diamant." And in both poems,

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"Hérodiade" by the old nurse:
Calme, toi, les frissons de ta sénile chair.

Yet, I cannot agree with those critics who tend to
identify the-two figures,9 for the sterile splendor of
Hérodiade is not the same as that of 1e Phénoméne, so proudly
displaying her jubilant nakedness--how different from
Hérodiade in her heavy and stiff, jewel—encrusted gown,
shielding a body which is seen only at the cost of death.
Moreover, the Phénoméne has just emerged from the sea, while
Hérodiade has not yet entered it.

Having examined the vocabulary and imagery of "Le
Phénoméne Futur," I want to point to some stylistic features
which relate thispiece to the other prose poems of 1864.

It shows impressionistic techniques, already touched upon in
passing: the Opening tableau is not drawn in sharp outlines,
but rather painted, so that mood is conveyed through colors
-which seem to flow into one another indistinctly, and im—
pressions are rendered before the image is identified, as
with the Phenomenon's hair. Further, in all the early pieces
there is a generous use of alliteration, as in our opening
sentence, and also of internal rhyme, as for example in

"... pleins d'un lait éternel, la pointe vers le ciel..."

And these devices also figure prominently in Mallarmé's verse
poetry of that time: while in the already mentioned character-
istic use of contrasting imagery, we recognize Baudelaire's

influence. And though in general the syntax is still

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24

conventional in these early prose poems, there are already
some indications which point to the later style, such as the
structuring of unusually long sentences by means of a totally
unconventional punctuation--frequent use of colons, exclama-
tion marks, and parentheses within the sentence--while verbs,
though still used abundantly, seem sometimes paralyzed in
their action by the use of participles. Further, there is
already a tendency toward nominalization, with expressions
such as "... dans l'oubli d'exister," while adjectives,
moreover, are being turned into nouns, as for example in
"... 1e désespoir d'un cri" or "... la nudité sanglante de
ses levres."

Finally, the thematic implications of "Le Phénoméne
Futur" remain to be explored. For while in some of the other
early, more anecdotical prose poems the theme emerges
naturally from the vocabulary analysis, in a truly symbolist
poem, such as this one, the key symbol needs to be inter—
preted. By "symbolist" I mean exemplifying the process by
'Which only one term of a metaphor is developed throughout a
poem» without any explicit identification of the thing,
jperson, or idea to which this first term stands in an ana—
logical relationship.t Thus, the thing symbolized is to be

inferred from the symbol itself, and from other signs in the

piece.10

Contemporary commentaries on the poem do not reveal its

meaning. Even Baudelaire, to whom, as we saw, the piece owes

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much, does~not seem to have understood it, as is apparent
from his comments.11 And Mallarmé's own friend, Cazalis,
acknowledging receipt of the piece with a warm letter of
admiration, limits himself to general comments, without any

attempt at interpretation.12

The Opening of the poem conveys despair with the state
of the world, a mood reflected in much of Mallarmé's corre—
spondence of that time, as well as in most of his contemporary
verse poetry, which is dominated by this same tone of dis—
couragement. ‘It is of the same world that poets since
Baudelaire have despaired of curing the ills through their
involvement-~poetic or otherwise. They have "turned their
back to life," as Mallarmé puts it in "Les Fenétres." Again,
from Baudelaire, who had admired Rousseauists like Bernardin
de Saint—Pierre and occultists like Eliphas Levi, came the
inheritance of what we might call the refusal of history and
1e regard en arriere, towards a lost Eden. The consequent
notion that the very act of perpetuating the race removes
humanity ipgg £3959 farther from the source and thus toward
evil, and that only art is capable of reflecting some of the
lost glory, is a constant theme in Baudelaire, whence his
fully developed opposition of Art and Nature. .

It might be mentioned here that the almost contemporary

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26

woman, and not the real one of our day, may reflect some

of that ever-lost beauty of the past. There are no influ-
ences of this work on our similarly named prose poem, or
vice versa, but both develop a like theme: that nature has
fallen into decay, and that only by means of some supreme
science--or supreme art--a reflection of what we have lost
might be artificially restored. And in the creation of the
Beautiful, its creator breaks beyond the limits of his time.
Our Montreur is connected to the past Golden Age by the
vision which inspires him, and projected into the future by
his immortal creation. And the isolation of this creator13
is reinforced by the fact that most of humanity is totally
incapable of comprehending his creation, just as it has
lost the memory of Eden.

In our poem, the Showman is the creator of the marvel,
and that his "act" is the poetic one becomes perfectly
obvious in the closing lines of the piece. Thus, the
Phenomenon is probably a poem, or its idea personified.
And numerous examples from Mallarme's contemporary corre-
spondence could be cited wherein he states that the most
perfect expression of Beauty is poetry.l4

Though wary of the excessive predilection of modern
criticism for interpreting poetry as "poetry about poetry,"
we must, on the other hand, heed Mallarmé's own comments
about.Divagations: "Les Divagations apparentes traitent un

15

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27

theory. And although in the same preface he seems to re—
strict the just quoted statement to the articles of the book,
this study shall show that its prose poems are concerned
with the same theme, while further hoping to be able to
explain that apparent restriction. In fact, Thibaudet
pointed out that the basic theme of poetic creation dominates
most of the verse poetry as well.16
Moreover, the Montreur's "boniment," namely that he
alone can describe the beauty he has to show, no painter
these days capable of giving a sad shadow of it, accentuates
the notion of the verbal as the supreme art form. Again,
this is a notion Mallarmé will develop throughout his life:
poetry surpasses any other form of art, even its greatest
rivals, music and dance. Further, the Phenomenon has been
preserved "par la science souveraine," namely the magic of
language. While this is again a partly Baudelairean inspira—
tion, the "sorcellerie évocatoire," Mallarme, as his readers
know, explored the mysterious resources of language all his
life.17 Both he and his great predecessor might well have
'been influenced by the Kabala through such figures as the
above-mentioned Levi, whose Dogmes et Rituel de haute Magie
was published in 1861. Mallarme, in a late essay of
Divagations, appropriately entitled "Magie," still repeatedly
uses terms of alchemy to designate the poetic art.

But it is the narrative closing of "Le Phénomene Futur"

itself which gives the clearest sign for the interpretation

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of its major symbol: most of mankind will remain indif-
ferent at beholding "Le Phénoméne," because they will not
have the strength to understand what they are contemplating;
but others will be "navrés," broken—hearted, that is emo-
tionally responsive to a poetry which they, however, do not
really understand; finally the poets alone will comprehend
the apparition, that is in the etymological sense of that
word be able to take into themselves that which renders them
"ivre un instant d'une gloire confuse."

The poet as Showman, a most important and constant image
in this poetic universe, makes his earliest appearance, then,
in our prose poem and the contemporary "Le Pitre Chatié."

The spectacle which the poet—showman offers to us, the Birth
of Venus, is the prose poem's central symbol. It figures

in a blinding vision the mature poetry anticipated but yet to
be created. Venus' beauty, once lost but now momentarily
remembered, embodies the motif of the return to the source,
of Paradise regained. This motif, together with the figure
of the poet, will be progressively developed throughout these
poems, and it will also reappear in other sections of the
.Qiyagations, ultimately to reflect Mallarme's confident,

mature affirmation of the importance of the poet's role.

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LE PHENOMENE FUTUR

NOTES

1 The three publications of the recueil indicated in the
Pléiade edition were in Pages (Bruxelles: Deman, 1891);
Vers et Prose (Paris: Perrin, 1893); Divagations (Paris:
Charpentier, 1897). The reference to the order of

composition of the early prose poems is in OC pp. 1548—9.

2 A contemporary article by Edmond Scherer, "Hegel et
l'hegélianisme," Revue des deux mondes, January, 1861,
which might have been read by Mallarmé, gives a summary
vulgarigation of Hegel's system. I am quoting from this
article a section which could conceivably have influenced
our poem:

... Hegel a parlé a sa maniere, en symboles, en
formules; il a ete obscur comme les prophetes,

mais comme eux il a eu le regard qui va au fond

des choses ... 11 a reconnu que si l'univers dit
quelque chose a l'homme, c'est qu'il a quelque

chose de'commun avec l'homme; en un mot, que la
vrare‘realiteh la premiere, ce n'est pas la matiere,
mais l'esprit. La chose n'est que le corps de
l'idee, le phénomene n'est que l'expression de la
loi. _

3 The "fané" is a notion which will reappear not only in

these prose poems, but in much of the poet's verse poetry,

and to which Jean-Pierre Richard has devoted an excellent

chapter in L'Univers, pp. 62—68.

4 .Much later in the poet's life, his nostalgia for another,

'by-gone world view is reflected by a charming episode

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related by his one-time disciple, René Ghil in Les Dates
et les Oeuvres (Paris: Cres, 1923), p. 114, which has
the "maitre" say: "non, Ghil, l'on ne peut se passer
d'Eden!" upon which the younger replies: "Je crois que

si, cher Maitre...‘

Richard, L'Univers, pp. 109-116, gives an extensive

psycho—critic treatment of fire extinguished in water.

For an extensive treatment of the theme in Mallarme's
verse poetry, see the beautiful study by Gardner Davies,

Mallarmé et le Drame Solaire (Paris: Corti, 1959).

Without getting deeply into SchOpenhauer, it is neverthe-
~1ess clear that for him the reproductive function, in
animal as well as man, is one of the most powerful mani-
festations of the Will's endless and blind striving, which
knows no cessation and can, therefore, never lead to
tranquillity. For him, the strong drive to live and
perpetuate life is the source of conflict in the world,
from Which the only possible temporary escape is aesthetic
contemplation. This notion, of course, through Hartmann,
mmst strongly influenced Laforgue.

And in Baudelaire the idea of "le péché" of procrea—
tion is clearly expressed in a poem which, like ours,
contrasts a former, golden age with present misery.
Charles Baudelaire, Lg§_Eleur§ du ma; (Paris: Garnier,

1961). pp. 13-14:

    

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J'aime 1e souvenir de ces époques nues,

Et vous, femmes, hélas! pales comme des cierges,

Que ronge et que nourrit 1a debauche, et vous, vierges,
Du vice maternal trainant l'heredite’

Et toutes les hideurs de la fecondite!

And this theme is reflective of a literary mood of the time,

already evident in Musset's "Rolla," and later taken up

-again in Rimbaud's "Soleil et Chair"; The cult of "ces

époques nues" might have originated in Schiller's cult of

Greek antiquity, expressed in his "Philosophische Gedichte."

A study of la chevelure in Mallarme's verse poetry is that
of C. Soula, La Poésie et la Pensée de Stéphane Mallarmé,
ggsai sur 1e symbole de la chevelure (Paris: Champion,
1929) in which he discusses the symbol in analysing "Dame
sans trep d'ardeur"; "Victorieusement fui 1e suicide”;
"Ses purs ongles tres haut"; "La chevelure vol d'une
flamme": "Quelle soie aux baumes de temps"; "M'introduire

dans ton histoire."

Frederic Chase St. Aubyn, Stéphane Mallarmé (New York:
Twayne, 1969), p. 131:
But more interesting is the sideshow tent of the
"Showman of things Past," for he has inside a
"WOman of other times," ... who can only be
Hérodiade.
This understanding of late 19th-century symbolist tech-
nique owes much to Bernard Weinberg's formulations in

The Limits of Symbolism (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press,
1966). PP. 34-35.

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11 Mondor, Correspondance I, p. 201, quotes Baudelaire's

12

13

14

15

comment :

Un jeune écrivain a eu récemment une conception
ingenieuse, mais non absolument juste. Le monde va
finir. L’ humanité est décrepite. Un Barnum de

1' avenir montre aux hommes degradés de son temps une
belle femme des anciens ages artificiellement con-
servée. "Eh! quoi! disent-ils, 1' humanité a-t- elle
pu etre aussi belle que cela." Je dis que cela

n 'est pas vrai. L' homme déqradé s 'admirerait et
appellerait 1a beauté 1a laideur. (Eauvre Belgi mg ,
Oeuvres posthumes, t. III, p. 35.)

Bernard, Le Poeme en Prose, p. 260, reproduces a section
of this letter in a note:
Tu m 'envoies ... un poeme en prose qui m' a fait
jaloux, qui est d' une couleur splendide; le grand
couchant avec ses reflets rouges et rayé de bandes
noires, sur 1equel se dessinent, pales, étireé,
longs et maigres, les squelettes a peine vetus de
nos petits enfants, ce dernier saltimbanque et ce
dernier débris des Vieux ages, tout cela forme
un tableau etrange d' une vraie et rare beauté, un
de tes chefs-d' oeuvre...
From the early "L'Art pour Tous," 1862, to the late, "Le
Mystere dans les Lettres," 1896, Mallarmé uncompromisingly

accepted and maintained the poet's necessary isolation.

Henri Mondor in Propos sur la Poésie (Monaco: Ed.
du Rocher, 1953), p. 79, quotes from one of Mallarme's
letters to Cazalis:

... Il n'y a que la Beauté,--et elle n'a qu'une

expression parfaite: 1a Poésie.

Mallarme, Divagations, p. 1.

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16 Thibaudet, at the end of La Poésie, p. 446, comes to this
conclusion:
Aussi, chez lui, le sujet de l'écrit est ordinaire~

ment, par un jeu d'allusions plus ou moins complexes,
l'ecrit lui—meme.

17 An examination of Les Mots Anglais of 1877 bears this out.

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CHAPTER III
PLAINTE D ' AUTOMNE

This piece, one of Mallarmé's two earliest prose poems,
appeared originally under the title "1'Orgue de Barbarie"
in 1864, the year of its composition, and it was published
under that name several times. Its present title, under
which it is also published in the three receuils of the
prose poems, appears for the first time in 1875.

The change is, indeed, significant, for it reflects one
of Mallarmé's basic principles of poetic composition, formed
early, and adhered to all his life. Already in a letter of
the same year as our piece, he says:

... car j'invente une langue qui doit nécessairement

jaillir d'une poétique tres nouvelle, que je pourrais

definir en ces deux mots: Peindre, non 1a chose, mais

l'effet gu'elle produit.l
The former title names "la chose," as it were, while the
final one suggests ”l'effet qu'elle produit."

And as this prose poem, just as the preceding piece, is
deeply influenced by Baudelaire, it is possible that its
definitive title was suggested by two titles from Les Fleurs
du Mal: "Chant d'Automne" and "Sonnet d'Automne." While

”plainte" is a mood-setting noun, it is also a formal poetic

term: and just as with the title of the first prose poem,

34

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Mallarme here again brings multiple associations into play.
A "complaint" is the formal designation of a lyric poem,
frequent in both French and English medieval and Renaissance
literature, which generally bemoans the poet's unhappy lot,
or expresses his regret at the unhappy state of the world.
A medieval example of the former would be Eustache Deschamps'
"Plaintes d'amoureux," while Ronsard's "Plaintes de la
France" is one of the latter. So the poet here brings the
association of literature into play from the very outset.
In this sense, the title classifies the poem formally as be-
longing to the past, a.past almost quaintly remote. The
second term of the title reintroduces, in the form of the
year's seasons, the motif of the solar drama, which will be
developed richly in the piece.

"Plainte d'Automne" is about the solitary narrator's
reveries on an autumn evening: he is alone with his cat, in
a room visited by memories of his dead sister. And as he
meditates on those memories of the past and also his literary
taste, which is likewise directed toward the past, he hears
a barrel organ playing under his window, whose melancholy tune
is in harmony with the lonely listener's somewhat voluptuous
sadness.

From the first sentence, the piece is anecdotal and
narrative; thus it contrasts rather sharply with "1e Phénoméne
Futur." In the opening sentence, the narrator meditates

about the stars--to which one of them did Maria, the departed

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sister go? And this beginning, with the introduction of a
proper name, is so highly subjective, that one is fully
justified in bringing biographical details into the analysis.

2

Maria, Mallarmé's sister who had died in 1857, haunts much

of the poet's early work; and our narrator has ever since
Maria's loss loved solitude. To what star might she have
gone, "Orion, Altair, et toi, verte Vénus?" This enumera-
tion brings to mind a line of Hugo's "A la Fenétre, pendant
la Nuit": "Sirius, Orion, toi, Vénus ... ": and a variant

of our line, "Oh! 1aquelle, Orion, Sirius, et la Grande
Ourse?” suggests this association even more strongly.3 It is
also remotely possible that Venus, being the mother of love,
might have suggested Maria's return to a Mother; for Stéphane's
and Maria's mother had died in 1847. Further, Venus is the
name of copper in alchemy, and "cuivre" appears twice in the
same paragraph, while the combination "verte Vénus," aside
from alliterating, suggests also youth and the rebirth of
spring, and youth and age are contrasted throughout the prose
poem. And finally the green color may suggest the color of
bronze or c0pper long exposed to the air-«as on ancient
statues, perhaps a statue of Venus. "Altair," the first
magnitude star whose Arabic name means "flier,” or "bird,"
brings to mind the bird or wind symbol for the poet or poetic
creation, while "Orion," aside from the Hugolian echo indi—
cated above, is also the name of a whole constellation, and

the constellation of stars will become a most important

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symbol in this poetic universe: then there is here also an
echo of the Latin ggigr, to arise, suggesting in our poem's
context resurrection.

"... j'ai toujours chéri 1a solitude” accentuates the
highly subjective tone of this poem and at the same time
reintroduces the motif of solitude already suggested in "Le
Phenomene Futur." This motif, which is part of the theme of
the poet's isolation developed in this cycle, is immediately
reinforced in the second sentence with "seul," a word which
Mallarmé added to the Eéflfié version of the poem, and which
he repeated in both the third and fourth sentences, and then
finally as the last word of the piece. Originally, however,
there was still another sentence added to that ending: "Oh!
l'orgue de Barbarie, la veille de l'automne a cinq heures,
sous les peupliers jaunis, Maria!" And so the image of the
barrel organ was once more evoked here and linked to the
memory of Maria; and with the precise indication of the time
of day, the poem ended on a more anecdotal note. But the
omission of that ending indicates that while Mallarmé at the
'beginning of the poem's composition might have felt it to be
concerned mainly with Maria, he subsequently rendered it more
general, toning down, as it were, the personal occasion to
accentuate a deeper and at the same time wider significance.

The motif of solitude as well as the image of the cat,
the solitary narrator's companion, recall Baudelaire, one of

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possible that Mallarme's often attested admiration for cats
'was, at least originally, due to his master's repeatedly
expressed delight with them.4 However, the Baudelairean
influence, as well as the cat, which will reappear in the
early prose poems, are entirely absent from the late ones.

"Longues journées" and words such as "alanguis," as
‘well as the long mood-setting adverbs, "étrangement,
singulierement, languissament, mélancoliquement" and
"désespérément" tend to slow the passage of time in this
piece, and the device of repetition further works toward that
effect, which somehow isolates the narrator's world, cutting
his own time, that of his reverie, out of the general flow
of the time of the world outside. Not only the word "seul,"
but also whole phrases are repeated, as "de longues journées"
and "seul avec mon chat." These poetic devices, the accumu-
lation of long adverbs and the use of repetition, help create
the poem's ambiance of time almost standing still. But in
this early piece, the poet also still resorts to "telling"
rather than merely "imaging" this effect of silent solitude
*with expressions such as "par seul j'entends" or "je peux
donc dire."

The "compagnon mystique," aside from contrasting with
“un etre matériel," vaguely evokes an occult, rather than a
:religious, atmosphere, the Greek ethymology of "mystic"
jpointing to "initiated"; in the author's first article, the

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demeurer sacrée s'enveloppe de mystere. Les religions se
retranchent a l'abri d'arcanes dévoilés au seul prédestiné:
l'art a les siens" (OC p. 257). Here then the religion of
art is clearly distinguished from religion, from which,
however, it borrows its vocabulary. And so the cat has been
transformed by and in the narrator's reveries into a spirit
from another world, that of the artistic imagination.

The "derniers auteurs de la décadence latine" reintro—
duces the subject of literature already suggested by the
title. The narrator, if not specifically identified as a
poet, is nevertheless a reader of poetry or literature, and
his taste reflects, or rather presages, the literary climate
of the closing nineteenth century. The vogue of the late
Latin writers at the end of the century is most clearly brought
out in a work which may have been influenced by this prose
poem, Huysmans' ngebourg of 1884. For Huysmans and Mallarme
admired each other's work, and decadence is one of the major
themes of both that book and our prose poem. The heroes of
both, moreover, isolate themselves from the world to pursue
”entre quatre murs" the divagations of their minds turned in—
ward and toward the past. Decadence as a literary movement
of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, both in France
and England, celebrated the notion of art's superiority over
nature, an idea, as we saw, underlying also "Le Phenomena
Futur." Further, the decadent writers loved to celebrate the

beauty of dying or decaying things. This morbidity, of course,

 

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immediately brings to mind one of the young Mallarme's
literary heroes, Edgar Allen Poe.5 And “Plainte d'Automne"
celebrates, in fact, the beauty of dying or decaying things:
a dead girl--even if in a remote and indirect way-~Maria, a
decaying literature, the agonizing sun of a dying day in the
late, the Fall, season of the year, all of which the poet
sums up with the word "chute." And the "blanche créature,"
who is no more, the dead sister, dominates the poem's mood
and gives it its death direction, out and away from the "real"
world. White, as already noted, is one of the poet's two
dominating colors: it is more exactly the absence of color,
the color which is Maria's, whose very absence constitutes
her only presence. The virginal white also recalls the
paraphernalia of the funeral, the crown of white roses and
the winding sheet—-Maria's last image. And a whole vocabu-
lary cluster reinforces this moribund ambiance: the last
and languid days of summer suggest mortal weakness; the
adjective languid usually refers to a "maladie lente," hence
suffering and approaching death. This is reinforced by the
"s'évanouir" of the sun and the literature "agonisante," all
suggesting a slow weakening and a sinking towards death.
The predominant sunset color, a variation of red,
copper, but somewhat weakened with "jaune," contrasts with the
white, as blood with pallor. And an equally harsh contrast is
.Mvduced‘with "derniers moments de Rome" and the "approche

rajeunissante des Barbares, " while in the same sentence

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"esprit" and "volupté" are juxtaposed, suggesting a sublima—
tion of the sensuous or physical to the mental or spiritual;
and this pleasure also is death-directed, preferring a mori—
bund, rather than a rejuvenating, tradition and moment of
art.

"Les carreaux" introduces the image of the window, and
with it the so far rather mental setting becomes physically
fixed. As in this way the internal setting is exteriorized,
a scene begins to be painted vaguely, of which, however, we
see but a window, dividing the phenomenal world into an
”inside" and an ”outside." On the inside is the musing nar—
rator with his dreams, for whom the window is the threshold
to the outside, a sunset, and a city setting, reminiscent of
both the "Spleen de Paris" and a considerable part of "Les
Fléurs du Mal." The narrator's posture of solitude, remain—
ing alone behind the window, goes hand in hand with his
choice of literature. For in preferring Latin over French,
he not only opts for a dead, over a living, language, but at
the same time necessarily removes himself mentally from his
own time and world into that of the past, all of which points
to his association with decrepitude rather than with rebirth.
Does he not even reject the "proses chrétiennes," those
early Latin Church hymns, because they are "enfantin"?

At this point, almost exactly in the middle of the poem.
there is a break, for while the first paragraph was mainly

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42

dominated by external phenomena: the singing of a street
organ, the remembered funeral procession in the street below.
But as the first part ended, so the second one begins with a
discussion of poetry, this subject linking the two parts.
Even the poetry now seems to take on concrete form, in the
personification of the old filles. Once again, age and youth
are contrasted in the worn-out old women, whose patches of
rouge the narrator prefers to "l'incarnat de la jeunesse."
And so the faded, the artificial, the corrupt are juxtaposed
with, and exalted over, youth and life and nature. To rein—
force the contrast, the image of the old women follows almost
immediately upon the personification of the early Christian
hymns, stuttering a child-like Latin.

Now the cat also has taken on concrete form; no longer
merely a spirit, it lets the narrator plunge his hand into
its fur. And so there is here, in contrast to the first part
of the poem, an emphasis on sensation. Though the cat in its
purity still recalls the "compagnon mystique" above, "pure"
here somehow also evokes the image of a white cat, a truly
visual image, while in the first part the whiteness was that
of a memory, "blanche créature," a mental image of the dead
Maria. Moreover, the stroking of the animal's fur conveys
a purely tactile sensation, immediately followed by an audi-
tory one: the singing of the barrel organ below the window.6
"Barbarie” echoes "Barbare" above, and, further, the hydraulic

organ's invention, the barrel organ being but a modification,

  
   

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is attributed to a famous mathematician of Alexandria, some
120 years before the Christian era. Does it not come, then,
from a far—away past and the center of the Decadence?

The mood evoked by the barrel organ recalls the tone of
sickness and mourning of the poem's first part, with
"languissament" and “mélancoliquement” echoing "alanguis"
and "agonisante" above: moreover, the barrel organ cannot
renew itself, but is eternally condemned to repeat. Likewise,
reminiscent of the tired, dusty trees of ”Le Phénoméne
Futur," the poplars' foliage has lost its green freshness;
even in springtime the leaves seemed "mornes." Mallarmé as
a teacher of English was certainly aware of the English "to
mourn" and adds this association to the adjective, for
immediately upon "mornes" follows the image of the funeral
procession.

"... Depuis que Maria a passé la avec des cierges, une
derniere fois," evokes not only the image of the procession,
but rhythmically conveys its slow and solumn movement.

"... Depuis que Maria a passé ... " also echoes the very
opening words of the piece: "Depuis que Maria m'a quitté

... " "Cierges," phonetically evocative of "vierges," and
resonating in "derniere," emphasizes once again the virginal
'whiteness, the tall white wax tapers of the procession, the
pale young girl in the casket wearing the "couronne des
morts” of white roses: and "une derniere fois" marks not only

her last passing, but the last mention of Maria in this poem.

   
    

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Musical instruments are important in Mallarme's poetry
long before he became interested in music as a possible
rival to poetry because of the traditional Orphic associa-
tion of poetry and music. Two of them are introduced here,
and at this early stage in the poet's career, a still rather
Baudelairean synesthesia, such as the piano's "scintille"
and the violin's giving "aux fibres déchirées la lumiere,"
is not uncommon; one recalls, for example, "De blancs
sanglots" of "Apparition" of 1863.

But then the sad tune removes the narrator again from
the world of sights and sounds, the senses, back into that
timeless inner, spiritual existence, the "crépuscule du
souvenir," a twilight zone of memory, where past becomes
present and the departed souls are with us again. And
"Plainte d'Automne" touches here upon one of the young
Mallarme's obsessive themes, that of the revenant, the return
of the dead, which dominates much of his adolescent poetry.

The persona's dreaming is "despairing," perhaps because
he cannot really reach the ideal Maria, whose memory, however,
isolates him in the world of the living. And that world, the
"outside," interrupts the reverie, for the "maintenant" pulls
the narrator back from his dreams into the here and now where
he has no sense of belonging. The adverbs referring to his
state of mind, "singulierement" and "étrangement," accentuate
his alienation; and his state of mind contrasts with the

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45

gladdens not his, but the suburb's heart. In its banality,
the tune is accessible to all; but the narrator is doubly
isolated from the others, physically by the window and
spiritually by his emotions which are the opposite of theirs.
For the tune which gladdens them makes him weep. And so the
joyous suburb seems as indifferent to his sadness as

that musical instrument itself, whose cyclic recurrence
reflects that of nature: in this life there is only endless
repetition, while the narrator's secret aspirations drew him
to the stars, where Maria has perhaps gone. Yet he loves

the simple melody--as he does his very sadness, one feels--
because it is old-fashioned, like a "une ballade romantique,"
an outmoded literary genre, and moreover a foreign one, which
suggests a mental escape both temporally and spatially from
the unbearable here and now. Moreover, the romantic ballad
was p0pular with the German poets, and this association sug-
gests Mallarme's young wife, the German Marie, and thus fore-
shadows the next prose poem, "Frisson d'Hiver," in which she
is celebrated.

The poem's last sentence is again purely narrative: it
explains the narrator's refusal to go to the window which
might well reflect already the turning away from experience
which, rather than being "lived," is transmuted into art.

At the same time, we are in the realm of the mysterious, for
it appears that if the persona stirred, a sort of spell might

be broken; moreover, he wants to preserve this enchantment of

    

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46

the old-fashioned music, which would be dispelled if he saw
its human agent, the poor barrel organ man.

All of the poem's variants, of which some were mentioned
in passing, show that in the revisions Mallarmé tends to sup-
press sentimental effusions, though the subjective and con-
fiding tone, as well as a certain sentimentality, still
permeate the definite version. It is this tone, and the
sentimentally-seraphic flavor of variants such as: "le piano
m'égaie, le violon m'ouvre les portes vermeilles oh gazouille
l'Espérance," or "le violon ouvre a l'ame déchirée 1a lumiere
des alleluia," which had characterized Mallarme's adolescent
poetry, but which completely disappears from his later verse,
as it does from the later prose poems.

The verse poetry contemporary with "Plainte d'Automne,"
such as "Angoisse," "Las de l'amer repos," "1e Sonneur," and
”Tristesse d'Eté," is dominated also by funereal images; the
poet persona is haunted by his winding sheet, white as the
paper on which the poem cannot be born; and the death wish
becomes a hallucination nearly driving him into suicide.

Even such a specific image, as that of the painted fills,
most reminiscent of the "Fleurs du Mal," reappears:

i Je gofiterai 1e fard pleuré par tes paupieres
And the general weariness of life is most bitterly expressed
in this stanza from "L'Azur" of the same year as our prose

poem:

Car j'y veux, puisque enfin ma cervelle vidée
Comme 1e pot de fard gisant au pied du mur,
N'a plus l'art d'attifer 1a sanglotante idée,
Lugubrement bailler vers un trépas obscur...

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At the same time, and in seeming contrast to this weary sink-
ing down.into death, there is the soul's elevation toward its
ideal, the ideal woman and sister who has reentered paradise.
Here, then, the death wish becomes an upward inspiration—-
in paradoxical contradiction with the love for dying and
decaying things, for "chute"-—to the innocence of a life be-
fore the Fall. And this mood of "Plainte d'Automne" is
reflected in the similarly named verse poem, "Soupir," which
also celebrates autumn, where "l'azur," that is the Ideal,
is "attendri," and where the persona's soul strives to rise
toward its ideal sister-~animus to anima—-in nature's gentle
Fall:

Mon ame vers ton front oh reve, 6 calme soeur,

Un automne jonche de taches de rousseur,

Et vers le ciel errant de ton oeil angelique

Monte, comme dans un jardin melancolique,

Fidele, un blanc jet d'eau soupire vers l'Azur!

--Vers l'Azur attendri d'Octobre pale et pur

Qui mire aux grands bassins sa langueur infinie

Et laisse, sur l'eau morte ou la fauve agonie

Des feuilles erre au vent et creuse un froid sillon,

Se trainer le soleil jaune d'un long rayon.
Not only is "Soupir" of the same year as "Plainte d'Automne"
and renders a very similar theme, but its total tonality
corresponds exactly with that of the prose poem.

This rising and falling, the simultaneously ascending
and descending movement and direction, so reminiscent of
Baudelaire's "double postulation," confer a distinctive tension
on "Plainte d'Automne," one of whose dominant themes is,

7

certainly, the "complaint" bemoaning the Fall from Eden.

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48

the oneness of paradise, is the death of the person evoked
in the poem. And we saw how throughout the piece the per—
sona's loneliness and separateness is stressed, and linked
to that event. But "Plainte d'Automne" is not primarily a
commemorative poem, for the theme of art, of literature, is
of at least equal importance.8 Both themes are suggested in
the revised title, and the theme of the memory of Eden, as
well as that of the resurrective power of art, link this
piece to the preceding one.

For "Plainte d'Automne" celebrates the Orphic function
of poetry and music in bringing back the dead, and, in this
sense, the victory of art over nature. Orpheus was both poet
and musician, and our narrator reads poetry and listens to
music. In this first prose poem, however, he does not di-
rectly assume the Orphic role, though his marked withdrawal
from the world is somewhat reminiscent of the traditional
Orphic descent into that other realm. And by reading and by
listening, the narrator does participate in the magical act:
and in another prose poem of the same year, "Le Démon de
l‘Analogie," we will see him fall under the demon's spell.

Maria is not only the remembered sister, but becomes the
Personification of an ideal, "la blanche creature," and her
death, again, is at once a descent and an ascension, an ggygl
‘50 the stars. The young narrator who dreams of her is in

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49

on the one hand a refusal of and turning away from

the

opposites,
life, on the other the acceptance of the ideal vocation,

rmrrator seems to hesitate, and "Plainte d'Automne" marks the

nwment of the young poet's hesitation to follow his calling.

Both his refusal of life and his love for art are re—

flected in the decadent posture. Decadence, as a moment in

the history of art, and as an attitude of this poem's narrator,
is an evasion from a world of matter, materialistic and
historical progress, and from nature, where every spring is
born only to decay in the end. In celebrating decay and

death itself, the decadent refuses the enchantment of youth,

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PLAINTE D'AUTOMNE

NOTES

1 Mondor, Correspondance I, p. 137.

2 In view of the obviously strong influence which this event
had on Mallarmé's early poetry, one must agree with
Charles Mauron, Introduction to the Psychoanalysis of

Mallarmé (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California

 

Press, 1963), pp. 26-27, in his surprise at Mondor's

omission:

Maria died at thirteen, when Stéphane was fifteen.
What is the significance usually ascribed to this
event? ... Dr. Mondor, who has furnished us with

all the details known on this subject as on so many
others, does not use it as the basis of any psycho-
logical evaluation of Mallarmé. As a matter of fact,
Maria's death does not even appear in the biographical
chronology of the Oeuvres completes.

3 The complete original version of "Plainte d'Automne" is
reproduced in Adile Ayda, Le Drame Intérieur de Mallarmé
(Istanbul: Ed. de la Turquie Moderne, 1955), pp. 29—30,
Appendix. This highly biographical study "explains" much
cfi Mallarme's poetry, and particularly his early work, in
the light of the death of the poet's mother, sister, and

a young friend. It does not, however, analyze the poetry.

4 The cat was throughout Mallarmé's life a member of his
little family. Genevieve Mallarmé recalls in "Mallarmé
par 8a fille, " La Nouvelle Revue Frangaise, XXVII (July-

Decenflber 1926). P. 519:

La :aisc.
fr. mic.
.:ésence:
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51

La maison était toujours fleurie et jamais elle ne
fut vide de quelque bestiole. Ces petites

presences vivantes et na'ives lui étaient nécessaires.
Voici pour vous faire sourire et venant en ordre:
.l'oiseau bleu et le bengali, la chatte angora blanche

Neige et son fils blanc, Frimas;
And Henri Mondor in Autres Précisions sur Mallarmé et
inédits (Paris: Gallimard, 1961), p. 218, tells us as
follows about Mallarmé's attitude toward cats:

Sur les chats qu 'il appela Seigneurs des toits,
Mallarmé a été presqie aussi souvent interrogé que
sur la bicyclette. Voici une des réponses jadis
retrouvée et que j 'avais pu faire conna1tre: "Le
chat s 'étend de la divinité au lapin; poursuivi, hors
les portes, par le rustre brutalement, il redevient,
a l' intérieur, dans des recoins d' ombre, quelque
chose comme nos lares, l'idole de l'appartement.
J'ajoute et ai souvent dit, qu'il satisfait, pour
cela doux aux solitaires, le besoin de la caresse,
en offrant sur lui la place exacte; y compris,
philosophiquement, 1' au—dela, indispensable, par le
déroulement ou la fuite de sa queue.

5 In his famous biographical letter to Verlaine, Mallarmé

says:

Ayant appris l'anglais simplement pour mieux lire
Poe, je suis parti a vingt ans en Angleterre (0C

p. 662).

6 Again, this predilection for the street organ is a bio-
graphical detail, revealed in Mondor, Correspondance I,
FL 58, where Mallarme writes in a letter of 1862:

Je me suis arreté un instant pour jeter un sou a un
pauvre orgue qui se lamente dans le square. ... Le
pauvre here attend pent-etre encore son déjeuner
... Non vraiment. Cet homme fait de la musique
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The most recent book on Mallarmé, Thomas Williams'

Mallarme and the Language of Mysticism (Athens: Univ. of
Georgia Press, 1970), pp. 31—32, considers "Plainte
d'Automne" a "falling away from the divine after the deaths
of Maria and Harriet Smythe" and thus considers this poem
the first of five stages in Mallarme's rebirth cycle as a
mystic. Unfortunately, all the support for this hypothesis
is drawn from the poet's correspondence (lg_g£;§g_dg
Tournon), while the poem itself is not even superficially

discussed.

Although this death is of great importance for the young
Mallarmé, I cannot agree with critics (Ayda, Cellier,
Mauron) who use this event to explain not only this, but

many other poems.

Nothing sums up the decadent's attitude better than
Huysman's des Esseintes, who particularly loved these early
prose poems: J.-K. Huysmans, A Repours (Paris: Ed.

Fhsquette, 1968), p. 244:

Mais dans ce recueil, avaient été colligés certains
poems sauvés de revues mortes: le Démon de l'analogie,
la Pipe, 1e Pauvre Enfant pale, 1e Spectacle inter-
rompu, le Phenomene future et surtout Plaintes [sic]
d'automne et Frisson d'hiver, qui étaient les chefs-
d'oeuvre du poeme en prose, car ils unissaient une
langue si magnifiquement ordonnée qu'elle bercait,
par elle-meme, ainsi qu'une mélancolique incantation,
qu'une énivrante mélodie-a des pulsations d'ame de
sensitif dont les nerfs en emoi vibrant avec une
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CHAPTER IV
FRISSONID'HIVER

This prose poem, of the same year as the two preceding
ones, appeared originally and a second time under the title
"Causerie d'Hiver," before receiving its definitive name in
subsequent publications. Again its anecdote is about the
reveries of the narrator, now a poet, in his room; but in
this piece the room is carefully developed, for it becomes
one of the poem's major symbols. The poet—persona is no
longer alone, but addresses his musings to a silent companion,
who is a poetic transposition of Mallarme's young German wife.

Like the title of the preceding piece, "Plainte d'Au-
tomne," this one also places the poem under the sign of one of
the year's seasons: winter, "L'hiver, saison de l'art serein,
l'hiver lucide," as the poet had said two years earlier in
"Renouveau." But winter, white and cold, is also the old age
of the year, its death, and its cold whiteness is that of
absence--recalling the ambiance of the preceding poem--and
for the poet the ennui of sterility.1 The substitution of
“frisson” for "causerie" harmonizes with this atmosphere, for
it suggests trembling from.both cold and fear, and also im-
plies fragility even by its sound-look so similar to the other

word of the title. And while ”causerie" merely pointed to

53

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the narrative tone of the piece, "frisson" points to one of
the poem's major, recurring symbols. "Frisson," moreover,
conveys a sense of expectancy and potentiality, combining

the notions of movement and stasis; and while in this poem,
with its cold, white winter ambiance, the latter predominates——
for life and movement seem arrested, frozen-—there is, at the
same time the promise of hidden life, that is of poetry.
Similarly, in the contemporary ”Hérodiade," the essence of

her being appears both hidden and paralyzed in white, virginal
coldness, while there is already, however, a promise of her
nubility, which manifests itself in a shiver:

De mes robes, arome aux farouches délices
Sortirait 1e frisson blanc de ma nudité.

Later in Mallarme's verse poetry, "frisson" usually designates
the very rhythm of poetic, and sometimes musical, creation:
for example in "Toast Funebre" the ideal poet's, Gautier's,
role is described as follows:
Le Maitre, par un oeil profond, a sur ses pas,
Apaise de l'eden l'inquiete merveille ,
Dont 1e frisson final, dans sa voix seule, eveille
Pour 1a Rose et le Lys 1e mystere d'un nom.2
But in "Frisson d'Hiver," this poetic rhythm is still hidden,
like a secret well-spring, under a blanket of ice.
The first-person narrator no longer just discusses
poetry, as in the preceding piece: he has become a poet—
persona, who uses the form of direct address so insistently

that, though hearing only one voice throughout, one is in-

tensely aware of "the other" presence.3 Again, as in

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"Plainte," the setting is a room, but here it is much more
carefully elaborated, with each of its cherished objects
lovingly painted.

The first of these, the "pendule de Saxe” suggests both
Time and Space, for not only does it count hours, but it
came from far away; it further suggests fragility, because
this is a Dresden china clock,4 white and fragile, with gods
and flowers painted on its delicate house of porcelain.5
This clock, which is slow, behind time, fits well into this
room, whose objects are all of the past. Its striking the
thirteenth hour, reminiscent of Nerval's "Artemis," where "La
treizieme revient ... encore la premiere,"6 constitutes a
symbolic, rather than a descriptive, aspect; for by striking
the thirteenth hour, it strikes an hour which does not exist,
a fictitious one. And at the same time, it symbolizes the
cyclical nature of the solar drama-—reminiscent of the barrel
organ of the preceding poem--one of whose moments provides
the atmosphere and the setting of the poem: the winter room.

The far-away country from which the clock comes is also
that of the silent companion, whom we will see later reading
her outdated German almanac; and the clock's mysterious
origin, "a qui a-t-elle été?" suggests its great age, so that
it, too, must be faded now, as all the other old things.
The china clock functions thus both as a richly multivalent
symbol, and as a mood-setting device to evoke evasion from

the here and now-—recalling the mood of "Plainte d'Automne"--

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back into a deep past far away. "Pense qu'elle est venue
de Saxe par les longues diligences d'autrefois" reminds
the companion of her own past and origin,7 and turns the
narrator's eyes inward toward internal space and time, the
world of the imagination.

But now the persona's glance falls on the room's windows,
and the curious shadows, or shades, which seem to be hanging
there. These worn window panes have lost their transparency
and polish. They don't serve here as a threshold to the
"outside," nor to reflect the interior of the room; these
dull, lusterless windows shield the inside from the outside;
but, at the same time, they threaten to expose the former to
the latter. The persona keeps looking anxiously at, but never
through or into them: and at first, he is merely vaguely
aware of those shadows hanging there, without seeing what
they are. Maybe they are the spiders' webs, which he will
see there later; maybe they are imaginary phantoms. For,
while refusing to look through the window panes at an "out-
side," might he not see through them; for a moment, into that
deeper "beyond," whence the ghosts of the past, "ombres,"
come back, sometimes? Here, just as in the much later sonnet,
"Sur les bois oubliés,"8 everything seems prepared for the
revenant's visit: the winter night outside, and the lonely
room with its fire and antique furnishings, and the intro-
spective solitary poet in a state of expectancy. So, by the

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sister of "Plainte d'Automne" and the silent, pale companion,
so beautifully addressed as "ma soeur au regard de jadis,"
with which words the poet seems to speak to them both.

As the narrator looks away from the windows, he sees the
Venetian mirror,9 which introduces one of the key symbols of
the Mallarméan universe. "Glace" for mirror carries not only
the association mirror-water, but mirror-frozen water, thus
fitting well into the white, cold winter atmosphere of
“Frisson d'Hiver." The ice suggests both the mirror's im-
passibility and its fragility, as well as the pure and the
virginal, and finally the shiver of recognition, "frisson,"
Which one experiences at the revelation of one's image.

The "de Venise," similarly to the "de Saxe" above, again
evokes the far away and, also, as with the painted Dresden
china clock, produces a precise image, namely that of a mirror
with an ornate gilt frame. Here the exoticism derives from
the aristocratic elegance of a by—gone "grand siecle," when
Venetian mirrors were, in fact, imported in great numbers
into the world of Versailles.

Further, the mirror recalls "vitre," since both function
as virtual doors from, or into, the room. But whereas the
window panes were dull, the mirror is smooth and clear, like
the watery surface suggested by "froide fontaine," an image
combining the clearness of water with the coldness of ice.
"Fontaine" suggests depth, reinforced by "profonde," which

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similarly to "frissonfl'"fontaine" encompasses both the notions
of movement and immobility, but again, in the context of our
poem, immobility is accentuated, for its coldness seems to
almost freeze that fountain. The "rivage" is at once the
fountain's border and the mirror's frame, and this fountain is
not a natural, running spring, but an artificial one, with

its smooth surface--almost frozen-~and an ornately sculpted
border, with stone and marble wiverns, the same that are
carved into the mirror's tarnished, old gilt frame. "Guivre"
is etymologically related to "givre," hoar-frost, thus once
more echoing a note of the winter theme..

So the fountain becomes a giant Venetian mirror, decorat-
ing a park, which is but the extension of the artificial and
artistic environment of the room. Such a fountain, for
example, would be the Médicis fountain of the Luxembourg,
which, in its rich historicity, evokes both the ”grand siecle"
and the Italian Renaissance, which so strongly influenced its
splendid luxury. In one sentence, thus, we have here a mag-
nificent superposition of two imagesé the ornate Venetian
mirror in a carefully constructed room, and the richly embel-
lished fountain of a park by Le Natre: Nature subjugated by
Art.

Just as in the preceding paragraph, so here the poet
first introduces the symbolic image, and then asks a question
about it, and both questions, "a qui a—t-elle été?" and "qui

s'y est miré?" intimate the mysterious origin of these antiques

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with their veiled history. But the mirror question also
stresses its function, and the ideal function of a luxurious
mirror is to reflect an image of Beauty.

"Mirer," etymologically from mirari, to be astonished,
invites the association with Narcissus and his fountain,
which is further developed with "baigner," where the mirror-
fountain analogy is extended, reminiscent of "Le Pitre
Chatié," of the same year, where the reflecting also becomes
a bathing. This association of looking into and bathing in
leads to the nude image, "un fant6me nu," in the Venetian
mirror, recalling the Aphrodite-like "Phénoméne Futur,"
stepping out of the sea. "Le péché de sa beauté" is not the
sin of nudity, but that of nudity seen, which motif links
"Frisson d'Hiver" to "Hérodiade," whose composition began in
the same winter. In that poem the mirror-fountain image and
the theme of narcissistic introspection is most richly de-
veloped, in a similar setting of cold, white and virginal
sterility:

... Tiens devant moi ce miroir.

O miroirg

Eau froide par l'ennui dans ton cadre gelee

Que de fois et pendant des heures, desolee

Des songes et cherchant mes souvenirs qui sont

Comme des feuilles sous ta glace au trou profond,

Je m'apparus en toi comme une ombre lointaine,

Mais, horreur! des soirs, dans ta severe fontaine,

J'ai de mon reve epars connu la nudite!
And.Hérodiade's mirror is at the same time, then, also the

frozen and motionless fountain of a sterile winter world,

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evoked illusory image in the mirror, but it almost always
carries the associate meaning:of "image des morts qui apparait
surnaturellement," and so, again, remotely suggests the

revenant, already vaguely alluded to above. Further, the

 

"fantome nu" of the persona's Venetian mirror, as well as
Hérodiade's naked "ombre lointain" in hers, already point to
the nymph, "Elle défunte nue en 1e miroir" of "Ses purs
ongles," an image of that death and night, the Egan; presaged
here, and before which the poet—persona hesitates. Whose is
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look no further into this deep fountain in which the self
might drown? For Hérodiade was horrified by the mirror's
revelation of nothingness; an impassible "Néant," which
threatens the poet from without and from within and so makes
him hesitate before both, those windows and that mirror.

The threat from the outside is concretized in the recur-
ring window motif. And now the persona recognizes "des
toiles d'araignées au haut des grandes croisées." The "vitres"
Zhawe changed to "croisées," and so no longer allude to the
window's transparency, but emphasize the solidity of the
frame» which, originally was but an extension of the walls,

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his eyes away to the inside, where they fall on "notre bahut
encore tres Vieux“; and this chest must be one of those old-
fashioned vaulted traveling trunks, evocative again of the

far-away. Its wood is "triste, even as it is struck by the
light of a fire which fails to impart any warmth to the pale
and faded objects of the winter room. The fire is, moreover,
not directly seen, but present by its reflection only, like

that pale beam of a distant sun in the contemporary "Soupir":

Et laisse, sur l'eau morte oh la fauve agonie
Des feuilles erre au vent et creuse un froid sillon,
Se trainer 1e soleil jaune d'un long rayon.

The persona addresses his companion fittingly with
"contemple," for she is the personification of the contempla—
tive life, Mary, and not Martha; as the poet later says, one
of those "qui ne gofitent pas l'action." And now he gives a
whole catalog of all that is cherished in the room: the
faded curtains, as old as the chest with its sad wood, the
antique chairs whose tapestry and painted wood frames have
lost their color, the old engravings on the walls, all summed
up in "toutes nos vieilleries." And even the living presences,
the colorful waxbill and the bluebird seem to have faded with
time. Like the white cat of "Plainte d'Automne," the poet's
animals assume and reflect their owner's mood.

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in its insistence has something haunting about it; moreover,

the persona seems to want to protect his companion from it:

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spiders' webs themselves have begun to tremble, and so the
notion of "frisson” is taken up again; for they are still
hanging there, always in the same place, but now their slight
“shiver" suggests stirrings, perhaps, of a mere idea caught
in their lace.

.The tone of the poem becomes more discursive, as the
narrator addresses the woman, and "... et voila pourquoi je
puis vivre aupres de toi" suggests that she is his wife.

But the bond uniting them seems more spiritual than conjugal,
the erotic not even being vaguely suggested. When it had
'but distantly been evoked with the naked mirror phantom, the
persona had immediately turned away. Here, in the winter
room, both Marias seem to be present, the dead one come to
life, and the living one remote as a ghost, in this "soeur

au regard de jadis." At the same time, the sister-beloved
association is highly reminiscent of Baudelaire, and the whole
sentence: "N'as—tu pas désiré, ma soeur au regard de jadis,
qu'en un de mes poemes apparussent ces mots 'la grace des
choses fanées'?" is a kind of homage to the older poet, whose
celebration of "1a grace des choses fanées" certainly influ—
enced this and the preceding prose poem. In this sentence,
also, the narrator identifies himself as a poet, and we re—
call, moreover, that the phrase "la grace des choses fanées"
did, in fact, appear in one of Mallarme's poems, namely a

10

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L' hiver, quand ma torpeur me lasse, je me plonge avec
délices dans les cheres pages des Fleurs du Mal. Mon
Baudelaire a peine ouvert, je suis attiré dans un pay—
sage surprenant qui vit au regard avec l'intensité de
ceux que crée le profond opium. ... Arrivé, je vois

de mornes bassins disposés comme les plates-bandes d' un

éternel jardin: dans le granit noir de leurs bords,

enchassant les pierres precieuses de l' Inde, dort une
eau morte et métallique, avec de lourdes fontaines en
cuivre ou tombe tristement un rayon bizarre et plein

de la grace des choses fanées.... (0C p. 263)

In these Opening sentences, we find already some of the sym-
bols and themes of our poem, which were to become character—
istic of much symbolist poetry: winter, evasion into the
exotic, the park and its fountain with its still water, the

sad reflection of the distant winter sun on the mirror-fountain
surface, and the obsession with death, for "oh tombe tristement"
certainly is meant to evoke "triste tombe," all summed up in
”la grace des choses fanées."

And as the persona of our poem addresses his lady, she
seems to become herself one of the pale antiques of the room,
one of those precious objects, as for example an antique
portrait of a lady, somewhat faded, calmly and silently look—
ing down to the poet from its gilt frame. For, paradoxically,
though we feel her presence throughout the piece, the narrator
at the same time seems alone with his dreams.

The remainder of the paragraph seems singularly disturb—
ing with its discursiveness and lack of imagery. But this is
surely intended, for now the ugliness of new objects irrupts

into, and breaks the harmony of, this secluded world. "Les

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accentuated in the onomatopoetic "laur hardiesse criarde,",
with its offensively grating alliteration. The last words

of the section underline the contemplative nature of Mary,
and the image of Maria reading fits beautifully into the
portrait, namely the portrait of a lady holding a book, like
that silent saint of the stained glass window, "... la Sainte
pale, étalant/Le livre Vieux qui se déplie" of the verse poem
of 1865.

And her book, the outdated almanac, from Germany as the
clock--home of by-gone romanticism--is behind the time also;
moreover, the very type of calendar called "almanac" is an
old-fashioned one. Like the clock, originally designed to
measure time, the almanac now merely recalls the past, for it
appeared "11 y a plus de cent ans," and the future it fore—
tells is dead, with the kings it announces all gone to their
graves. This lost past is again evoked with "11 n'y a plus
de champs," for these past fields have now become the city,
with its empty evening streets.

Not of the world outside however, but of that inner one
which is their home, will the poet speak to his companion,
the "calme enfant," in her faded dress, his head resting on
her "genoux charitables." This is the same Marie who will
be celebrated also in the last of the early prose poems, and
who is evoked in "Don du Poeme," when the poet brings his
new-born "Hérodiade" poem to her so that she may nourish it.

.And she, her voice, "rappelant viole et clavecin," is also

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the pale saint, "Musicienne du silence," and the companion
much later remembered in "Prose," she is the Poet's Anima,
spiritual sister and companion of his mind.

The poet will speak to her, his soul, for hours of his
treasures, hours which are out of time--fictitious as that
thirteenth hour of the old china clock--for this poem is
about itself: the introspective poet's fragile and delicate
narcissistic reveries, threatened by chaos, and symbolized
by the fine spiderwebbing, whiCh now shivers high up on the
casement windows.

Of the variants, the only significant one is that of
the title, and stylistically the poem resembles the others
of that year. :However the young Mallarmé's predilection for
repetition, which we already saw manifested in ”Plainte
d'Automne," has in this poem become a major structural device.
And while this may again evidence Poe's influence, or cer-
tainly Baudelaire's in his prose poems, the recurrence of
the obsessive window-spider-web image has here grown into
the equivalent of a Wagnerian leit-motif: a melodic figure
that accompanies the reappearance of the symbol and plays
repeatedly into the main narrative theme. The poet uses the
device also in his verse poetry of those years, as for
example in the "Ouverture" of "Hérodiade, " which Mallarmé

himself called "musical":11

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Un ar6me d'ors froids r6dant sur le sachet,

Une Aurore trainait ses ailes dans les larmes!

Comme un cygne cachant en sa plume ses yeux, ,
Comme les mit le Vieux cygne en sa plume, allee
De la plume detresse, en l'eternelle allee

So there is not only a correspondence of imagery, but
also a stylistic one, between Mallarmé's prose and verse poems
of those years. And in "Frisson d'Hiver," as in "Hérodiade,"
the stylistic device under discussion is so closely linked to
the theme that form and function become inseparable, so that
style becomes the objectification of the idea it expresses.

In "Frisson d'Hiver" some of the major symbols of not
only the prose poems, but this whole poetic universe, burst
forth. The room itself, which emerges as the symbol of the
poet's mind or consciousness, will be the setting also of some
of Mallarmé's late sonnets, where we meet again the familiar
objects: the mirror, the window, the lace, and the clock.

At the same time, this prose poem is still strongly under the
influence of Baudelaire, and the winter room itself might well
owe part of its inspiration to these lines from "Paysage":

Et quand viendra l'hiver aux neiges monotones

Je fermerai partout portieres et volets 12

Pour batir dans la nu1t mes feeriques palais

The need to close the mind off from what threatens it
reflects two important aspects of this moment in the poet's
development, both revealed by the correspondence of those

years: the need felt by Mallarme for solitude and withdrawal,

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the approaching crisis of 1866,13 a decisive crisis Whose

impact will influence the next prose poem of the cycle even
more strongly. The emerging poet is already beginning to
experience a truly existential anguish, the full force of
which will be rendered dramatically in Igitur, by means of
these same symbols: the room and its furnishings, and, above
all, the mirror--into which the hero must now look-—and the
clock, the objectification of the obsession with Time, and
reminder of the ephemeral in human existence:

J' ai toujours vécu mon ame fixée sur l'horloge. Certes
j 'ai tout fait pour que le temps gu 'elle sonna restat
présent dans la chambre ... j 'ai epaissi les rideaux,
et comme j 'étais obligé pour ne pas douter de moi de

m' sseoir en face de cette glace, j 'ai recueilli pré—
cieusement les moindres atomes du temps....

Et quand je rouvrais les yeux au fond du miroir,
je voyais 1e personnage d'horreur, 1e fantome de
l'horreur absorber pen a peu ce qui restait de sentiment
et de douleur dans la glace, nourrir son horreur des
supremes frissons des chimeres et de l' instabilité des
tentures, et se former en raréfiant la glace jusqu' a
une pureté innouie,——jusqu' a ce qu '11 se détachent,
permanent, de la glace absolument pure, comme pris dans
son froid, --jusqu' a ce qu 'enfin les meubles, leurs
monstres ayant succombé avec leurs anneaux convulsifs,
fussent morts ... et que les rideaux cessant d'etre
inquiets tombassent, avec une attitude qu'ils devaient
conserver a jamais (OC pp. 439141).

The delicate cobwebs, still shivering by the windows, will
later become Mallarme's image for the Orphic explanation of
the earth, which it is the poet's function to reveal: the re-
lation between all parts, the universal analogy, of an
artistic universe imposed on chaos:

... je venais de jeter le plan de mon oeuvre entier,

apres avoir trouvé la clef de moi-meme, clef de vofite,

ou centre, si tu veux, pour ne pas nous brouiller de
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une araignée sacrée,sur les principaux fils déja sortis
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FRISSON D'HIVER

NOTES

1

In the same winter, January of 1865, Mallarmé writes to
Cazalis, Mondor, Correspondance I, p. 150:

... et [je] pleure quand je me sens vide et ne puis
jeter un mot sur mon papier implacablement blanc.

And in "Brise Marine," of 1865: "Sur la vide papier que

la blancheur défend."

Cohn in Toward the Poems, p. 105, comments on this pas-
sage as follows:
Through this formula Mallarmé evokes the dialectic
of creativity and the process of evolutionary refine—
ment, from an original crude rhythm (or polarity) of
pain and delight (as in the simple experience of
physical love), to the delicate shiver-rhythm of
sound waves set in motion by the poetic voice, the
air de paroles.
Mallarmé later again uses "frisson" in a similar sense in
"Hommage":
Hiéroglyphes dont s'exalte le millier
A propager de l'aile un frisson familier!
One can't help but think of the equally insistent "(Nous
ffimes deux, je 1e maintiens)" of the much later "Prose pour

des Esseintes," where the woman, moreover, is also

addressed as "soeur."

My notion, that the "pendule de Saxe" must be a Dresden china
clock is supported by René Ghil, who in Les Dates, p. 25,

describes Mallarme's room at Valvins:

 

 

  
 

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Bureau ancien, et la pendule de Sevres inspiratrice
de l' exquis poeme en prose que 1' on sait: "Frisson
d' Hiver."

Whether Dresden or Sevres, it is a painted porcelain clock.

 

As some of the other early prose poems, this one is highly
biographical. For the Bengal birds, see note 4 of "Plainte
d'Automne"; in a letter of the same year as these poems,
Mallarmé again mentions his white cat, the birds, and,
above all, Marie Gerhard, and our Saxony clock; Mondor,
Correspondance I, pp. 133-34:

... si tu voyais comme nous sommes d'une facon char—
mante avec nos délicieux oiseaux, les poissons d'or
et la chatte blanche, et parmi tout cela, ma douce
Allemande, qui va des uns aux autres. Elle a été
éblouie des belles choses que j 'ai rapportées, de bien
,1oin, et ne cesse de contempler la belle petite pen-
dule de Saxe.

J'ai repris courage et, grace a ce qui m' entoure,
j' espere que je ne retomberai pas de sit6t dans les
lourdes tenebres ou j' ai si longtemps vécu.

The same month, to another correspondent, gp. cit., p. 136:

... j'ai une adorable maitresse, toute blanche, et
qui s'appelle Neige. C'est une chatte de race, jolie
et que j' embrasse tout le jour sur son nez rose.

Elle efface mes vers avec sa queue, se promenant sur
ma table pendant que j 'écris.

Joins a cela que je riffonne ceci au chant des
bengalis que j'ai rapportes a ma femme--et tu compren-
dras combien nous devons etre heureux, en famille, ou
en ménagerie, comme tu le voudras.

In his sonnet, "Artemis," Nerval also uses direct address,
and develops the theme of time and death, with imagery of

flowers, gods, and phantoms.

The underlying biographical fact is Mallarme's marriage with

Maria-Christine Gerhard, a German girl, on August 10, 1863.

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8 The sonnet, of 1877, reads:.
-—Sur les bois oubliés quand passe l'hiver sombre
Tu te plains, o captif solitaire du seuil,
Que ce sépulcre a deux qui fera notre orgueil
Hélas! du manque seul des lourds bouquets s 'encombre.
Sans écouter Minuit qui jeta son vain nombre,
Une veille t' exalte a ne pas fermer 1' oeil
Avant que dans les bras de 1' ancien fauteuil
Le supréme tison n 'ait éclairé mon ombre.
Qui veut souvent avoir la Visite ne doit
Par trop de fleurs charger la pierre que mon doigt
Souleve avec 1' ennui d' une force défunte.
Ame au si clair foyer tremblante de m' asseoir,
Pour revivre il suffit qu' a tes levres j 'emprunte
Le souffle de mon nom murmuré tout un soir.’
Here it is, of course, the revenant, "Ombre," who addresses
the solitary survivor, but the "setting" is very similar to
that of our prose poem: the old room waiting in a winter

night, i.e., the ”state of mind” propitious for "la Visite.

9 In his famous letter to Cazalis of 1867, describing his
spiritual crisis, Mallarmé says, Mondor, Correspondance I,
p. 242:

‘ ... enfin je me sois revu un jour devant ma glace de
Venise, tel que je m' étais oublié plusieurs mois
auparavant.

10 This poem found its way, in a much shorter version, into

Divagations under the title "Autrefois, en Marge d'un

Baudelaire."

11 In a letter to Cazalis, of 1866, Mondor, Correspondance I,

p. 207, Mallarmé says:

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J'ai donc a te raconter trois mois, a bien rands
traits; ... Je les ai passes, acharne sur Herodiade,
ma lampe 1e sait! J'ai ecrit l'ouverture musicale,

 

12 Baudelaire, Fleurs, p. 91. Also, of course, the prose

poem, "La Chambre Double,” of the Spleen de Paris comes to

mind.

13 In the letter, already quoted from above (Note 9), relat-
ing this crisis, Mallarmé tells of his experience in
rather Hegelian terms, Mondor, Correspondance I, p. 240:

Je Viens de passer une année effrayante: .ma Pensée
s'est pensée, et est arrivée a une Conception pure.
Tout ce que, par contrecoup, mon étre a souffert,
pendant cette longue agonie, est inénarrable, mais,
heureusement, je suis parfaitement mort, et la region
la plus impure ou mon Esprit puisse s'aventurer est
l'Eternité, mon Esprit, ce solitaire habituel de sa

propre Pureté, que n'obscurcit plus meme 1e reflet du
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CHAPTER V
LE DEMON DE L'ANALOGIE

This prose poem also appeared first several times under
a different title, "La Penultieme," and the present one is
used for the first time in gages, of 1891, and then again in
Divagations. Similarly to the change of "Plainte d'Automne"
from its variant, in which we recognized a reflection of
Mallarme's principle of painting no longer "la chose,” but
the effect produced, so here "La Penultieme" is part of "1a
chose,” that is of the haunting phrase itself, whereas its
demonic power is the effect it has on the poet—persona.
Further, the identification of this demon as that of analogy
places the piece in the domain of poetics.

The poem's anecdote tells about the narrator's obsession
with a phrase which haunts him as he is walking in the streets.
and which he vainly tries to exorcise by explaining it to
himself. As the poet-persona finally sees his image re-
flected in a store window, and upon looking through that
window discovers that this is a lute-maker's shop, with old
stringed instruments hanging on the wall, precisely the kind
of instrument that he had been thinking about in connection

with the haunting phrase, he is overcome by the strange and

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unexplainable correspondence between the images of his
imagination and those of the phenomenal world.

Analogy, originally a term of Greek philosophy, refers,
as a rhetorical figure, to the writer's method of exposition
by which an unfamiliar object or idea is explained by compar-
ing it in certain of its similarities with other ideas or
objects more familiar.1 That analogy was the underlying logic
of Mallarme's Weltanschauung is not only reflected in his
poetry, but also struck those who had the privilege of know-
ing him.2

We saw in the conclusion of the preceding chapter that
the perception and creation of analogies is the structural
basis for this whole poetic universe, that universal analogy
which is the revelation of the relations between all parts of
an artistic cosmos, imaged in the spider's web: an order which
the poet creates out of his own substance and imposes on
chaos.

This discovering and creation of correspondences recalls
Baudelaire, and it is in his translation of Poe's prose that
Mallarmé might have come upon a title "Le Démon de la Pervers—
ité," which could have influenced his own choice.3 The word
demon, originally a spirit, good or bad, points to the role
which the supernatural plays in this piece, while figuratively
it stands for inspiration, in the sense in which Socrates
called the mysterious inner voice which inspired him his

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Aside from insignificant variants of punctuation, there
is only one other, namely of the very first sentence, which
originally read: "Avez~vous jamais eu des paroles inconnues
chantant sur vos levres les lambeaux maudits d'une phrase
absurde?" The final version is obviously more compressed and
leads directly, with the first two words, "paroles" and
"inconnues," into the two realms announced by the title:
poetics and the mysterious, the extraordinary.

In analyzing the poem's vocabulary, one finds that many
of its words fall, in at least one of their definitions, in
the domains of rhetoric and music. Thus, "paroles," literal—
ly signifying simply "words," that is the poet's raw material.
etymologically points to "parable," a sort of extended meta—
phor which, similarly to an analogy, equates a thing or idea
with meanings outside itself. At the same time, in the plural,
as used here, it may refer to the words of a song, and
"chanterent-elles" reinforces this association.

Again, "phrase" is a term both grammatical and musical,
in both contexts referring to a completed unit, either a
group of words constituting a sense unit, or a musical phrase
of a certain number of measures closing with a cadence. But
here this unity has been destroyed, only shreds of it remain-
ing, and “maudits" endows these shreds of words with a magical
quality, as with a charm. The alliterating "levres, lambeaux"
justaposition invites the image association of red lips and

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red, and this surrealistic image is reinforced with "absurde."

The "torn" phrase introduces a whole vocabulary cluster
in this piece, namely that of something broken, ruptured:
"interrompre, détacher, descendre, casser, dégager, discon—
tinuer, désespérer," which accompanies the death motif through-
out the poem.

The following sentence introduces a first—person narrator
and a city setting and, with the factual banality of "je
sortis de mon appartement" contrasts for a moment with the
mood produced by the images of the opening paragraph. But
then, with the narrator's curious sensation, the first mani-
festation of the demon, we are back in the realm of the
strange, where everything seems curiously related and inter-
twined: "La sensation .-. d'une aile glissant sur les cordes
d'un instrument, trainante et légere, que remplaca une voix
prononcant les mots sur un ton descendant...." Is the sen-
sation first visual, tactile, or auditory, or is it all of
these at once? This phrase gives a purely poetic sensation,
where the repetition of the "1," that of the "-ent" sound,
the "r," and finally that of the "0," produces an incantatory
effect of sounds, with words designating wing, gliding, over
cords, of stringed instrument, lightly, finally descending
with the "o's"—-thus a cluster of images named, which is also

suggested by the sound, not so much of individual words, but

of the whole phrase.

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The very first image, ”aile," is so rich in multivalent
suggestiveness that it produces a sort of expectant confusion:
"d'une aile" sounds like a feminine presence, "une elle," at
first, and as the image of the soft wing comes before the
mind's eye, it evokes the picture of a white angel, and in
these prose poems, the white angel is Maria. But the wing,
synecdoche for bird, is also a symbol for poetic inspiration
and ggygl. "Glissant sur les cordes d'un instrument" evokes
the lyre, traditional symbol for poetry, and the Orphic
association of poetry and music. And then the music suggested
by the wing's gliding over the instrument becomes, in fact,
"une voix." The voice is born out of the wing’s contact
with the instrument, suggesting the mandola's belly rendered
fruitful by inspiration.

These associations are all reflected in Mallarme's verse
poetry, where the virtual force of poetic ggygl_or Aufschwung
is likened to the powerful wing best:

Va-t—il nous déchirer avec un coup d'aile ivre
of the swan. And the wing-angel-music association is beauti—
fully synthesized in:

Que frole une harpe par l'ange

Forme avec son vol du soir

Pour la delicate phalange
of the Saint Cecilia of the stained glass window. The birth
of art, of song, out of the mandola's belly, a womb waiting
sadly for its fulfillment, is suggested in the last sonnet of

the triptych:

Ma;

 

78

Mais, chez qui du réve se dore

Tristement dort une mandore

Au creux neant musicien

Telle que vers quelque fenétre

Selon nul ventre que 1e sien

Filial on aurait pu naitre.
And the "nul" of this sonnet's penult line, composed many
years after our prose poem, is also the penultimate syllable
of our "Penultieme."

So this one rich phrase, with its sudden release of blend-
ing sensations and images and sounds is so many-faceted and
mobile that we are taken as by a spell of vertigo, where we
seem to lose the firm ground under our feet, as everything
starts to sway for a moment, until we can make out the words
of the falling voice: "La Penultieme est morte."

Out of sensations, the sound of words in a falling
intonation, emerges, grouped into a meaning, which is, how—
ever, detached from any context, like a lonely leaf fallen
off a tree, the phrase: "La pénultieme est morte." Almost
immediately the words arrange themselves in a rhythmic pattern,
but then the intonation and rhythmic pattern are not only
heard, but visualized, with the noun at the end of a line
and the verb and predicate adjective going over into the
following verse in a run-on line.‘ And the poet persona not
only tells us about this arrangement, but draws it out on the
page. Poetry is for Mallarme as much visual as it is auditory,

and the schematic presentation of but one "absurd phrase" in

this early poem already foreshadows his growing preoccupation

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79

with the visual design of his poetry, culminating finally in
the "Coup de dés."

The "pénultieme," whose lexical definition the poet
explains himself further on, suggests something I have already
mentioned above, namely something broken, something discon-
tinued, ended before its end. Not the last, with which things
naturally come to an end, but the one before the last; and the
penult of the very word "pénultieme" is precisely the "nul"
syllable over which the instrument's strings will break.

So "nul," while denoting the absence of existence, "qui,
pour ainsi dire, en parlant des personnes, n'a pas d'existence,"
also suggests the death of a person. I purposely quote
Littré's definition of this term as it refers to “personnes,"
rather than to "choses," for the word "pénultiéme," from its
very first appearance, is persOnified in such a way that one
almost forgets that it is "quelque chose" rather than "quel-
qu'un," or, I should say, "quelqu'une." The French grammatical
gender distinction here plays beautifully into the poet's
hands. This notion of a feminine presence, evoked as so often
in Mallarmé by its very absence, is reinforced by the capi—
talization of the first letter, making a proper noun of it,

a woman's name.

And this Penult is dead; thus, from the outset, two anti—

thetical forces are at work: a phrase is born, but in a dying

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80

The "est morte,’ with its double designation of “has
died" and "is dead," is detached from the line, again rein-
forcing the notion of rupture and cessation. "Suspension“
is, again, both a rhetorical and a musical term, meaning

"temporary cessation," and it is "fatidique, i.e., one that
was fated to be. The notion of the fates suggests ultimate
disaster, death. Just as at this initial stage of inspiration
the verse pattern seems inexplicable, so does the "fateful
suspension," this death. And this basic feeling of absurdity
which necessarily accompanies the mind's reflections upon

its own approaching and inevitable nonexistence is reinforced

I"

by "le vide de signification, with its typically Mallarméan
nominalization of the adjective and the use of the preposi-
tional phrase. This stylistic device is significant here, for
it raises the notion of the void and of emptiness to predominate
over its very opposite, namely meaning.

.Again, the anecdotical "je fis des pas dans la rue"
seems to put us back into the realm of the ordinary, but only
briefly so, for now the penultimate syllable of “La
Penultieme,” the "nul," associates itself with the image of a
taut string of the musical instrument evoked above, and for-
gotten again, but now recalled once more. But there is here
so mighty a sweep of Memory, that it must refer to more than
merely the recall of the image of the instrument: "le glorieux

Souvenir,‘ with its significant capitalization, surges out
of a deeper past, and this vast sweeping movement is beautiful-

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81

palme," again recalling the wing image above and adding that
of the "palme."

Memory and Penult are the only two words capitalized in
the poem; Memory is the prime inspiration of the Penult's
monody, this song commemorating one departed.

The wing symbol in this connection suggests the poet's
Orphic function of resurrecting the past, and bringing back
the dead, while "palme," somehow blending with wing in "de
son aile ou d'une palme," a symbol of triumph, suggests the
triumph of the poetic quest. But the palm branch is also
the sign of the martyrs, thus conveying the notion of the
poet not only as Orpheus who triumphs over nature and death,
but as the Promethean giver of life, fire, who is sacrificed,
martyrized, a motif taken up again in the following prose
poem.” At the same time, both images, that of wing and palm,
evoke angels and saints, the blessed beyond the tomb, and
the white figure of Maria.

"Je fis des pas dans la rue et reconnus en 1e son 331
1a cordetendue de l'instrument de musique," with its six-
fold repetition of the "u" sound and its short, almost shrill.
syllables conveys an obsessive effect. The merciless insist-
ence of these sounds, and their association with the tension
of taut strings, creates an indeed mysteriously demonic
quality. "Le doigt sur l'artifice du mystere" indicates the
persona's cognizance of the mechanism of Memory inspiring song,

or poetry. But "artifice" and "je souris" somehow also point,

 

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82

by the merest hint, to something else. Does the persona
here momentarily step beyond and out of the poem, so as to
fuse and identify with the poet? For "artifice" as "habile

et industrieuse combinaison de moyens, and etymologically
related to "art," could also refer to the just described

poetic artifice, which produced so mysterious an effect.
Further it could well describe Poe's poetic theory which, in
those early years, influenced Mallarmé, and perhaps this poem.

However, this suggestion is present only vaguely, if at
all, and so well hidden behind the primary level of meaning,
that the illusion of the poem is not destroyed, the spell
not broken, as the persona now tries by any means, natural or
supernatural——"implorer" and "voeux" having religious,
"speculation" and "intellectualle" rational undertones-—to
escape the demon Who drives him relentlessly from sounds, to
images, to rhythmic patterns, to thoughts, and even into the
realm of the dead.

The obsessiveness of the juror poeticus is rendered
doubly, in the persona's telling us that the phrase keeps
coming back to him, and, at the same time, in the very use
of the device of repeating the same images and phrases through-
out the poem. When the phrase returns "virtuelle," it has
something menacing about it, a self-contained, so far unre-
leased, energy and force. Now it is finally freed, "dégagée
d'une chute antérieure de plume ou de rameau." ‘What is this

fall, a word so loved by the poet of “Plainte d'Automne?"

 

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83

The whole phrase had come in a falling tone, and this ob-
session with falling and fall must point to a former, higher
state. "Chute antérieure” curiously combines both the
notions of a former state and the fall from it, just as the
very notion of the Fall implies a lost Eden, or, inversely,
the very idea of Paradise implies a state now lost.

Again, Baudelaire comes to mind, and his "La Vie
Antérieure" complex, so well transposed in the poem of that
title. And looking once again at "Symphonie Littéraire II,"
Mallarmé's early prose poem honoring the older poet, from
which we already quoted in connection with "Frisson d'Hiver,"
we find there the images of our poem: "Nulles fleurs, a
terre, alentour,--seu1ement, de loin en loin, quelques plumes
d'aile d'ames déchues," which renders explicit the associa-
tion of "aile" and "chute" with the idea of the Fall from
Eden, which is also one of the basic themes of "Les Fleurs
du Mal."

"De plume ou de rameau," by the conjunction "ou" again
makes the images intentionally vague, so that they appear to
be almost the same thing. The phrase, now freed from "une
chute antérieure de plume ou de rameau," which in the literal
sense means now freed from the above described sensation of
wing touching instrument, has now definitely become a voice.
But now "aile” has changed to "plume ... ou ... rameau."

The feather is a synecdoche for the wing it now replaces, but

at the same time it evokes the poet's pen which traces the

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84

poem on the white page. "Rameau" evokes both classical and
Christian mythology."rameau-pa1me" recalling Palm-Sunday, the
"dimanche de Rameaux," and also the golden bough, the "rameau
d'or," without which the realm of the dead could not be
entered.

From now on, the new-born phrase, no longer merely vaguely
felt, but finally freed, and articulated by the voice, become
19395, will live its own life, no longer living of the poet's
substance but of its own. The formerly vague, subjective
perceptions of the persona have grown into an objective entity,
no longer dependent on him. This is the very birth process of
poetry, the process of creation itself, in which subjective
experience becomes objectified.

-Now the poet, no longer content just to perceive it, toys
experimentally with this phrase. Again, characteristically,
he first sees it, "la lisant en fin de vers," then speaks and
hears it, "l'adaptant 5 mon parler." As in the beginning,
the Penult will come at the end of the line, the rest run over
into the following, with the string so stretched in forgetful—
ness over the penultimate syllable, "nul," that it breaks,
and this breaking, this dying, then rendered in the manner of
a prayer: “est morte." "Si tendue en l'oubli" seems strange
as applied to the string of a musical instrument; but it must
here refer to the poet's "oubli," for above we read: "1a
corde tendue de l'instrument de musique. qui était oublié,"

which means that the poet-persona had forgotten his lyre, now

 

  
   

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85

visited by memory. And "pénible jouissance" reflects at once
the poet's joy at the recreation of a remembered past and the
regret of its loss; moreover, this antithetical feeling of
both joy and pain, which accompanies the natural process of
birth, is also characteristic of the artistic one.5

The poet now tries again to escape and to calm his ob-
session by speculating on the origin of the Penult's appari-
tion. .He considers that, after all, this is but a lexical
term, the definition of which is simple enough, but he fails,
of course, to apprehend the word's deeper significance. And,
like the young narrator of A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, who
st0ps before the blossoming hawthorn bushes calling out to
him, but who lacks the will power to carry through the quest
for their "real" meaning, a quest not into things but into
the self, so here the young poet fails to unveil the Penult's
mystery.6

Great has been the speculation on the part of critics
who, without analyzing the rest of the piece, have tried to
define what Mallarmé might have alluded to with "1e reste
mal abjuré d'un labeur de linguistique par lequel quotidien-
nement sanglote de s'interrompre ma noble faculté poétique."7
‘Whether it alludes to Mallarmé's work as a language teacher
or to his researches into the secrets of language in the
service of poetry, and I hold to the former, what is inter-

esting above all is the tone of this sentence, which once

again clearly and explicitly establishes the narrator as a

 

 

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86

poet, a fact, of course, implicit throughout the poem. But
the tone is ironic, and the "noble faculté poétique," which
"sanglote de s'interrompre," can be read as an undercutting
of the poet's own sense of mission, still threatened by
doubts about his ability, which implies his fear of the
poetic vocation at the beginning of his career.

The facile "explaining away" of the haunting Penult does
not succeed, but only increases the persona's torment.
"Tourment" is immediately reinforced with "harcelé"; con-
quered, he giVes in to the demon of words, letting them play
over his lips; surrendering to them. This surrendering
"l'initiative aux mots" is many years later described in a
passage of "Crise de Vers":

L'oeuvre pure implique la disparition élocutoire du

poete, qui cede l'initiative auéymotg, par la heurt de

leur inegalite mobilises; ils s'allument de reflets
reciproques comme une virtuelle trainee de feux sur

des pierreries, remplacant la respiration perceptible

en l'ancien souffle lyrique ou la direction personnelle

enthousiaste de la phrase (0C p. 366). [my italics]

So the dirge for the Penult intones itself with the
appropriate note of condolence, and in this murmured incan-
tation, with its repetition of “morte ... morte ... morte,"
the persona hopes to sing himself to peace. But here more
than ever does this inexplicable Penult seem to become a
woman, a dead woman whose desperate ghost haunts the poet.
Wanting to pacify this ghost and rid himself of the spell of
the phrase, he tries to bury her once more, that shade, and

the haunting phrase with her, in the "amplification“ of the

"psalmodie," a kind of placandis Mariae manibus.

 

 

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87

But the demon will not let him go, pursuing him out of
the mind's recesses right into the world of the city streets,
for now the horror-stricken narrator sees himself, reflected
in a sh0p window, caressing something with his hand--in a
descending motion, which corresponds to the "ton descendant"
of the voice. The window, here functioning as a mirror, is
the door to the visible manifestation of the mystery, not to
be explained away as "une magie aisément déductible et
nerveuse."

A very similar transposition of the creative process,
both a birth and a dying, occurs in a verse poem of those
years, "Les Fenétres":

Je me mire at me vois angel et je meurs, et j'aime
--Que la vitre soit l'art, soit la m sticite—-

A renaitre, portant mon réve en diademe,

Au ciel antérieur ou fleurit 1a Beauté!

The poet recognizes in the voice now the first voice
with which the song began, and it must be this one which he

is caressing, that song which originated in him and has now

been born into a life of its own, but which is always the

same. And so the poem points back to its beginning: une
voix prononcant les mots sur un ton descendant: 'La Penul-
tieme est morte.'" In a strange fusion of the visual and the

auditory, the reflected image of the poet caressing his own
voice becomes a symbol for a vocation which seems to condemn
to solitude and narcissism: the poet himself creates the

object of his love.8

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88

The poem might have ended here, with the ring of its
circular structure closed. But the final paragraph under—
lines, in taking up once again the key images of the piece,
the demonic and inexplicable nature of poetic passion. Yet,
the intervention of the supernatural, as well as the narra—
tor's anguish, begin not really here, with the marvelous
anecdote, but have prevailed throughout the piece.

From this point, the persona does not continue onward,
but remains in front of the same shOp window which has just
reflected his image. What changes is his "regard,“ for now
he looks no longer merely at, but through, the window.

There is, again, a tone of irony in "l'angoisse sous
laquelle agonise mon esprit naguere seigneur,“ but what is
undercut is not the anguish of the obsession, but the rational

' which has become its victim.9

mind, "naguere seigneur,’
"Angoisse" and "agonise," though ironically used, reinforce
the AESEE atmosphere, which is built up by the device of
‘withholding the object of the anguish until far into the
sentence. This is reinforced by a certain Steigerung, or
intensification, achieved through an accumulation of prepar—
atory clauses: "c'est quand je vis," "levant les yeux,“

"dans la rue.” These clauses, by delaying the revelation,
create a mounting expectancy. Only now do we learn that the
narrator is in front of a lute-maker's shop, which establishes

the bridge between inner and outer worlds: the memory of the

wing brushing "les cordes d'un instrument," and the actual

 

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display of "vieux instruments pendus au mur." After the ini-

tial rencontre of the mental image and the external phenome-

 

non of the key symbol, the poet's lyre, some of the
accompanying symbolic images also find their phenomenological
complement: palms and wings, mysteriously enveloped by
shadows and paled with age.

The motif of old age and a distant past, so reminiscent
of the preceding piece, is underlined with the "rue des
antiquaires," "vendeur de vieux instruments pendus au mur,“
"palmes jaunes," and, above all, "les ailes ... d'oiseaux
anciens." Just as the "pendule de Saxe" was behind time, and
the ”vieil almanach allemand" announced kings long since dead,
the lute no longer sings, the palm leaves are no longer green,
and the birds have long since died. And so the notion of
"chute" is suggested again here, where every object is but
the souvenir of a former state.

Just as the narrator had been frightened upon discover-
ing in his mirror reflection the image of a poet, so he now
flees upon discovering beyond the glass the symbols of his
art. He is condemned to a vocation which sets him apart
from the rest of mankind, condemned to mourn "l'inexplicable
Penultieme."

The final note of the poem certainly seems "inexplicable,"
and this is precisely how it appeared to contemporary critics.
Gustave Kahn recalls that:

La presse, toujours la mame, avait accueilli d'un

déferlement de rires la Penultiéme. ... il y avait la
Penultieme, cette fameuse Penultieme, dont on parlait

 

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i1 y a dix ou douze ans de la rive gauche a partout;

la Penultieme etait alors 1e nec plus ultra de

l'incomprehensible, le Chimborazo de l'infranchissable,

et le casse7téte chinois.10
And Mallarme's close friend, Villiers de l'Isle—Adam, pre—
dicted that this prose poem would be even more incomprehensi-
ble for "le bourgeois" than the poet's verse.ll

The first and only full analyse of the poem known to me
is Thibaudet's; but it is essentially descriptive, rather

12 It is with Thibaudet's analyse that A. R.

than analytic.
Chisholm takes issue in a short article which, while inter—
preting the poem, does not, however, account for its multiple
levels of meaning.13

The poem is an artistic transformation of the creative
process,14 which makes of it a sort of Gidean "composition
en abyme," where one finds transposed in a work of art the
very subject of that work.15 On this level, "Le Démon de
l'Analogie" is a poem about the creation of "Le Démon de
l'AnaIOgie."

The particular tension of the poem, imaged in the taut
string of the instrument, consists"of the contrapuntal play
of two antithetical themes: birth and death. We have dis-
cussed the former, the creative process, but the latter,
which is paradoxically a part of it, remains to be explored.
For, who or what dies in this birth process?

"La Penultieme," we saw, suggests a feminine presence,

that of the "blanche créature" of "Plainte d'Automne," the

white Maria, again evoked in our poem with such images as

 

 

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91

"aile," "plume," and "palme," images which are at the same
time symbols for poetic inspiration, the writer's instrument,
and man's that is the poet's triumph. Further, "antérieure"
and "chute," again taking up the theme of "Plainte d'Automne,"
suggest both micro- and macrocosmically a blessed state now
lost, and of which Maria was a part: the poet's childhood,
and the lost unity of the universe. Maria not only belongs
to, but represents, this childhood before the fall; and the
fall for Mallarmé is that point where his own age of faith
ceases, where he must choose, at the price of infinite anguish,
the atheistic attitude.16

Whether the successive deaths of his mother, his sister,
and finally his friend, Harriet Smythe,17 brought about the
crisis is less important for this study than is the fact that
‘without it, this paradoxical ”fortunate fall," from faith to
atheism, the poet could not have been born. To be born a poet,
a self had to die, and we know how cruelly Mallarmé suffered
the death agonies which set him free.18

This dying in order to be reborn, a voluntary death for
the sake of gaining a new existence, is well seen by Poulet
in his essay on Mallarmé,19 which enlightens the experience
not only of our poet-persona, but at the same time points to
his relationship with his dramatic counterpart, Igitur:

... la mort est un acte, une opération volontaire par

laquelle on se donne une nouvelle existence et par

laquelle on donne l'existence meme au néant. La mort

est le seul acte possible. Presses que nous sommes

entre un monde matériel vrai dont les combinaisons
fortuites se produisent en nous sans nous, et un monde

92

idéal faux dont le mensonge nous paralyse et nous en—
sorcelle, nous n' avous qu' un moyen de ne plus etre
livrés ni au néant ni au hasard. Ce moyen unique, cet
acte unique, c 'est la mort. La mort volontaire. Par
lui nous nous abolissons, mais par lui aussi nous

nous fondons.

The persona's nostalgia for this lost past, which surges
back touched by the wing of "le glorieux souvenir," is also
manifest in his literally walking toward it, "la rue des
antiquaires instinctivement suivie." And so it is his own
past which the poet mourns, "condamné a porter probalmement
1e deuil de l'inexplicable Penultieme."

The important image of "1a plume," here for the first
time introduced in the prose poems, and which will later grow
to heroic proportions in the "Coup de dés,"20 suggests by
association--”une toque de minuit"--another figure, who will
reappear in the prose poems, that of Hamlet, "prince amer de
l'écueil." The young Mallarmé more than once21 compared him—

self to:

L'adolescent évanoui de nous aux commencements de la
vie et qui hantera les esprits hauts ou pensifs par le
deuil qu'il se plait a porter ... (OC p. 299).
And in the same essay, Mallarmé calls Ophelia: "Ophélie,
vierge enfance objectivée du lamentable héritier royal,"
which establishes a close parallel with the hero of our poem,
likewise in mourning, and who, in singing the death of the

Penult, or Maria, also laments the loss of his "vierge enfance

Objectivée."

 

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93

LE DEMON DE L'ANALOGIE

NOTES

1

Gardner Davis in "The Demon of Analogy," French Studies,
IX, 3 & 4 (July and October, 1955) 197—211 and 326-347,
analyzes the different figures of discourse, commonly
called analogies, which the poet employs most often.
The "Conclusion" to his Mallarmé et le Drame Solaire

essentially reiterates the article.

Mauclair, in Princes, p. 116, remembers of Mallarmé:

... une faculté personnelle qu 'il possédait a un
degrée incroyable: celle de l' analogie. Stéphane
Mallarmé eut 1e sens des analogies developpé jusqu' a
stupéfier quiconque parlait avec lui. Il surprenait
entre les objets ou les actes les plus disparates,
d'un oeil infaillible, le point de contact et de
comparaison. Il concevait si nativement et avec une
si grande force la plénitude indéfinie de l'univers,
qu' a son esprit rien ne se présentait isolément, et
que tout était systeme de signes cohérents et soli-
daires. C' était le caractere de clarté mystérieuse
de sa causerie. Il fut donc amené sans efforts a se
servir de l' analogie comme source d' images en lit—
térature. Quant aux exemples analogiques, 11 en a
laissé d' admirables et d' exquis.

In Oeuvres Complétes de CharlesgBaudelaire, Traductions,
"Histoires Extraordinaires" par Edgar Poe (Paris: Conard,
1932), pp. 1-9, we find "Le Démon de la Perversité," a

story in which certain types of perverse psychic behavior,
not accounted for by “la phrénologie," are discussed. As

an example, the narrator relates how, after having committed

a murder, he was haunted by a demonic voice, repeating

certain words, which finally drove him to confess and

 

 

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94

condemn himself. This is not similar to our piece, but
rather a typically Poesque psycho-horror story. However,
the title, as well as the following paragraph, where words
haunt the narrator as he is walking in the city streets,
might have struck Mallarme:
Un jour, tout en flanant dans les rues, je me surpris
moi—m’émea murmurer, presque a haute voix, ces syl—
labes accoutumees. Dans un acces de pétulance, je
les exprimais sous cette forme nouvelle: Je suis
sauvé,-—je suis sauvé;--oui,—-pourvu que je ne sois
pas assez sot pour confesser moi-meme mon cas!

In his L'Oeuvre, Cohn suggests the influence of Poe's

 

"Israfel" on the imagery of our poem.

Many years later, in his commemorative lecture for Villiers
de l'Isle—Adam, Mallarmé will again use this term for
inspiration: "Le démon littéraire qui inspira Villiers de

l'Isle-Adam, a ce point fut-i1 conscient?" (OC p. 481)

The same feeling is expressed in a letter by Mallarme, of
1891, and quoted by Cohn, L'Oeuvre, p. 480: "Montrer cela
et soulever un coin du voile de ce que peut étre un pareil

poeme est dans mon isolement mon plaisir et ma torture."

Repeatedly, the narrator in the Recherche undergoes this
experience of things calling out to him, and of his lack
of strength to find their deeper meaning, which is, of
course, not in them, but in the artist himself. The ex—
ample of the "aubépines" is most analogous to the experi—

ence of the poet persona of our piece. Marcel Proust,

95

Ala Recherche du Temps Perdu (Paris: Gillimard, 1954),

p..l38:

Mais j 'avais beau rester devant les aubépines a
respirer, a porter devant ma pensée qui ne savait ce
qu 'elle devait en faire, a perdre,a..retrouver leur
invisible et fixe odeur, a m' unir au rythme qu e
jetait leurs fleurs, ici et la, avec une allegresse
juvénile et a des intervalles inattendus comme cer-
‘tains intervalles musicaux, elles m 'offraient indé-
.finiment 1e meme charme avec une profusion inepuis-
able, mais sans me laisser approfondir devantage,
comme ces mélodies jc‘Lu 'on rejoue cent fois de suite
sans descendre plus avant dans leur secret [my

italics].
In the most recent book devoting a chapter to Mallarmé,

Walter A. Strauss, Descent and Return: The Orphic Theme

in Modern Literature (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press,

1971) and which I was able to obtain only after writing
this study, the author, who very briefly discusses "Le
Démon de l'Analogie, " also sees a correspondence between

Our Poet-persona and Proust's narrator:

This resembles, in a curious manner the first stages
0f Proust's tenacious pursuit of the sensation that
the petite madeleine had caused in him, (p. 92) .

 

To merltion just a few of these. Guy Delfel, L'gthétigu—e

.Wane Mallarmé (Paris:_ Flammarion, 1951), p. 136 ff.,

sees in this "labeur de linguistique" an allusion to that
Sc=ience" of finding the essence of phenomena in language.

8 ' o ‘ . -
Inn-13.1: to Plato's notions on language expressed 1n the

C
W. Scherer, L'Expression, p. 22, sees here, in

e I
ffect, an allusion to Mallarme's teaching work, as does

Be: .
rnard' W. Mauclair, in his L'Art en

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96

perfection of form in connection with his poetic work.
The interpretation of the allusion will probably always
remain doubtful, but it certainly is not of crucial im-
portance for the reading of the poem. One should recall,
at any rate, that Les Mots Anglais does not preoccupy
Mallarmé until several years later; it is not until 1868

that he begins to think of undertaking linguistic studies,

as indicated by his correspondence.

In a letter to Cazalis of 1867, Mondor, Correspondance I,

p. 243, Mallarmé says:
Pour moi, laIPoésie me tient lieu de l'amour parce
qu'elle est eprise d'elle—meme et que sa volupte
d'elle retombe delicieusement en mon ’ame.
Many years later, in his essay "Magie," Mallarmé insists
still on the mysterious, the supernatural of poetic crea—
tion: "je dis qu'existe entre les vieux procédés et le

sortilege, que restera la poésie, une partie secrete":

(0C p- 400).

Gustave Kahn, Symbolistes et Décadents (Paris: Vannier,

1902). pp. 17 and 138.

In a letter of 1867, quoted in Mondor, Correspondance I,
p. 260. Villiers writes to Mallarme:

Je viens de lire vos admirables poemes en prose!
Je lirai samedi, c'est-a-dire demain soir, a neuf
heures et demie, chez de" Lisle, Le Demon de

_ 'analogie que j'étudie profondément. Jamais,
0n n'a vu ni entendu sa pareille et 11 faut absolu-
ment étre: au diapason du "violon démantibulé" de
Igouis Bertrand pour saisir 1a profondeur de votre
ldee et le talent excellent de la composition.

 

 

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97

The reference to Bertrand is revealing, for the mysterious,
somewhat anguished ambiance of our poem resembles, indeed,
the general atmosphere of Bertrand's prose poems. We re-
call that Baudelaire praised these highly in his preface,
"A Ars‘ene- Houssaye, " to the Spleen de Paris. It might be
due to the older poet's admiration that Mallarmé became
interested in Bertrand. In a letter of December, 1865,

to Victor Pavie, Mondor, Correspondance I, p. 188, he

says :

S' 11 vous restait encore quelques exemplaires de
Gaspard de la nuit je vous demanderais en grace,
Monsieur, de vouloir bien me céder 1' un d' eux:
croyez qu i'l’ne serait nulle part plus religieuse-

ment conserve .

Thibaudet, in La Poésie, pp. 184—88, discusses the poem.
Without examining its vocabulary closely; and he comes

t0 the following conclusion:

I]. ne faudrait pas s 'autoriser de ce morceau et de
cette analyse pour croire, chez le poete, a une
manie constante et a un détraquement particulier.
Tout homme de lettres un peu nerveux est sujet a
des hallucinations analogous (p. 187).

More interesting are his comments introducing his chapter.

Les Mots, " in the same book, where he takes our poem as

POint of departure:

Le mot, pour lui, [Mallarmé] revétait une existence
tres présente et presque hallucinatoire. Le D_e_m__on

Lie 1' Analogie nous met dans les mains une des clefs
de sa "noble faculté poétigue." Enveloppé de musique
et de mystere, un mot souvent s' impose a lui, non
Par sa signification, mais. par son corps, qui est sa
forme typographique, par son ame, qui est sa sonorité,
our ar un secret plus intérieur encore qui ne préte
Pas a Mallarme d' autre concept que celui, vide et

 

 

 

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98

familier, de "hasard." Il est, et sans autre raison
se legitime par cette existence (p. 218).

13 A. R. Chisholm, "Le Démon de l'analogie," Essays in French

14

Literature, 1 (Nov, 1964), 106, Univ. of West. Australia

Press:

‘With regard to the actual style of Le Démon de
l'analogie, we have to remember that Mallarme was

<only about twenty-two years old when he wrote it,

aand was still too strongly under the influence of Poe
aand Baudelaire. Hence the "hallucinatory“ expressions
1ihat misled Thibaudet.... The.poet is here expressing,
vvith some Baudelairean exaggerations and a touch of
liocus- Poe- -cus, what he will later learn to convey in
1113 own incomparable style. There is nothing super—
laatural in Le Démon.

 

This reading simply refuses to look closely at Mallarme's
early poetry, because it prefers the late work; but this
approach certainly does not do justice to the-poem, which

the mature poet chose, after all, to place into Divagations.

 

Alice Coléno, Lesportes d'ivoire (Paris: Plon, 1948): PP~
29‘31. describes this process well:

Ce n 'est pas toujours la vision qui contraint le
Poete a 1' expression. Chez ceux qui ont été le plus
EMJrement artistes, Baudelaire et Mallarmé, c 'est plus
Struvent 1' expression qui les conduit a la vision.
Quoi de plus logique. Un son, un mot, une cadence
Owrt, dans le monde de la vision, leur correspondence
e1;, comme un parfum suggere une couleur, un rythme
Poetique appelle l' idée qui lui ressemble. Quel
POete, et (1' une facon plus large, quel écrivain n' a
eXperimente’ cet étrange voyage de découverte ou
l'entrainent les mots? Mais ce mot trouvé en suggere
Vul autre ou plusieurs, engendrés par le son précis du
Premier, par sa valeur évocatrice ou par 1' obscur
Ebranlement produit par sa recherche. Ces mots a
leur tour éveillent des idées qui éveillent des mots,

9t cela sans autre fin que 1' epuisement nerveux du
Voyageur.

 

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99

And E. Fiser, Le Symbole littéraire (Paris: Corti, 1941),

p. 86, shows how the creative act as experienced by a

composer, in this case Richard Wagner, is similar to that

of a poet:

Wagner raconte dans Ma Vie (T. III, p. 83) comment

le motif lui est venu spontanément a l' esprit dans
une sorte de somnolence: 'En rentrant l' apres-midi,
je m 'étendis sur un canapé tres dur, attendant 1e
sommeil si désiré. Il ne vint pas. Je tombai seule—
Inent dans une sorte de somnolence pendant laquelle 11
rue sembla que, soudain, j' enfoncais dans un rapide
(:ourant d'eau. Le bruissement de cette eau prit
laientat un caractere musical: c 'était l' accord de
Ini bémol majeur retentissant et flottant en arpeges
.ininterrompus; puis ces arpeges se changerent en
:figures mélodiques d' un mouvement toujours plus
Jrapide, mais jamais 1e pur accord de mi bémol majeure

ne se modifia et sa persistance semblait donner une
signification profonde a l' élément liquide dans lequel
je plongeais. Soudain, j 'eus la sensation que les
ondes se refermaient en cascades sur moi et, épouvanté,
je me reveillais en sursaut. Je reconnus immediate-
ment que le motif du Prélude de L' or du Rhin venait
de se révéler tel que je 1e portais en moi sans etre
Ervenu encore a lui donnor une forme. En meme temL,
_‘Le compris la singularité de ma nature: c'est en moi-
méme que je devais chercher la source de vie et non

311 dehors [my italics].

 

Although one tends to identify the "composition en abyme"

usually with Gide's later work, and especially Les Faux-

W, it should be recalled that the "early Gide"
belonged to Mallarme's group, and that in his Symbolist
Traité du Narcisse, of 1891, he was already fascinated with

\
the Play of reflections--as is evident. of 00111388: in the

Very title of that piece.

 

I
n a letter to Cazalis, of 1866, Mondor, Correspondance I,

pp, 108-9, Mallarmé says:

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100

Oui, je 1e sais, nous ne sommes que de vaines formes
de la matiére, mais bien sublimes pour avoir inventé
Dieu et notre ame. Si sublimes, mon ami! que je veux
me donner ce spectacle de la matiere, ayant conscience
d' etre et, cependant, s 'élancant forenément dans le
Reve qu 'elle sait n 'étre pas, chantant l' Ame et toutes
les divines impressions pareilles qui se sont amassés
en nous depuis les premiers ages et proclamant, devant
1e Rien qui est la vérité, ces glorieux mensonges!

 

I believe that this is akey passage for the understanding

of not only our poem, but all of Mallarmé's poetry.

The aalready mentioned work of Adile Ayda, Le Drame, concen-
trates on the question of the influence of Harriet Smythe's
deatli on all of Mallarme's early, and even some of his later
workg. Much more interesting than Ayda is Mauron's "psycho—
critjxque" in Psychoanalysis, p. 48, which is based on the
Freudian principle that every action, although apparently
meaniJngless [or "inexplicable"], has an unconscious signifi—
canceu. And Mauron.sees in "Penultimate," "the one before
the last, " the obsessive memory of the poet's mother, for
the last one to die was the sister, Maria, and the one be-
fore, 'the mother. The maternal is, of course, constantly
Preserrt in the poem, namely in the womb-shaped belly of the
lute. This image, supporting the birth motif in my reading.
is in Mauronlinked to the other obsession. He does not
diSCHSs the poem except to point out that the obsessive
image of the mother here appears under the form of the
Pennltimate. One could change the schema, of course, and
Say that the last one to die was Harriet, and the one be-

f .
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101

I feel the presence of Maria evident from the internal

evidence of these early pieces, for it is she who is evoked

in "Plainte d'Automne," composed in the same year as our

poem, and where the theme of "chute" is fully developed.

At the same time, the woman suggested is probably, as fre—

quently in artistic transposition, a composite, and thus

made up of all three, the mother, the sister, and the

friend.

Again from the important letter to Cazalis, of May 14,

1867, quoted in the preceding chapter (Note 13), Mondor,

Correspondance I, pp. 240—41:

Tout ce que, par contrecoup, mon etre a souffert,
pendant cette longue agonie, est inénarrable, mais,
heureusement, jg suis parfaitement mort ma lutte
terrible avec ce vieux et méchant plumage, terrassé,

heureusement, Dieu [my italics].

And in a letter of the same year, to Lefébure, Mondor,

W, p. 249, Mallarme himself links the

notions--I should say experiences—-of birth and death:

Toute naissance est une destruction.. . .

Georges Poulet, La Distance Intérieure (Paris: Plon.

1952) o P. 325.

Cohn, EOeuvre, p. 82:

La plume est donc un héros de Poeme qui s'occupe
Constamment de soi.

 

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102

In a letter to Cazalis, of 1862, Mondor, Correspondance I,

p. 25, the twenty-year old Mallarme describes himself:
Que vous serez désillusionné quand vous verreg cet
individu maussade qui reste des journees entieres.

la téte sur le marbre de la cheminée, sans penser:
ridicule, Hamlet qui ne peut se rendre compte de son

affaissement.

One recalls, further, the identification of the poet-
persona with Hamlet in "Le Pitre Chatié, " a verse poem of
the same year as our prose poem. Here the "Hamlet" was

added later, but the association is there.

 

 

 

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CHAPTER VI
PAUVRE ENFANT PALE

This poem appeared originally under the title "La Téte, "
and received its definitive one in its second publication.
in 1867; but then it was published under yet another name,
“Fusain, " in 1886, after which it reappeared only under its
final heading. The first title, echoed in the last word of
the poem, resembles in this respect the variant title of the
Preceding piece, where "La Penultiéme" was likewise repeated
in the last word of that poem. Mallarmé then seems to have
rejected, in both cases, this rather facile device for
establishing circularity.l The second variant, "Fusain," in
the sense of "dessin exécuté au fusain," that is,’ a "charcoal
sketch, " suggests that this piece is a preliminary expression
9f something yet to be develOped, an outline, rather than a
fully elaborated poem.2

The poem's anecdote is about a street singer in a big
City, and the narrator's reflections about him. He sees the
future Criminal in the child, and while feeling somewhat
sympathetic toward the outcast, he feels his own and society's
guilt for this human fate.

The visual form of the poem is striking, with its division

int .
o e1ght short paragraphs of similar length. and a final one,

103

 

 

 

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104

consisting of a mere half line. Further, each one of these
paragraphs is in the form of direct address, somewhat like

a ritualistic supplication, or a litany. Yet the vocabu-
lary of the piece is not at all elevated, but even singularly
unpoetic. Almost all the words, except "soie incarnadine,“
are drawn from every-day language, and a term like "a tue-
téte" has the familiarity of a colloquialism; a lofty word,
such as "seigneur," is used ironically, and the word "chanson,"
suggesting music and harmony, is immediately undercut by
"aigué." The city-street setting, merely suggested in the
three preceding poems, is fully developed here. The speaker,
a first-person narrator, refers to himself directly, "moi,"
only at the end of the piece, so that through most of the
poem he is both absent and present; as in a dream, we con-
stantly hear his voice, but we do not know where he is.

The title, as in the twelfth piece of the collection, is
immediately echoed in the first words of the poem, and its
alliteration is reinforced with "pourquoi" and "perd parmi"
in the same sentence. And since this "p" alliteration re-
appears in the poem, and especially in its last sentence, one
might well wonder about the significance of the haunting
consonant. Robert Greer Cohn identifies "p" as a "male"
consonant,3 and with this suggestion of male, masculine, man-
like, a tension is established from the outset between the
notions of Man and Child, while the consonant might, at the
same time, be indicative of the gathering force of "la

volonté du crime."

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The first word, "pauvre," itself is ambiguous, for,
while on the literal level referring to poverty, it connotes
two antithetical attitudes: pity and sympathy on the one
hand, and contempt on the other. "Pale," recalling the whole
complex of the "fané" developed in the preceding prose poems,
contrasts with the notion of "enfance," and thus makes our
"enfant" singularly unchild—like, a characteristic which is
developed throughout the piece. The image of the "petit
homme" evokes the old paintings and sculptures of the
"Madonna and the Christchild," where the "Infant Jesus"
appears paradoxically as a small full-grown man in the
Virgin's arms.

"Crier a tue-téte dans la rue ta chanson aigfie" onomato-
poetically renders the shrillness of the child's singing, and,
at the same time, with the pun "a tue—tete," in harmony with
the setting of ”dans la rue," announces the poem's principal
theme: decapitation. The setting will be reinforced through-

out with vocabulary such as "toits," "volets,' "étages,"

"rues,' "pavés,' "journaux," and "villes," finally culminating
in a fusion of setting and theme with "crime reported in the
papers."

The "insolent" character of the song suggests both the
contempt of the listener and the haughtiness of the singer;
yet his pride is undercut, for his song "se perd parmi les
chats," who are the only lords of this world. We are far from

"le pur animal" of "Plainte d'Automne," and.yet that closed

 

   
   

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106

world is here suggested by its very inaccessibility, both
nwrally and also literally in space. There is a curious
reversal here with both "Plainte d'Automne" and "Frisson
(PHiver,“ where we were on the inside with the persona, be-
hind the windows, while in this poem we are on the outside,
with the singer, looking up at those mysterious windows, so
reminiscent of Baudelaire's "Les Fenétres."5
The wretched song will never penetrate those shutters,
whose very function is to shut out the city streets. The
whole above mentioned vocabulary cluster, of roofs, shutters,
streets, sidewalk, brings before the eye the inside of cities,
but the outside of the houses which make it up. And so, the
child will never know, will never guess, "de lourds rideaux
de soie incarnadine," behind which we divine Venetian mirrors,
and ancient clocks, and treasures, and dreams. A variant of
this sentence reads: "derriere lesquels tu ne vois pas les
lourds rideaux de soie rouge." The changes are significant,
for "ignores" means that the street singer will not only not
"see," but not "know anything about" that other world, thus
removing him even farther from it. And in those heavy pink
curtains we recognize "les rideaux amortis" of "Frisson
d'Hiver," "lourd" etymologically pointing to luridus, yellow-
ish, paled, and also "sombre,” which is reinforced with
"incarnadine," a word so much more richly luxurious than the
original "rouge,” yet meaning "faded red."6

The beginning of the third paragraph, "Cependant tu

chantes fatalement," whose first word underlines the unpoetic

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107

tone of the piece, onomatOpoetically renders the monotony of
the child's song with the close repetition of the [37 sounds,
while the sharp /s/ sounds of ”assurance tenace" suggest the
harshness of that unchild-like voice. He was "fated" to sing,
which now answers the initial question, "pourquoi crier a
tue—tete”; and "fatalement," reminiscent of the "fatidique"
of the preceding poem, an evocation, by association, of the
fates, again portends disaster.

"Petit homme" spells out the already suggested contrast-
ing notions of man and child, and, being neither the one nor
the other, the singer is completely isolated from the world
around him, its children, "sans baisser tes yeux méchants
vers les autres enfants jouant sur le pavé," and its adults,
"qui s'en va seul par la vie, et ne comptant sur personne,
travaille pour soi.” This isolation of a stranger among men-
kind again recalls another Baudelaire prose poem,
"L'Etranger."7

The singer is so forsaken that he does not even have the
orphan's traditional "vieille" to beat him to make him forget
his hunger: and this passage sounds the first note of the
hunger motif,8 implied throughout the poem, and developed
from here on. And both orphanage and hunger already point to
the Icarian theme of the poem: in part, the orphan is a
poet-figure. He sings unheard or for an uncomprehending
audience. And no earthly food can allay his spiritual needs,

while his spiritual superiority makes him the child of no

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108

human parents: as an entertainer he prefigures the clown
and saltimbanque of Apollinaire, Picasso, the "montreur"
of "Le Phénoméne Futur."

The third paragraph echoes the above "travaille pour
$01" with a slight variation to "travailles pour toi,"
creating a kind of Leitmotif: "seul," "pour soi," "pour toi.”
From the narrator's half-ironic point of view and attitude,
the "travailler" indicates a certain progression towards
social acceptability, from the initial "crier," to "chanter,"
and the then repeated "travailler." The singer's posture,
"debout," with the above "dans la rue" repeated but varied
and generalized to "dans les rues," accentuates an ascending
movement, with the city streets suggesting horizontal lines.
The solitary singer "debout," reinforced by "grand" and "sans
abaisser," creates a single vertical line rising perpendicu-
larly from that horizontal plane of the city streets and its
humanity.

Again the singer's ambiguous nature, neither ohild nor
man, is brought out in the description of his attire: faded
clothes, out like those of a man, that is, not really man's
clothing, but also not a child's. In the same sentence, the
"maigreur prématurée"‘ brings back the hunger motif, while
the "trop grand a ton age" literally describes the above
suggested tension (man—child) and at the same time indicates
the ascending movement, with a hint at its danger. ”Tu chantes

pour manger" again emphasizes hunger, and "acharnement,"

 

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109

etymologocally "action d'un animal qui s'attache opiniatre—
ment a la chair qu'il dévore," underlines this very physical
desire, while on the literal level referring to the singing's
toughness and also desperation.

The pale child's separation from the children playing
in the streets stresses his difference; he does not even

have the eyes of a child, but evil ones. These "yeux méchants
on the literal level describe the mean look of the young
tough, but they suggest at the same time that he has seen
what others have not seen, that his eyes are no longer inno—
cent, but guilty. Evil came into the world through the eat-
ing of forbidden fruit, and, by extension, the "yeux méchants"
have seen forbidden sights.

Now, almost half-way through the poem, with the anecdot-
ical background established, the theme, only suggested and
foreshadowed so far, is exposed: elevation, rupture and
decapitation. As the "chanson" changes to "complainte," a
lament, which, by association, suggests the literary genre
of a song, or poem, about some tragic event or legend, there
is a vague intimation of the dimension of a mythical past.

"Et ta complainte est si haute, si haute," supports this
notion, for "haut" can also mean ”éloigné dans le temps."
This key word, "haute," emphasized by immediate repetition,
recovers the upward movement suggested from the outset; in

the first paragraph, the song already rose to lose itself

"parmi les chats, seigneurs des toits," unable to penetrate

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110

the ”premiers étages" gbgyg the street. And the "debout" of
the third paragraph graphically delineated this upward direc-
tion, and the "trop grand" its precariousness. On the
literal level, "haute” refers to the voice, loud and shrill
and high, ”élevé," "aigu," and "qui s'entend au loin."

But now the voice and head seem to become one in one up-
ward movement, for as the voice rises, so the head goes up,
up, straining to an almost unbearable tension, as the ascent,
"si haute, si haute ... se léve ... monte," mounts to a peak,
a culmination point, and then breaks, with the rupture sug-
gested by "partir." This is the same tension and final tear—
ing of the lyre's String of "Le Démon de l'Analogie," the
rising of a song, and its death, symbolized by the broken
instrument. "Monter” can convey not only ascension, but
also excess; and so the voice and the head, straining to the
breaking point, threaten to fly away. And in one cut the
voice is shattered and the head severed--from the body, for
which "tes petites épaules” is a synecdoche, perhaps sug—
gestive of wings, and again in a "p" alliteration.

This upward movement of the voice, of song, isolates it
totally from not only the world, but the singer even, before
it dies; and the singer'sfulfillment, is, thus, the very
moment of his own death. .This simultaneous disintegration of
singer and song at the supreme moment is beautifully rendered

in.a late verse poem, "Petit Air II":

111

Indomptablement a dfi

Comme mon espoir s'y lance
Eclater la-haut perdu

Avec furie et silence,
Voix étrangere au bosquet
Ou par nul écho suivie,

L' oiseau qu' on n 'ou'it jamais
Une autre fois en la vie.
Le hagard musicien,

Cela dans le doute expire
Si de mon sein pas du sien
A jailli le sanglot pire

Déchiré va-t-il entier
Rester sur quelque sentier!

The traditional swan symbol, "L'oiseau qu'on n'odit jamais/
Une autre fois en la vie," has here been masterfully trans-
posed into an entirely original image, "le hagard musicien,"
in our prose poem depicted by the street singer. He is
"hagard," that is, on the literal level, gaunt and emaciated;
but, by association with a now obsolete meaning of the term,
something else is suggested, namely "wanton, unchaste," some-
how pointing back to the "yeux méchants" above.9 And this
again suggests the notion of punishment and chastisement, of
crime; and the criminal execution is evoked here by "ta téte
nue," the head bared for the beheading.

The elevation-disintegration complex central to our
prose poem seems to portend, in a sentence of "La Musique et
les Lettres," of many years later, as well as in "Petit Air II,"
the notion of hubris-nemesis associated since times immemorial
with the poet singer:

Mais, je vénere comment, par une supercherie, on projette,

a quelque élévation défendue et de foudre! 1e conscient

nmnque chez nous de ceggui la—haut eclate (0C p. 647)
[my italics].

 

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The singer's rising voice is, thus, a constant symbol with
Mallarmé for the transcendental nature of poetry, reflected
also in other late essays, as for example in "De Meme,"

where he discusses the religious [transcendental] function of
poetry: "... car voici le miracle de chanter, on se projette
haut comme va le cri" (0C p. 396).

The "se lever" of the head, aside from its literal and
descriptive meaning, carries the association of "lever la
téte, s'enorgueiller," to become proud, elated, and in this
way points to the hubris notion; and the secondary meaning of
"haut," as "qui a d'élévation morale et de la fierté," sup-
ports this association. The image of the head leaving the
shoulders is a transposition, on the symbolic level, of mind
leaving body, or spirit divorcing itself from matter, and the
separation of spirit from matter implies for Mallarmé the
basic struggle of "pensée" against “hasard."

And so the structural make-up of the prose poem reveals
the shape of a parabola: there is a mounting accumulation
of imagery and, at the same time, the rising of the ascent,
both culminating in the center, the fourth paragraph of the
eight, where the symbolic meaning explodes and bursts out of
the imagery. In the four remaining sections, there is a
falling-off; on the one hand the nature of the poem changes
owing to a shift in point of view, from relatively detached
description to a guilty socially-conscious intervention by

the narrator's voice, and the prosaicness of this voice's

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113

commentary may well be a deliberate deflation, trivializa-
tion, of the lyrical élan, designed to follow the downturn
of the parabola; on the other hand, there is a mere elabora-
tion of all the ingredients now posed: the anecdote and the
ideas it symbolizes.

The following section, which with its opening words
echoes the "petit homme" of the second paragraph, conjectures
on the omens posed, by developing the anecdote's literal
level, where "chanter" again becomes "crier." We are again
firmly placed in the setting "dans les villes," where the
street singer's most probable bad ending is predicted: his
eventual infraction of the laws of a society of which he is
an outcast.

The theme of the pariah, victimized and finally immolated
by society, links this piece to a very early verse poem,
"Aumone," which had undergone numerous interesting revisions,
of which its successive titles are indicative. The first,
"Haine du Pauvre," expresses unambiguous contempt for the
beggar, "Tu comprends que le pauvre est le frere du chien";
then, in "A un Mendiant," the tone changes a little, as the
persona suggests evasion, rather than suicide, to the beggar;
and in "A un Pauvre," the most significant change is that of
the title; finally, with "Aum6ne," the most interesting modi-
fication lies in the fact that the persona establishes a
certain rapprochement between himself and the beggar by the

introduction of a "nous," absent from all the preceding

 

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114

versions. This growing affinity is above all evident in the
poem's last line, of which the variant read: ”Et surout, ne
va pas, drole, acheter du pain!" which was then changed to:
"Et surtout, ne va pas, fgggg, acheter du pain" [my italics].

"Un crime n'est pas bien difficile s faire," in our piece
also implies a certain empathy on the part of the narrator
with the future criminal, and one of the variants of this
sentence reflected this orientation even more strongly. The
original form of the first part of this sentence read: "il
suffit d'avoir une main au bout de son désir," and the para-
graph ended there. The idiom juxtaposing hand and desire hap~
pily changed to "courage apres le desir," much wider in
scope, for desire and courage might comprise any human under—
taking, physical or spiritual. The second version, ”11 suffit
d'avoir du courage apres le désir, et nous qui désirons,"
also had a "nous," by which the persona established a conniv-
ance with the criminal, sharing with him in the desire, but
seemingly not the courage. The final alteration to "et tels
qui ... " might mean that Mallarmé found the penultimate
version too direct and obvious,‘for the whole paragraph, even
if ironic in tone, suggests-«perhaps by that very irony--an
involvement on the part of the narrator with the singer's
fate.10 The last sentence of this section, whether referring
to the singer's head or body, promises that his courage will
'be equal to his desire.

.Another verse poem, "Le Guignon," of the same year as

the first version of "Aumone," that is two years before the

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115

composition of "Pauvre Enfant Pale," furnishes a connecting
link between poet and beggar, for here the poets, pariahs
like those in the Baudelairean models of the poem, are them—
selves depicted as beggars, though of superhuman proportions,
rising up.literally to tower over the rest of humanity:
Au-dessus du bétail ahuri des humains .
Bondissaient en clartes les sauvages crinieres

Des mendieurs d'azur dans nos chemins.

As the street singer, they are starving on their quest,

Ils VOyageaient sans pain, sans batons et sans urnes
Mordant au citron d'or de l'ideal amer.

and, like him, doomed to perish:

La plupart rala dans les défilés nocturnes,

fierisoires martyrs de hasards tortueux.

There is even a veiled comparison of these outcasts with
Christ:

Quand en face tous leur ont craché les dédains,
rendering their death, again figured in a separation of head
from body, a hanging, a sacrificial one:

Ces héros ...

Vont ridiculement se pendre au réverbére.

.And the tragic finale is here also undercut by a tone of
irony; though very bitter, and the low modern city setting.
This city setting is, in the sixth section of our poem,
seen from above, those windows, from which not a penny falls
down into the wicker basket held in a hand "sans espoir,"

‘Ehidh seems already that of a corpse, foreboding the execution.

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116

those in which guillotined heads were often caught. And "main
pendue" is a synecdoche for ”corps pendu," with the suggestion
of the hand, the instrument of our acts, being punished. This
scene recalls the final tableau of “Plainte d'Automne," with
the barrel organ man playing under the windows, viewed--or
rather heard--from above. But whereas his song "mit la gaité
au coeur des faubourgs," our singer and his song go unheard,
as we said above, in a city which refuses him its alms.

A variant of this sentence read: "Pas un sou ne descend
dans ton petit panier d'osier ... cela te rendra méchant."
The substitution of the definite article for the possessive
adjective impersonalizes the sentence more, which is also
brought out in the basket's not being held by the singer,
"tu," but by "ta longue main pendue," which reifies part of
the still living body, both basket and hand hanging "sur ton
pantalon." Again here the "p" alliteration is conspicuous.

The change from ”cela" to "on," however seems to move
into the opposite direction: not the lack of alms, and thus
the city only indirectly, but now "they" will be responsible.
And "mauvais" for "méchant" might possibly put the accent on
a more sinister, diabolical side of evil, as in "mauvais
augure," "mauvais présage,” or "mauvais ange," whereas the
other adjective often suggests a less corruptive, less serious
kind of wrong. For it is in this final version that Mallarmé
again presents, for the third time, the word "crime."

The following section again picks up the ascending move-

ment of the fourth part, head and voice again in unison, the

.
airway
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former rising still while the voice is becoming more menacing,
But n0w the ominousness of this singing is no longer merely
apparent to the narrator, but to the head itself, which,
"comme si d'avance elle savait," seems to divine its fate.

A variant of this sentence read: "Et ta téte se dresse tou-
jours, et veut déja te quitter, comme si elle savait d'avance
... " "Déja" with the "d'avance" probably seemed redundant,
and the inversion of "elle savait d'avance" put less stress
on anticipation than does the final version. At the same
time, the singer seems now to become voice and head, for in
this separation of head and body, it is in the former that
consciousness and forebodings of misfortune reside.

" ... tu chantes d'un air," referring on the literal
level to the way in which the boy sings, by association evokes
not only melody, "tu chantes un air," but recalls the movement
of head and voice high up into the air, that high point of
the parabola, the "se leve en.l'air/'of the fourth section.

In the last paragraph, the head is"for the third time referred
to by the pronoun, and the "elle te" juxtaposition with which
it opens accentuates the notion of severance, the beheading.
And it is not the singer, "tu," who will bid farewell to the
head, but the inverse, again emphasizing the growing identifi-
cation of the singer with the head, which reflects the move-
ment toward his spiritualization.

"Tu paieras" reintroduces the hubris-nemesis, or crime-
punishment, theme, while "pour moi, pour ceux qui valent

moins que moi," points to the sacrificial nature of the

 

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118

immolated victim's death. It is at this point that the
narrator for the first time refers to himself and, in so
doing, enters the world of the poem; but at the same time
he sets himself apart from the others. So far, he has been
present only as a voice, depicting the city out of which
rose the solitary singer, "tu," isolated from humanity,

on." Now the narrator momentarily almost seems to inte-

grate with the others, "pour moi, pour eux,‘ sharing in
their guilt, although they are more guilty than he. Later
on, in that projected future, narrator and £921; again seem
to fuse with "gggg te verrons dans les journaux." But the
ambiguity is not resolved, and one wants to step out of the
poem itself in order to find the persona in it: not part of
the city, he is perhaps in that closed world still, protected
by those "lourds rideaux de soie incarnadine."

"Tu vins probablement au monde vers cela," of which the
variant read "Et probablement tu vins au monde pour cela,"
not only again presages the calamity, but introduces the
notion of mission and vocation, already suggested by the "tu
chantes fatalement" of the second section. There is even an
intimation of the divine calling of Christ, who came into the
world to expiate its sins. The change from "pour" to "vers"
stresses the forward movement, toward fulfillment, and its
urgency, emphasized again with "et tu jefines des maintenant."
The original version of that phrase read: "et c'est pour

cela que tu chantes des maintenant,” and the change is most

 

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119

significant, as it brings back the hunger motif, now developed
into "fasting," which on the literal level refers to the
street singer's starving existence, but which at the same

time means a sacrificial abstinence in preparation for the
final ordeal. Thus the singer's sainthood is now clearly sug—
gested, but it is then immediately undercut with "nous te
verrons dans les journaux," a shocking anachronism produced
by the sudden colliding of the narrative and the symbolic
levels of meaning. A variant of that sentence read "nous te
verrons alors dans les journaux," and the omission of the
"alors" again serves to speed up the forward movement.

The last line is the final invocation of the litany,
where the "pauvre enfant pale" has become a "pauvre petite
tete," and the singer's apotheosis accomplished.

I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter that the
variant title, "Fusain," indicates that "Pauvre Enfant Pale"
might constitute a preliminary expression of something yet
to be developed, that it might be a kind of sketch for
another poem. This other poem is the "Cantique de Saint Jean,"
which constitutes the third part of Hérodiade, and which was
published posthumously, with the date of composition unknown,
but of which Mondor says: "On peut penser que ce poeme ne
date pas de la derniere partie de la vie de Mallarme" (0C
p. 1446).

The ”Cantique" is a hymn by the Saint at the very moment

of his beheading;ll and, the Feast of Saint John corresponding

 

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120

'with the summer solstice, Mallarme here parallels the sun's
trajectory with that traced by the severed head of John.
That moment, implied in "solstice," when the sun seems to
stand still, on the supreme point of the parabola, corre-
sponds to the supreme moment of the Saint's death and
spiritualization, his sanctification:

Le soleil que sa halte
Surnaturalle exalte
Aussitat redescend

Incandescent

Je sens comme aux vertebres
S'éployer des tenebres
Toutes dans un frisson

A l'unisson

Et ma tete surgie

Solitaire vigie

Dans les vols triomphaux
De cette faux

Comme rupture franche

Plut6t refoule ou tranche

Les anciens désaccords
Avec le corps

Qu'elle de jeunes ivre

S'opinifitre a suivre

En quelque bond hagard
Son pur regard

La—haut ou la froidure

Eternelle n'endure

que vous le surpassiez
Tous 6 glaciers

Mais selon un bapteme

Illuminée au meme

Principe qui m'élut
Penche un salut

The parallels of this magnificent poem with our prose
Am
I" are obvious, on both the narrative and the symbolic

1e
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121

fulfillment at the moment of their death by decapitation,12

——"Tu vins probablement au monde vers cela," and "Illuminée

au meme/Principe qui m'élut, "-—symbolizing the divorce of

spirit from matter. This is the highest realization of Man,

the projection of thought into matter, order against chance.
That both the Saint and the Singer stand for the Poet,

hdua for Mallarmé is Man par excellence, is evident. Saint

{Jolun is punished for having beheld Hérodiade, Pure Beauty,

andin the prose poem we pointed out the associations sug-

gested by the Singer's "yeux méchants." And in both poems,

the hero prepares himself for the final ordeal by fasting,
"et tu jefines des maintenant, " and "de je’unes ivre."13
Further, just as the prose poem's structure suggests the
shape of a parabola, the very first stanza of the "Cantique"
traces the same form of the trajectory of the severed head,
Symbol of spirituality, on its ascent toward its "halte/
Surnaturelle, " and yet condemned to fall back to earth.

The solstice is extratemporal like the poet's supreme
moment of vision, for when the sun reaches its highest point
and ”stands still, " time stops. And the singer and the song's
disintegration--just as when the voice rises to higher and
higher notes it reaches a point beyond which it can no longer

be heard, thus dies--is analogous with the "extase, " where
the limits of time and space are overcome and "penseé" is on

tb -
9 br 111k of the absolute, which is simultaneously the point

0f
the mind's own annihilation. To lose one'shead, i.e.,

122

decapitation, is at the same time to lose one's mind, that
is to become "demented," and this danger of poetic vision
is suggested in these lines of "Prose pour des Esseintes":

Oh! sache l'Esprit de litige

A cette heure oh nous nous taisons,
Que de lis multiples la tige
Grandissait trop pour nos raisons

"carandissait trop pour nos raisons'r echoes the "trop grand
a ‘ton age" of our prose poem, and the very first word of

"Prose," "Hyperbolel" points to the hubris of the singer, or

poet, and its danger.14

The threat of annihilation and disintegration also links
(otxrr prose poem to Igitur, whose hero does, in fact, cross
over into absolute thought, that Hegelian Absolute notion
which swallows up individual consciousness:

Je n 'aime pas ce bruit: cette perfection de ma certitude
me gene: tout est trop clair, la clarté montre le désir
d' une evasion; tout est trop luisant, j 'aimerais rentrer
en mon Ombre incréée et anterieure, et dépouiller par la
penseé le travestissement que m' a impose la nécessité,

d' habiter le coeur de cette race (que j 'entends battre
ici) seul reste d' ambiguité.

... un personnage dont lagpensée n' a pas conscience de
.lui-meme, de ma derniere figure, séparé de son personnage
par une fraise arachnéenne et qui ne se conna’it pas
(0C pp. 438 & 439) [my italics].

Girririeer Davies15 comments on this passage as follows:

"L'Ornbre s'applique par conséquent‘a retrouver la progression
premi ére; finalement elle réussit a revetir l'image de la
W: . . . Ce personnage, libéré de la conscience
Individuelle, représente l'aboutissement complete de la

be
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123

again evokes Hamlet,16 as did

and the "fraise arachnéenne"

already the "As—tu jamais eu un pere?" of our prose poem.

Just as our street singer is neither man nor child so
Hamlet, qui se débat sous le mal d'appara’itre, " (0C p. 299)
and

for he is all becoming, and yet hesitating;

cannot _1;_e_,
that he reflects the growing

it is in this, essentially,
Again, as in the preceding prose

pains of the young poet.
and so the death imagery of both

poem, becoming is dying,
poems reflects the coming into being" of the poet, threatened
everywhere: by a terrible birth into an existence of 1sola-

tion from his fellowman, which will find its fulfillment at

the moment of death:
Tel qu'en lui-meme enfin l'éternité le change
"Pauvre Enfant Pale" is an outcast of soc1ety, like the

The
these two masters of that

poet, 7 be it Poe or Baudelaire,

young Mallarme who will many years later say-

Pour moi, le cas d'un poéte, en cette société qui ne
c'est la cas d'un homme qui

lui permet pas de vivre,
s isole pour sculpter son propre tombeau (OC p. 869)

And so this prose poem is again about the young poet-

it is one of the last Baudelairean pieces, and as such master-

fu-lly demonstrates what Baudelaire expected of "modern

p08 try:18

Qu’ est-ce que 1' art pur suivant la conception moderne.

C' est créer une magie suggestive contenant a la fois
.1 'objet et le sujet, le monde extérieur a 1' artiste et

.1 ‘artiste lui-meme.
And it is also one of the early examples, with "Le

9‘11
eflc>zzzer1e Futur, " of that poetry of suggestion, where the

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124

symbolic meaning and the profounder theme remain hidden be-
hind the literal story.19 For the theme of the poet singer,
the Prometheus, the Saint, the Christ-like redeemer of man—
kind, is never stated, but suggested throughout, in a poem
whose vocabulary never rises above the "low-life" literal

level.

125

PAUVRE ENFANT PALE

.NOTES

1 I hope this remark does not sound blasphemous, since circu-
larity is one of the devices in "Un Coup de dés." There,

however, it is profoundly inherent to the essence of the

poem.

2 "Fusain" moreover suggests the sketches of Constantin Guys,
Baudelaire's "peintre de la vie moderne." and our poem

reads very much like a tableau parisien.

3 Cohn, Toward the Poems, p. 271:

p--male, plosive: pere perce penetre, plume, explo—
sion, pouffer, Les Mots Anglais: "l'intention tres
nette d' entassement, de richesse acquise ou de stag—
nation que contient cette lettre (laquelle s 'affine
et precise parfois sa signification pour exprimer
tel acte ou objet vif et net)" (933)

Cohn then discusses the role of the letter particularly
in connection with Prose, also referring to its signifi-

cance in the "Coup de dés."

4 IAJI investigation of the symbolic significance of Christian
:iczonographyteChrist the Lamb and the Lion, Innocence and

Wisdom--lies beyond the limits of this study.

5 (:ihnearles Baudelaire, Petitg Poemes en Prose (Le Spleen de

M) (Paris: Garnier, 1962), p. 173:

Celui qui regarde du dehors a travers une fenétre
ouverte ne voit jamais autant de choses que celui

qui regarde une fenetre fermée. 11 n 'est pas d' objet
plus profond, plus mystérieux, plus fécond, plus
ténébreux, plus éblouissant qu' une fenetre éclairée
d' une chandelle....

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126

This prose poem appeared in 1863, thus one year before the

composition of "Pauvre Enfant Pale."

6 The unusual word, "incarnadine," which appears in no other
prose poem, and whose closest relative in the recueil is
the "incarnat" of "Plainte d'Automne," suggests to me the
following association. As rare in English as in French,

I know it from only one other usage, namely that in Macbeth,
where it stresses the blood imagery so vivid throughout the
play. Macbeth, right after the murder, says:

Whence is that knocking?

How is't with me, when every noise appals me?

What hands are here? Ha! they pluck out mine eyes.

Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood

Clean from my hands? No, this my hand will rather

The multitudinous seas incarnadine.

Making the green red.

Lady:

My hands are of your color; but I shame
To wear a heart so white.

13ere the word is used as a verb, in the sense of rendering
something pink, or red. We don't know if Mallarmé had
read Macbeth then, a play which he wrote about many years
Llaiter, "La Fausse Entree des sorcieres dans Macbeth."
£311t it is likely, for he had just spent some time in England,
Preparing himself for his profession of English professor.
In this connection the "un crime n'est pas bien difficile
é faire, va, il suffit d'avoir du courage apres le désir, "
of Our prose poem, is reminiscent of Lady Macbeth's:
Art thou afeard

To be the same in thine own act and valour
As thou art in desire? Wouldst thou have that

127

Which thou esteem'st the ornament of life,
And live a coward in thine own esteem,
Letting "I dare not" wait upon "I would,"
Like the poor cat i'th'adage?

7 Baudelaire, Poemesen Prose, pp. ll-lZ:

Qui aimes-tu.le mieux, homme énigmatique, dis? ton

pere, ta mere, ta soeur ou ton frere? --Je n'ai ni
pere, ni mere, ni soeur, ni frere. -—Tes amis?
--Vous vous servez la d'une parole dont le sens m'est
reste jusqu'a ce jour inconnu. ——Ta patrie?

--J'ignore sous quelle latitude elle est située....
This stranger, too, has his head raised high, as he con-

templates the clouds.

EB In a letter of the same year as the composition of our
jpoem, Mondor, Correspondance I, p. 118, Mallarme writes to
Cazalis :

Apres tout, tu sais que la seule occupation d'un
homme qui se respecte est a mes yeux de regarder
l'azur en mourant de faim.
9 firfle "hagard“ does not appear in our poem, but I am pointing
tXD' an underlying association, for the "hagard musicien" of
‘tllee later verse poem certainly points back to the "pauvre

enfant pale" of the early prose poem, both gaunt, emanci-

at ed singers .

lo . . . ; . . . .
This 1dent1f1cat1on of poet and Singer 13 suggested 1n a

Bail1<ielaire poem, "La Muse Vénale," Baudelaire, Fleurs,
F>“ 3L7:
Il te faut, pour gagner ton pain de chaque soir,

Comme un enfant de choeur, jouer de l'encensoir,
Chanter des T§_Deum auxquels tu ne crois guere,

 

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..

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128

Cu, saltimbanque a jeun, étaler tes appas
Et ton rire trempé de pleurs qu' on ne voit pas,
Four faire épanouir la rate du vulgaire.

11 Cohn in Toward the Poems, pp. 8190, where he analyzes
"Cantique," says:

The hymn is sung by the Saint. It tells us of his
decapitation. Whether it is sung before (in antici-
pation), during, or after (by his spectre) is not
quite clear. Mallarmé seems to have envisaged various
positions in the verse— -drama for the piece.

.12 Mauron, Psychoanalysis, pp. 41—42, again offers ingenious
insights:

The reader will see later that in my opinion the be—
heading of John the Baptist in the Cantique represents
a castration symbol. Mallarmé' 3 St. John thus pays for
getting a glimpse of the princess in the nude. ...
there is a certain analogy between this beheading and
the one in Pauvre Enfant Pale, a prose poem in
Divagations. Now Plainte d' Automne, another prose
(poem on the dead Maria (and first version of Hérodiade)
and Pauvre Enfant Pale (first version of the Cantigue)
were published for the first time together....

 

and onp. 125:
I should like to say one more word for the reader who
is shocked by the crudeness of the term "castration."
We cannot avoid it in explicating the classic myths.
But, Mauron never does seem to come to the point: Saint
JCDIIJn's'beheading, as a castration symbol, in punishment
15<>13 having beheld the nude Hérodiade, would be paralleled
with the Pauvre Enfant's beheading, as a punishment some-
how linked with Maria (according to him as early Hérodiade,

ce:Lebrated in "Plainte d'Automne"), likewise as a castra-

t -
1°11 symbol. The "leap" here lies in the fact that whereas

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129

the "Cantique" is the third part of Hérodiade, the two
figures, Hérodiade and Saint John thus being thematically
linked, no such link exists between the Maria of "Plainte
d'Automne," and the hero of "Pauvre Enfant Pale." All
poetry certainly reflects the poet's psyche, but to con-
nect the street singer's punishment, a transposition
according to Mauron of the poet's guilt feelings, with the
Maria of the second prose poem seems farfetched; moreover,
beheading as a castration symbol, can be fully accepted,

in both verse and prose poem, simply as an archetypal

symbol.

l3 Izichard, L'Univers, p. 141:

 

.L'importance du theme du festin amoureux, c'est qu'il
s'oppose au theme d'un contre—festin, ou plutot d'une
abstention alimentaire d'intention spirituelle. Comme
la jouissance charnelle se dit en un repas, l'ascé-
tisme se signifie par un jefine; ... La faim est donc
un theme de dégagement spirituel: elle nie la chair,
la supprime, et donc elle accomplit l' essence: "La
littérature, d' accord avec la faim, consiste a sup-
primer le Monsieur qui reste en 1' écrivant" (p. 657
"La Musique et les Lettres").

l4 CRDIIra, Toward the Poems, p. 240, referring back to the
EnEIJLish edition of his book on the "Coup de dés," says:
Prose later recounts to a sympathetic listener the
story of how Mallarmé really attained a perfect vision
and how his wiser, more patient self abandoned the
attempt to capture that perfection which also threat-
ened madness or the néant.

wrz‘i-<=Jh reflects my idea that the young poet is still fright-

6
“ed by this threat.

 

 

 

130

15 Gardner Davies, Vers une Explication Rationnelle du Coup

de Dés (Paris: Corti, 1953), pp. 60-61.

16 Richard, L'Univers, p. 277:

Car Jean se possede idéalement lui—meme dans la
seconde exacte ou la nuit annule en lui toute pensée,
et grace a cette annulation. L' acte qui supprime sa
conscience est aussi celui qui allume en lui la plus
haute et plus consciente lumiere dont 1' esprit humain
soit sans doute capable ... Comme Saint Jean, le héros
d' Igitur aura sa téte décollé, "séparée de son person-
nage par une fraise arachnéenne," mais cette fraise

l' apparente aussi a la figure de Hamlet.

We might add here that "fraise" means both “strawberry
mark" and "collerette plissée et empesée a plusieurs

doubles que portaient hommes et femmes au XVIe siecle."

l7 .CEhis strong consciousness of isolation from society on the
Ewart of the young poets who were Mallarme's friends in
tfluose years is reflected in a.letter of Villiers de l'Isle-

Adam, written to Mallarme in 1867, quoted in F. Jean-Aubry,

Une Amitié Exemplaire: Villiers de l'Isle-Adam et
SLeiphane Mal_larmé (Paris: Mercure de France, 1942), p. 42.

Chere ame tendre et charmante que vous efes, mon cher
Mallarmé, vous voila malade! C' est juste, que faire
ici, et quel serait notre rétexte de rester si nous
n 'étions pas percés, traques, volés, vilipendés, et
saignants? ... Allons! mourons le plus tot possible:
c 'est que nous avons de mieux a faire. ... Cependant
ne mettons mon conseil a 1' execution que lorsqu' il
n'y aura plus un seul, un seul capable d' échanger une
idee avec nous.

18
Ba1-7l<3.e1aire, Poemes en Prose, p. xxxvi.
19 I
t 3.5, therefore, disappointing to find the following judg-

mE! . ,
Inn-t:" 1n one of the most recent books on Mallarme, Paxton,

ghilull 'Hmlww'!‘
.. .1. P.

131

The Development, p. 104, of our prose poem, a judgment
which clearly misses the mark:

It would be rash to claim that all the Divagations
are equally successful. Mallarme's judgment was no
more infallible, and his inspiration no more constant,
than those of many other great writers. Sometimes

he lyricises a passage of argument too forcefully,

and the thought becomes impossibly difficult to ex—
tract (as in La cour); sometimes he fails miserably
to curb his sentimentality (as in that nauseous

piece Pauvre enfant pale).

CHAPTER VII
LA PIPE

This is the last early prose poem of the collection, and
as such marks the end of a cycle within the recueil, that of
the prose poems dealing with the poet's coming into being.

He is now in possession of the traditional forms of his art,
and, with his master, he can say: "Je sais l'art d'évoquer

1 And this piece is, in effect, an

les minutes heureuses."
example of that traditional function of poetry: an evocation
of the past, where past experience is transposed, so that the
guotidien becomes the marvelous, and fleeting emotions a
lasting melody.

The poem's anecdote is about the narrator's memories of
a London winter, which suddenly come back to him as he is
about to settle down to serious work; and with that London
winter return memories of Marie, the beloved, whom the little
steamer carried back and forth across the Channel, during
that stormy season of their young romance.

"La Pipe," only known title of the poem, serves ostensibly
as a mere pretext for the piece; yet,its repetition in both
the first and second sentence suggests a deeper significance.

On the narrative level, it is merely an.insignificant instru-

ment, which, like Proust's famous madeleine, releases the

132

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133

mechanism of involuntary memory to disclose a hidden mystery.
But whereas the madeleine, once "used" in this capacity, is
then abandoned, our pipe is not. Preferred over the frivolous
cigarettes, it is taken up again and personified, "ma pipe ...
ma grave pipe." in such a way that "it" seems to become a
"she," later to be referred to as "cette délaissée" and "la
fidele amie."

This personification is reinforced by the secondary mean-
ings of "délaissée," "l'éloignement qui survient entre mari
et femme, entre amant et amante, dont l'un abandonne l'autre,"
which at the same time foreshadows part of the subject of the
poem, and of "fidele amie" as "dame des pensées." The pipe
is thus clearly the narrator's companion, and he, again,
reveals himself as a writer, a poet—persona. And so there is
here an association with that other meaning of the word "pipe,"
namely that of a musical instrument, and particularly the
reeds of Pan, by means of which the poet, like the Faun, not
only evokes, but perpetuates, experience and dreams.

The first word of the poem, "Hier," removes us at once
into the past, but an immediate one, serving as the stage
:fin that more distant one, in both time and space, which is
invited by the first two verbs of the piece: to find and to
dream. In dreaming of "une longue soirée de travail, " the
mOodpropitious for poetic creation is established, and since

he.fi.nds his pipe, we know the poet-persona will find the

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The season particularly congenial to this creative work
is winter. In thispredilection the persona reflects the
poet, for numerous are Mallarme's references to winter as the
season of art. In these prose poems, "Frisson d'Hiver" ex-
plains how this is the season of the poet's dreams. And in
a verse poem of the same year as these early prose pieces,
”Renouveau," again reminiscent of Baudelaire,2 the persona
condemns spring for having chased away winter, the poet's
season:

Le printemps maladif a chassé tristement
L'hiver, saison de l'art serein, l'hiver lucide

Many years later, in "Crayonné au Theatre," Mallarmé says:
"L'hiver est a la prose" (0C p. 340), and much later still,
in one of the "réponses é des enquétes," entitled "Sur le

Printemps,‘ we find: "... et l'hiver resterait la saison
intellectuelle créatrice” (OC p. 882). Finally, it is not
only winter work that the persona dreams about, but the very
subject of the poem which he will write is a winter come back
to him.

The persona now tosses his cigarettes, of unbecoming
levity in comparison with his "grave pipe," into the past of
aisummer. But this summer itself is not discarded quite so
lightly as the cigarettes and "les joies enfantines." As
flxmgh in spite of himself, while barely mentioning, barely
tbuching, that summer, he ignites it, renders it luminous,

with but a few impressionistic strokes of his pen. Last

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preparing for, winter and work--this summer, then, illuminated
by leaves "bleues de soleil," and muslin, which one knows

must be white, and which evoke the billowy summer dresses of
ladies in a garden setting, this summer thus resplendent

with light, calls to mind Claude Monet's many summer scenes.

And as a favorate one, "Dans un Jardin, rises before the
mind's eye, I see there the flowing white muslin of the
dresses, the sunlight quivering on the blue-green leaves, and
it is just this magic which the poet calls into being--before
he can put away last summer.3

After this brief but vivid illumination, the tone be—
comes ironic, as the "grave pipe" is taken up by "un homme
sérieux qui veut fumer longtemps sans se déranger, afin de
mieux travailler." This "homme sérieux" who has cast off
"les joies enfantines" and who wants no distractions, is again
the young poet, whom.we know from the preceding prose poems,
viewing himself, and who, still somewhat doubtful about his
poetic accomplishments, thus undercuts his self-portrait.
Moreover, as in the closing piece of the cycle, "Conflit,"
Mallarmé--reflected in his poet-persona--seems to feel some-
what guilty because he does not work with his hands, and
produces no tangible results. We recognize the narrator of
"Plainte d'Automne," who did not throw a penny to the barrel
organ man in the street, because he did not dare stir, "de

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136

intently to an inner voice and protecting it jealously from
the slightest disturbance from without which might break its
melody.4

But "fumer longtemps ... afin de mieux travailler" also
links this prose poem to a sort of poetic tradition in the
nineteenth century, which saw in tobacco, and especially the
pipe, an inspirational instrument for the poet, and an opiate
for life's ills for the unfortunate.5 This is, of course,
due to the fact that many of the poets smoked Opium and has-
hish, some to heighten their perceptual powers, others for
the sake of "le déreglement de tous les sens."6 But the word
"inspiration" itself etymologically points to "drawing air
into the lungs," thus describes the very act of smoking, and
Mallarmé, so conscious of the etymological weight of words,
certainly was aware of this association.

Not only is there a poem in "Les Fleurs du Mal," en-
titled "La Pipe," where Baudelaire, in a whimsical mood, makes
his pipe the poem's narrator: "Je suis la pipe d'un auteur";
but there is even a prose poem by Alphonse Rabbe, much more
serious in tone, also named "La Pipe," in which this precursor
of both Bertrand and Baudelaire celebrates his pipe as a kind
of narcotic which helps the poet in transmuting "les chagrins
du présent en passageres délices."8

For our poet-persona, the pipe suddenly becomes the
source of unexpected emotion and wonder, for upon the first
inhalation of its smoke, a mechanism of associations is re-

leased, which, taking the smoker completely by surprise,

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137

creates a privileged moment, where past becomes present and
the far-away the immediate, and of which this prose poem is
the objectification.

As our poet is instantly and inexplicably entranced, his
good intentions, again ironically treated, "mes grand livres
a faire," sink into oblivion. Yet the tone is not at all
bitter, but rather gentle, for it is a kind of dramatic, but
at the same time very untragic, irony, of which we, the
audience, understand the wit, as we see those "big books to
write" turn into this modest one-paragraph prose poem, while
the persona himself is still unaware of the humor suggested.

.He, like Proust's narrator, at the very instant of that
particular physical stimulus, namely the sensation which re—
calls the same sensation experienced in the past, is both
astonished and moved. And he is in that vague emotional and
mental state of expectancy propitious for the visit of a
revenant. Through his pipe, the faithful friend so long
abandoned, a by-gone winter comes back now and "tout Londres,"
the revenant's apparition, which is the return after its
death of the soul of the past.

But this London winter is not recreated, but created now
for the first time, called into existence with the poem.

Both time, "l'hiver dernier," and space, "tout Londres,"
surge to the surface, out of the poet's essence--a past which
he has lived not only by, but within, himself: "tel que je

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138

From this point on, the piece abounds in vocabulary
which is, especially for Mallarme, extremely sense-oriented.
It is not merely a taste which sets off involuntary memory
here, but the taste of tobacco smoke is at the same time its
smell, its feeling as it is inhaled and exhaled, and finally
the sight of the smoke rising from the pipe. Further, the
description of last winter's London is rich with sensory
adjectives: the fogs have an odor all their own; the tobacco
itself "sentait," that is tasted like, or smelled of, or felt
like, a dark room, which constitutes a Baudelairean synesthesia,
where a color, or rather more vaguely a shade, is perceived
other than with the eye; the leather furniture is sprinkled
with coal dust; the cat is skinny and black; the maid's arms
are red; and the coals falling from the iron bucket into the
sheet-iron basket make their special noise; and the mailman
is perceived by his "double coup" on the door.

And as the shabby furnished room in a strange city is
thus depicted, one notes that all the adjectives describe
ugliness: a dark room, a woman's red arms, dusty furniture,
and a skinny black cat. And this continues outside the room
as well, for through the windows, which let in the fog from
the outdoors, we see a "square désert" with its sick trees,
recalling "les rues vides" outside the windows of "Frisson
d'Hiver," and the wan trees of both "Le Phénoméne Futur" and
"Plainte d'Automne."

But there is a curious tension here between the ugly

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139

envelopes it in the poem. For though the room is shabby
and dark, as it is evoked here it has a kind of happiness
about it, with its "grands feux!" and the expectancy of a
new day. And so the black coal dust covering the old furni-
ture, far from conveying the notion of neglect or dissolution,
takes away none of the ambiance of comfort of the bright
morning fires watched over by the maid, just as the cat,
though lean, seems content in all its shabbiness, rolled up
on a dusty chair.9

The mailman's arrival "me faisait vivrel," because he
brought letters from France, the friends left behind; yet
there is not the slightest note of sadness here, and one has
the feeling that these letters are at least as great a cause
of joy as would be the actual visits of those left behind,
as though the very distance between himself and his friends
added to the charm of those friendships.10

The abandoned "square" outside, and the little "steamer,"
both of which English words help create a foreign feeling,
impart no uneasy strangeness; nor does the Open sea, a sea
familier, for "si souvent traversé cet hiver—la." But most
of all, the characteristic London fogs, the very first aspect
of that winter which comes back to the narrator's mind:
"d'abord les chers brouillards," had nothing threatening
about them as they crept in under the easements, but were

"chers" to him. On the contrary, they, "qui emmitouflent nos

cervelles et ont, la-bas, une odeur é eux," cozily muffled

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and bundled his mind, like a little child. "Emmitoufler"
not only sounds snug and comfortable, but literally means:
”envelopper quelqu'un de fourrures ou de tissue pour le
tenir chaudement." And so the lonely, cold and foggy London
winter, as it is here summoned forth, suggests warmth and
wellbeing, with the poet sheltered and protected both by

the fires inside and the beloved fogs outside, and at the
same time by his distance from the world left behind.

This notion of distance is for Mallarmé himself of the
greatest importance, and it might even explain some of his
repeatedly expressed love for those very London fogs cele-
brated in our prose poem. In a letter to Cazalis, of that
same London winter, he says:

Revoici le brouillard, sans lui j'aurais encore paressé

aujourd'hui. Mais il est si beau, si gris, si jaune

que je viens de rentrer avec Marie, jurant que jamais

plus nous n'affronterions, par une brume pareille, la

solitude de Hyde-Park.11
Here the "brouillard" is linked to the park's "solitude,"
and, though the beloved is at the poet's side now, one feels
that he would have enjoyed the foggy walk through the soli-
tary park at least as much without her. Do not these fogs,
in insinuating themselves between himself and the world
around him, isolate him even more by enclosing him in a haze,
similar to that cloud of tobacco smoke which would surround
him, many years later, when talking to his disciples on those

famous mardis.12 Finally, this fog which, like tobacco smoke,

puts a distance between himself and the world, perhaps

   

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141

already presages a style, yet to be born, which will isolate
not only the poet, but the poetry itself, from most of man-
kind.

Another London letter,13

of the summer following the
winter evoked in our poem:

Je hais Londres quand i1 n'y a pas de brouillards:
dans ses brumes, c'est une ville incomparable.

points to yet another reason why those fogs may have been so
beautiful to the poet. For, while they enclose the poet
himself, they at the same time envelop the objects surround-
ing him, as for example that whole big city, hiding its ugli-
ness under a mysterious veil of vapor, whose infinitely fine
transparent particles blur the sharp outlines. These tiny
watery granules at the same time refract the sun's sharp
light into a luminous haze, reminiscent of the resplendent
atmosphere of Impressionistic paintings, whose magic the
poet has just allusively evoked himself in the opening lines
of this poem.14
Now the narrator has left the room, and the square, and
he is out on the open sea--as yet another image moves before
his mind's eye, "j'ai revu ... j'ai vu,"-—once again shiver-
ing on the steamer's bridge, which is "mouillé de bruine et
noirci de fumée." Yet, though trembling from cold on the
ugly, dirty deck, he seems to behold the misery surrounding
him without partaking in it, for he appears enve10ped still

by the warmth, that glowing ambiance, created in the poem.

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142

And it is only now that the beloved is introduced, the
companion of the London winter. .Her presence had not even
been suggested until now. She appears here suddenly, almost
as an attendant figure, "--avec ma pauvre bien-aimée errante."
Though the remainder of the poem is devoted to her, the unity
of the piece, one single paragraph, is in no way broken, for
the detailed description of phenomena, now that of the be-
loved's clothes, continues. Everything about her is faded
and poor, and the poet seems to love the girl because of
those tired garments, which are all that we see of her, but
which must be the outer manifestation of her essence. .For
in her "longue robe terne couleur de la poussiere des routes,"
she seems the very incarnation of "la grace des choses fan-
ées"; and this "bien-aimée errante" in her shabby traveling
costume at the same time brings with her the mystery of the
far-away, reminiscent of the Dresden china clock "venue de
Saxe par les longues diligences d'autrefois," and the out—
dated German almanac, both loved for their fragile, time-
worn, and old-fashioned beauty. And as we recognize the
"soeur au regard de jadis" of that other winter prose poem,
the "calme enfant" who is as silent here as she was there,
with her poverty as lovingly described as the shabby London
room, her distress seems not shared by the narrator who

fondly beholds, but never holds, her.15

The beloved is not only pale and exhausted, but cold,

and whereas the "fané" described only her attire, "froide"

143

applies to part of her very body, those shoulders shivering
under the damp coat. And this cold body is again vaguely
reminiscent of Maria, silent and pale in her coffin, Which
is probably the secret of the poet's love for that woman
who never quite seems to come alive, in love or even in
motherhood. For is she not the same who will become the
innocent, maidenly mother of "Don du Poeme," a verse poem
written one year after our prose piece:

0 la berceuse, avec ta fille et l'innocence

De vos pieds froids accueille une horrible naissance:

Et ta voix rappelant viole et clavecin,

Avec 1e doigt fane presseras-tu 1e sein

Par qui coule en blancheur sibylline la femme

Pour les levres que l'air du vierge azur affame?

And as this is the last prose poem celebrating the
young poet's love for the virginal woman who with every silent
appearance seems to resuscitate the companion of his child-
hood--thus bridging at once the distances to the past and
the beyond-—it is also the last piece to sing ”la grace des
choses fanées," and the poem's final words, "adieu pour tou-
jours,“ aside from their literal meaning on the narrative
level, certainly suggest this. It is another ideal of beauty
which will be celebrated in the mature prose poems, where the
woman sung will be of the vibrating splendor of "Le Phénoméne
Futur," that is as splendid as the poetry dreamed of, and
her attire of the greatest elegance.16
After having depicted the beloved's dress, the persona

now gives so minute a description of her hat that, again, it

nmst be the visible sign of her hidden nature. ”Sans plume

144

et presque sans rubans," it is wilted from the very sea air
which the poet loves and will celebrate a year later in
"Brise Marine," where it summons him on his solitary venture,
"le large," and for which he must forsake everyone. In that
poem, the young poet-persona, for whom the poetic venture is
symbolized by the sea voyage--already foreshadowing the
"Coup de dés"-—must leave woman and child, and even his
masters. Similarly this prose poem is a farewell, the last
in the recueil where the Baudelairean influence is felt.

The "terrible mouchoir qu'on agite en se disant adieu
pour toujours" of the~last sentence of our poem is also echoed
in "Brise Marine's" "... adieu supreme des mouchoirs," a
phrase which could end the poem on a hopelessly sentimental
note. But this is avoided by the use of the impersonal pro-
noun and the present tense and the present participle of the
verbs in the relative clause, which makes out of a personal
and unique experience a general one, known to all lovers.
and‘contributes, at the same time, to establishing that
esthetic distance which we have felt to permeate the piece.
.And so, though the letters Mallarmé wrote about the same
time about the underlying experience are most emotional)"7 the
poemnis not, for while Erlebnisdichtung, it is not the ex-
pression of emotions, but their transposition into poetry.

And in concluding our reading of this first half of
the recueil, which encompasses Mallarme's "early" prose poems,

. 18 .
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Mallarme's readers, because of her very admiration for his
late style, seems not to appreciate justly this early poetry,
which the poet himself, however, included in Divagations
shortly before his death. She condemns all the early prose
poems, with the exception of "Le Phenomene Futur,3 for being
too directly biographical. However, the fact that one might
easily "recognize" the experience underlying a poem makes it
no less a poem, the whole question being what the artist
makes out of this experience. It is precisely in examining
the correspondence dealing with this experience that one
appreciates its transposition in even these early pieces.
Mallarme always insisted on the importance of the role
of "souvenir" in poetic creation, and the very first line of

his "art poétique, the late "Prose pour des Esseintes,"
points to this:
Hyperbole! de ma mémoire
Triomphalement ne sais-tu
Te lever, aujourd'hui grimoire
Dans un livre de fer vétu;
and the Faune says:
0 nymphes, regonflons des SOUVENIRS divers.’
Finally there are numerous prose references to the basic role
of "souvenir" in the creative act of the~poet=
... le parfait écrit récuse jusqu' a la moindre aventure
pour se complaire dans son evocation chaste, sur le tain
de souvenirs ... (0C p. 318).
... ou gue sur une feuille de papier proche du testament,

un passe ait a ce point surgi devant une mémoire ...
(0C p. 555).

146

LA PIPE

NOTES
1 Mallarmé himself quotes these lines of Baudelaire's "Le
Balcon" in a letter of 1862, to Des Essartes, Mondor,
Correspondance I, p. 47:
,Quel temps! Voici l'automne et l'hiver dans une meme
journee. L'automne. Ce matin des brouillards-london-
iens. ... "Je sais l'art d'evoquer les minutes
heureuses."
2 I am thinking, for example, of the Opening lines of "Brumes
et Pluies," Baudelaire, Fleurs, p. 113:
O fins d'automne, hivers, printemps trempés de boue,
Endormeuses saisons! je vous aime et vous loue
[my italics]
3 Though winter is for him the season of art, Mallarmé is
not a poet of one season: just as the cold "Hérodiade"

is his immortal winter creation, so summer lives forever,

incomparably, in the "Faune."

4 A letter of 1865, to Aubanel, Mondor, Correspondance I,

p. 181, reflects the poet's fears, in those years, of dis—

tractions which might disturb his listening to himself:
Je ne t'écris pas aujourd'hui, parce que toute dis-
traction, méme la plus charmante, m'est odieuse, et
j'ai besoin de la plus silencieuse solitude de l'ame,
et d'un oubli inconnu, pour entendre chanter en moi
certaines notes mysterieuses.

5 A stanza of "Aumane," a poem from which I quoted in connec-

‘tion with "Pauvre Enfant Pale," points to this aspect of

147

tobacco, reminiscent of "Le Vin des Chiffonniers" of "Les

Fleurs du Mal":
Eglise avec 1' encens que toutes ces maisons
Sur les murs quand berceur d' une bleue eclaircie
Le tabac sans parler roule les oraisons,
Et l'opium puissant brise la pharmacie!
And the much later, 1895, miniature ars poetica, ”Toute

l'ame résumée/Quand lente nous l'expirons" again plays

with the etymology of "ame-breath—inspiration.”

6 Rimbaud, Oeuvres (Paris: Garnier, 1960), p. 344.
7 Baudelaire, Fleurs, pp. 73—74; The tercets of this humorous

sonnet point to the anodyne effects of the pipe upon the

poet:

J' enlace et je berce son ame
Dans 1e réseau mobile et bleu
Qui monte de ma bouche en feu,

Et je roule un puissant dictame
Qui charme son coeur et guérit
De ses fatigues son esprit.

8 Pierre Moreau in La Tradition Frangaise du Poeme en Prose
avant Baudelaire (Paris: Lettres Modernes, 1959), pp. 26

and 28, says:

A quelques égards 1a destinée de Rabbe préfigure

celle de Baudelaire ... Le romantisme de ses poemes

ne regarde pas seulement vers la vie: la mort

l' obsede; il annonce le suicide, il 1e prépare.

... 1a délectation morose de cette volonté de mourir
qui est 1' un des démons de ce que Baudelaire appellera
"La Destruction."

.He then gives the prose poem, "La Pipe," on p. 29:

Que cherche—je moi-meme au fond de ton petit fourneau,
6 ma pipe? 1e cherche comme un alchimiste a transmuer

148

les chagrins du présent en passageres délices. Je
pompe ta vapeur a coups pressés, pour porter dans
mon cerveau une heureuse confusion, un rapide délire
preferable a la froide réflexion. Je cherche 1e
doux oubli de ce qui est, 1e reve de ce qui n'est
pas et meme de ce qui ne peut pas etre.

Tu me fais payer cher tes consolations faciles;
le cerveau s' use et 3 'alanguit peut— —étre par le retour
journalier de ces movements désordonnés. La pensée
devient paresseuse et 1' imagination se fait vagabonde,
par 1' habitude d' ébaucher en vacillant d' agréables
fictions.

Je périrai bientot: tout ce qui compose mon
etre et le nom meme dont on me nomme disparaitra
comme cette légere fumée ... Dans quelques jours,
peut- etre, a la place meme ou j 'écris, on ne saura
pas meme si j ’ai vécu ... Mais de ce corps si péris-
sable s 'exhalera- t- 11 quelque chose qui ne périsse
pas et s 'éleve en haut? Reside- t- i1 en effet dans
chaque homme une étincelle digne d' allumer le calumet
des anges sur le parvis des cieux?

0 ma pipe! chasse, bannis ce désir ambitieux et
funeste de l' inconnu, de l' impenetrable.

Clearly, this poem is much more in the tone of Baudelaire
than of Mallarmé, and I do not know if Mallarmé even knew
it. But in the genre of the prose poem, Rabbe is a pre-
cursor of Bertrand, in whom Mallarmé was interested in

those years.

This poem, as most of these early prose pieces, is highly
biographical. That the reality, out of which this poem
grew, was far from happy, is evident from Mallarmé's
correspondence of this London winter; for example, the
black cat was certainly not loved like the “mystic com—
panion" of "Plainte d'Automne." In a letter to Cazalis
from London, of 1863, Mondor, Correspondance I, p. 77,

Mallarmé writes :

10

ll

12

149

Je suis seul, tout seu1 avec un chat noir. Et cela
est affreux. Je vis replie sur moi-meme et, quand
je veux oublier, j'ai des remords.
The last sentence refers to Marie Gerhard's frequent un-
happy visits there. She will become "ma pauvre bien-aimée

errante" of our prose poem.

Years later still, Mallarmé expresses this notion of real
togetherness with his friends in their very absence, writ—
ing to his best friend of those years, Cazalis, in 1869,
Mondor, Correspondance I, p. 294:
... c'est vraiment quand mes amis sont partis que
je commence a etre avec eux, avec leur souvenir
voisin de mon Reve, et que derange un peu parfois
leur apparition veritable—-les tiennes surtout,
inattendues et breves. [my italics]
And to a less close friend, Francois COppée, Mondor,
Correspondance I, p. 314, he writes in the same year:
Vous étes obsédant. Votre Visite, d'abord, a été
interminable; car ce n'est qu'apres leur depart, et

quand ils sont redevenues des absents, que je suis
avec mes chers hates hatifs.

Mondor, Correspondance I, p. 59, November 30, 1862.

The many references to these fascinating evenings at the
rue de Rome are too numerous to mention all: most of them
mention the china bowl of tobacco for host and guests,

and the cigarette or pipe in the master's hand, and smoke
filling the modest room as incense a chapel. Arthur
Symons, in The Symbolist Movement in Literature (New York:

lDutton, 1958), p. 64, recalls:

gluflulufq
. a . .
_ ,

13

14

150

No one who has ever climbed those four flights of
stairs will have forgotten the narrow, homely in-
terior ... the table on which the china bowl, odor—
ous with tobacco, was pushed from hand to hand:
above all, the rocking chair, Mallarmé' s, from which
he would rise quietly, to stand leaning his elbow
on the mantlepiece, while one hand, the hand which
did not hold the cigarette, would sketch out one of
those familiar gestures.

And a description of Mallarme by Mauclair, cited in Henri
Mondor, Vie de Mallarme (Paris: Gallimard, 1941). PP. 794-
95, emphasizes the feeling of distance emanating from
Mallarmé:
Cette homme paraissait immensément éloigné, isolé de
tout contact par le magnétisme d' un génie secret, par

1' insaisissable réticence qui penchait sa téte en
arriere. [my italics]

Mondor, Correspondance I, p. 92, July 24, 1863, to Cazalis.

Richard, L'Univers, p. 496, also notes this predilection
on the part of the poet for English fogs, but explains it
somewhat differently--an explanation, by the way, which
seems somewhat forced:

C' est la magie dissolvante du brouillard, que Mallarmé
apprit a aimer en Angleterre. L' effet en est paradoxal:
car le brouillard, qui semblerait théoriquement devoir
obturer 1e ciel et noyer toute clarté terrestre,
réussit en réalité, de par sa granulation infinité—
simale, de par sa prodigieuse puissance de motilité

et de decomposition, a fondre en lui les resistances

du lointain et a nous redonner 1e libre acces des
choses.

And Poulet, Distance, pp. 311-12, sees in the fog's particu-
lar quality the following attraction for the poet, linking

it also to the Impressionists:

15

16

151

Car 51 toute relation directe est impossible, 1' image
meme du brouillard ne nous suggere- -t- elle pas la pos-
sibilité d' une relation indirecte? Le brouillard,
concu cette fois non plus comme un mur Opaque, mais
comme une vitre voilée, a demi trans arente, milieu

a la fois conducteur et protecteur, a travers lequel
les choses matérielles s 'impregnent de lumiere at ou
la luminosité devient comme matériellement sensible.
Ainsi l' espace ne serait plus ni tout a fait un vide,
ni tout a fait un plein, mais, comme dans les tableaux
impressionistes, une ambiance.

That some of Marie Gerhard's charm for the young poet was
her very poverty and the sadness inherent in her humble
condition is evident from some of the letters about her.
In 1862, Mallarmé writes to Cazalis, Mondor, Correspondance
.l, p. 45:
Comme toutes les gouvernantes et institutrices, qui
sont toujours déclassées, elle a un charme mélan~
colique qui produisit son effet sur moi.
Mallarmé's interest in feminine elegance is evident from
his own short—lived but incomparable ladies journal,
LA DERNIERE MODE. In the September, 1874, issue of LA
DERNIERE MODE (OC pp. 727-28), one finds a veritable cele-
bration of womens' hats, "Je dis que le chapeau a pour
toute regle celle-ci: d'aller a ravir," where Mallarmé
literally "sings" the two latest styles, "le chapeau
Berger," of incredible luxury,

Le dessus est garni d'une torsade de velours et de
quelque plumes, tandis qu'une guirlande de fleurs
fait le dessous ...

and the "chapeau Valois," no less elegant,
... ayant la visiere derriere au lieu de l'avoir

devant, on le couvre de velours ou d'une broderie
de jais, un bouquet de fleurs avec traine et appret

1’1-" 1.17.?
. r 2!.
.1.“de

152

de dentelle se place derriere sur la calotte alors

que devant un tres-beau feuillage forme bourrelet

et tombe sur les cheveux.
In the "toilette de bal" of the November issue of the same
year (OC pp. 778-79) the woman described seems almost to
suffocate in an abundance of silk, flowers, and lace.
These are exactly the fashions worn by "les riches dames”
with which our "pauvre bien-aimée” is contrasted. And one
can't help but be reminded of this same contrast between

the poet's humble wife and the dazzling beauty and elegance

of Méry Laurent.

17 In July, 1862, Mallarmé writes to Cazalis, Mondor,
Correspondance I, p. 41:

De toutes les amertumes humaines, celle qui nait du
depart, cette mort momentanee, est la plus affreuse.

And in January, 1863, p. 70, again to Cazalis:

Mon frere, je voulais t'écrire sur le bateau, mais
je pleurais. Hier, non plus, je ne le pouvais pas.
Oh figure- -toi, c 'est affreux, quand on s'aime, de
se quitter pour la vie. A une heure du matin, par
une bruine sombre, je l' ai menée a la gare, et,
quand 1a porte s 'est ouverte, elle a glissé de mes
bras amoitié morte.

And in March, of the same year, again to Cazalis, p. 82:

Nous étions convenus que nous aurions beaucoup de
courage: et en effet, nous nous sommes longtemps
embrassés et regardés sur le bateau sans pouvoir
pleurer tellement nous étions fous de douleur.
Longtemps, nous avons agité nos mouchoirs et,
quand je n' ai plus vu le sien, j 'ai sangloté a
travers les rues.

18 Bernard, Le Poeme engprose, p. 258:

... alors que plus tard le moindre incident de la vie
courante lui sera un prétexte pour remonter, par le

153

miracle d'un style savant, condensé et métaphori ue,
jusqu'a l'essence des choses, on trouve ici l'élement
biographique utilisé de facon directe, presque naive:
on reconnait sans peine la maison de Tournon et sa
"pendule de Saxe, qui retarde et sonne treize heures
parmi ses fleurs et ses dieux" dans Causerie d'hiver:
Penton Square dans L'orgue de Barbarie; et, dans

La Pipe, la maison de Londres, les "arbres malades du
square désert," et Marie Gerhard secouant, du steamer,
"1e terrible mouchoir qu'on agite en se disant adieu
pour toujours." Il n'y a dans La Pipe aucun effort de
"composition" artistique; 1e style est uni jusqu'au
prosaisme, la seule recherche étant celle d'un certain
"réalisme" moderniste.

 

CHAPTER VIII

UN SPECTACLE INTERROMPU

The seventh piece of the "Anecdotes ou Poemes" of
Divagations marks a significant moment in the cycle, for it
belongs no longer to the "early" prose poems and not yet to
the "late" ones. While the six preceding poems were all of
1864, and the six following ones will be of 1885 or after,
"Un Spectacle Interrompu" occupies an intermediate position
with its publication date of 1875. We do not know when the
piece was written, but it is safe to assume that it was
around that time, for stylistically it is as different from
the early poems as it is from the late ones.

Almost all commentators on Mallarmé's poetry are in
agreement that a decisive stylistic change took place shortly
after 1870,1 and this change is as striking in his prose as
it is in his verse. Mallarmé is beginning to form a new
language of art, where he distinguishes not, in the tradi-
tional way, between a languageof verse and one of poetry,
but between "écriture" and "parole":

L'écrit, envol tacite d'abstraction, reprend ses droits

en face de la chute des sons nus: tous deux, Musique

et lui, intimant une prealable disjonction, celle de la

parole, certainement par effroi de fournir au bavardage
(OC p. 385).

154

155

"Ecriturefl constitutes for Mallarmé a closed system of artis-
tic expression, which would have to be mastered, as the
fundamentals of any other art, as those, for example, of
music——for an intelligent appreciation. This desire for a
new form of literary expression is already clearly stated in
the very youthful "Hérésies Artistiques: L'Art pour Tous"
of 1862, in which the then twenty-year old poet says:

Toute chose sacrée et qui veut demeurer sacrée s' en-
veloppe de mystere. Les religions se retranchent a
1' abri d' arcanes dévoilés au seul prédestiné: 1' art
a les siens.

La musique nous offre un exemple. Ouvrons a la
légere Mozart, Beethoven ou Wagner, jetons sur la
premiere page de leur oeuvre un oeil indifferent,
nous sommes pris d' un religieux étonnement a la vue
de ces processions macabres de signes séreres, chastes,
inconnus. Et nous refermons le missel vierge d' aucune
pensée profanatrice.

J' ai souvent demandé pourquoi ce caractere néces—
saire a été refusé a un seul art, au plus grand. Celui-
1a est sans mystere contre les curiosités hypocrites,
sans terreur contre les impiétés, ou sous le sourire
et la grimace de l' ignorant et de 1' ennemi.

Je parle de la poésie (OC p.257).

After 1870, both verse and prose will reflect the in-
creasingly complex system of analogies, the structural
principle of this poetic universe, which in ordering simpli-
fies the world:

Tout 1' acte disponible, a jamais et seulement, reste

de saisir les rapports, entre temps, rares ou multiplies:

d' apres quelque etat intérieur et que 1' on veuille a son
gré étendre, simplifier le monde (OC p. 647).

Auud this change will result in the prose work in a most un-
usual syntax. For that connected system, or order, of the

various elements of the sentence, though rigorously "correct,

vwill.at the same time be as intricate as the ideas it serves

156

to express. And so the question arises whether the poet
changed his style in order better to express his ideas. The
early "L'Art pour Tous" indicates that there was already a
desire for a certain hermetic form before Mallarmé had en-
countered some of the important ideas which this form was to
serve: yet it is only after decisive ideological developments
that the new style appears, which suggests that form and
function are inextricably linked.

In the preceding chapters I pointed out that the crisis
of Tournon, that spiritual descent and return, transposed in
Igitur, already overshadowed some of the early prose poems.
Igitur was written in 1869 at Avignon, where the poet read
it to his friends, Villiers de l'Isle—Adam and Catulle Mendes,
‘who had eagerly looked forward to this reading. They,
especially Mendes, Mallarme's own friends, and poets them-
selves, did not understand the work.2 And the significance
of the event is reflected in the fact that Igitur, this key
:document for a comprehension of Mallarme's poetry, was never
:finished, but has come down to us in the fragmentary form of
11869. Is this "failure" somehow connected with the drastic
change of Mallarmé's style so shortly after?

Shortly after, namely around 1870, decisive changes took
place in Mallarme's life, not the ”least significant of which
was his long desired move to Paris. And as Mallarmé begins
tx: realize himself, and as in his work the new style asserts

itself, some of the fears and anguish reflected in some of

157

the early prose poems make room for a tone of confidence,
a new tone which permeates "Un Spectacle Interrompu."
I said that Mallarmé distinguishes not between a verse
and a prose style so much as between a style of art and a
style of communication.4 "Un Spectacle Interrompu" is not
only in the style of "écriture," but the poem is, in fact,
about this distinction of "écriture" and "parole," of writing
and journalism, the poem's anecdote being the vehicle for its
demonstration. For in this piece the artistic vision, a
privileged one, is set apart from the common one, and "mon
regard de poete" is contrasted with that of the "reporters,"
a contrast which Mallarme elsewhere expresses by a striking
analogy:
Narrer, enseigner, meme décrire, cela va et encore
qu'a chacun suffirait peut—étre pour échanger 1a pensée
humaine, de prendre ou de mettre dans la.main d'autrui
en silence une piece de monnaie, l'emploi elementaire
du discours dessert l'universel reportage dont, la lit-
terature exceptee, participe tout entre les genres
d'ecrits contemporains (OC p. 368).
‘Phe "new" style of "Un Spectacle Interrompu" is the objectifi—
cation of a mature artistic vision, "mon regard de poete,"
iEhe poem is further the first longer piece of the recueil,
and it no longer deals with the private world of the narrator.
:Its very title recalls the world of "Le Phénoméne Futur" and
:its side-show atmosphere, but whiIe in that poem the showman's
'tent.was but vaguely evoked in a highly impressionistic

tableau, here the theatrical event is, as the narrator himself

‘ternm.it, "anecdotal," that is it has all the trappings of a

158

particular factual occurrence. And whereas in "Le Phenomena
Futur" the essence of the poetic vision seemed dressed up

and placed into the fairground setting, in this poem an actual
theatrical event appears to have given birth to the vision,
and to the reflections aroused by it.

The anecdote tells about the persona's attendance at a
theatrical presentation; and while describing the act shown,
the poet gives us his own interpretation of the event on the
stage, which to the rest of the audience appears merely like
an animal act, ending in a rather dangerous climax, as a bear
comes too close to a human acrobat.

The vocabulary of the piece is, of course, of the domain
of the theatre, but at the same time it is one of contrasts--
poet, reporter; ideal, factual; reality, dream; little theatre,
"Prodigality": genius, beast; sad heaviness, silvery nudity;
darkness, brilliance--for contrast is inherent in the very
essence of theatre: the show of appearance which both re-
flects and transforms reality.

The first word of the title, "spectacle," leaves the
«exact nature of the performance vague, and Mallarmé nowhere
can the narrative level renders absolutely clear whether we
have to do with a puppet show, a marionette-play, a ballet,

a: circus act, or a straight pantomime, while at the same time
Ive evokes the atmosphere so vividly that one never doubts
the factuality of the event. Etymologically "spectacle"

guiints to its Roman origin, and the "jeux et combats" which

159

included those barbarian confrontations of man and animal in
the arena; and an "animal act" is precisely that part of the
show which is the subject of our poem's anecdote.

The first sentence, an impersonal exclamation, somehow
reminiscent of the classical exhortations over a dying civili-
zation in the manner of the Ciceronian O tempora! O mores!,
or its bombastic Rousseauistic echoes, is, in fact, a deroga-
tory commentary on modern civilization. How far it is from
being civilized! In every truly civilized city one should
expect to find a society of dreamers supporting a journal
recording events in the light of dream.5 Though somewhat
ironic by its hortatory tone, this Opening, which gives us
the ”tableau parisien" setting with "grande ville" and
"journal," which we know from "Pauvre Enfant Pale," at the
same time suggests the absence of poetry in an age of decline,
.reminiscent of the desolate atmosphere of "Le Phénemene
.Futur." One of the most powerful products Of modern civiliza-
‘tion, "le journal," in which "reporters par la foule dresses,"
'that is servile instruments of the masses, report the common-
;filace, is contrasted with an imaginary journal Of "reveurs."6
'Uiéve" is juxtaposed with "artifice que la réalité," result-
ing in a paradoxical inversion where reality, or "les mirages
¢i“un.fait," are designated illusory, which implies, by con-
trast, that "dream" is true. At the same time, "l'intellect
moyen, " "la foule, " is Opposed to the poet-persona. And
whereas the reporters "divulge, " that is "portent a la con-

naissance du public ce qui était ignoré, " the poet writes

160

"en vue de moi seul." Both, poet and reporter, will treat
the same "Anecdote," but while the reporters only see and
write about the factual, the poet will transpose it into
the ideal. In an article about a fellow poet, Banville,

Mallarmé says:

La divine transposition, pour l'accomplissement de quoi
existe l'homme, va du fait a l'ideal (OC p. 522).

But does not reality, by the very fact of "fixing" the
average mind in a common way of viewing it, rest on some
universal understanding, so that "dans l'idéal" there might
also be “un aspect nécessaire, évident, simple, qui serve de
type?" The poet, for whom analogies serve to order and
simplify the world Of chance phenomena, proposes to discover
whether a chance event, "les mirages d'un fait,“ might not
likewise be simplified and reduced to meaning and order. And
so, aside from establishing the contrast between actualities
expressed by every-day language and their ideal transposition
expressed in artistic language,7 the first paragraph poses a
problem: in this piece the persona will report the factual,
an anecdote, but "sous 1e jour propre au réve," a sample,
then, Of what the imaginary "journal" would contain.8 And so
the early still somewhat "Baudelairean" prose poem has evolved
into a new form, namely this paradoxical reportage Of the
ideal, in which the Mallarméan prose poem will fully come into
its own, where chance events Of every day life will be trans-
posed into meaning and order by poetic vision objectified in

a new prose style.

161

With the second paragraph the anecdote prOper--the

exemplum--is presented, while the last paragraph Of the poem,

 

set Off from the rest by double spacing, will give the moral
of the story. "Le petit theatre des PRODIGALITES," the scene
Of the event, has an air Of factuality about it, but this

may be due to the poet's "creating" an anecdote for us;9 for
the ironic contrast of the "little theatre" and its grandiose
name suggests to me a Mallarméan invention. The show itself,
the "féerie classique la Béte et le Génie," taken in their
stride by those commentators, who have briefly paraphrased
the poem, as though it were indeed a classic fairy tale known
to us all, likewise has a factual tone about it, especially
as it's title echoes the well known folk tale "La Belle et

10

la Béte." And in Our act, "added to" the main performance,

the theme of "la Béte et 1e Génie" will, of course, be mimed

11 is Of German origin, and

by bear and acrobat. "Atta Troll”
”Martin" can be "le nom qu'on donne a l'ours retenu et dressé
dans les ménageries," which definition somehow echoes the
above "reporters par le foule dressés." "Féerie" leaves the
type of performance as vague as did the "spectacle" Of the
title; but "féerie" with "genie" in the sense Of the Arabic
"jinniy" suggests vaguely the "conte oriental," the ambiance
<3f the Arabian Nights, also evoked with the stage settings.
Inost of the imagery describing the act itself seems, as in a

«dream, to shift someWhat, at times suggesting a marionette

'Eheatre, which, however, could not accommodate "le vivant

162

cousin d'Atta Troll ou de Martin," who nevertheless later will
be "emu au leger vent,” which appears somewhat strange for

a heavy bear. But, then, this is not the "COpying" Of reality
at all, but an impressionistic painting of the scene, whose
vagueness, however, in no way reduces its vividness.

The persona's isolation from the other spectators is
indicated by the empty seat beside him, "la stalle vacante a
mes OOtés," and the friend who is not present, "une absence
d'ami," which is not only an example Of nominalization for
"absent friend," and the typically Mallarméan suggestion of
presence through absence, but it again raises the notion of
"absence" to predominate over the other term, similar to "la
vide de signification" encountered in "Le Démon de l'Ana—
logie."12 Since "stalle” is not the most common word for a
theatre seat, and since it can also refer to a church bench,
there is here a very vague hint already of the theatre-church
association which will be developed later in the poem. The
persona's isolation is again stressed by the "goat général a
esquiver ce naif spectacle," which, by his very presence, he
seemm.not to share. That the performance is only "naive" to
‘uhe naive who fail to realize its deeper significance-—for
"ce spectacle naif" hides "un des drames de l'histoire
astrale"--is ironically implied.

In the next sentence we follow the narrator's thought
and vision step by step, aided by most original punctuation,

as he gives a highly impressionistic rendition of the moment.

163

The Opening question, "que se passait-il devant moi?.' part
of the very sentence which answers it, reflects his trying

to orient himself in the action on the stage—-or is it a
circus arena? for the pedestals "en architecture de Bagdad"
suggest a stage decor reminiscent of the Arabian Nights, and
which used to be that Of the big circuses--at the moment when
the lights come on brightly upon the scene, or as he turns
his eyes from the inside, his own reflections, toward the
outside, where the show begins. And throughout the piece
there seems to be a perpetual kind Of movement from the "out-
side" to the "inside" and vice versa, in the sense that the
outer events described then lead to inner reflections upon it,
climaxing with the outer show being internalized altogether
into the poet's vision, which completely transforms it.

"... paleurs évasives de mousseline se réfugiant ...“ brings
before the mind's eye Degas' dancers whose bright ruffles

and limbs appear as one brilliant flash of movement caught
suspended in space. And that there are dancers before us is

13 by their attributes: brilliant

never stated, but suggested
airy lightness and graceful smiles and Open arms reaching
down from their pedestals toward, and contrasting with, "la
lourdeur triste de l'ours," which, with its dark and heavy
sounds, onomatopoetically paints what is designates. These
”sylphides," supernatural beings, "nom que les cabalistes

donnaient aux prétendus génies élémentaires de l'air," are

the only dancers in these prose poems, but their brief

164

evocation is unforgettable and reminds us that the ballet
was one of Mallarme's favorite art forms.14

Only now is the "hero“ of the show introduced, "de ces
sylphides évocateur et leur gardien, un clown," and "un clown"
somewhat undercuts the "héros," His "haute nudité d'argent,"
the tightly fitting leotards and the white rice powder make-
up under the bright lights, contrast with the squat and furry
heaviness Of the bear--the former an image of man as artist,
the latter one reminiscent of the primordial raw material of
animal existence--whom he banters with a ghgw of man's superi-
ority. For in all his white splendor, the clown is by defini—
tion a grotesque figure who, having the dancer's agility but
none Of his grace, can at best put on a ludicrous show, a
caricature of genius.

As the narrator's reflections now turn back on himself,
there is an ambiguity in "jouir comme la foule du mythe
inclus dans toute banalité, quel repos," for the last two
'words could mean "how restful it is," or "how restful it
would be.” The ironic implication is that the poet cannot
enjoy the show "comme 1a foule," for while they see and enjoy
merely "toute banalité," he alone is conscious Of the "mythe

inclus, which stresses again his isolation, as does also

the welcome absence Of friends, which leaves him free to
concentrate on the performance, both "ordinaire" and
”splendide," and for the poet but part of his perpetual quest

of "imaginations" or "symboles." And this prose poem is a

165

demonstration of this poetic quest, in which the little
theatre is transformed into the bright and fleeting images
of an impressionistically vibrating scene, and its simple
action raised to symbolic stature.

"Etranger a mainte reminiscence de pareilles soirées,"
introduces a sentence which moves us from the inside to the
outside, again, following every turn Of the narrator's
thought and vision, and which rhythmically reflects this
experience. That opening clause, verbless and luxuriously

précieux, is suddenly and brusquely interrupted from the out-

 

side, with the sharp, short syllables: "L'accident le plus
neuf! suscita mon attention." A wave of applause had sud-
denly stopped short, a burst of noise turned to instant
silence, and the "cesser net" imitates the abruptness of the
break, "brisée par quoi?" This applause is independent of
the human somehow, "décernés selon l'enthousiasme,"—-"selon"
is one of Mallarme's favorite prepositions On account of its
very vagueness--for "l'illustration sur la scene du privilege
authentique de l'Homme." People do not applaud performers
here, but "enthousiasme" applauds an "illustration du privi—
1ege authentique de l'Homme," and the degree of abstraction
here strongly separates the poet's experience; for, clearly,
none of the audience saw "sur la scene [1e] privilege authen—
tique de l'Homme," for the simple reason that this abstrac-
tion is not visual. But what is incredibly visual in this

sentence, where the scene has disappeared, is the image of

166

the applause suddenly standing still: "un fixe fracas de
gloire a l'apogée, inhabile a se répandre," where it is
rendered concrete like a tangible element standing still in
dense turbulence at its highest point, needing, but being
unable, to come down, to flow off, to spread out again.

This is a very real wave of concentrated force--Of enthusi-
asm concretized—-standing breathtakingly still "a l'apogée."
There is thus a brilliant inversion, where the visual scene
before us is abstracted so that we can no longer see it at
all, while the abstract, but to the theatre so essential,
aspect, the audience's enthusiasm, is concretized to the
point of becoming both visual and almost tactile, a powerful
element menacing with latent force.

But now we see the stage action, for ”11 fallait etre
tout yeux," where the clown, now called "pantin," performs
one of the traditional 1335;, "Pantin" in its first defini-
tion means a puppet or marionette, but figuratively it desig-
nates one who "gesticule sans motif et ridiculement," thus
fitting the circus clown, Whose very gesture, "une paume
crispée dans l'air," strikingly resembles that of the "maitre"
Of the "Coup de dés," that clenched fist up in the air before
final shipwreck.15 With his 13551, the clenched fist now
[opening wide as though catching something in flight, the
"ingenieux," here probably in its slightly pejorative sense
«of engignos, had won the crowd's approbation; but the trick,

a figure--and the parenthesis reduces it to its first

167

definition of "forme extérieure d'un corps"--Of the ease

with which everyone grasps an idea, is richly ironic, for
"chacun," on the contrary, sees only appearance while failing
to grasp the idea which it hides.

The bear--"ému au léger vent" again vaguely suggesting a
marionette show--now rises "rythmiquement et doucement," that
is with a live animal's supple movement, as he examines the
trick, ironically termed "exploit," recalling the clown's
designation Of "héros" above. The heavy bear claw coming to
rest on the ribbons of the clown's costume, rather than
shoulder, makes for an even stronger contrast in this strange
rapprochement. But the audience's excitement is not shared
by the narrator, whose ironic distance from the spectacle is
apparent in "consequences graves pour l'honneur de la race,"
'where ”honneur" is but another ironic use of a heroic term,
in harmony with the preceding "héros" and "exploit." This
ironic tone is completely abSent from the idealized descrip-
tion of the animal, gentle and good, aspiring after genius.
:But this aspiration is hidden from the audience, thus a
"secret rapprochement,“ who see only the bear's dangerous
proximity to the clown. And so "un homme inférieur" is
(moncealed under the superbly impressionistic image Of the heavy
animal gradually rising "debout sur l'écartement de deux
;janmes de poil," which defies translation. One paw on the
«clown's shoulder, the other on his arm, the animal seems to

be reaching up toward the slender human body to embrace, not

168

to harm, it, in longing admiration for his "frere brillant

et surnaturel." And so, gradually, the narrator, though
describing the outer event, the show, internalizes it, fusing
outer phenomena and inner vision.

As the "hero" performs his trick, he raises his head,
"chef affreux," probably both horrible and horrified, his
"bouche folle de vague," that is his mouth open and perhaps
grotesquely painted by the clown's make—up, in order to stare
after a paper and gold fly. "Remuant par un fil visible dans
l'horreur les dénégations véritables d'une mouche de papier
et d'or," is confusing, perhaps as the stage trick itself.
Does "les dénégations véritables" mean that the stage prOp,
the paper and gold fly after which the clown stares open—
mouthed with his head raised up, is but imaginary, not really
there but only suggested by his play? The "fil visible,"
again vaguely reminiscent Of a marionette show, might stress
the actor's mechanical performance of the 55555. "Spectable
clair" of the following sentence refers on the narrative level
'both to the brightness Of the stage and also the clear meaning
of the act, namely that the bear fails to grasp what is going
on, the play of genius. Only for the narrator does the
spectacle transcend its little stage, "tréteau" signifying
"theatre de charlatan, saltimbanque, theatre ou l'on présente
des pieces bouffonnes." And while for the audience the moment
seems to last forever because of its danger, for the poet it

takes on the dimension of art, are longa ..., as his vision

169

now entirely separates itself from theirs, "sans que m'offus~
qufit l'attitude probablement fatale prise par 1e mime

dépositaire de notre orgueil,' which, again, ironically under—
cuts both the clown's play and role, and what it represents:
a caricature of humanity's complacent superiority to animals.
The clown is now called a "mime," indicating that this is a
pantomime, where the actors, by definition, may only use
gesture to express themselves. Thus there is a strange re—
versal, when discourse, "interdit au rejeton des sites arcti-
ques" under natural, but not artistic, laws, is accorded to
the animal, while "human genius" must remain silent. And the
bear is here identified as a polar bear, "rejeton des sites
arctiques," which introduces the association with "the most
conspicuous of the northern constellations, Ursa Major," that
is the Great Bear, which will be the final constellation of
the "Coup de dés," and in our poem foreshadows the "un des
drames de l'histoire astrale," into which the pantomime show
will be transformed in the poetic vision.

The bear's imaginary monologue—-with the parenthesis
implying that if these were not his precise words, this was
at least their message--is an appeal to human charity, to
explain to him the quality of this splendid theatrical atmos—
>phere in which man has taught him, the beast, to move. But
it is not an atmosphere of splendor alone, but also one of
dust, and these seemingly contradictory terms, splendor and

dust, on the descriptive level befit the stage with its glaring

lb:- u.’ If ”iii:

170

lights and dusty sets; but on a figurative level they desig-
nate modern civilization, as it might appear to an outsider-—
the outsider here both the beast, and, paradoxically, the poet,
who had deplored its sorry state at the outset Of the piece.
Splendor and dust and noise,16 do they not characterize

"toute grande ville"; and we recall that "la poussiere du
temps" had also marked that late, death-bound civilization

of "Le Phénoméne Futur."

The bear, addressing the mime his "ainé subtil," claims
that his request, both pressing and just, should and could be
answered by him Whose fear he imagines but feigned—-is a
clown's every gesture not theatrical make-believe? For this
brother is "élancé aux régions de la sagesse" because the
bear, still wearing the attire of the caves of a dark age--in
contrast to the other's "haute nudité d'argent" and civiliza-
tion's apparent splendor——has reimmersed his latent strength
in prehistoric darkness to set his human brother free. And
so a secret bond unites them; this secret bond is, moreover,
also suggestive of the bear as "terrible parent" archetype in
Jungian psychology, a figure for a demonic anima which is
destructive because it is repressed, "ma force latente," and
not understood-—none but the poet understands the symbolic
significance of the animal act. In this sense, it is perhaps
also this dark brother who is now seeking reconciliation.

Far from begrudging the brilliant clown his superiority, the

bear wants, on the contrary, to seal the pact of their secret

171

brotherhood, and their reconciliation, "devant la multitude
siégeant ‘acette fin." "Siéger" transforms the theatre audi-
ence into an assembly, or a tribunal, Of witnesses, and so
the audience has, along with the action on the stage, been
absorbed into and fused with the ideal vision. And this
vision, with a kind of vague comprehension on the part Of the
idealized bear Of the process of evolution, with the implied
notion of the original common origin of all creatures--or by
extension the Hugolian idea of the gradual upward movement
of all forms of life toward spiritualization on the great
chain of being--also recalls that in the early "Plainte
d'Automne" the narrator's cat had already been his "compagnon
mystique, un esprit."l7
Not only the stage action and the spectators, but the
entire theatre is transformed, for its modest dimensions are
magically Opened up, as it were, when the breathless atten-
tion Of the excited audience is referred to as "l'absence
d'aucun souffle unie a l'espace" [my italics]; and "dans quel
lieu absolu" takes away all limits and evokes cosmis spaces,
absolute time and place, which creates a setting of eternity
and the infinite, where the evolution of a race is but a
moment and constellations not remote, reminiscent of "des
circonstances éternelles" of that final drama of the "Coup
de dés." For our show has become a cosmic drama, "un des

drames de l'histoire astrale," with the theatre audience

fading away now, "la foule s'effacait toute," and becoming

172

part of a ritual, a "situation spirituelle," of which the
stage has become the emblem.
An emblem is, similar to the symbol, a visible sign Of
an idea, but it is not traditional, but the poet's own, a
symbol, thus, particular to the Mallarméan poetic universe.
And in this universe, the theatre in its ideal form is
ritualistic and takes on the spiritual function of the dying
Church, thus becoming a kind of modern Church itself:18
Notre seule magnificence, la scene, a qui 1e concours
d'arts divers scelles par la poesie attribue selon moi
quelque caractere religieux ou Officiel, si l'un de
ces mots a un sens, je constate que le siecle finissant
n'en a cure, ainsi comprise (OC p. 313);
says Mallarmé in "Crayonné au Theatre," and, late in his life
still, in one of his responses to Jules Huret's inquiries,
the poet maintains:
Je crois que la Littérature, reprise a sa source qui
est l'Art et la Science, nous fournira un Theatre, dont
les representations seront 1e vrai culte moderne (OC p.
875).
And so, the entire theatre being transformed as the
stage action is elevated to ritual proportions, the gas light,
a sort of giant constellation, "le gaz, dans les hauteurs de
la salle," which has replaced the church tapers of yore, plays
its part in the rite, that Of "dispensateur moderne de
l'extase." "Extase" here carries its meaning as a mystical
term, "élévation extraordinaire de l'esprit, dans la contempla-

tion de choses divines, qui détache une personne des objets

sensibles jusqu'a rompre 1a communication de ses sens avec

173

tout ce qui l'environne," which aptly describes the narrator's
situation among the theatre audience. This gas light, "avec
l'impartialité d'une chose élémentaire," one of the newest
products of modern civilization, held a special fascination
for Mallarmé,19 and with its "bruit lumineux d'attente," this
synesthesia, recalls its role in "Le Tombeau de Charles
Baudelaire." What is being described on the literal level
here is the theatre's chandelier, a gas light fixture, which,
as I said, in the "drame astrale” setting figures as a giant
constellation: and the traditional chandelier itself, "le
lustre," also played an important role in Mallarme's concep-
tion of the theatre outside Of our prose poem. For, with its
multiple facets, this suspended and blazing giant gem seems
to reflect not only the action on the stage, but the multiple
consciousness of the spectators, that is the communicants in
the ceremony:

... le lustre, dans la salle, représentfit, par ses

multiples facettes, une lucidite chez le public, rela—

tivement a ce qu'on vient faire (OC p. 388).
In the contemporary DERNIERE MODE, when discussing "theatres,
livres, beaux—arts," in his "Chronique de Paris" section,
the poet-editor says:

La vraie representation est, dans cette nuit de gala,

non ce qu'eclaire la rampe, mais le lustre (OC pp. 717-

~18).

But at this climactic moment, the culminating moment Of
elevation and expectancy of "lumineux'd'attente," there Occurs

auxabsolute break, "le charme se rompit,“ a break indicated in

174

unapoem by double spacing: for the vision disappears, and we
zm>longer see the event "sous 1e jour propre au reve."

Nothing could more vividly image the crassness Of the
natural order--where factual reality replaces magic and
dream——than the piece of flesh, "un morceau de chair, nu,
brutal," "quue saignant[e]," thrown on the scene, a scene no
longer a "lieu absolu," but a humble stage with its dusty
spaced sets and the customary, but usually hidden, gory feed-
ings of the beasts after an animal act.20 The magic of the
theatre, "le rayonnement théétral," which--in the poetic
vision-Ahad endowed the bear with a higher curiosity, an
aspiration, and, above all, with speech, has vanished, as the
beast with muffled tread seems to carry "Silence" away with
him. The contrast Of the ideal vision with reality is fur-
ther stressed by the suggestion that the animal, no longer
aspiring after human, that is supernatural, wisdom and splendor,
would now have to degrade man, "notre image," to the level of
crudest matter, namely shreds of torn flesh, to enjoy him,
"gofiter" here playing with the word's multiple meanings.
Once more the theatre's bright lights are evoked, when the
uncomprehending audience, spellbound, watches the bloody feast,
as rows of shiny Opera glasses both reflect and glaringly
stare at, the action.

And now the circular form of the poem comes to a close
with "la toile et son journal de tarifs et de lieux communs,"

echoing the "journal" and "reporters," and "caractere commun"

175

oftme opening paragraph. For this curtain with its advertise—
nmnts and price schedules moves us bluntly back into that
nmdern civilization and "1a réalité, bon a fixer l'intellect
nmyen entre les mirages d'un fait," a world in which the poet
is a stranger. And as he steps outside, "comme tout le monde,"
in the crowd, but not of it, he realizes the answer to his
original question: if there is in the ideal "un aspect
nécessaire," it is not "evident" to man, for the vision of the
ideal is not shared, but the poet's alone. However, the now
mature poet is, in his solitude and isolation from his fellow
man, serene, for his poetic vision is not only superior, but
alone true. And Mallarmé chose the end Of this poem to an-
nounce, with a rather uncharacteristic directness, the superi—
ority of his vision, Which confirms my assertion that this
poem--rather than "Le Démon de 1'Analogie"--inaugurates a new
style and form.

In this prose poem, the only one where the poet-persona
is a spectator in a theatre, and not (as frequently) a per-
former himself, several important themes converge, Of which
the most Obvious is that of the theatre itself, developed here
poetically, that is by suggestion. And this ritual of
spiritual regeneration implies the crucial relationship be-
tween performance, Or more widely a work Of art, and the be—
holder who becomes in a sense a participant, and the interac—
tion between the two.21 In this dialectical relationship.

there is an interplay of three planes, where an Object, in our

. . . .03....
is... .-%.w 9 “‘1'.” .
ll! a. -

176

case "le spectacle," is perceived by a subject, here the
poet—persona, so that through this encounter a new Object
comes into being. In ”Un Spectacle Interrompu," the
"spectacle" in being transformed by the poet at the same time
modifies him; and the "évenement sous 1e jour propre au
réve"--the beast's potential liberation or spiritualization
by the poet--becomes a new synthesis. But in our case, the
"new object" is also a definition of the Mallarméan prose
poem, Of which the piece is the demonstration: reportage of
the ideal.

Central to these ideas is the notion of the power and
isolation of poetic vision, developed in this prose poem,
which is, again, about poetry and the poet. This notion
carries with it the attendant theme Of the poet's isolation-—
reflected here also in a new poetic language-~from society,
from 55 foule. Poetic vision seeks, or creates, meaning in
the world of phenomena and chance events——that is, in con-

fronting "reality," the poet asks--or creates--its meaning.

177

UN SPECTACLE INTERROMPU

NOTES
1 E. Moulet, L'Oeuvrepoétique de Stéphane Mallarmé (Paris:
Droz, 1940), p. 299:

Comme ses premieres poésies, les poemes en prose de
la premiere heure sont parfaitement limpides. La
premiere page qui parut difficile coincide avec le
premier poeme obscur. C' est, au sort1r de la crise de
Tournon, Le Démon de l' Analogie, qui étonna les lec-
teurs de LA REVUE DU MONDE NOUVEAU, pendant que le

Toast funebre étonnait ceux du Tombeau de Theophile
Gautier.

I agree with Mme Noulet that the "Toast Funebre" is
Mallarmé's first "difficult" verse poem. It dates from
1873; the first "difficult" prose poem is not "Le Démon de
l'Analogie," which, by the way, was written before the
"crise de Tournon," but our "Un Spectacle Interrompu” of
1875. Further, I cannot agree with her when she condemns
Mallarme's new prose style, as follows: (p. 299)
L' oeuvre en prose de Mallarmé, plus abondante que
son oeuvre poétique, devient des lors indicatrice de
ses tendances et de ses procédés. La tentative de
transporter dans la prose les moyens dellhermétisme
semble cependant vaine. La réforme verbale, valable
en poésie ou i1 s 'agissait de rompre avec un passé
oratoire et codifié, ne se justifiait pas en prose.
Celle- -ci doit rester avant tout l'instrument du
raisonnement.
This remark seems to fail to understand the prose poems,
and moreover Mallarme's most fundamental notions regarding
the language of literature.

Scherer, L'Expression, pp. 225-26, notes the stylistic

break as follows:

2 This
Vie,
3 This

L' année 1874 est déc1sive dans 1' évolution de la
technique de Mallarme. Brusquement, cette anneé- 1a,
11 s 'élance vers les régions inexplorées de la syn-
taxe francaise, et trouve presque d' emblée un bon
nombre de ses hardiesses. Pourquoi? C' est en 1874,
en meme temps qu 'il prépare sa traduction du Corbeau
de Poe, que Mallarmé édite, de septembre a décembre,
le journal de modes et de frivolités qu 'il intitule
LA DERNIERE MODE. On sait que, sous divers pseudonymes,
il est l'unique rédacteur de cette publication. Sans
doute, LA DERNIERE MODE n' est- elle qu' un divertisse-
ment, une oeuvre de circonstance, une aimable fan-
taisie, un délassement. Mais sous ce charmant travesti,
Mallarmé peut tout oser. Cette oeuvre légere revét
une importance capitale pour la fixation des tendances
de Mallarme devant le langage.

Le systeme défini par la DERNIERE MODE s 'affirme
aussitot en prose avec 1e Spectacle Interrompu (1875),
en poésie avec L' Apres-midi d' un Faune (1876).

disastrous reading of Igitur is related in Mondor,

pp. 229-302.

notion is also Paxton's, The Development, p. 50:

That Mallarme recognized Igitur as a failure to be
discarded is surely indicated by the fact that he
never attempted to publish it, nor did he ever revise
it or work on it again. It is my belief that the
realisation that the message which he wished to com—
municate could not be rendered by a conventional use
Of language came to Mallarmé as a result of Igitur
and began the search for a new language which con-
tinued all his life.

4 Mauclair, Princes, p. 112, recalls Mallarme confiding to

him:

Que de fois, j'ai résolu de me mettre a écrire les

‘1ivres que je portais dans mon cerveau, en me con-

tentant d' une forme francaise habituelle, d'un a pen
pres éloquent et expressif, avec des rythmes et une
syntaxe d' usage courant, en me jurant a moi-meme de
secouer 1e joug; et puis, au moment de commencer, je
sentais que je ne pouvais pas, que 1' on n' a pas le
droit de mésuser ainsi de la langue écrite-—et je

:recommencais a étudier ce qu 'elle exige.

5 Leon Ce

 

Presses
"Mais l
[Mallar'

Associa‘

 

(1x

"Réve" ]
POGtiC c
ing tenc
the fir;
of Poet
the Ene
furnish
Pottry

the we:

to n A

ea

tat101-1

To the
Hallar:

0f the

JE
CC

179

Leon Cellier in Mallarmé et la Morte qui Parle (Paris:
Presses Universitaires de France, 1959), p. 156, reports
"Mais l'année du 29555 [two years before our poem] il
[Mallarme] écrit a Mistral pour lui prOposer de créer une

Association internationale des Poetes."

"Reve" is one of the most frequent terms in Mallarmé's
poetic dictionary, and it is so multivalent, that its mean—
ing tends to vary according to its use. While it Often is
the first principle Of poetry, and sometimes the process
of poetic creation itself, it can at other times also be
the enemy of poetry. Walter Naumann in Der Sprachgebrauch
Mallarmés (Marburg: Hermann Bauer, 1936), pp. 196-98,
furnishes an index for the usage of "réve" in Mallarmé's
poetry and prose, outlining the most frequent meanings

the word carries. Nowhere, however, does Mallarmé refer
to "rave" in the sense of the Surrealists, and the exploi-

tation Of night dream for "écriture automatique."

To the charge of Obscurity in this artistic prose,
Mallarmé answers, again contrasting his language with that
of the newspapers, as follows:

Je préfére, devant l'agression, retorquer que des
contemporains ne savent pas lire—-

Sinon dans le journal: 11 dépense, certes, l'avantage
de n'interrompre 1e choeur de preoccupations (0C, p.
386).

7"")

8 A sampl

 

LA DHRS~
cal andl
E
“repOrt I
and at i

that LA

modern c

 

sances

9 Bernard,

Lor

180

8 A sample of the imaginary journal itself is, of course,

10

LA DERNIERE MODE, in which not only fashions, but theatri—
cal and other "events" of interest to the readers, are
"reported," but certainly "sous le jour propre au réve,"
and at the same time in the new prose style. The fact
that LA DERNIERE MODE was so short lived testifies to
modern civilization's inability "de procurer les jouis—

sances attribuables a cet état!"

Bernard, le Poeme en Prose, p. 293, says:
Lors d'un spectacle, un ours s'était soudain redressé
contre le clown qui 1e faisait manoeuvrer, et l'avait
etreint dangereusement, jusqu'au moment ou l'appat
d'un quartier de viande lui avait fait'lacher prise:
telle est, en sty1e de "reporter" cette "anecdote"
que je n'ai trouvee rapportee nulle part dans les
journaux de l'e oque, pas plus que je n'ai trouve la
mention d'un theatre des "Prodigalites."
She then quotes some passages Of the poem with the comment:
"11 faut, on 1e voit, une véritable 'explication du texte'
pour saisir la valeur significative et suggestive de
chaque mot, pour reconstruire 1a phrase selon nos habitudes
syntaxiques," and characterizes the newly evolving style
(p. 297) under three headings: “Tendance a l'abstraction;

tendance a la concentration; tendance a reconstruire la

phrase."

In my search through the following reference material:
Gertrude Jobes, Digtionary of Mythology and FoIklore
Sympols (New York: Scarecrow Press, 1962); Stith-Thompson,

MOEifirlndex of Folk-literature (Bloomington: Univ. of

K,

I.
(u

'..
...4

Indiana

lore 51

Bolts 51}

chen

find

Hm role

SPeCific

1841

Chase 5:

 

(H.

a I

 

time

of satir

into

Fre

got her

This

Sty

111d

listi

istiCS c

Period .

This

ter

Stronger

0f th

his I»

e I!

13é(
qLu
ad,
Qu;
{“31
e5<e
Sn,
8x5
et:

11

12

13

181

Indiana Press, 1958); Funk & Wagnalls, Dictionary of Folk-
lore, Mgthology and Legend’(New York: Wilfred Funk, 1949);
Bolte & Polivka, Anmerkungen zu Grimms Kinder und Hapgmar-
ghgp_(Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1963), I have not been able to

find a reference to "la Bate et la Génie.“

Chase St. Aubyn, Mallarmé, pp. 50—51, where he discusses
the role of Hérodiade in 19th-century literature and then
specifically in Mallarmé, notes in passing: "... and in
1841 the German lyric poet Heinrich Heine wrote a series
of satirical poems, subsequently translated by the author

into French, under the title Atta Troll in which Hérodias

got her due."

This indicates that, though there Occurred a marked
stylistic change rather suddenly, some of the character-
istics of the new style were already present in the earlier

period.

This tendency to "suggest" rather than "name" will become
stronger as Mallarme's style matures; he proposes it as one
of the most important characteristics of modern poetry in
his "Crise de Vers":

Décadente, Mystique, les Ecoles se déclarant ou éti-
quetées en hate par notre presse d'informat1on,
adoptent, comme rencOntre, 1e point d' un Idéalisme
qui (pareillement aux fugues, aux sonates) refuse les
matériaux naturels eL comme brutale, une pensée
exacte les ordonnant; pour ne garder de rien que la
suggestion. Instituer une relation entre les images
exacte, et ue 8' en détache un tiers aspect fusible
et clair presente a la divination ... Abolie, la

.3

 

’ ..

 

The Sig:

 

faCt the

mEtaPhor

14

15

16

prétention, esthétiquement une erreur, quoiqu'elle
régit les chef- d' oeuvre, d' inclure au papier subtil
du volume autre chose que par exemple l'horreur de
la forét, ou la tonnere muet épars au feuillage; non
le bois intrinseque et dense des arbres (OC pp. 365- 66).

In his enthusiastic article about the Cornalba he says:
La Cornalba me ravit, qui danse comme dévetue; c'est-
a- -dire que sans 1e samblant d' aide Offert a un enleve-
ment ou a la chute par une presence volante et assoupie

de gazes, elle para1t,appelée dans 1' air, s' y sou-
tenir....

The significance Of the dancer for the poet lies in the
fact that she also writes, and creates a kind of visual

metaphor:
... la danseuse n 'est pas une femme qui danse, pour
ces motifs juxtaposes qu 'elle n 'est pas une femme,
mais une métaphore résumant un des aspects élémentaires
de notre forme, glaive, coupe, fleur, etc., et gu 'elle
ne danse pas, suggerant, par le prodige de raccourcis
ou d'elans, avec une écriture corporelle ce qu 'il fau-
drait des paragraphes en prose dialoguée autant que
descriptive, pour exprimer, dans la redaction: poeme
dégagé de tout appareil du scribe (OC p. 304).

This "geste du pantin, une paume crispée dans l'air" re-

veals an underlying association, at that time still un-

conscious, connecting the grotesque show of "le Génie"

with "l'Homme," par excellence, the Master Poet, who in

the final work is seen "la main/crispée/par-dela l'inutile

tete" (0c p. 464).

This "atmosphere de splendeur, de poussiere et de voix"
is strikingly similar to the atmosphere of Baudelaire's

"Le Vieux Saltimbanque,” Poemes en Prose, p. 72:

 

 

Here the

ClOWns ;

 

bright ]
the ambi

Pieces i

17 Though 5
PhilOso;
the idea
d'ombre,
HUgo, Li
476:

183

555 hercules, fiers de l'énormité de leurs membres,
sans front et sans crane, comme les orangs-outangs,
se rélassaient majestueusement sous les maillots
laves 1a veille pour la circonstance. Les danseuses,
belles comme les fées ou des princesses, sautaient et
cabriolaient sous 1e feu des lanternes qui remplis-
saient leurs jupes d' étincelles.

Tout n 'était que lumiere! poussiére, cris, [my
italics].

 

Here the dancers are also magically beautiful, but the
clowns a sad caricature of Man, and the stage, bathed in
bright light, is similar to that Of our poem; but while
the ambiance of the two prose poems is alike, the two

pieces have otherwise no similarity.

17 Though Mallarmé certainly did not share Hugo's faith or
philosophy, there is here a vague reminiscence of some Of
the ideas expressed in, for example, "Ce que dit la Bouche
d'Ombre," with its universal animism and plenitude. Victor
Hugo, Les Contemplations (Paris: Gallimard, 1965), p.

476:
... la création qui, lente et par degrés,

S' éleve a la lumiere, et, dans sa marche entiere,
Fait de plus de clarté luire moins de matiere

Qui va du roc a 1'arbre et de l'arbre a la bete,
et de la pierre a toi monte insensiblement
18 Haskell M. Block in his Mallarmé and the Symbolist Drama
(Detroit: ‘Wayne State Univ. Press, 1963), pp. 85-86, comes
to the following conclusion regarding Mallarmé's vision of
a new theatre:
In his highly personal reformulation of the drama,

Mallarmé is not concerned with the details of the
”explication de 1' homme," but rather with the

19

21

184

spiritual attitudes and values that the new theater
will express: the primacy of mystery, dream, and
imaginative vision, projected beyond any particular
time or circumstances. The magic and mystery of the
theater reside within its very substance, as an evo-
cation of the absolute, embracing the destiny of all
humanity. In this sense, Mallarme's ritual drama is
the means of the propagation of a new religion, a
secularization of the liturgy and rites of ancient
dramatic performances.

This vision of a ceremonial theater is in fact
a configuration of elements derived from a variety
of sources: Greek drama, the medieval liturgical
drama, Shakespeare, Wagner, Banville and the tradi-
tion of poetic drama, and the Catholic Mass. Mallarmé
saw the theater of both the past and the future as a
temple, wherein actor and spectator participate in a
sacred rite.

Richard, L'Univers, p. 502, notes:

Deux lumieres "modernes" fascinent tout spécialement
Mallarmé: l'électricité ... mais surtout 1e gaz, qui
réunit, comme un Génie d'ancienne féerie, l'éclat a
l'impalpabilité, 1e brio au don d'ubiquité. Brutal,
d'une facon et nu--malgré sa nature ”impalpable," il
réserve surtout "son effet de magie" afin de créer
"l'éclat obligatoire au theatre," (OC p. 736). Son
flot inonde violemment, assaille 1e spectacle: i1

0 ere avec une telle franchise que sous cette "lumiere
reelle" (La Derniere Mode) celui—ci en parait
simplifié, dénudé, transfiguré.

The image of the raw, bloody shred of flesh-—in contrast
to the ideal astral vision—~13 evocative of Rimbaud's
prose poem, "Barbare," Oeuvres, p. 292, where there is also
a juxtaposition of arctic purity and the food of animal
instincts, bloody meat:

0h; Le pavillon en viande saignante sur la soie

des mers et des fleurs arctiques; (elles n'existent
pas).

This dynamic relationship, the "dialectics" between

 

. F
Kunstw

is the:
I

he cor

 

185

Kunstwerk und Betrachter, a work of art and its beholder,

is the subject of Steland's Dialektische Gedanken, where

 

he concentrates on Mallarme's essays on the ballet.

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CHAPTER IX
REMINISCENCE

This poem is the first "late" piece of the recueil,
dating from 1888, and though it originated from an early
piece, "L'Orphelin" of 1867, it is not really so much a modi-
fication of that version as it is an entirely new prose poem,
which is why Mallarmé placed "Reminiscence" in the second
group of the cycle. A reading of the two pieces as differ—
ent poems,1 which are, however, thematically linked, is more
profitable than examining "variants." It reveals not a pro-
gression from the early to the late style, but their differ-
ence, and all which this stylistic difference implies.

Mallarmé indicates the poem's transformation by the
change of the title itself.3 "L'Orphelin" was one of the
young poet's obsessive themes, which not only pervades his
adolescent lyric poetry but was suggested in the early prose
poems in "Plainte d'Automne" and "Le Démon de l'Analogie,"
and finally fully developed in "Pauvre Enfant Pale." But
"Reminiscence“ indicates by its definition that the mature
Mallarme is no longer obsessed by'the experience which had

become a recurring theme of his early poetry. For

"reminiscence," not exactly synonymous with "souvenir,"

186

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187

means: "rappel d'un souvenir a peu pres effacé; acte par
lequel nous cherchons a ressaisir un souvenir incomplet."
In terms of poetry this means that the poet, rather than be-
ing visited by a childhood memory, recalls it at will, to
paint it in the light, the colors, and, above all,,the style
of a mature artistic imagination. Far from being obsessed
or haunted by a theme, he now, on the contrary, owns and
controls it artistically, that is with masterful aesthetic
distance. Moreover, "reminiscence" also suggests by associ-
ation the apprehension of perfect forms, in the sense of
the Platonic Idea, for the poem is about "l'orphelin" in its
widest sense, the archetypal idea of the orphan in this poetic
universe, or what Mallarmé would call its "notion pure," "the
idea itself," rather than its particular manifestation:
Je dis une fleur! et, hors de l'oubli on ma voix relegue
aucun contour, en tant que quelque chose d'autre que les
calices sus, musicalement se léve, idée méme et suave,
l'absente de tous bouquets (OC p. 368).
The poem's anecdote recounts the meeting of an orphan
'with the children of the circus, which had come to town.
'Ehe lonely child feels instinctively drawn toward the vaga—
‘bonds, and the mature narrator in reminiscing about this
childhood experience wonders whether this early felt affinity
might not have presaged already his future isolation from
mankind and his own artistic vocation.
"Orphelin j'errais en noir et l'oeil vacant de famille"

introduces at once the narrative subject, a first-person

narrator, the Hamlet—Igitur theme, and an example of the

’7

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188

extraordinary stylistic virtuosity which characterizes the
poem. The very first word is reminiscent of the opening of
"Pauvre Enfant Pale," with which the original version of

this piece is almost contemporary. But while the other poem's
narrator identified himself with the "pauvre enfant" only
indirectly, here he "was" the orphan himself. Yet, the
temporal distance, as well as the one created stylistically,
are such that from the outset the orphan and the first-person
narrator describing him (-se1f) constitute two clearly dis-
tinguished voices, with the poetic one almost completely
absorbing that of the child. Further, this opening line by
its high compression—-and, in inverse relationship to it,

its infinitely extended suggestiveness--creates not only the
key image of the poem, but at the same time is pregnant with
the meditations aroused by it. And so one already presages
here, vaguely, the poet's very latest manner, that of the
"Coup de dés," and explained in its Preface: "Tout se passe,
par raccourci, en hypothese; on évite le récit" (OC p. 455),
for, in a sense, this opening line is, or contains, the
whole poem; but in "Reminiscence" we now pass to the elabora-
tion of the theme, "le récit."

And in "le récit," the narrative, we now see a child
dressed in black, recalling "une personne condamnée a porter
probablement 1e dueil de l'inexplicable Penultieme," wander-
ing somewhat aimlessly--for he is not yet a singer like the

"pale child" but still without a mission-—"l'oeil vacant de

189

famille." These eyes are the mirrors of his soul, reflecting
an outer, and at the same time expressing an inner, state:
the loneliness, isolation, and separateness of an orphan
searching for those to whom he belongs.4 The second part of
the sentence provides the setting of the piece, the festive
tents of a fairground among the trees5 outside the city,
reminiscent both of "Le Phenomene Futur" and the verse poem,
"Le Pitre Chatié" of the same year. And in the verse poem,
the poet persona, who was a showman in the early prose piece,
is a circus clown, who calls himself "1e mauvais Hamlet,"
which indicates an underlying association of Poet, Showman or
Clown, Hamlet, and Orphan, all of which converge in
"Reminiscence." But while this association is still spelled
out in "L'Orphelin": "... déja, enfant avec tristesse pres-
sentant le Poete, j'errais vetu de noir, les yeux baissés du
ciel et cherchant ma famille sur la terre," it is suggested
only in our prose poem. For our next clause not only makes
no mention of the poet, but renders the premonition of the
future even more vague by phrasing it like a question within
the sentence. Only the orphan's fascination with the gypsies
is affirmed, and expressed not in a child's terms,“bfit in
poetic ones: "J'aimais le parfum des vagabonds"; and it is
the narrator who then suggests that the orphan--and how could
Hamlet be more strikingly evoked than "en noir et l'oeil
vacant de famille?"-—perhaps already felt a kinship, a

spiritual relationship, with the itinerant entertainers.

190

And the "vagabonds,' in echoing the "j'errais" above, some-
how stresses this affinity.

"Vers eux axoublier mes camarades“--where the preposi—
tion, similar to its use in "tu vins ... au monde vers cela"

of "Pauvre Enfant P31e,‘ conveys a strong sense of anticipa-
tion--is immensely condensed by the suppression of the finite
verb, which extends the suggestiveness of not only this clause
but the whole sentence. Like the somber Hamlet, leaving
behind his courtiers to seek out the wandering players come

to festive Elsinore, our black-dressed child, contrasting
with the colorful fairgrounds surrounding him, forgets his

own comrades, his own kind among whom he is a stranger, for
the strangers come to town. Thus, the Hamlet association,
though not stated, is most powerfully suggested in this open-
ing sentence.

Further, the word "fete," which is the entire atmosphere
that the show people bring with them, by association, "jour
consacré a des actes de religion; cérémonies par lesquelles
on célebre ce jour," introduces a vocabulary cluster of
religious imagery and language, which in this poem is set
side by side with the "low" and colloquial language, the
slang even, of the gypsy children. This religious language
is that of the poet-persona's reflections on the nature of
theatre, whose sacred and ritual character was already de-
veloped in the preceding prose poem, and which in the long

second sentence is expressed by "choeurs, drame, sainte heure,‘

191

the mention of the poet of the Divine Comedy, and "prier,
chaste, repas supérieur," and the celebration of "blancheur"
in "neiges des cimes, lys, ailes." At the same time, the
second sentence introduces the action prOper, but only after
what seems like an interminable albative absolute, an elabor-
ate adverbial stage and, at the same time, mood setting.6
"Aucum cri de choeurs par la déchirure, ni tirade loin,
1e drame requérant l'heure sainte des quinquets," evokes that
quiet hour before the show begins, the momentary calm before
the multifarious agitation of the colorful scene. For
Mallarmé this moment of suspens, in its rich virtuality, held
a particular fascination; and in our poem it has a manifold
significance, for while it refers to the literal level of the
moment of expectancy before the performance, it at the same
time suggests an analogous point in not only the poet—persona's,
but the Poet's--that is Man's——becoming. It is Hamlet's
stage of indecision which is, however, already pregnant with
the Act, the present of possibility preceding the future
actualization of the self. In his "Hamlet" essay, which is
almost contemporary with "Reminiscence," Mallarmé says:
Son solitaire drame! et qui, parfois, tant ce promeneur
d'un labyrinthe de trouble et de griefs en prolonge les
circuits avec le suspens d' un acte inachevé, semble 1e
spectacle meme pourquoi existent la rampe ainsi que

1' espace doré quasi moral qu 'elle défend, ... (OC p. 300)
[my italics].

”Choeurs" not only suggests the chorus of Greek drama,
but also the enfants de choeur who participate in the
Christian ritual of the Mass, and the "brise ancienne des

choeurs" of "L'Orphelin" was still more explicit in bringing

192

out these associations. The "déchirure," rent or tear, of
either show tent or theatre curtain, has about it a mysteri-
ousness, heightened by the very vagueness of the phrase, of
things hidden from the uninitiated, on the literal level the
secret preparations for the shOw. "Choeur" is now rein-
forced with "tirade," suggesting the long, declamatory mono—
logues of classical theatre, and leads up to "le drame"; and
"loin," referring on the literal level to spacial distance,
also suggests a temporal distance which implies, at the same
time, an artistic one. In this way, by suggestion, the
humble fairground stage is linked to both classical Greek
drama, theatre's origin, and also French classical drama,
the artistic culmination of the tradition. For the actual
side-show magically reaches back through the ages to classical
drama, from which it is as far removed temporally as it is
artistically. "Le drame," which requires its "l'heure sainte
des quinquets," constitutes here not only an ironic juxta-
position of the "low comedy" characteristic of the théatre de
§Qi£g_with elevated and even ritual drama, but points to
their secret kinship. "Quinquets," phonetically echoing
"quinconce" above, and which recalls "la suie ignoble des
quinquets" of "Le Pitre Chatié," marks this theatre with a
touch of modernity,7 but "l'heure sainte," with its sugges-
tion of the canonical hours, is, again, richly evocative of
the past.

"The "action" of the orphan—hero is more correctly a

mere wish to act: "je souhaitais de parler," and the child

193

he feels instinctively drawn to is a little outsider himself,
"un m6me trop vacillant pour figurer parmi sa race." "Mame,"
a "terme populaire," and thus fitting for the little gypsy,
at the same time suggests "momerie," that is a mascarade,
which underlines the show atmosphere of the poem. And this
urchin, "trOp vacillant" to even "figure," to take a humble
part, in the performance, so that he is not even a real circus
child yet, appears like a spiritual brother to the orphan by
the similarity of his condition. ”Vacillant," aside from
literally describing the little one as too shaky on his legs
to work with his acrobat family, suggests figuratively the
undecidedness inherent in the moment before finding one's
vocation. And just as the orphan is marked by his somber
costume, so this lonely child is wearing a rather peculiar
attire, that strange Dantesque night-cap, a long, pointed
cowl that seems to come from another age. This allusion to
the Middle Ages was in "L'Orphelin" reinforced with "des
toiles ... peintes par le maitre qui, peut—étre, a cet instant,
croyait seul au moyen age." But the mere allusion to the
medieval poet, which, by association, evokes the original
theatres de foire and also medieval religious drama, is in-
finitely richer, for the name Dante summons forth the eternal
celebration of human drama in Poetry and an age of faith.

The juxtaposition of the trivial and the sublime, of
the recalled childhood experience and its poetic expression,

reaches its culmination in "qui rentrait en soi, sous l“aspect

194

d'une tartine de fromage mou, déja la neige des cimes, le lys
ou autre blancheur constitutive d'ailes au-dedans." For the
rather unaesthetic slice of bread covered with soft cheese on
which the little gypsy was munching, paradoxically releases
in the poet an explosion of imagery celebrating whiteness.
The cheese has become "l'aspect," that is the mere external
appearance, under the form of which the little Dante already
took possession of what in "L'Orphelin" was called "toutes
les blancheurs sacrées des poEtes," absolute whiteness--
reminiscent of Mallarme's absolute Néant——whose sacredness
to poets is merely suggested here with “blancheur constitutive
d'ailes au—dedans," where "aile" is again symbolic for poetic
creative power, as it was in "Le Démon de l'Analogie." There
is thus a curious conversion of "nourritures terrestres" in
the crassest sense to spiritual food. And this Whiteness of
"la neige des cimes" and "le lys," this absolute purity, is
reminiscent of that other orphan, the virginal Hérodiade,
motherless, and abandoned by her father, "Reviendra-t—il un
jour des pays cisalpins!"--suspended, as it were, in that
solitary, young moment of expectancy before fulfillment:
J'attends une chose inconnue

Ou peut—étre, ignorant 1e mystere et vos cris.

Jetez-vous les sanglots supremes et meurtris

D'une enfance sentant parmi les réveries

Se separer enfin ses froides pierreries.

But the rapprochement of the orphan and the little Dante,

who innocently carries a still secret artistic mission within

him, never quite comes about, for the orphan does not speak,

195

and "je l'eusse prié de m'admettre a son repas supérieur,"
a designation doubly ironic, by its stilted phrasing with
the pluperfect subjunctive rather than the past conditional

of the formal verb "prier,' expresses merely the unfulfilled
wish. At the same time, this ironic description of the slice
of bread and cheese is suggestive of a ritual meal, like the

Communion, where the communicant, similarly, under the

aspects of bread and wine-~nourritures terrestres—-partakes

 

of divine substance, and to which the orphan would have
"prayed to be admitted," had not a dazzling, older boy,
seemingly surging out of nowhere, interposed himself.

The past participle, "partagé," followed by "Vite,"
stresses the swiftness of that "ainé fameux," who has already
obtained what the orphan never even succeeded in asking for.
"Contre une proche toile en train des tours de force et

banalités alliables au jour,‘ vaguely suggests a backdrop of
canvas tents, fitting setting for his nimble tricks. And
somehow it seems not quite clear whether the "tours de force"
belong to the tents or the young acrobat, while in

"L'Orphelin” the whole image was so clearly delineated that

it left much less to our imagination: "la baraque voisine

dans laquelle on allait donner les tours de force." Not only
‘his easy laggi, but his nakedness in "sa prestesse de maillot,"
where the performer's agility seems to become part of his

costume and that a part of him, recalls the clown-acrobat of

"Un Spectacle Interrompu" in "sa haute nudité d'argent."

196

And this nude form of the dancer-acrobat-clown, barely dis-
guised under the tightly fitting leotards, always fascinated
Mallarmé, perhaps as an attribute of the dancer's freedom,
as is his very mobility.8

For this other one, contrasting with and admired by the
orphan, appears sovereignly free, both of body and of speech,
and his superior liberty was immediately apparent in his easy
and uninhibited eating of the little one's piece of bread,
partly effected so fast that we didn't even see it, and later
continued as freely as his tricks and talk. In this quiet
and silent scene, the calm hour before the show, it is he
who introduces action and movement, all the words concerning
him, "jaillir, vite, tours, prestesse, pirouetter," desig—
nating motion. But a peculiar tension is created by a certain
‘weakening of verbal expression through the use of the narra-
tive infinitive, present and past participles, or even
nominalization, from the acrobat's very arrival on the scene,
"partagé, jailli, de pirouetter," and then later again with
"de triompher en élevant" and "de mordre." This stylistic
device not only creates tension, but, by keeping in check the
very motion whose quickness and ease the verbs describe,
somehow catches and fixes this motion in the very act.

The arcobat contrasts with the two other children not
only because of his physical superiority, which is the outer
sign of his having found his vocation and that he already is,

rather than still becoming, freely himself; but his speech,

197

a happy torrent of slang, which swallows up the orphan's

only line, a melancholy one "je n'en ai pas,‘ underlines the
theme of orphanage by contrast in stressing his own strong
sense of belonging. For he is securely attached not only to
the whole tribe of homeless performers--those gypsies forever
wandering on the fringe of society--but particularly to his
own father and mother, and thus doubly to ”sa race."

And his language, "c'est farce, un pere"-—which was much
less rich with "c'est amusant un pere":hn"L'Orphelin"--is not
only fittingly "[de] la langue populaire," but at the same
time evokes the type of show characteristic of the fair:
"farce, piece dramatique et souvent simple dialogue ou l'on
emploie les plaisanteries hasardées et les lazzis burlesques,"
and of which the circus child seems to be giving us a small
sample, as he tells about his life, which is show life.
Among his kind, art and life are inseparable so that, while
not in the show, but waiting for it to begin, he puts on a
show, already resembling his father, who is so thoroughly an
artist that even when he is ill, he performs his "grimaces
aussi belles." The father is a clown, for his feat is to
make faces; and, therefore, the expression "que bouda la
soupe," to tell us that he could not eat, is particularly
funny here, for it literally means that "the soup made faces"
at him, "bouder" almost being synonynous with "faire des

grimaces." Whether the older clown got the ringmaster's

"claques et coups de pied" because he was sick or whether it

198

was the other way around, is not quite clear. And the senti-

mental note of "L'Orphelin,' which did not have our marvel—
ously suggestive idiom and read "meme l'autre soir ou l'on

a mis en terre mon petit frere, il faisait des grimaces plus
belles quand 1e maitre lui lancait des claques et des coups de
pied," has happily disappeared. It is really not even clear
whether the "claques et des coups de pied" reveal some of
circus life behind the scenes, or whether they were part of
the "act," which suggests again how inextricably art and life
are interwoven among the show people. And it is possibly
their unreserved commitment to their art which makes the
gypsies so attractive to the Poet, an outsider to society like
they.

The young acrobat's triumphant "élevent ... la jambe avec
aisance glorieuse" contrasts with the ”coups de pied" re-
ceived by the older clown, which suggests at once the strength
and beauty of youth and its fugitiveness, and vaguely inti-
mates the theme of Baudelaire's prose poem, "Le Vieux Saltim—
banque."9 "Il nous épate, papa" expresses not so much the
child's admiration for his father, but for his father's show-
manship, and, after a quick bite into the smaller one's piece
of bread--the "régal chaste" both reminiscent of "repas
supérieur" above and doubly ironic as juxtaposed with "mordre"—-
he begins to display his mother's talents, whose greatness is
attested by public acclamation.

The orphan's motherlessness, "pent—etre que tu es seul?"

is passed over quickly by the other child, who now disappears

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199

as suddenly as he had appeared, for "la parade s'exaltait."
"Parade” here means "scenes burlesques données par les
bateleurs a la porte de leur theatre pour piquer 1a curi—
osité des passants et s'attirer des spectateurs," and
"s'exaltait" is much more suggestive than "sa parade venait
de commencer" of "L'Orphelin," because it not only indicates
the long-awaited beginning of the show but evokes all the
excitement and heightened intensity of the moment. This
mood, along with the acrobat's last words, "drale" and "rire,"
contrasts with the orphan's "moi, je soupirais," and his
sudden sadness at not having parents, pointing back to the
beginning of the poem, where it Was expressed only in his
eyes. The last sentence of "L'Orphelin," in its more explicit
manner, helps clarify what is implied here: "Moi, je m'en
allais tout seul, songeant que c'était bien triste que je
n'eusse pas comme lui des parents." Again, in our sentence
the sentimental note has been removed, but what comes out more
clearly in the original is that the orphan does not merely
regret having no parents, but rather that he does not have
parents "comme lui," like the little showman. For our orphan,
wandering "l'oeil vacant de famille" toward the gypsies, is
already vaguely looking for the family of Poets, symbolized
by these wandering entertainers.

And just as the little orphan is doubly burdened, by his
past and also already by his future, so the poem itself in

recalling the past prepares the future, so that it occupies

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200

within the recueil as decisive a moment as the one artis-
tically fixed within the piece. The poem on the narrative
level recalls a moment in the persona's youth, and at the
same time it is an image of that moment when Man confronts
his destiny alone, those threatening worlds both within and
without, a moment which for Mallarmé was embodied in the
modern myth of Hamlet.10 And this figure, the incarnation
of that moment suspended between the alternatives of action
or refusal, acceptance or suicide, and which in Mallarmé's
universe is symbolized by the twin figures of the white
Hérodiade and the somber Igitur, encountered in almost all
the early prose poems, is here recalled for the last time.
At the same time "Reminiscence," in suggesting the associ-
ation of poet and saltimbanque, that is poet and performer,
and thus reaching back to the firSt poem of the recueil,
foreshadows the following poem, "La Declaration Foraine,"
where the poet performs, that is, mounts the fairground stage

himself to entertain la foule, with poetry.11

201

REMINISCENCE

NOTES

1

I shall restrict my interpretation to "Reminiscence," as
it appears in Divagations and only refer to "L'Orphelin"

as it helps my reading of the former.

The Pléiade edition gives "L'Orphelin" in full in the
notes (0C pp. 1559-60). Paxton, The Development, pp. 18-
19, gives a minute listing of the "variants," but his
subsequent discussion of them, pp. 19-20, more enumerative

than synthetic, tells us nothing important about either

poem.

The poem's title had undergone successive changes from
"L'Orphelin" to "Le Petit Saltimbanque" to "Le Mome Sagace"
before its final form. The intermediate titles, however,

‘were not published but only mentioned in Mallarmé's corre—

spondence:

Le titre définitif, Reminiscence, ne fut adopté par
Mallarme que pour la publication du poeme dans Pages;
l'auteur lui avait donne, d'abord, dans sa pensee,
ceux de le Petit saltimbanque (lettre a Deman, 19
juillet 1888) et de 1e Mame Sagace, (30 juillet 1888).
Une lettre du 15 septembre 1888 au méme editeur indi-
que pour la premiere fois le titre Reminiscence et
date vraisemblablement la mise au point de la seconde
version (0C p. 1560).

:Lt goes without saying that this image and theme reflect

Mallarme's early loss of his mother (which, as we saw,

influenced several of the early prose poems) and the neglect

experienced through his father's remarriage shortly

202

thereafter. And that these facts contributed to form the
poetic vocation itself cannot be questioned. Kurt Wais,

Mallarme, p. 48, goes so far as to see a direct causal

 

relationship here: "Mit dem jahen Bewusstsein des Kleinen,
elternlos zu sein, began jene Storung im inneren Wachstum,

ohne die es den dichterischen Funken nicht gabe."

In "L'Orphelin" these trees, in their sickliness, "les
arbres dont le vent cassait 1e bois mort," were most
reminiscent of the trees whitened by the dust of time of

"Le Phenomene Futur.”

This device is similar to what Leo Spitzer in Stilstudien
(Mfinchen: Huber, 1961), p. 125, calls "Inszenierende"
Adverbialbestimmungen, which he feels are characteristic
of "newer French literature"; he does not mention Mallarme,
however, in the chapter he devotes to the subject. We are
reminded, of course, of Mallarme's predilection for the
elaborate adverb to open a sentence or line, more notable

in his verse poetry than in his prose.

The "quinquet" is, according to Littré, "une sorte de lampe
inventée vers 1800 a laquelle le fabricant Quinquet a donné

son nom"; and he then goes on to describe this oil lamp.

Richard, L'Univers, pp. 96-97, discusses the psycho-erotic

 

implications of nudity in Mallarmé's poetry.

9 Baud

cont
with

then

 

 

Altho
fully
where

the ol

René C
Geherg
diSCUs
the Q
And or
how Ma
Priate
which

"Le

67

throng:

wallaC1

1962)'

10

11

203

Baudelaire, Poemes en Prose, 71-75. Here the poet-persona
contrasts the carefree activity of the younger showpe0ple
with the misery of the old "saltimbanque," with whom he
then openly identifies:
Je viens de voir l'image du vieil homme de lettres
qui a survecu a la generation dont il fut le brillant
amuseur; du vieux poete sans amis, ... degrade par sa

misere et par l'ingratitude publique, et dans la
baraque de qui le monde oublieux ne veut plus entrer!"

(p. 74)
Although this theme is suggested here, it is not nearly as
fully developed as it will be in "La Declaration Foraine,"

where the persona will put on a "charity performance" for

the old clown.

René Taupin in "The Myth of Hamlet in France in Mallarme's
Generation," Modern Languagejguarterly, XIV (1953), 432-47,
discusses Hamlet's significance in the 19th century, and
the transformation of the myth from Romanticism to Laforgue.
And Charles Chassé in "Le Theme de Hamlet chez Mallarmé,"
Revue des Sciences Humaines, 77-78 (1955), 157-69, outlines
how Mallarme, influenced by theatre and painting, appro—
priated and subsequently transformed the figure of Hamlet,
which pervades his poetry from such early verse pieces as
"Le Guignon" [original version] and "Le Pitre Chatié"

through “Igitur” and "Un Coup de dés."

Wallace Fowlie in Mallarmé (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press,
1962), pp. 243—44, discusses "Reminiscence" pointing to its

relationship with Hamlet, whose significance for the poet

 

he e

 

 

The 1
deVEIC

that t

204

he explains as follows:

Hamlet has to play many parts in his tragedy; the
jilted lover, the friend of the two courtiers, the
king's nephew, the avenging son, the son of his
mother. Only briefly in his soliloquies does he
manifest the part he didn't invent: the grief-
stricken son unable to execute the revenge and whose
mind wavers under the tragic burden. To continue liv-
ing he needs a theatre, a play in which to test him-
self and the world he knows. To live one's own part
is not sufficient for Hamlet and for the poet. A scene
has to be constructed by them in which their destiny
may be re-enacted theatrically. In his ordinary life
a man, in his lack of knowledge and imperfect vision,
is unable to comprehend his own fatality. Only by
projecting his life into an art form, a Shakespeare
tragedy or a Mallarmé poem,is he able to discover some
reasonableness in the mystery that is his (p. 244).

The last sentence in particular points to what I have
developed in my discussion of the preceding poem, namely

that the poet, through his art creates meaning in his world.

CHAPTER X
LA DECLARATION FORAINE

This prose poem, stylistically the most difficult of
the recueil, is, with the exception of "Conflit," possibly
one of the latest not only of composition but also of con-
ception. For there are no earlier versions known, and the
piece, published for the first time in 1887, appears prac-
tically unchanged in Divagations.1 The stylistic virtuosity
of the poem renders its translation extremely complicated,
and the complications show themselves already in the title,
of which both words carry more than one meaning. "Declaration"
here means both "déclarationpublique" and "aveu d'amour":
and while "foraine" immediately suggests the fgigg setting
<mf "Le Phénomene Futur" and "Reminiscence," it also means
"foreign, strange,"2 with each signification, though seem-
ingly excluding the others, being of equal importance in the
context of our poem.

The anecdote is about the sunset carriage ride of the
persona and a lady friend out into the suburbs where they
pass by a fair; the lady wants to visit it. As they come to

an empty stand, the lady suddenly decides to mount the stage,

and as a crowd of onlookers begins to gather, the poet—persona

205

206

entertains them by reciting a poem celebrating the beautiful
woman on the stage.

The first word of the poem itself, a noun set off from
the rest of the sentence by an exclamation mark, like the
beginning of "La Gloire," sets the mood of the first-person
narrator as well as the opening scene, and at the same time
establishes a tension by contrast with the title and the
whole world of the poem indicated by it. "Le Silence,"
resonant in "songes, bercement," and "assoupissant," is a
condition of predilection for Mallarmé,3 a state of being
denoting absence—-not only of noise, but of agitation, and
passion even, a state almost of the absence of existence and
being--out of which alone, paradoxically, the essence of
things, which is poetry, is born.

And now the scene unfolds, with the narrator riding in
a coach in the company of a lady, who will recognize her
portrait in the poem, in which she is a figure, however, for
"toute femme." She is dreamily stretched out by his side--or,
though really there, does she perhaps seem more like part of
his mental world, a dream, "ainsi que songes"?--lulled by the
gentle motion of the carriage, whose wheels appease the
interjection of the flowers bending under them. So silent
seems this dream-like ride that the flowers' weak resistance
even is calmed; but "interjection" by association suggesting
passion, "partie du discours qui exprime les passions," do

these flowers, as a beautiful manifestation of a hidden

 

sexual
allite
under
broken
costume
who 11*;
que Sug’
interro;
nearness

Qested b

 

this ele
her face
halance .
diStanCe
thSiCal
spiritue

207

sexuality and so resembling the "femme," with which they
alliterate, suggest erotic passion and thus a hidden tension
under the surface calm? This calm, at any rate, would be
broken were the narrator to compliment his lady aloud on her
costume, all the mystery of which constitutes a gift to him
who lives or dreams this privileged moment. "Ne pouvant ...
que suggérer" has as its antecedent probably still "quelque
interrogatrice toilette," which, despite all this chance
nearness, is only able to suggest not only the distance sug—
gested by her face, but a perfect equilibrium. For just as
this elegance is at once provacative and protective, so on
her face the witty smile and its dimple, establish a perfect
balance of nearness and familiarity on the one hand, and
distance and reserve on the other——for the dimple evokes the
physical charms of the woman's face, while the "sourire
spirituel" suggests the disembodiment of the physical expres—
sion of her laughter.

But the harmony is now abruptly broken as reality erupts
and interrupts the ideal moment, the direct brevity of the
short phrase emphasizing the break. And in the remainder of
the long sentence, the dying moment's bliss is contrasted
with reality's crass vulgarity in which it is mercilessly
swallowed up. The sunbeam felt luxuriously on the landau's
varnish is an emanation of brightness, warmth and sumptuous
magnificence, but dying there like the dream itself and the

sun which it reflects.4 For there was "trOp de tacite

208

félicité," and so the poet—persona's favorite hour is now
submerged in a violent outcry, somewhat reminiscent of
"le désespoir d'un cri“ of the sunset of "Le Phénoméne
Futur." "Avec orage" menaces with all its figurative conno-
tations of revolt, war, danger, and passion--the threat of
multitudes, already foreshadowing some of the poem's later
moments, and contrasting with "Le Silence!" And “dans tous
les sens a la fois et sans motif" underlines the atmosphere
of disorder and confusion, the wild profusion of matter with
its "rire strident ordinaire des choses" which now replaces
the "spirituel sourire" of a beautifully mysterious and
silent face. This grating "rire strident" of things with
their "cuivrerie triomphale" is reminiscent of "les Objects
neufs avec leur hardiesse criarde" of "Frisson d'Hiver"; but
while the silent companion of that early piece shared the
poet's feelings and soul, this poem's lady does not.

"La cacophonie a l'ouie de quiconque" onomatopoetically
renders the discord it signifies. This discord remains
shrilly present to whoever "un instant écarté, plutOt qu'il

ne s'y fond, aupres de son idée,‘ one who, like the narrator,
fails fully to abandon himself to the ideal, and thus re-

mains haunted by existence. This passage is highly remin-
iscent of Igigur where, as the hero does, in fact, almost fully
"melt into" the realm of pure essence, one after another

"les choses" disappear about him, including his own existen-

tial manifestation, namely his mirror image. "Un instant

 

écarté
moment

drowne

 

 

209

écarté ... aupres de son idée," however, was that perfect
moment of silence with its.intimation of absence, now
drowned in the tumultuous uproar of existence round about.

And it is toward this noisy commotion that the narrator's
companion feels drawn and draws him: the fairground and
"féte," under whose spell he, too, will fall. And so it is
she--"l'enfant voiturée dans mes distractions" suggesting
both the real woman riding beside him and the ideal one of
his reveries, thus juxtaposing inner and outer, or essential
and existential, realms-—who draws him "out of himself" and
into the apparently banal festivity, which she announces
happily. "J'obéis" introduces the tone of chivalry and
courtly love, which will be predominant throughout the poem,
and which-was already vaguely suggested at the opening with
the gallant note of secrecy which at once acknowledged and
masked the identity of the Lady celebrated. And this motif
of §;n_amgg£ will be supported by a vocabulary cluster of
terms such as: "gonfalon, tambour, exploit, héros, altesse,
honneur, péril, Madame," not the least of which is "obedience"
to one's lady.

But the narrator needs to orient himself in the very
disorder, and his "besoin d'explication" is one plausible
for a poet's mind, a "figurative" one, which he then immedi-
ately symbolizes in a beautiful image: the lighting up of
lamps—-those of thefairground--in the evening dusk, in which

his mind discovers—-or creates--an order of garlands and

 

   

of "U:
ing, 0.
clash
basic t
mind; a
recall
meaning

dés. n I

 

0f the C.
0f Chane
As

lentiOHe
m0ckingl
ihto the
CompacJui
fla‘30r'

111.5%
fur adve
ingenu. ..
and free
'1’ the ..
their ey

walk, to

210

attributes, purposefully arranged wreaths and emblems, that
is a design. And so we recognize the poet and his "recherche
assoupie d'imaginations ou de symboles" of the little theatre
of "Un Spectacle Interrompu." For this need to create mean-
ing, only compensation to the shock experienced by the harsh
clash of dream and reality, touches in passing Mallarme's
basic theme of the defeat of chance, of hasard by the poetic
mind; and the lamps coming to life in the falling evening
recall the multitude of stars on the night sky, which become
meaningful as constellations, the final image of the "Coup de
dés." At the same time, our poem is a demonstration, again,
of the creation of meaning, the ideal, that is poetry, out

of chance circumstances.

As the narrator now definitely gives up "solitude,"
mentioned here for a last time, and throws himself with a
mockingly chivalric show of daring, "meme avec bravoure,"
into the violent confusion "nagueres fui dans une gracieuse
compagnie," which conveys both a précieux and highly courtly
flavor, she, in keeping with the rules of fin amour, accepts
his service without surprise, a belle dame sans merci ready
for adventure and relying on her knight with her "bras
ingénu." "Ingénu," originally a feudal term meaning "noble
and free," by extension points back to the youthful beauty
of the "enfant voiturée" above. They enter the fairground,
their eyes on the rows of barracks, and walk down its center

walk, to both sides of which the occasion's confusion,

 

I
echoi:

 

settii
is mos
world,

its ut

   

briefl:

 

SuQSet:
Ebraine
bEQauSe
merab.

:acade ‘

211

echoing noisily everywhere, is spread out. And so this
setting, already evoked several times in these prose poems,
is most fully developed here, as almost a miniature medieval
world, where the crowd for a brief time limits, or encloses,
its universe, and of which our aristocratic couple will
briefly, but magically, become a part.

The following sentence not only "is about" an aristo-
cratic attitude amidst the masses whose amusements appear to
it like "assauts d'un médiocre dévergondage," but it "reflects"
this attitude in a style so highly précieux, beginning with the
rather cumbersome, but somewhat typical, long adverb, which
is at the same time a term of jurisprudence, juxtaposed with
a military term, that one cannot miss the ironic flavor.

.And ironically, too, this vulgarity does divert the couple's
"stagnation," again a highly precious latinism to indicate
merely that they stopped walking, to look at the sunset.
"Crépuscule" here not only designates the sunset, but, by its
etymological association, creperus, suggests an uncertain
state of transition, not only of the sky, but within the poem,
that of passing from the introduction to the action proper,
whose occasion is the ”humain spectacle, poignant," while the
sunset's "nue incendiaire" again foreshadows the "déclaration
foraine" itself. The "touching human spectacle” is touching
because of the absence of the human: an apparently empty,
miserable shanty, "renié," or abandoned, by a multicolored

facade or big-lettered inscription, which adorn other buildings,

 

 

stage 1

Poet w:
actual

Peculia

 

trivial
irOny, ‘
Calls "
the low
theatre
temPles
VaQUEue
tegpsu

inthat
Perhaps
:atetia
lid hid
by "l'a
his dis

which. .

212

and once this one too. Its former gaiety is evoked by its
present absence.

And now, similarly to the little theatre of "Un Spect-
acle Interrompu," which was transformed into the absolute
stage of a cosmic drama, this poor shack is endowed by the
poet with an aura of sanctity, contrasting sharply with its
actual shabbiness. In fact, this whole paragraph has that
peculiar tension created by the repeated juxtaposition of
trivial and sublime imagery, couched in a tone of transparent
irony, which barely veils the tragic, and which strongly re-
calls "Réminiscence." Thus, the "matelas décousu," hiding
the lowly stage, or marking it, parodies not only heavy velvet
theatre curtains, but "les voiles dans tous les temps et les

temples,’ which, in its very compression and at the same time
vagueness, is infinitely suggestive. For "dans tous les

temps" evokes the mythological past of the race, with "temples"
intimating not only churches, but the temples of antiquity,
perhaps even the Temple of Jerusalem and its Veil of costly
material hung on the two columns separating the sanctuary

and hiding the Holy of Holies, perhaps vaguely suggested here
by "l'arcane," the mystery. For the absent showman had hung
his dismantled mattress cover here "pour improviser l'arcane,"
which, while conferring on the sideshow the spirituality of

a ritual performance, at the same time once more foreshadows

"la declaration foraine," to be, in fact, "improvised" by

the poet performer. The show tents, then, are the holy places

 

fairg:

E
the st
mattre
EVOCEt
marvel;
night'na
StarVin
the m is

deVOtior

 

 

CIeated
formed t
nights'

Sign, by;
For the

festiVQ I
laneline
its mYStI

prgfoldei

213

of that universe enclosed, for a time, by the limits of the
fairground.

But now, in sharp contrast to the sublimity inherent in
the stage, some of the human misery indicated by that poor
mattress shred is suggested, and also, ironically, by an
evocation of the past: the hungry nights-~visited not by
marvelous dreams but only the nothingness of hunger—inspired
nightmares--spent on it, before its transformation, by its
starving owner. Yet, reminiscent of "Pauvre Enfant Pale,"
the miserable performer's hunger is sublimated to a kind of
devotional abstinence by "jefine," in harmony with the ambiance
created above. The mystery of the "fete" had, however, trans-
formed the uninspired one, so that he had made of his bitter
nights' companion his "gonfalon d'espoirs en liesse," the
sign, by association, of his readiness for daring feats.

For the daily misery seems excluded from the fraternal and
festive magic of the fairground universe,5 which bans both
loneliness, "des souliers nombreux y piétinant," and hunger,

its mysterious atmosphere being such that it arouses aux
profondeurs des vetements ... [1e] dur sou" to emerge, thus
causing the inanimate, even, to come to life, so that no one
can resist the spirit. And, therefore, "lui, aussi" had
rendered himself, saved himself, by sheer faith alone, “de
tout denué sauf de la notion qu'il y avait lieu pour etre un

des élus" ironically playing with the Doctrine of Salvation

by Faith-—rather than Works. Thus, guided not by talent,

 

 

 

but at
due to
to cree

Specula

 

absenc
and thi
act" mo
COunt OI‘
taste?

214

but the sheer faith inspired by the fair, he had yielded to
its calling, in order to, if not sell, at least show--and

the "mais quoi" now reminds us that "he" is not there at all,
but absent, and had only been put on the scene, as it were,
due to this very absence, which left the poet—persona free

to create him. "Tres prosaiquement" undercuts the preceding
speculations with the simple conjecture that, perhaps, the
absence of a trained rat prevents the show from going on:

and this brief evocation of the most humble kind of "animal
act" mocks "l'arcanel" above. Or did this imaginary "beggar"
count on a display of his own physique to flatter p0pular
taste? "L'athlétique vigueur de ses muscles" by association
ironically juxtaposes the sorry figure of the starveling
evoked above with the youthful beauty and strength of athletes.
But at the same time, the irony hides, barely, the tragic,
which surges particularly out of the final part of the sen-
tence, which superficially merely gives a possible explana-
tion for the absence of the trained rat, perhaps caused
"comme cela résulte souvent de la mise en demeure de l'homme
par les circonstances générales." And "mise en demeure" here
plays both with its meaning as a legal term, "interpellation
faite au débiteur, pourqu'il ait a remplir ses obligations,"
and its figurative one: but the humorous intimation that
this particular show business may have fallen prey to bank-
ruptcy almost disappears behind the most basically tragic of
themes, which Mallarmé expresses with stark directness in his

essay on "Hamlet" :

215

... car i1 n'est point d'autre sujet, sachez'bien:"
l'antagonisme de réve chez l'homme avec les fatalites
a son existence departies par 1e malheur (OC p. 300).
But these meditations and the long reverie about the
chimerical owner of the shanty are now interrupted with an

imperative "Battez la caisse," proposed by the very real

companion. "Madame ..." not only again veils her identity,

but underlines the chivalric note, as it was formerly the
title reserved "aux seules femmes des Chevaliers," and this
note is reinforced with "seule tu said Qui," echoing "une qui
voit clair ici" of the beginning, and the gallant secrecy of

fin amour. Further, "en altesse" not only indicates her

 

fitting haughtiness of tone, but, at the same time, paints,
with a fine hint of irony, the portrait of a courtly lady.

As she points thus to the old drum, there rises from it its
equally old owner, perhaps the guardian of the forsaken stage,
who now uncrosses his idle arms to indicate to them that
there will be no show, with "theatre" here for the first time
actually named in the piece: but "sans prestige," which on
the narrative level designates the lowliness of the little
stage» suggests etymologically, praestigium, that this theatre
is no»longer capable of creating the illusion of sorcery and
magic, and, thus, has lost its vital powers, like the speech—
less old showman and the silent drum, his companion. Yet,
the life-long fellowship, perhaps, with this "instrument de
rumeur et d'appel, " which half ironically again evokes the

world of knightly adventure and at the same time vaguely the

 

 

mass<

drum,

ample
jewel
leave
to be
create
pin cl
is an
mouth”

and veJ

 

B
has att
the mo:
“halte“
0'31, u 1.
as his
POEm "I

*1, .
sue fa 1

Ill|l lIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIllllllllllllllllllllllfi
.3:

216

masses' threatening discontent, makes the old one beat his
drum," [1e] séduisit a son vacant dessein."6

The following section of this long sentence is an ex—
ample of a Mallarméan analOgy, as brilliant as the precious
jewel which is one of its terms. The method of "raccourci"
leaves the narrator's questions to his companion unstated,
to be merely suggested by "le manque de réponse," which
creates "l'égnime." The poet likens her mystery to a jeweled
pin closing her blouse, because her mystery, like her jewelry,
is an adornment, and because her mysteriousness "closes her
mouth" as it were, the way a jeweled pin clothes her blouse
and veils her body.

But she is already engulfed by the crowd whom the drum
has attracted, "engouffrée" vaguely hinting at the danger of
the moment whose mock military ambiance is suggested with
"halte" and the beating of the drum. “Ma surprise de pitre
coi," in character with the narrator's attitude and his role
as his lady's servant and fool, directly recalls the verse
poem "Le Pitre Chatié," and indirectly the prose poem, "Le
Phénomene Futur," in preparing for his part as performer at
the fair. And his speechlessness, "coi," is already broken

as he automatically assumes his role of montreur, with the

 

boniment, "invariable et obscur d'abord pour moi-meme," and
deafened by the drum's noise, beginning to pour out of him
mysteriously; for he, too, now has fallen under the fair's

magic spell and from spectator turned performer.7

 

 

 

be:

y‘ore 1

swath

iii9hr 13

3‘; by e)‘

SI

<,

3: met

217

And, in keeping with the tenets of chivalry, our aristo-
cratic couple gives a charity performance for the old man,8
who, by a brilliant synecdoche, "nimbe en paillasson," is
likened to a saint, saying a prayer of thanks for the alms
collected for him, "joignant deux paumes séniles." But this
clause is as difficult as it is brilliant, for the synecdoche,
"straw halo," is at the same time a totally original image
for "hat," and subject of "joignant deux paumes séniles,"
with the past participle "vide" floating somewhat lost at the
end of the sentence. For it does not agree with the senile
palms; if it goes with "remerciement," it might mean "thanks
poured forth," which sounds unlikely. Most likely, "vidé"
modifies the hat itself, suggesting that the narrator had
collected the pennies in it and now emptied it before the
grateful old man. But this interpretation limits our vision
of the setting to that of a straw halo emptied into two senile
palms joined by the gesture of giving thanks. I have the
feeling that both readings: the old man wearing his straw
‘hat which makes him look like a medieval saint, and the nar-
rator's having collected the receipts in the hat now emptied
Ibefome the old man, are somehow compressed into one richly
evocative phrase.

The collection completed, the narrator now waves, in
knightly fashion, "les couleurs," either of the hat itself,
or by extension of the old man's little theatre, namely that

poor mattress shred, above referred to as "gonfalon d'espoirs,’

218

as a signal from afar for the crowd that the show is to begin.
And the "je me coiffai" here parodies the donning of the
helmet before action: "prét'a fendre la masse debout en le
secret de ce qu'avait su faire avec ce lieu sans rave
l'initiative d'une contemporaine de nos soirs."

But now her entrée en scene, set off from the rest of
the poem, naive and incomprehensible at once, and with
"emergeait" vaguely suggesting a rising out of water, is
reminiscent of the Birth of Venus image of "Le Phénoméne
Futur," with the fgglg, "cent tetes," figuring as the sea
from which the apparition rises and into which it will later
again disappear.

The following comparison, of the sudden bright beam of
light striking the figure on the stage, with the lucidity of
an idea striking the narrator, both illuminations flashing
forth simultaneously and "éléctriquement," links inner and
outer or mental and-factual events. And the resulting "calcu—
lation," that the woman, not without anything but her megs
presence, but rather without anything by her elegant presence,
amply repays the crowd for the alms exacted from it, recalls
'the opening of the poem, where, even in the narrator's private
world, symbolized by the landau, the companion's beauty was
celebrated in her dress as'much as in her features. This
balance between the artificial and the natural is charmingly
rendered here with "elle, selon'que la mode, une fantaisie ou

l'lnumeur du ciel circonstanciaient sa beauté." Not only does

219

this celebration of elegance recall the Baudelairean inheri-
tance with its cult of the artificial, but it perfectly fits
the courtly ambiance of our poem, which, in turn, reflects

that Mallarméan préciosité and delicate refinement which pro-

 

duced LA DERNIERE MODE and, above all, the very style of
"La Declaration Foraine."

Again, the essential ingredients of theatre, "danse ou
chant," are evoked by their absence, but the audience's
dangerous presence, "cohue," dictates the narrator's course
of action, the sentence ironically alluding to the two knightly
duties of charity to the poor and the defense of ladies in
peril. For the lady's "exhibition" seems indeed too "subtile"
for the general comprehension of the vulgar audience, for
they appear to be losing interest, and the only power in the
world the narrator feels he can resort to is the absolute one
of Metaphor, significantly capitalized, and surely a synec-
doche for poetry, identifying the narrator of this poem, too,
as a poet. "Dégoiser" not only undercuts somewhat ironically
this tone, but, above all, the magnificent poem, which will
be "spouted forth" until a certain enlightenment on their
faces indicates that they, the crowd, believe that they are
getting their money's worth. "Leur sécurité" is a synecdoche
for them, who will, thus, by the "evidence impliquée en la
parole," that is by the sonnet, be induced to "exchange their
cheap coin for superior presumptions," an allusion to the

alchemical Operation of changing base metal into gold, the

220

gold being that revealed by the poet who will celebrate the
lady's hair as a golden flame.

But before he begins, he gives a last glance at the
apparition, all of whose beauty appears to be concentrated
in her hair and which,therefore, becomes not only a synecdoche
for, but the symbol of, that woman who represents, both drama-
tically in this little theatre, and as a figure--"la vivante
allégorie"-—in the poem, feminine beauty. And this burning
hair is highly reminiscent of that of "Le Phénoméne Futur,"
which was "une extase d'or." But, curiously, the hair is
here so inextricably linked to the carefully described hat--
of pale color and of crepe and decorated with flowers--which
complements it, that they seem to melt into one another; for
'is it the hat which "fume puis éclaire" the hair with flowery
magnificence--"de fastes de jardins" not only describing the
flowers on the hat, but with "jardins" underlining the arti-
ficia1-—or is it the inverse? Further, the poet takes care
to indicate that this lovely hat matches both dress and shoes.
a dress animated by the woman wearing it, "statuaire," and
the foot, a traditionally erotic image, "comme 1e reste hor-
tensia," that is, immediately associated not with the woman's
‘body, but with her costume and its pale color of the hydrangea
Zblossom. The whole paragraph would, without any modification
almost, perfectly fit the "Fashions" section of any of the
issues of LA DERNIERE MODE.

And now the poet-persona makes "La Declaration Foraine,"

'that.is he improvises a poem, which has become one of

221

Mallarmé's most famous sonnets, "La Chevelure vol d'une
9

flamme." The poem, in which the poet has "fixed" both the
intensity and the fleetingness of beauty, and the passion it
inspires, in the image of the flame which, like the sun

itself, rises, mounts to a climax, and then dies, and which

was foreshadowed in the prose poem's Opening with the expiring
sunset, falls into the dead silence Of an uncomprehending
crowd, similar to that of "Le Phénoméne Futur." And nothing
could better indicate this total lack of reaction but the
poet's own absolute silence, before he pursues the "anecdote"——
as though the magnificant poem had never even taken place,
"RIEN de la mémorable crise ... N'AURA EU LIEU ... QUE LE

LIEU" (OC p. 474-5). For the indifferent fgglg, from which
the Poet rises--like his Muse from the "cent tétes”—-and into
which he returns, is, indeed, suggestive of the elemental sea
whence the solitary Maitre almost casts his "Coup de dés."

The lady celebrated has not understood her poem either,
for she is already getting off the table, but, then, she had
at this point lost her individual identity; for, similarly to
'the dancer who "n'estjpas une femme qui danse, pour ces motifs
jinrtaposés qu'elle n'est pas une femme, mais une metaphore"
“y: p. 304), she had, in fact become "la vivante allégorie,"
and this designation, while indicating the woman's transforma-
tirnn, at the same time suggests, in its seeming contradiction,

the tension between .life and art. The woman served so

gallantly--"mon aide a la taille afin d'en assoupir l'élan

222

gentiment a terre"--throughout the poem by the courtly poet,
herself, in turn, serves him, as an occasion of poetry, as
his Muse. For "courtly love" was never a way of life, but
a way of art, and the Minnesanger is not a lover, but a singer.
His lady's ”resigning her faction," again in mock—
chivalric tone, "faute ... de faconde ultérieure" of the
narrator, after the recitation of the "declaration," is
bitterly ironic, and reflects the isolation of the poet who
now resorts to prose to put himself on the audience's level
of understanding. And as he tries to convince them by flat—
tery that they have had a complete show, expressing his
previous "calculation," that the lady's elegance amply re-
places the theatre's customary accessories, what keeps the
crowd in the temporary "suspens de marque appreciative,"
long enough for our couple to disappear among them, is not,
ironically, what he is saying, but their very incomprehension
of his words. For, "ce naturel s'accommode de l'allusion
parfaite que fournit la toilette toujours a l'un des motifs
primordiaux de la femme, et suffit, ainsi que votre sympa-
theque approbation m'en convainc," though prose, is that of
a prose poet. When the narrator cuts short their dangerous
surprise with "une affectation de retour a l'authenticité
du spectacle," "affectation," which on the narrative level
refers to method, "faux-semblant,“ at the same time suggests

the manner, a "maniere qui s'éloigne du naturel,’ which is

one way to characterize this style.10

223

As our couple, submerged now in the crowd, in and
with-it is led to the exit "sur une vacance d'arbres et de
nuit,"—-an "emptiness" probably in contrast to the crowded

little theatre inside--there is a momentary ambiguity--as if

until the eyes get accustomed to the dark--for, is it une

vacance d'arbres," an absence of trees? But then "et de
nuit" makes clear that they are stepping out into the night;
and the trees, now, are perceptible. What might the festively
white—gloved "enfantin tourlourou,” so reminiscent of the
"gant blanc des tourlourous" of "Petit Air Guerrier," be
hanging back for, if not to dream, as the poet suggests
humorously, of unstiffening those new gloves "a l'estimation
d'une jarretiere hautaine." But what does the striking image
suggest but another reaction to the Beauty displayed inside.
and celebrated with the "declaration foraine,” an uncompre—
hending one, though somewhat different from that of the
crowd.11

The remainder of the piece is its conclusion, a dialogue
*which, similarly to a fable's moral which teaches its lesson,
is about what the poem demonstrated: the creation of a poem,
from.its conception to its delivery and reception into the
svorld. Yet this conclusion is an integral part of the whole
structure, presented as a conversation of the hero and
Zhemoine, the Poet and his Muse, now alone again, as they were
in the beginning, which closes the circle. And so the lady,

lxoth celebrated and resCued by her poet, characteristically

224

"consents" to thanking him for this double service, while
drinking in the night air, ”une bouffée droit : elle d'une
constellation ou des feuilles," to regain the habitual
coolness of her voice, fitting the distant smile we know.

She had, of course, never lost her serenity, for Pure Beauty
is self-confident. Her "j'ai dans l'esprit 1e souvenir de
choses qui ne s'oublient" is enigmatic, as are her ways, for
does it refer to her own display or its celebration by the
poet? He, at any rate, accepts it as a compliment, which he
must politely diminish, and reduces his magnificant creation
to a mere convention, "lieu commun" here suggesting the
formal rhetorical "lieux oratoires." She accepts it so, but
indicates that, perhaps, without the occasion the poem would
not have been born; and was she herself not doubly that, in
being the one celebrated by it, and in having produced the
need to utter it, that is "une impatience de gens" and the
resulting "coup de poing brutal a l'estomac?" And what could
'better express this brutal, but practical and efficient mid—
‘wifery of the public? The poet admits it, and "la reverie,"
the new poem, "qui s'ignore et se lance nue de peur, en
travers du public," at the moment of its birth, this fearful
.naked creation--reminiscent of "l'enfant d'une nuit d'Idumée”
<3f "Don du Poems," almost too fragil to live through the night
(of its birth-—also exposes its creator, "Une nudité de héros
-tendre," the poet hero. And he now not only explains the

strange and literally foreign features of his creation, which

225

he takes care to point out to us in a footnote, but also that,
just as he had needed the public, l3_§ggl§, so did she, his
companion. For would she have so clearly appreciated the
refinement of his ”boniment“ without its repercussion from
the many?

And again here under the jesting irony of the narrative
level is hidden the serious business of poetry. For neither
had the poem been receivedby a "multiple comprehension,"
nor is it certain that it had "charmed” the lady's mind. But
the notion suggested by these words is the need of a work of
art to create its audience; after the poem is born, it has to
live in the world, and this life may well begin only after
the poet's death.

What would better indicate the lack of understanding of
the persona's companion, "une contemporaine," than this
"perhaps," which either "received the poet's thought un-
changed," or with which “she, the same, received it," either
of which reading expresses the lady's indifference.

And so this prose poem, again about the poet's unique
preoccupation, his art, also ends on a note of solitude, as
did some of the early pieces, but especially "Un Spectacle
Interrompu" and "Reminiscence." But at the same time, "La
:Déclaration Foraine" manifests, demonstrating in its anec-
dote and restating in its conclusion, the solitary artist's
jparadoxical need of "the others," l§_fggl§, without which,

like the "montreur" of "Le Phénoméne Futur," he would cease

226

to exist. It is perhaps for this reason that Mallarme

chose to place that piece, which, as I mentioned, was not

the earliest composed, at the head of the recueil, where it
appears like a still vague premonition--neither was the
"montreur" directly identified as a poet, nor was he a first-
person narrator--of the destiny unfolded here, both of and
by the mature poet.

This paradoxical tension of the artist's need of both
solitude and the multitude is reflected in his exigency of
both silence and utterance: silence which is, as I indicated,
almost like an absence of existence, which the poet needs to
create its essence. Yet is it not the very meaninglessness
of the world as it exists which sets the artist on his search
for meaning and ideal order? Not only did our poet-persona
need the fairground's haphazard array of lamps lighting up
in the night in order to discover "guirlandes et attributs"
there, but the Poet needs the night to see the stars, and
these, in turn, to discover--or create--Constellations.

So as the poet needs both the absence of the world and
its presence to conceive his Declaration, this declaration,
even if it is a soliloquy, is a declaration to someone; the
soliloquizing Hamlet needs the stage of the world, theatrum
mundi, both to speak and to be heard, in order to find himself.
.And, aside from their traditional kinship, that of the
{Orpheus-singer with the entertainer, the troubadour with the

‘harlequin, some of the secret relationship of poet and

227

showman lies in this: they both need l§_foule as proof of
their existence, as the solitary Igitur needed his mirror
image.12 In this sense, then, "the others" perform a most
vital function in the poetic act for the poet, who, in turn,
performs for them. And as the ideal poet priest's perform-
ance is a mystery--"improviser ici l'arcane"--both to and
for those who participate in the ritual, so the crowd in our
poem, though not understanding that it beheld Pure Beauty,
beheld it, however, only because the poet celebrated it
before and for--and as we now know with--them.l3 But in
order to celebrate the Ideal, the poet sacrifices his own
existence by transmuting it into art, which will be the
theme of "Le Nénuphar Blanc," and which was rendered in our

poem by a courtly poet-persona, for whom a beautiful woman,

"la flamme," was not an occasion of love, but of poetry.

228

LA DECLARATION FORAINE

NOTES
1 The only variant, from the poem's appearance in Pages,
five years before Divagations, is an insignificant one

of punctuation (OC p. 1553).

2 While the adjective "forain" carries today principally
the meaning "traveling, itinerant, or strolling," Littré
lists as its first definition "qui est dehors, étranger,"
and as its second one "qui n'est pas du lieu"; then he
makes the following point: "bien que forain signifie
qui est étranger, et non qui est de la foire, par confu-
sion de sens, comme si, dans marchand forain, forain
voulait dire qui est de la foire, theatre forain, petit
theatre dressé a la foire." As so often, Mallarme here
certainly plays with multiple meanings, the "foreign,"
that is English sonnet, which he takes care to indicate
in a footnote, and the "fairground" performance, so im-

portant in this poetic universe.

3 We recall the silence pervading "Plainte d'Automne" and
"Frisson d'Hiver"; and we will find the notion of silence
richly developed in the late prose poems "Le Nénuphar

Blanc," "La Gloire," and, above all, "Conflit."

4. The celebration of reflected sunlight, which prepares al-

ready for the sonnet within our prose poem, is reminiscent

229

of Mallarme's verse poetry, especially the almost con-
temporary 1ove sonnet ”M'introduire dans ton histoire,"
and "Tout Orgueil fume-t-il du soir,“ of exactly the same
year, but particularly "Victorieusement fui le suicide
beau," which celebrates the sunlight's death and subse-
quent resurrection in the beloved's hair and is, thus,
thematically similar to the sonnet in our poem. The image
of reflected evening sun is, of course, part of the major
theme of the solar drama, brilliantly exposed in Davies,

Le Drame Solaire.

I have not been able to find "frérial" in Littré, nor in
such dictionaries as Larousse and Robert, or the bi-
linqual Heath; and though its meaning is obviously
"brotherly" from fggge, it strongly suggests "férial," not

only phonetically, but particularly in our context.

The quoted clause is not entirely clear on account of the
equivocal possessive adjective, which could imply that

the old man yielded to the lady's seemingly meaningless,

or empty, plan, or that he was seduced from his own vacant
scheme, namely to do nothing. This and similar willfully
created ambiguities contribute to that "technique of
strangeness," to which James L. Kugel has devoted a book,
The Techniques oflStrangenesgin Symbolist Poetry (New
Haven and London: Yale Univ. Press, 1971). He character—
izes Mallarme's particular technique as "Grammatical Chaos,"

and.then discusses only "Soupir" as an example of it.

230

The period after "d'abord," line 14, p. 281, of the Pléiade
edition, is a printing mistake; for no punctuation mark
at all appears in the 1897 edition of Divagations (p. 30)

at this passage between "d'abord" and "Entrez," except the

opening quotation mark.

The poet's giving alms to the old saltimbanque recalls

"Le vieux Saltimbanque" of Baudelaire, as we mentioned in
the preceding chapter, but the two prose poems differ so
widely artistically, that one does not dare compare them.

Baudelaire "explains” where Mallarmé "transposes" his

ideas into poetry.

This sonnet was for the first time published in the body
of our prose poem, but subsequently placed by the poet
into his volume of verse poetry, the Deman edition of the
iPoésies (1899), prepared by him; and it appears in the

IPléiade edition (OC p. 53) also at the place which

Blallarmé had assigned it in Poésies. One of the most

famous of Mallarméan sonnets, it has been thoroughly
emxplicated many times, sometimes with more or less brief

references to its original context. Some of these analy-

ses of "La Chevelure vol d'une flamme" are as follows:
Cflaarles Chadwick, Mallarmé sa Pensée dans sa Poésie (Paris:
Corti, 1962), pp. 101-102; Chassé, Les Clefs, who has a

Whole chapter on “Les Poémes sur la Chevelure," pp. 190-

 

2130; Cohn, Toward the Poems, pp. 147-152; Davies, Le Drame,

231

pp. 165-191; Fowlie, Mallarmé, pp. 39—42; Noulet,

L'Oeuvre, pp. 194-200; Richard, L'Univers, pp. 347-349;

 

Thibaudet, La Poésie, p. 196; Wais, Mallarmé, pp. 589—
599. In view of this profusiOn of easily available

analyses, I will refrain from offering mine.

This smiling and gentle self—irony, whether intended or
not in this particular case, is frequent, especially in

the poet's late work.

I would not go quite so far as Thibaudet, La Poésie, p.
70, who identifies the soldier boy, who wants to touch
the vision, i.e., the poetry, with "la critique," though
his suggestion is far more precise than mine:
Et le malentendu entre Mallarme et la criti ue
n'est-il pas ici symbolise? Le public en general,
la critique en particulier, tiennent a pouvoir
toucher 1e mollet de la Muse. C'est meme cela sou-
vent que l'on entend par ce mot: comprendre.
Sentir les strophes du Lac effleurer comme des rames
une eau musicale n'est rien, si l'on n'a resolu de
palpitants problemes sur Madame Charles, et degourdi,
comme les gants blancs du bleu, des doigts taches
d'encre a l'estimation de sa jarretiere.
Zrt is true, however, that every single critic who has had
aanything to say about "La Declaration Foraine" in particu-
llar, has at the same time felt called upon to discuss
Diallarmé and Mery Laurent; this is also true for most of
tflae analyses of "La Chevelure vol d'une flamme." So,
perhaps, one could see the little soldier as a symbol for

"loiographical criticism."

1LT _u. 1 ' I . ‘

 

232

12 Richard, L'Univers, p. 346, also arrives at the idea that
the fgglg_finally reflects the poet, as had formerly the
mirror, but his associations are rather psycho-erotic than
philosophical, as are mine. He, for example, makes no
association with Igitur in this connection, but rather
with the gauge, but he concludes similarly:

Le meme besoin qui 1' amenait a se faire le poete

du miroir, le pousse donc maintenant a rechercher

l' épreuve d' un "éclat multiple." ... Privée d' attes—
tation divine, la pensée tendra, et surout a partir
des années 1880—1885, a trouver une consecration dans
1' appui de cette nouvelle "divinité éparse,“ la foule.

13 Block, Symbolist Drama, pp. 78-79:

Though intimate, Mallarmé's poetic recitation was
envisaged as a public ceremony and a means of reveal—
ing spiritual truths to the masses. This aspiration
seems to go back at least as far as Mallarmé' s
participation in the Theatre de Valvins: "Un de ses
voeux," reports Paul Margueritte, "était que le
poete, en des salles immenses, devant des foules
attentives, prononcat les phrases lapidaires de

l' enseignement esthétique, d' on tout decoulait.
Seul, le poete sachant, affirmait- il, révéler la
beauté, source de vertu parfaite, aux masses.’

CHAPTER XI
LE NENUPHAR BLANC

This is by far the best known of Mallarmé's prose
poems; both composed and published for the first time in

it remained practically unchanged in its successive

1885,
publications:L One of the poem's great attractions lies,
undoubtedly, in the beauty of its perfect marriage of

thought and expression, so that, though of the "late style, "

its difficulties and obscurity seem to dissolve smoothly as
we enter the gentle flow of its Opening passages.
The title} which introduces the major symbolic image

at the same time discloses both its setting of

that of

of the piece.

a water world, and one of its principal themes.

absence, symbolized, as so often in Mallarmé, by the color

of his predilection, the white of pure negation or nonexist-

ence. And though of a flower, this whiteness is of one not

rootediin the earth, but a floating, shimmering blossom.

Which appears like matter refined and sublimated into pure

form, the ideal, by nature herself. This pure white absence

is reminiscent, as always with this poet. of the virgin page

Prior to the birth of poetry.2

233

 

 

llf.ilvjlfiinaq

234

The poem's narrative tells of a summer day, which the

poet-persona spends traveling in his little boat on the

Having lost himself in his rowing, he realizes, as

that he

Seine.

the boat comes to a sudden stop in a clump of reeds,

has run aground near the property of a friend's friend, a

lady to whom he was supposed to introduce himself. But in-

stead of meeting her, he avoids the real encounter in order

to create the poetic image of the idealized woman, the heroine

of "Le Nénuphar Blanc."
And while the first word of the poem introduces a first—

person narrator, this opening sentence, at the same time,

suggests a former gradual sinking away of his consciousness,

with the verb reaching back to an anterior past, between

which and the present moment, in his consciousness, there was

only absence. For, from the absence of his mind, with his

eyes unseeing and, like an embryo's, turned inward "sur

1 ' entier oubli" of his journey, the narrator is coming back

into the existence of his consciousness. He had lost himself

in a rhythm, the rowing motion of his body and the gliding

Of his boat, "un grand geste net assoupi, " on the water, from

which, as from a Lethean oblivion, his awareness now emerges—-

and into which it had seemingly disappeared-—to be born

gently into time, that of a mid-sununer day. "Comme le rire
de 1' heure coulait alentour" not merely describes this har-
mony of the One, consciousness of time, with the All, time

floVuing into space, but with its gentle vowels and softly

235

alliterating r's and 1's renders the blissful, liquid,

fluid, flowing of this water environment, which smoothly
carries the drowsy dreamer. This instrumentation continues
throughout the paragraph, with "fr61é, fila" and "yole" sug-
gesting the continuity of the boat's gliding and the flowing
of the water, while "l'étincellement stable d'initiales"
onomatopoetically evokes its breaking up into sparkling,
glittering globules, the transparent fragments of space and
time in suspense.

The rower had been so unaware of his rowing, sharing
the summer morning's apparent immobility and idleness, "tant
d'immobilité paressait,"3 its absence both of movement and
activity, that he had not noticed the boat's slipping gently
to a stop in a "bruit inerte"--"inerte" etymologically sug-
gesting absence, again, of activity—-which it made coming to
a halt in a clump of reeds. And he did not fully realize
that he had actually ceased to move along with the river until
his eyes fell on the sparkling oars, which he had pulled in.
again, without being aware of it. But this bright and in-
sistent scintillation awakens the dreamer to his identity in
the world. And this birth into existence is vaguely remin-
iscent of the Opening of the preceding poem and its narrator's
awakening from "le Silence!" into the outer world; but while
it was harsh and shocking there, forcing the poet out of his
solitude, it is gentle here, for he remains alone.

The occasion of his return, the "initiales sur les

avirons," is richly symbolic, for "avirons," from virer, a

236

verb very important later on in the poem, reminds us that
this drifting boat—-in its drifting perhaps a symbol of the
mind's subconscious wanderings--is not wind-driven, like a
yawl, for example, but to be directed by the rower alone
who, once awakened, will not leave its course to chance.
For, though the little boat had floated almost into a chance
encounter, symbolized by its getting caught in the reeds--
which at the same time paradoxically mark the rower's in-
tended destination--its pilot wakes up in time still to
direct it. And the wet “initials," glittering in the sun,
by their etymology, in ire, indicate the hero's entering the
mysterious territory of his adventure, not without, at the
same time, constituting a veiled erotic allusion.

”Qu'arrivait-il, oh étais-je?" he tries to orient him-
self on the threshold between inner and outer worlds, with
"arrivait" etymologically again alluding to the nautical
venture.

In order to "see clearly" now, which by contrast recalls
his "yeux au—dedans fixés" before, the narrator has to cross
that gap of absence, and reach back, to his "départ tat,"
"tat" from tostus, "... brulé, par assimilation de la
rapidité de la flamme," leading directly into "ce juillet de
flamme," an impression of the moment's atmosphere, which, not
only by its image, but both phonetically and also by the
visual arrangement of the letters, suggests light quivering

in heat vibrations. “L'intervalle vif," the water flowing

 

4.....- ifiiv v. 'ai. ..

237

among its vegetation, reinforces that moment, for "vif"
refers not only to the water's flow, but also to the sun-
light's play on its surface, and the triple alliteration of
the v's, "l'intervalle vif ... végétations," conveys an
agitation of flickering light, with the plants' secret
energy, vegetatio, hidden under their sun-drenched sleep.
The traditional early departure for "l'aventure,"
with its rich associations, suggests the chivalric quest
voyage, underlined with "en gugtg de floraisons d'eau."
The water flowers indicate, again, that this quest is nauti—
cal, and so the traditional forest of the quest voyage
transforms itself, accordingly, "en fluvial bosquet," both
literally and magically a "water forest." At the same time,
the water flowers point to that other aim, "reconnaitre
l'emplacement occupé par la propriété de l'amie d'une amie,
a qui je devais improviser un bonjour," and also back to the
title. The chivalric note comes out in the originally
military "reconnaitre," reinforced with "l'emplacement
occupé," and this vocabulary of conquest has the erotic
undertones of not only the subconscious voyage, but appro-
priate to the courtly love theme, developed in this poem as
it was in the preceding one. Not only is "amie" also a term
of fig gmggg, but the distance implied with "l'amie d'une
amie" fits the world of ging§_as beautifully as the identifi-
cation of a courted lady by her property, which constituted,

in fact, a medieval lady's worldly identity.

238

As in his absence of mind the narrator had seemingly
become part of the "distrait ruisseau" on and by which he
was driven along, his oarstrokes, too, had merged with sur—
rounding nature's fundamental rhythms, "chasing" the boat
along the lawns-—or, impressionistically, the landscapes
along the boat—-inevitably and without stOpping before any,
the oars breaking their meaningless, because unseen, mirror
reflections with the regularity and impassibility of day
following day, season upon season, and year upon year. And
this, "le meme impartial coup de rame," recalls the gaslight
of "Un Spectacle Interrompu,” humming relentlessly "avec
l'impartialité d'une chose élémentaire."

But then the boat had run aground, and "je venais
échouer" vaguely suggests the "naufrage" ever haunting the
poetic sea voyage from "Brise Marine" to the "Coup de dés,"
while the obstacle hidden in the water, "quelque touffe de
roseaux,” is doubly the journey's "terme mystérieux." For
as the narrator on the literal level reaches the limits of
the sought-after ”prepriété de l'amie d'une amie," on a more
obscure and hidden level of consciousness "touffe de roseaux"
is associated with a Faun's erotic dreams--of having ”divisé
la touffe échevelée" of forest and water-dwelling nymphs
espied in their "sommeils touffus," with his dreams' desires
perpetuated, "ici les creux roseaux domptés/Par le talent,"
in a melody. Mysterious obstacles, moreover, characterize

the traditional chivalric quest through the magic forest.

239

The river, both symbol and vehicle of the journey,
becomes, at the destination, a proudly displayed pond, its
"nonchaloir" underlining the stagnant water etymologically
implied by "étang," which, while pointing to the end of
the voyage, connotes, however, no dullness, for its ripples
suggest the virtuality "des hésitations a partir qu'a une
source." And the pond's virtuality, its promise of poten-
tiality and unrealized possibilities, throws its charm over
the whole adventure. "Source,” echoing "ma course" above,
evokes the notion of first origins associated with water,4
and modulated in the birth motif--of the hero's conscious-
ness--in the opening passages of the poem.

And now the narrator discovers that the obstacle of
greenery on the water "masquait l'arche unique d'un pont";
bridges suddenly discovered in the forest being a traditional
quest obstacle, whose mystery-—where do they lead, are they
to be crossed--the hero must solve.5 Ours reveals itself
as part of the unknown lady's estate, toward which the hero
had drifted unconsciously. Significantly, however, he does
not arrive at either entrance of the bridge, but at right
angles to it, seeing the curve of its single arch spanning
the water, its extension on the ground hidden, "prolonge, a
terre, d'ici et de la, par une haie claturant des pelouses."
The little bridge's balanced symmetry is rendered with "d'ici
et de la," with its two short syllables to either side of

their conjunction .

240

This passage at the same time displays a significant
image cluster, dominating the whole poem, namely the imagery
of enclosure, introduced already with the boat, and then

the pond, now reinforced with "une haie clfiturant,‘ whose
insistence is almost redundant, since a hedge is by defini-
tion a cloture protecting or limiting a territory. This
imagery will become more and more prominent, culminating
finally in the swan's egg--whose shell will remain unbroken--
and the closed "nénuphar" itself. The unknown one's park
surrounding her is, again, by definition, an enclosure, and,
at the same time stresses the imposition of the artificial
upon the natural, already vaguely suggested above with "le
ruban d'aucune herbe" and "pelouses."

Now moving from the description of the scene, the outer
world, to the reflections aroused by it, the inner world,
and which permit the narrator to cross those enclosures,
the very sentence reflects a tension of "inside" and "outside,"
of the apparent and of the hidden. For, while having a
certain tone of banality and triteness about it, ”un joli
voisinage, pendant la saison," and approaching the woman in
the most distant and indirect manner, "1a nature d'une per—
sonne qui ... ne pouvant etre que conforme a mon gout," it,
at the same time, suggests the closest intimacy. For the
narrator is, in fact, entering her chosen "retraite aussi

humidement impénétrable" revealing her innermost privacy to

an unseen beholder.6 The erotic suggestiveness of the

 

all

 

 

 

241

sentence strongly surges through the surface of its apparent
nonchalance, reminiscent of those ripples on the pond. And

it is this intense eroticism, not only veiled by politesse

of language and attitude, but sublimated into the spirituality
of aesthetics, which constitutes the tension of this poem,
culminating finally in the "rapt de mon idéale fleur."

The woman alone with her mirror, "elle avait fait de ce
cristal son miroir intérieur," evokes Hérodiade before hers,
solitary also and separated from the world by ”l'eau morne"--
and of whom a glance had cost the beholder's life--while
"l'indiscrétion éclatante des apres-midi" recalls the Faun,
already evoked above. And not only has the natural river
become part here of an artificial park, but the pond and
"la buée d'argent glacant des saules" have become part of
their owner, the willows' silvery mist the approaching lady's
"limpid glance," and the water surface her "miroir intérieur."
This is both a private pond, enclosed by bushes and trees,
and at the same time the reflection of its solitary beholder's
psyche, thus doubly enclosed, doubly "intérieur." "Glacant,"
as well as "cristal,” which etymologically suggest cold and
ice, intimate an absence or refusal of passion, Hérodiade's
virginity. The narrator, thus, did, indeed, evoke her
"lustrale," which, in suggesting the purification of baptismal
waters, vaguely recalls the birth motif, while also pointing

to woman's sublimation in the poem.

242

The following paragraph leads back to the narrator's
external attitude, that posture of one leaning forward to
see without wanting to be seen, in which curiosity held him,
and which foreshadows the narrator's stance in the opening
of "L"Ecclésiastique." But then the poet extends that image
beautifully, for he is "courbé ... comme sous le silence
spacieux de ce que s'annoncat l'étrangere," bent as if under
"spacious silence," that is pure absence, which is, however,
pregnant with expectancy. And then he smilingly associates
this submissive-looking pose with the potential enslavement
imposed by "une possibilité féminine," which under an appar-
ently distant tone hides, again, suggestions of intimacy,
while both the notions of "esclavage" and distance befit the
courtly motif. Now, haunted by his "démon," the poet creates
another of those sparkling and surprising analogies, in com—
paring the potential bondage to the lady who inspires him,
and who thus becomes part of the courtly poet, to the straps
attaching the rower's feet to his boat, instrument of his
mysterious journey-—the boat which had drifted, into the
enchanted garden. But since in this universe the poetic
quest is repeatedly rendered as a sea voyage, the poet's
magic instrument, which at the same time casts its spells on
him, is his poetry.

But then a barely audible noise--and in this magic world
noise is softened and diminished into an almost silence as

‘with the initial "bruit inerte"--makes the musing hero wonder

243

whether the lady, again distantly and manneristically desig-
nated "l'habitante du bord," is approaching. Is she merely

haunting his mind, "mon loisir,’ or really coming to the
water's edge, "inespérément?" The sentence indicates not
only a fusion, almost a confusion, of inner and outer worlds,
but implies a preference for that of the imagination, for

"inespérément,' while literally meaning "unexpectedly," at
the same time suggests the narrator's hOpe that the lady may
not come.

And before the narrator continues his mental divagations,
he seems to pause, pose a question, then pause again, and
we notice, how almost every sentence now, some long, some
short, becomes a separate paragraph. This typographical
arrangement, so significant in the poem, is much more obvious
in the original Divagations, where the spaces between para-
graphs are wider. The poet here literally utilizes empty
space--absence—-poetically, the spacing between the sentences
suggesting the pauses between the narrator's thoughts, so
that the white of the paper itself makes the "Nénuphar" poem
even whiter.7

But why did the walking stOp?

It stOpped in time--as had the hero's boat--for the
foot, gracefully displayed in "La Declaration Foraine" in its
silken shoe, has a more subtle and elusive power if unre-
vealed. It is the rhythm of the imaginary feet, "qui vont,

viennent, conduisent,” 'which charms and leads the dreamer's

244

mind where the lady, who has become the absence of a mere
shadow, wishes. And as she is enclosed in the misty ele—
gance of batiste and lace, reminiscent of LA DERNIERE MODE,
so are these unseen feet--"circonvenir" stressing at once
the notions of enclosure and approach—-by the skirt flowing
on the ground, "affluant" in harmony with the water ambiance
as is "dans une flottaison,"8 echoing "floraisons d'eau"
above. The elegant woman's walk appears like a rhythmically
moving ship,9 or like the floating white waterlily itself,
which, though the steps' "initiative" vaguely intimates com-

mencements of adventure reinforced with "s'ouvre,' we know
will remain closed. The concluding analogy merely suggested
here is that of a gliding ship's prow throwing a misty train
of foam behind its path with the flowing white lace folds
thrown back "en traine" by the walking feet, "double fleche
savante," the veiled allusion to Cupid stressing their erotic
attraction.

And, again, a pause, and then a question, "Connait-elle
un motif a sa station la promeneuse?" But the intricate
style, again here, expresses so much more, as for example
that tension suggested by the juxtaposition of “motif" and
"station," where the notions of movement and its absence are
played against each other, as later in the sentence "mentale
somnolence" and "lucidite"; or the tone of "la promeneuse,"
which continues a modulation begun with ”l'amie d'une amie,"

"l'inconnue,' "l'étrangere," "l'habitante du bord," and

245

"la chere ombre," and which leads up to and prepares for
"la Meditative ou la Hautaine, la Farouche, la Gaie."10

To find out why she stOpped walking would be to destroy the
mystery by questioning, which, in the tradition of romance,
breaks the magic spell. The narrator's raising his head
beyond the reeds which hide him would expose him and, at
the same time, bring him out of the magical drowsiness which
permeates the poem and--as the reeds hide his dead-—hides
his lucidity. But the "trOp haut la tete" further suggests
the punishment of decapitation for having beheld the for—
bidden, again linking the Nénuphar lady to Hérodiade.

While not approaching, nor even looking at, the real
one, the poet-persona——for the narrator more and more, if but
indirectly, reveals himself a poet-—addresses the lady in and
of his imagination, with the courtly, general and distant
"Madame," warning her that the revelation of her face would
break the charm. "Précision" contrasts with the great vague—
ness of "chose installée ici par le bruissement d'une venue,"
designating his own arrival. And on one level, "ce charme
instinctif d'en dessous" points, etymologically, to carmen,
"d'en dessous" intimating a hidden melody and, at the same
time, the poet's hiding in the reeds, potential instruments
of his modulation, while "instinctif" refers back to that
absence of lucidity designated above "mentale somnolence,"
all of which imagery is highly reminiscent of "L'Aprés-

midi d'un Faune," as is, most of all, "la plus authentiquement

246

nouée, avec une boucle en diamant, des ceintures." And the
allusion to the chastity belt--an enclosure somewhat ironical—
ly "authentiquement nouée"--with that other level of meaning
of the sentence, namely the notion of charms vainly defended
against an explorer, which reintroduces the martial love lan—
guage, directly recalls the Faun's dream of the nymphs:

Moi, de ma rumeur fier, je vais parler longtemps

Des deesses; et par d'idolatres peintures,

A leur ombre enlever encore des ceintures
But while he had, before that point, rejected art, "Tache
donc, instrument des fuites, o maligne/Syrinx, de refleurir

aux lacs ou tu m'attendsl, our whole poem constitutes
desire's sublimation and its moduIation on those reed pipes.
The buckle "en diamant," symbol of a hard purity become use—
less-~for what can defend woman against the poet's dreams?-—
suggests its melting,11 and recalls remotely the "separating
of cold jewels" upon Hérodiade's nubility.

Again the poet warns the real woman not to approach
and lean her face "sur le furtif seuil ou je regne." his
secret and literally "stolen" domain, where she (her particu-
lar features) would trouble his emotion, which is an aesthe-
tic one. For that artistic transposition into "1e délice

empreint de généralité,‘ which not only permits but demands
the exclusion of the particular, and which transformed the
companion of "La Déclaration Foraine" into "toute femme,"

in a somewhat Hegelian dialectic, elevates the mere sugges-

tion of a lady in her park, negating her by her absence,

into the synthesis of the ideal, the Pure Notion:

247

A quoi bon la merveille de transposer un fait de nature
en sa presque disparition vibratoire selon le jeu de la
parole, cependant, si ce n'est pour qu'en emane, sans
le gene d'un proche ou concret rappel, la notion pure

(OC p. 857)?

And so the poet will not introduce himself to the lady, with
the excuse of chance justifying his "tenue de maradeur
aquatique"; for in refusing the encounter he has conquered
chance, avoiding the contingent doubly, the unforeseen and
what it implies etymologically, tangere. At the same time
the ironic designation of his costume alludes again to the
everywhere suggested goal of this nautical quest: the abduc—
tion of the nymphs.

In "séparés, on est ensemble," no longer addressing the
woman but beginning the internal monologue which makes up
the remainder of the poem, we recognize the young narrator of
"La Pipe," who, happier with his friends' letters than with
their presence, tasted those friendships' charm in distance
more than in nearness, a trait we found reflected in the
poet's correspondence of those years already. The short
phrase, again, has that tension created by the juxtaposition
of opposites, "séparés ... ensemble,” and the impersonal
pronoun stresses the notion of distance, which is then, how—
ever, immediately juxtaposed with the suggestion of the
greatest intimacy, "je m'immisce a de sa confuse intimité,"
not so much with the noun "intimité" itself as with the verb.
‘whichbrings out also the notion of resistance, "se meler

de quelque chose sans en avoir l'autorisation, a phrase

‘which recalls the opening line of a love sonnet almost

248

contemporary with our prose poem, "M'Introduire dans ton
histoire."12

"Ce suspens sur l'eau ou mon songe attarde l'indécise,"
recalls the above "le silence spacieux de ce que s'annoncait
l'étrangere," for both denote empty moments of absence, pure

space "sur l'eau,' which is, at the same time, pregnant with
virtuality, indicated here with "suspens." The moment's un-
certainty hovers over the water like the lady's hesitation,

a state of suspense in which the poet's musing keeps and
delays the undecided one who is, thus, under his spell. And
just as the "ceinture avec une boucle en dismant" cannot
defend the woman against the poet's dreams, so here those
dreams authorize more intimacy than any real visits, "Visite"
here also playing with its etymological origin, videre. And
the happy absence of "discours oiseux," which reflects
Mallarme's distrust of "la parole,”13 befits the silence of
this privileged world, where the "intuitif accord" of the
conversation held "pour n'étre pas entendu" recalls the
unheard harmonies of Saint Cecilia, "Musicienne du silence."
The poet is still "courbé ... sous le silence spacieux," and
his ear now "vers le sable entier qui s'est tu," might sug-
gest the stOpping of the sand in an hourglass, that is, not
only complete silence, but time even "standing still" for the
privileged moment.

"La pause se mesure au temps de ma determination" of

which a variant read "sa determination," the change suggesting

 

249

the poet—persona's control of the moment, might, at the same
time, with "temps" mark the end of the privileged moment, as
we are also gradually approaching the end of the poem; for
"que faire?" reintroduces preoccupation, concern with the
here and now, while the moment was marked not by "doing,"
but pure ”being," that §§£§_which always borders on the neant,
"Résumer" marks the beginning of the poem's conclusion,
where its tensions, though not resolved, are brought into the
consonance of one symbolic image, while on the narrative
level the persona has resolved his question: a last glance

at "la vierge absence éparse en cette solitude, a virgin ab—
sence which is ideal presence, he decides to leave as secretly
as he had arrived by chance, taking along as a souvenir of
this unrealized experience "l'un de ces magiques nénuphars
clos," both a symbol of its indealization, and a figure for
our poem itself, "Le Nénuphar Blanc." The poem, like the
blossom, is closed, enfolding "a nothing, made of dreams,"
recalling Mallarmé's life-long preoccupation with the trans-
mutation of nothingness into poetry, and which, for him, at
the same time constitutes the essence of fiction.14 The
water-lily's "creuse blancheur" is reminiscent of the man-
dola's "creux néant musicien," virgin wombs both, empty and
yet paradoxically pregnant with the possibility of birth, of
poetry and, therefore, the poet.

.He will row away quietly, careful not to "briser

l'illusion," like the calm water surface by the strokes of

gill-It. I~il :..-pa

250

his oars, lest the foamy trail Of his departure, reminiscent
Of "les plis rejetés en traine" by the lady's walk, might
after all reveal his secret presence to her, "aux pieds
survenus" again distantly précieux while at the same time
once more evocative Of the charm Of those hidden feet cele—
brated above. In the comparison Of "la bulle visible de
l'écume enroulée" with the "rapt de mon idéale fleur," where
the juxtaposition Of "rapt" and "idéale fleur" culminates,
as I said, the poem's tension Of the erotic and its sublima-
tion, "bulle" and "nénuphar" are likened as fragile enclosures
Of nothingness, while "écume" vaguely suggests the agitation
Of passion.

Should "she," however, have come to the shore, it is now
tOO late for him to ever know her features, which are, there-
fore, ”indicible," and which may be those Of a Meditative,

a Haughty, a Wild or Cruel, or a Gay lady, sheer possibilities
Of which not any one-—because merely virtual and thus not
real--excludes any Of the other, and which wealth Of un-
realized possibilities constitutes precisely "le délice
empreint de généralité qui permet et ordonne d'exclure tous

visages. "Car j'accomplis selon les regles la manoeuvre”
emphasizes control, on the narrative level that Of the boat
by the rower, which at the same time suggests the artistic

control Of the poem, whose form is that Of a spiral. It is

circular in that the persona now departs exactly from where he

had arrived for "l'aventure," but just as in the Opening the

251

chance nature Of that arrival was elaborately modulated, so
in the poem's closing the notion of purpose is stressed,

that is "a higher level." For to maneuver literally means
"to guide with adroitness and design," which is then rein-
forced with "selon les regles," the whole phrase recalling
"la manoeuvre avec l'age oubliée" Of the "Coup de dés," where
the loss Of control is shipwreck, that "naufrage" which was
so vaguely suggested, as we saw, in our poem's beginning

with "je venais échouer."

The "me dégageai, virai," with "virai“ already fore-
shadowed when the sight Of his "avirons" woke the narrator
from his drowsiness and its chance wanderings, shows him on
the narrative level finally freeing his boat from the reeds
and turning it around. But "me dégageai" at the same time
again suggests the artistic refusal Of "engagement" in a life
which is sacrificed in order to become the matter Of art,
thus Once more pointing to the theme Of our poem: the trans-
position Of reality into ideality. This is also the theme
of the sonnet chosen by Mallarmé to close his collection Of
verse poetry, a poem written two years after ours, "Mes
bouquins refermés sur le nom de Paphos," where the poet re-
nounces the "real" for the "ideal" fruits, not without evoking,
however, as he has in the "Nénuphar," all their savor:

Ma faim qui d' aucune fruits ici ne se régale
Trouve en leur docte manque une saveur égale:

Qu' un éclate de chair humain et parfumant!

Le pied sur quelque guivre ou notre amour tisonne

Je pense plus longtemps peut- -etre éperdument
A l' autre, au sein brulé d' une antique amazone.

252

But even "Le Nénuphar Blanc," Mallarme's "whitest" poem, as
it were--any poem for that matter-—involves, or engages, the
poet in the contingent, namely that of language itself, where
he continues, in creating the intricate structures Of his
style, to combat chance. For its total abolishment, true
absence and purity, would--as in our poem suggested with the
image of the bubble--not be any poem, but the empty page Of
the poet's silence:

... le hasard vaincu mot par mot, indéfectiblement le

blanc revient, tout a l'heure gratuit, certain main—

tenant, pour conclure que rien au-dela et authentiquer
le silence—-(OC p. 387).

And the "noble swan's egg from which flight will never spring”
is the symbol Of that absolute silence, for from this white
virtuality the singer-poet would never be born, as his song——
"le vol," Mallarme's constant symbol for poetic gnygl—-would
never break the fragile shell, "qui ne se gonfle d'autre
chose sinon de la vacance de soi." Exquisite absence and
emptiness Of self, from which the dreamer had awakened into

a summer morning, and which the imaginary and ideal woman-—
"toute dame" recalling "toute femme" Of the preceding poem--
likes to pursue in those privileged intervals, those absences,
Of life, "dans les allées de son parc, arrétée parfois et
longtemps, comme au bord d'une source a franchir ou de quel-
que piece d'eau." This is a gentle fading away into distance
of this world which we leave silently with the poet, in a

sentence where some Of its loveliness, like the park, the

moment of rest, the spring, and finally the water itself, are

 

Ell-’15., N: ».rP.I' I.“

253

echoed once more softly like the waves on the disappearing

pond.

254

LE NENUPHAR BLANC

NOTES

1

The principal variant is the orthographic one Of the title
which was originally "Nénufar," which applies, Of course,
also to that word's appearance in the body Of the poem.
Both spellings are lexical, but the final one is more com-
mon, while the first points to the word's arabic origin,
"ninfifar." Proust, by the way, in the famous Nymphéa pas—
sage Of Combray, also uses the "nénufar" spelling. The
other variants from the poem's publication in gages, such

as the omission Of commas and conjunctions, are minor.

This Obsession with the white page manifests itself both
in the verse poetry, as in the early "Brise Marine," where
we find: "... le vide papier que la blancheur défend,"
and in the prose; for example, in an issue Of LA DERNIERE
MODE, where, mentioning the color in the description Of an
interior, the poet editor says: "Blanc comme une feuille

de papier sans poeme ..." (OC p. 770).

"Le Nénuphar Blanc" reflects Mallarme's summers at his
vacation retreat, Valvins, which will also serve as the
setting Of "Conflit." His love for the Seine, which he
enjoyed at Valvins with his little boat, "idling away"
time, without losing it, is expressed in his famous
"biographical letter" to Verlaine, Correspondance II,

p. 304:

‘il

255

J'honore la riviere, qui laisse s'engouffrer dans
son eau des journées entieres sans qu'on ait
l'impression de les avoir perdues, ni une ombre de
remords. Simple promeneur en yoles d'acajou, mais
voilier avec furie, tres—fier de sa flotille.

4 Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane (New York:
Harcourt, Brace and World, 1959), p. 130, in his chapter
on "Structure Of Aquatic Symbolism" says:

The waters symbolize the universal sum of virtuali—
ties; they are fons et origo, "spring and origin,"
the reservoir Of all the possibilities Of existence:
they precede every form and support every creation.
... immersion in water signifies regression to the
preformal, reincorporation into the undifferentiated
mode Of pre-existence.

And these associations are clearly suggested by the water

ambiance Of "Le Nénuphar Blanc."

5 One Of the best—known examples that comes to mind is
Lancelot's arrival on the "Pont de l'Epée" in Le Chevalier

a la Charette.

6 Richard, L'Univers, in his chapter, "Les Réveries Amour-
euses," devotes many pages to "le regard," but, as
frequently, unduly isolates the motif from its context.
He generalizes, as follows, on p. 95:

... l'amant pourra user d'un instrument fort efficace:
son regard. Qu'est—ce en effet que celui-ci, sinon
une transparence intime, capable de traverser, sans
la toucher ni la briser, la transparence d'un dehors?
11 se jette au dela, mais i1 n'entame rien: merveil-
leuse arme d'hyperbole, outil dangereux d'indiscretion
... Rien de plus monotone, en un sens, que la drama-
turgie mallarméenne du désir: parfaitement illustra-
trice de l'attitude érotique baptisée par d'aucuns
"complexe d'Actéon," elle reproduit ca et la, avec
assez de variantes, le meme geste essentiel, celui du
vol Oculaire.

10

256

Mallarmé expresses his utilization Of the silence Of the
white paper in one of his "Réponses a des Enquétes,"
talking about Poe:

L'armature intellectuelle du poeme se dissimule et
tient-—a lieu—-dans l'espace qui isole les strophes
et parmi le blanc du papier: significantif silence
qu'il n'est pas moins beau de composer, que les vers
(OC p. 872).

"Dans une flottaison" literally refers tO a ship's water-
line, "terme de marine, plan qui divise 1a partie du
vaisseau qui est dans l'eau, de celle qui est hors de

l'eau, ligne de flottaison."

"Le Beau Navire,‘ Baudelaire, Fleurs, pp. 57—58, comes, Of

course, to mind, and especially its second (which is also
the seventh) stanza:

Quand tu vas balayant l'air de ta jupe large,

Tu fais l'effet d'un beau vaisseau qui prend le large,
Chargé de toile, et va roulant

Suivant un rythme doux, et paresseux, et lent.

Thibaudet, La Poésie, p. 328, charmed with this particular
sentence, finds in it even this further suggestion:

On suit avec un plaisir curieux, chez Mallarmé, 1a
virtuosité des coupes syntaxiques. Dans le Nénuphar
Blanc, arretant sa barque sur la rive d'un parc, un
bruit le fait douter si l'habitante du bord ne
s'approche pas de l'eau: "Connait-elle un motif a

sa station, elle-meme la promeneuse." Les trois
membres de la phrase, dont les deux virgules marquent
les articulations, se présentent dans l'ordre inverse
de l'usage fran ais qui exigerait "La promeneuse
elle-meme connait-elle un motif a sa station?" 3-2—l
remplace 1-2-3. Ne dirait-on pas que cet ordre inverse
des trois membres, comme la tete, le buste et les
jambes se mireraient reverbérés sous l'eau, suspend
la vision du rameur?

ll

13

257

Elsewhere in Mallarmé's poetry, the melting Of the diamond
is a symbol for orgasm, as in "Sonnet," almost contemporary
with the "Nénuphar":

Dame

sans trOp d'ardeur a la fois enflammant
La rose qui cruelle ou déchirée et lasse
Meme du blanc habit de pourpre le délace
Pour ouir dans sa chair pleurer le diamant

Cohn, who in Toward the Poems, pp. 223—28, analyzes the
sonnet, points to its kinship with not only other verse
poems, but also with our prose poem:

One Of his finest prose poems, Le Nénuphar Blanc,
tells Of the possible contact with a flower-lady, an
absente de tous bouquets, whose pure unglimpsed barely—
guessed-at presence exhales an almost maddening
beauty. Rowing meditatively in his little boat, On
the Seine near Valvins, he pulls into some inlet or
little stream tributary tO the river and arrives inad-
vertantly, at the edge Of the property Of a neighbor
he has never met. He hears soft footsteps behind
foliage, but he cannot decide to make a move to meet
the lady in the flesh. At last he prefers to shove
Off and row away with his dream Of her intact. The
whole prose poem is alive with this presence—absence
Of a woman, unsure between an airy lightness Of sub-
limation and fierce eroticism: ... Note, in passing,
that the "pelouses-parc" Of the prose poem is close
kin to the gazon Of the sonnet, as we shall see; the
histoire Of the sonnet is exactly equivalent to the
meditative isolation, the intimité Of the lady he
imagines in the Nénuphar.

 

The futility of "la parole" is most clearly confirmed and
demonstrated in our last prose poem, "Conflit," and in the

related essay, "Confrontation,' expressed thus: "... 1e
meilleur qui se passe entre deux gens, toujours, leur

échappe, en tant qu'interlocuteurs" (OC p. 411).

‘1’}

 

 

 

 

258

14 We recall that the metaphysical crisis Of the poet's youth,
which, in a sense, created the oeuvre, resulted in this

basic and unvarying tenet: "1e Rien qui est la vérité."

11:1. .IK )IiJlquI-III'
. e

CHAPTER XII
L ' ECCLES IASTIQUE

This prose poem, published for the first time in 1886,
has only one variant, namely that Of the title, which in one
Of its subsequent publications was "Actualité. Printemps au
BOis de Boulogne." And though this heading was used only
once in its five different publications, it helps us in the
reading Of this curious piece. For in suggesting "actualités,
nouvelles du moment dans la presse," it identifies "L'Ecclési—
astique" as reportage Of an anecdote "comme elle frappa mon
regard de poete," while, at the same time, with "actualité,
caractere de ce qui est actuel, relatif aux choses qui interes-
sent l'époque actuelle," pointing to that “modernité” under-
lined in its conclusion. However, it is not only this variant
title which, in recalling the definition Of the prose poem
developed in "Un Spectacle Interrompu," points to that other
piece, but the Opening Of "L'Ecclésiastique" itself reveals a
striking similarity with that Of the other poem, for in both
the poet deplores the absence Of the kind of writing exempli-
fied, in each case, by his own composition.1

The anecdote Of our prose poem relates how he had seen,

while strolling in the BOis de Boulogne on a spring day, an

259

260

ecclesiastic "responding" to the season. And then our nar—
rator stole away unseen to elaborate the strange scene which
he had just witnessed in his imagination.

The definitive title appears to float, somewhat vaguely
over the opening sentence with which, on first glance, it
seems to have no connection, were it not for its suggested
contrast with the very first word Of the poem. For the term
"ecclésiastique" not only evokes, in designating a priest, a
black figure, but by its Greek character at the same time
suggests the great age Of many centuries, While "printemps,"
evocative Of fresh and bright greens, brings with it the
notions Of newness and youth. And the Opening sentence it-
self would sound like a general, factual statement, except
for the touch Of préciosité Of its first word, the plural
"les printemps," and the ggda—like "chez les animaux," which,
ironically, somehow makes one wonder, before reading on,
what that could have tO do with priests. The sentence ending,
then, prepares for the basic Contrast underlying the whole
poem, while its Opening introduces a style which characterizes
the whole piece. In a way, only this style makes it even
possible, by establishing from the outset the very ironic
detachment of the mature poet, which permits him to approach
any subject whatsoever, even this bizarre one Of our prose
poem, Of the secretly Observed priest behaving in rather
unpriestly fashion. "Les printemps" at the same time situates

the piece, the only one Of these prose poems Of which almost

261

every one is placed in one Of the year's seasons, in the
poet's "bad season";2 and more than that, this season plays
so significant a role in "L'Ecclésiastique" that it almost
becomes, as the variant title had suggested, the subject Of
the poem.

As this first sentence makes perfectly clear, "les
printempts" is not the season Of art, but, on the contrary,
Of nature, which is strongly brought out with "poussant
l'organisme a des actes," where "l,Organisme" means any sub-
stance organized by nature, with "pousser" implying its
passive subjection to those natural forces. In this general
evocation Of Physis, that primordial force pulsating through
and animating matter, "actes" suggests a curious contrast
with its inherent contradiction to passivity; but it is pre-
cisely this paradox which renders the "acte" about to be
witnessed so bizarre. At the same time, in view Of the title,
"actes" also recalls its function as an ecclesiastical term,
such as the "acts of the martyrs," or Apostles, so that this
Opening passage already reveals the poem's alternate use Of
vocabulary drawn from the domains Of ”termes de physique" on
the one hand and that Of theOlogy on the other, growing out
Of and at the same time underlining the theme Of the somewhat
mock-heroic defeat Of spirit by matter. .Further, certain
expressions belonging to one Of these two spheres will some—
times suggest the other by the merest hint, as for example

"histoire naturelle," which, while perfectly unequivocal within

262

the context of its sentence, recalls "histoire sainte" in
the wider and mildly burlesque one of the whole poem, which
is, after all, about the acts Of a priest!

On the narrative level, the poet-persona——he will later
identify himself as a poet--who, in the first sentence,
noted the existence Of treatises on strange animal behavior
induced by spring, deplores, in the second one, their absence
as concerns this influence on individuals made for spirituality.
Now that Opening sentence which would have, without that
tagged-on ending which we found so curiously jarring with
the title, referred to both flora and fauna in a general
sense, under its mock-scientific lucidity, by means Of that
brief ending, makes a veiled but unmistakable reference to
the animals' mating season. And the "d'individus faits pour
la spiritualité!" Of the second sentence by its position
exactly parallels the ending Of the preceding one, thus con-
trasting animals and "individuals made for spirituality" with
that added touch Of irony Which distinguishes between them
and "spiritual individuals." At the same time the phrase
juxtaposes a "terme de classification zoologique et botanique"
with one of metaphysics. The smoothly alliterating "plus
plausible” adds to that ironic tone by its etymological associ-
ation Of "worthy Of applause"--not without however also point-
ing to the virtuosity Of the very poem which accomplishes
it—-that collecting Of "certains des altérations qu'apporte

l'instant climatérique dans les allures ...," where

263

"alterations," again etymologically a "terme de physique,"
in "l'usage ordinaire" implies a "changement de bien en mal,"
and further "se dit aussi des dérangements de la santé,"
which befits the use Of medical terminology further on in
the poem. "Climatérique" itself, which in our narrative
context refers to "les printemps," by association suggests
"l'an climatérique, l'époque de la décadence,” thus together
with "alteration" pointing to a deterioration. Littré takes
pains to note that "i1 ne faut pas, comme font quelques-uns,
faire dériver ce mot de climat, ni dire influence climatérique
pour influence de climat," which recalls Mallarmé's diliberate
playing with both correct and incorrect uses Of "foraine" in
that other prose poem. For another "correct" meaning Of the
adjective is "période de la vie humaine qui présente un
caractere dangereux," which will later be picked up with such
terms as "diabolique," and "énergumene," all pointing, with
gentle mockery, to the dangerous abdication Of reason.

i The following sentence links the very general Opening
of the poem to its specific anecdote, by briefly touching upon
spring's effect on the narrator himself, not without first,
however, mentioning the season Of his predilection. "Mal
quitté par l'ironie de l'hiver" expresses the effect which
only now has begun to wane, of its ambiguous influence on the
poet7persona. For, similarly to "l'azur," it can be both
beneficent, as "saison de l'art serein, l'hiver lucide," and

as the season Of the poet's dreams, as in "Frisson d'Hiver,"

264

and also a torture, a cruel season for the poet plagued by
sterility: "Quand du sterile hiver a resplendi l'ennui,"
where it is a "blanche agonie." And it is spring, then,
which frees the poet-persona from this "état équivogue" by
“un naturalisme absolu ou naif, capable de poursuivre une
jouissance dans la differentiation de plusieurs brins d'herbes,"
which hints at a kind of reconciliation with the unloved time
Of the year which, though not inspiring, is, at times at
least, one of "repos." Yet, at the same time, "L'Ecclésir
astique," Mallarme's only "spring-time poem" in the recueil,
constitutes a victory over the enemy season, which even in
"Bucolique,” Of the 1890's, is still called “le vénéneux
printemps" (OC p. 401).

But our sentence really points more to the poet persona's
contact with nature than with spring, and with the "enjoyment
in the differentiation Of several blades Of grass" suggests
the poet's role vis-a-vis nature as that Of a beholder, which
is in sharp contrast, Of course, with the ecclesiastic's
attitude. This relationship with nature, which becomes prO-
gressively more important in the poet's mature work, a pro-
gression, moreover, reflected in these prose poems, prepares
for Mallarme's notion Of Nature as a Spectacle, develOped in
the last two prose poems and elsewhere in the late prose,
where he, the Poet, becomes both a beholder Of, and a partici-
pant in, a rite. And it may be such reflections--not "de

profit a la foule" as long as they are not yet objectified in

265

art-—which draw the poet “sous quelques ombrages environnant
d'hier la ville," that is both into spring and into nature.

The beautiful phrase, which in its préciosité again indi—

cates the poet's inner distance from the outer sylvan setting,
at the same time reflects the general movement Of the prose
poems Out Of the confines Of rooms, houses, and finally the
city itself, into the Open natural setting, the suburbs,
Valvins, the BOis de Boulogne, and the forest Of Fontainebleau.

And sO, in the BOis de Boulogne, in his customary isola-
tion so prOpitious to poetic creation, the poet-persona finds
its unexpected occasion, "un exemple saisissable et frappant,"
the exemplum Of "springtime inspirations" on an individual
made for spirituality. The sylvan mystery, vaguely suggestive
of the celebration Of secret pagan rites, is duly undercut
with "presque banal," while "j'exhiberai" recalls the poet's
role Of montreur.

After this brief but richly suggestive introduction, the
anecdote proper begins with the second paragraph, whose first
sentence introduces its hero. But since this is no longer an
abstract consideration, its style is not that Of logic, but a
highly impressionistic rendition of the narrator's encounter
‘with a phenomenon, where the visual impressions, rendered in
the order of their surprising appearance to the narrator, pre-

3 The first impression is

cede the explanation Of their cause.
simply a "sombre agitation basse," Obscure not only because Of

the priest's black gown, but because the image is at first

266

indistinct through the "mille interstices d'arbustes bons a
ne rien cacher," and further because the beholder does not
understand, at this point, what he is looking at. "Basse"
because whatever it is, it is on the ground, but with the
added suggestion Of "vil, méprisable, honteux," which latter
reinforces that same undertone produced by "cacher." And
"interstices," amusingly is, aside from its literal meaning
on the narrative level, again both a "terme de physique"

and also a "terme de l'Eglise," as the latter referring to
"the period Of time between the reception Of holy orders,"
which somehow points ahead to the "gambade du séminaire.”

The vague commotion comes gradually into focus, and a three-
cornered hat, now its wearer, down to his silver-buckled
shoes, a priest! appears; and the "battements supérieurs"
ironically refers both literally and figuratively to man's
highest part, his head, that seat Of reason, on the ground
now, like the rest. The silver buckles, recalling those
other symbolic ornaments, the diamond necklace Of the lady

of "La Declaration Foraine," or the diamond-buckled belt Of
the Nénuphar lady, might suggest that though the shoes are
thus fastened, their wearer's feet have literally lost their
ground. And only now is the poem's title at once echoed and
explained: an ecclesiastic,-”a l'écart de témoins" like the
poet, "répondait aux sollicitations du gazon," where he finds,
however, a different kind of enjoyment than that derived from

"la differentiation de plusieurs brins d'herbes."4

‘ll‘ '- ‘l 3‘. I n

 

267

The narrator steals away unobserved, reminiscent of that
motif in the preceding poem, and again not without having
thus secretly come upon the material for a poem. For here,
also, the vision modulated in the larger part of the poem is
not the Observed one, but the one created by the poet-persona.
Thus, far from acting scandalized-—and the parenthesis here
is a purely ironic interjection--or embarrassing the other by
seizing a pebble from the road or merely acknowledging his
presence to him by a smile, he avoids the "real" encounter.
But there is at the same time a suggested one, on the non-
narrative level, in the juxtaposition Of his own "sourire
meme d'intelligence" and the other's "rougeur sur le visage
a deux mains voile,” for, by suggestion, his smile does un-
mask the "pauvre homme" and penetrates those protecting hands
to reveal a blush, whose cause, "son solitaire exercice" has
frankly erotic undertones, later reinforced with that curious
reflection On the priest's gown. Further "la tentation d'un
regard porté en arriere." to which the narrator does not
succumb, has somewhat diabolical connotations, ”tentation"
by definition being a “sollicitation au mal par la suggestion
du diable," preparing for "l'apparition quasi-diabolique."
At the same time, this temptation is not only reminiscent of
"Hérodiade," but of that other biblical story, Of the wife
of Loth and her forbidden backward glance upon the deprava-

tion of the Sodomites who had no wives.

268

The important turning point, however, is the literal
one of the persona, away from the factual scene toward that
of his imagination, "me figurer en esprit l'apparition quasi
diabolique qui continuait a froisser le renouveau de ses
cates, a droite, a gauche et du ventre en Obtenant une chaste
frénésie," where "figurer" means not a passive beholding,
but an active selecting, forming, and creating which trans-
forms an apparition into vision. "Froisser le renouveau"
ingeniously juxtaposes the concrete and the abstract, the
first term, etymologically from frustrum, "mettre en morceaux,"
suggestive Of a frenzy both destructive and productive of
organic life, resumed in "renouveau," time of physical
renewal. The frantic nature Of the grotesque vision is
rendered by the accumulation of "de ses cOtes, a droite, a
gauche," finally culminating with the most unpoetic "ventre."
And in "chaste frénésie" the juxtaposition Of antithetical
elements seems to reach its climax, with the former a moral
and the latter again a physiological-medical term, the one
implying not only a moral quality but the control of reason,
while the latter designates its Opposite, namely the lack of
control and a state Of delirium due to mental derangement.
The process Of accumulation is repeated with "se frictionner,
jeter, se rouler, glisser," whose boisterous hilarity is only
heightened with the sudden bewildered cessation Of the agi-
tation, due to the tickling of a flower. As spring invades

the ecclesiastic's very body, his outer trappings seem to be

269

defeated by the mere force of flowers. And "cette robe,"
referring to the cassock, but suggesting a wOman's dress,

thus seemingly uniting the two, strangely befits the celibate,
that "solitaire," whose androgynous aspect was already sug-
gested above.

In the following sentence a curious inversion takes
place; for, while the ecclesiastic appears to have become a
natural phenomenon, nature is personified, and thus humanized,
and it is the latter which the persona now addresses directly
with "Solitude, froid silence épars dans la verdure, ... vous
connfites les claquements furibonds d'une étoffe," where
nature's impassible cold silence contrasts sharply with the
cloth's furious clappings, that frenzy, paradoxically, of
something usually inanimate, a synecdoche which further de—
humanizes the priest. At the same time "silence épars dans
la verdure" echoes the “vierge absence éparse en cette soli-
tude" Of the "Nénuphar," pointing to the movement Of these
prose poems into an Open, natural setting. The ecclesiastic's
"sens moins subtils qu'inquiets" reinforces the contrast of
a calm flora witnessing the subjection to his senses Of an
"individu fait pour la spiritualité." Throughout the poem,
the cassock, "sombre agitation basse," "cette robe spéciale
portée avec l'apparence qu'on est pour soi tout meme sa femma,"
"claquements furibonds d'une étoffe," has something sinister
about it, an effect created by the shocking surprise of

seeing this traditional symbol of dignity literally "par le

270

démon secoué."5 And "la nuit absconse en ses plis" finally
shaken out Of it culminates that accumulation of the dark,
the mysterious, and the hidden suggested by that "robe
spéciale" which, like a shroud, hid a skeleton, whose bizarre
"heurts sourds contre la terre" evoke an almost Bertrand-like
tableau macabre with the dead coming out of their graves.
The perversity, thus, of both the scene depicted and the one
suggested, lies in their violation of the natural order.
"Mais l'énergumene n'avait point a vous contempler"
again stresses the difference between the poet-persona,
mentally beholding and communicating with nature, that is her
solitude and silence, and that other individual who, on the
contrary, far from contemplating her, lets himself be pos-
sessed by her diabolic forces, with "énergumene," a "terme
de théologie," literally designating him as "qui est possédé
du démon." But then the following sentence by its tone,
emphasized with the ablative absolute—like "hilare," saves
the passage from sliding into the Gothically-horrible, while
at the same time indicating that the hilarious ecclesiastic
carries his demon within him, so that the "plaisir" which it
subjects him to is also his "devoir," neither of which to be
accounted for by the life he had furtively escaped. And this
life is now evoked, by contrast to the "influence du souffle
vernal," with ”les immuables textes" inscribed in his flesh,
:making the poor priest appear somewhat like the branded chat-

tel Of the Church, later to be reinforced with his mirthful

271

comparison to "un afie." And though "doucement dilatant les
immuables textes" is vaguely reminiscent Of Hérodiade's
"finally separating cold stones," indicating in both a move—
ment from refusal toward acceptance Of the world, the distance
between the two figures-—the one an ideal, the other burles-
que—-is so immense, that it does not at all permit us to
associate, not even in the most indirect manner, poet and
ecclesiastic, particularly as the prose poem itself continu-
ally stresses their difference. "Lui aussi" certainly points
back to the poem's beginning, where the poet—persona had
confessed his own escape for a contact with Nature, but while
it had led the ecclesiastic to roll on the ground "dans la
béatitude de sa simplicaté native," it had inspired the poet
artistically, a point he clearly emphasizes in the conclusion.
The anecdote proper is terminated by the humorous accumula-
tion Of "Obédiences," ”canons," "interdits" and "censures,"
a list of that formidable array of constraints of organized
spirituality to protect its own precisely from that "immédiat,
net, violent, positif" contact with Nature which the ecclesi-
astic had succumbed to, with his subsequent "béatitude," on
the literal level the simple animalistic bliss of an ass,
ironically suggestive Of its mystical designation of the
felicity of the elect.

It is somewhat surprising that the remaining portion Of
the piece is not set Off by paragraphing as had been the

introduction, for there Occurs a marked break with the

272

following sentence, where the poet—persona returns to himself
and his role as creator Of the poem, thus not only stepping
out of the anecdote, but almost out of the poem itself. “Le
héros de ma vision" points back to that moment in the anecdote,
when the persona had abandoned the description Of the Observed
in order to paint the image of his mind, "me figurer en esprit
l'apparition." At the same time, "héros" is a final ironic
designation of this anti-hero, whose real-life model must no
doubt by now have returned "inapercu, dans la foule, et les
habitudes de son ministere." But in resolutely rejecting the
trite and "real" conclusion from the adventure, the poet-
persona underlines once again the artificiality, and at the
same time artistically, burlesque character of this "ecclési-
astique," whose futive embrace with spring is once more evoked
with the suggestive "pistils" and "sucs" attached to his
person.

The final sentence again introduces the poet's funda-
mental bargain with life, if I may say so, and which has not
only been implied merely, but sometimes stated, in these prose
poems: the deliberate renunciation Of life for the rewards
Of art. "Ma discretion ... n'a—t—elle pas pour recompense,"
is reminiscent Of "sans compensation a cette secousse qu'un
besoin d'explication figurative" of the "Declaration," or
finally "mon imaginaire trophée" Of the "Nénuphar." In each
case, the poet turns away from the encounter with reality's

fleeting phenomena, to give them permanence by "fixing" them

F
in.
. fl:

 

qwl

 

 

273

in a harmonious image. Nothing is more fugitive, in fact,
than the eruption of nature's spring, or the temporary diva—
gations of man under its influence, but lasting is this
"image marquée d'un sceau mystérieux de modernité, a la fois
baroque et belle," the poet's definition of our prose poem.
The "reverie d'un passant" designates poet and poetry, he
the perishable and mortal creator of the permanent.6

It is not the adventure, but its image, the poem, which
is mysteriously signed and sealed, for its beauty is hidden,
by a modernity--which may well be that of the form of the
prose poem itself, reportage Of "une anecdote comme elle
frappa mon regard de poete"—-which renders it both baroque and
beautiful. "Baroque et belle," these melodious last words,
which constitute the confident master poet's judgment of his
own work, once more underline the antithetical tension which

permeates this poem, in which the fantastic and the bizarre

are molded into artistic harmony.

274

L'ECCLESIASTIQUE

NOTES
1 One should place both Opening passages side by side to
appreciate their resemblance Of tone:

.Que la civilisation est loin de procurer les jouis-
sances attribuables a cet état! on doit par exemple
s 'étonner qu' une association entre les reveurs, y
séjournant, n 'existe pas, dans toute grande ville,
pour subvenir a un journal qui remarque les événe—
ments sous le jour prOpre au reve ("Spectacle").

Les printemps poussent l'organisme a des actes qui,
dans une autre saison, lui sont inconnus et maint
traité d' histoire naturelle abonde en descriptions
de ce phénomene, chez les animaux. Quil serait d'un
intéret plus plausible de recueillir certaines des
altérations qu' apporte l' instant climatérique dans
les allures d' individus faits pour la spiritualité
("Ecclésiastique").

2 In these prose poems, this dislike for spring was brought
out clearly, as we saw, in "Plainte d'Automne," where it
was part of the young poet's infatuation with decadence.

It is further reflected in such verse poetry as "Renouveau,"

and in the correspondence, where Mallarmé at times liter-

ally seems to hide from the season behind his windows, as

for example in a letter, cited by Mondor, Correspondance I,

p. 208, to Cazalis Of 1866:

Quant a maintenant, je me repose (bien que je ne
participe pas au printemps, qui me semble a des
millions de lieues derriere mes carreaux) ...

.Mallarmé must have liked this phrase, as he repeats it

(almost word for word in another letter of that year, to

.Mérat (p. 213):

275

Ma reverie avait été consumée par la lampe des nuits
d' hiver quand je recus vos vers: et une promenade

n 'aurait pu restaurer aux objets entrevus leur réel
ni poétique aspect. Le printemps derriere les car-
reaux, me semblait a des millions de lieues.

And Charles Mauron, Introduction, p. 76, also identifies
spring as the "low point" in Mallarme's year:
Each winter brought on a depression, which apparently
reached its lowest point--no doubt because Of the
cumulative effect--between February and May.
This sentence is very similar in its "impressionistic"
technique to the very beautiful and justly famous Proustian
one, painting the beginning of a summer rain in Cambray.
Proust, A la Recherche, pp. 101-2:
Un petit coup au carreau, comme si quelque chose
1' avait heurté, suivi d' une ample chute légere comme
de grains de sable qu' on eut laissés tomber d' une
fenetre au- dessus, puis la chute s 'étendant, se
reglant, adoptant un rythme, devenant fluide, sonore,
musicale, innombrable, universelle: c'etait la pluie.
The difference must be stressed, for a German critic,
Franz Rauhut, Das FranzOsische Prosagedicht (Hamburg:
Friederichsen, de Gruyter & CO. m.b.H., 1929), p. 84, in
this sole commentary on our poem says:
... das in fibermfitigster Laune verfasste Stfick
L' Ecclésiastique symbolisiert in der Gestalt eines
Geistlichen, den Frfihlingsgefuhle zu wenig wfirde-

vollen Kapriolen verleiten, wiederum den geistigen
Menschen, den Dichter.

 

.And Chase St. Aubyn, Mallarmé, p. 138, likewise, identifies
ecclesiastic and poet:
Under the influence of spring the ecclesiastic "had

come to recognize by an immediate, clear, violent,
positive contact with Nature, stripped of all

276

intellectual curiosity, the general well-being."
Such a contact with the world would seem to resemble
that of the poet.
How Mallarmé of all people would ever appear "stripped of
all intellectual curiosity" when making "a contact with

the world" is incomprehensible to me.

And our prose poem does, of course, echo the grotesque
note of the early "Une Négresse par le démon sécouée,"
originally entitled "Image Grotesque," which could well

be that of the prose poem.

"A jamais" expresses an Optimism most unusual for Mallarmé.
The hero of the "Toast Funebre" was similarly designated
"Quelqu'un de ces passants, fier, aveugle et muet," in a
poem which celebrates at once the mortal and the immortal
aspect of the poet; and the poet—hero Of "Conflit" says

of himself: "quelque singulier instinct de ne rien pos-

séder et de seulement passer."

CHAPTER XI I I
LA GLOIRE

This poem, which appeared for the first time in 1866,
was composed that year for Verlaine's Les Homme d'aujourd'hui,
where it carried the subtitle "Notes de mon Carnet," which it
retained in one of its subsequent publications: and the
Pléiade edition closes the recueil of "Poemes en Prose" with
this piece, which is the penultimate one Of the "Anecdotes ou
Poemes" in Divagations.

The anecdote concerns the poet-persona's autumn visit
to the forest Of Fontainebleau, from his departure by train
to his arrival before the festive forest, which he does not
approach until he is alone, a solitary "royal intruder" in
Nature's splendor.

The title, immediately echoed in the first word, has by
its superposition of multiple references, and at the same
time its sound-look beauty, something of the many-faceted
sparkle and fire of the whole poem. For all the meanings of
glory are simultaneously suggested here: renown, fame,
honor, but above all églgt and superhuman splendeur, thus
not only royal but divine magnificence, which is that Of the

Poet.1 And so the opening, set Off from the rest Of the

277

278

piece, suddenly ignites, a beam of light caught in a diamond's
flare, not dissimilar to the brilliant apparition of "Le

Phenomene Futur,‘ which left poets "le cerveau ivre un
instant d'une gloire confuse."

On the anecdotical level, this beginning sentence para-
graph introduces a first-person narrator who emphasizes his
deliberate isolation from "the others." But at the same
time it reveals another contrast, a stylistic one created by
the juxtaposition Of a highly lyrical and lofty tone: "La

Gloirel je ne la sus qu'hier, irréfragable,‘ with a narrative
manner tending toward the ironic, "et rien ne m'intéressera
d'appelé par quelqu'un ainsi." And this double tension, that
Of the solitary poet and his vision against the blind masses
of humanity, as well as that Of an elevated language and an
ironic vein, already intimated here, is characteristic of
the whole poem, much of whose anecdote is dominated by irony,
while the theme for which it is the vehicle constitutes a
sublime elevation. These tensions are, of course, indicative
of the fundamental antithesis of ideality and reality inher-
ent in the very notion of apotheosis--deification in death--
which is celebrated in "La Gloire."

The second paragraph, which begins the anecdote proper,
the narrator's departure from the city by train, carrying
him toward the forest, describes both the phenomena surround—

ing him and, at the same time, evokes the moment's special

ambiance, in a language as beautiful as it is economically

279

functional, for it establishes by its tonality the pOem's
éclairage, while at the same time not only announcing its
major theme, but also illuminating several subordinate ideas
suggested by it. "Cent affiches s'assimilant l'or incompris
des jours" juxtaposes the banal advertising posters with not
merely daylight or sunlight, but with that peculiar golden
glow of autumn days,2 whose symbolic significance the £231;
is unaware Of, thus emphasizing again the poet-persona's
isolation, while also preparing already the final scene.

And this magic light is appropriated by the signs which re—
flect it, those publicity posters which betray the higher
function of letters, thus reintroducing the theme developed
in "Un Spectacle Interrompu," of the profanation of écriture
in a journalistically-oriented civilization, which is, however,
again unaware Of this defilement. At the same time we get
the impression of the signs rushing past the train, rather
than the inverse, while the narrator's eyes, a fitting synec—
doche for him, the beholder, try somehow to pass beyond the
immediate, to the distant horizon. This glance again fore-
shadows the culminating scene, and recalls Mallarmé's
designation of himself in "Bucolique" as "lecteur d'horizons"
(OC p. 402). And there is a special urgency suggested by the
poet's being drawn toward the horizon and forest, both lit-
erally by the train, and at the same time by his desire "de
se recueillir dans l'abstruse fierté que donne une approche

de foret en son temps d'apothéose." This movement and

 

gihwgwflfljj
; -. ......

280

striving to come to a rest is again indicative of that tension
permeating the poem; and we will soon encounter its inversion,
namely the rest heavy with impending motion of the forest's
"extatique torpeur." While "fierté" announces the "orgueils
surhumains," it is "abstruse" again merely to l§_fgglg, the
adjective at the same time etymologically foreshadowing the
poet's role Of "intrus royal." The characteristically vague
nominal phrase “une approche de foret," suggestive of the
more common "l'approche d'une foret," intimates both the
narrator's approach of the forest and also the forest's ap-
proach of its final hour, with "approche" again emphasizing
the urgency and that sense of expectancy tending, both spatial-
ly and temporally, toward the climactic "apothéose," the
glorification announced by the title.

The following paragraph is strongly reminiscent of the

opening passages of "La Declaration Foraine,' where "une
vocifération, parmi trop de félicité" of an evening hour, was
as discordant as here the "discord parmi l'exaltation de
l'heure," which shrilly breaks the balance of inner and outer
harmony of the moment.3 The peace is shattered here by a
stationmaster's cry, as the train comes to a stOp at the
narrator's distination. And there is a double dissonance,
‘both that of the voice interrupting the moment's exaltation,
and, at the same time, the one produced by the "crying out"

of that magic name, Fontainebleau, itself, "faussé," thus,

‘by an inarticulate bark, which merely conveys their location

 

fissillxla

 

281

to the passengers, simultaneously serving lg fgglg and dis—
turbing the poet. This again suggests the theme touched

upon above, that of the antithetical double function of
language: its every—day use as parole and that of the poet;
for while in the former a name is but a designation, so that,
once the information has been imparted, the word is left to
die, the same name in that other realm lives independently by
its own magic. And the very syntax of our sentence, first
introducing the evocations carried by that name, and only then
the magic word itself, set off by commas, accentuates this
notion, reminiscent of the similar function Of "Saxe" in the
early "Frisson d'Hiver," with its suggestiveness of both

temporal and spatial distances. Fontainebleau "connu pour

déployer la continuité de cimes tard évanouies,‘ is a name
both famous, pointing to "gloire," and known to evoke the
'woods' silhouette on the horizon. And it suggests here both
the evening hour hovering over those trees threatened by im-
pending darkness, and at the same time the late moment of the
year, the fall, "évanouies," of that splendor.4 There is in
"cimes tard évanouies" a further vague intimation of
Fontainebleau's historical past, represented by its palace,
which will later again be suggested by the trees, which appear
like "torches ... dans une haute garde," with both their and
the sky's "pourpre," of course, always evoking royal splendor.

And just as the "interrupteur" had violated peace, so

the narrator now mentally resorts to violence, which is not

282

devoid of a certain irony. The ablative absolute, "la glace
du compartiment violentée," a superb concrete image of the
inner experience of suddenly interrupted calm, refers to an
imaginary breaking of the windOw in order to reach out and
grab that adversary by the throat. This gesture introduces

a likewise imaginary, and moreover rather one-sided, dialogue.
"Tais—toi,l" not only calls for quiet, but suggests the
verb's secondary meaning, "ne pas divulguer un secret,"

which the narrator develops in entreating the other not to
give away, to l§_§ggl§, "l'ombre ici insinuée dans mon esprit,"
namely that mysterious magic evoked by the name. And the
stationmaster's dehumanizing "aboi indifférent" juxtaposed
with "l'ombre ici insinuée" sharply accentuates the clash of
outer and inner worlds, with the former again gaining the
upper hand by the means of noise, that of the compartment
doors' banging. The ablative absolute, "les touristes omni-
présents vomis,"5 not only marks, again, the narrator's
isolation from, but now adds his scorn for, the others, which
is emphasized furthermore by their reification implied in the

substitution of the train's doors for its passengers, ne
divulgue pas ... aux portieres."

The station's "vent inspiré et égalitaire," with the
ironic juxtaposition of the exceptional and its Opposite,
contrasts with "une quiétude" of the following sentence, which

now introduces the real presence of the forest, so far merely

announced by the narrator's anticipatory reflections

 

£151!th ruli.‘ fluid

283

accompanying his approach. "Une quiétude menteuse de riches
bois suspend alentour quelque extraordinaire état d'illusion"
accentuates two of the poem's essential ingredients, that Of
illusion, inherent in the very idea Of spectacle and theatre,
and that of suspense, which is its atmosphere. The former is
reinforced with a whole vocabulary cluster dispersed through-
out the piece, "paraitre, trahison, fausser, menteuse, illu-
sion, doute, ombre," which, with "pompeux, splendeur, éclat,

exaltation, ivresse, orgueil,' points to the illusory magnifi—
cence of the solar drama. For it is to witness its final
act that the poet persona has left the city; and it is because
he alone is capable of appreciating its significance that he
delights in being its solitary spectator. In his "Hamlet"
essay, of the same year as "La Gloire," Mallarme stresses the
poet's role of ideal beholder, who alone penetrates the mean—
ing of this spectacle which reflects, however, not only the
poet's, but mankind's destiny:
Loin de tout, la Nature, en automne, prépare son Theatre,
sublime et pur, attendant pour eclairer, dans la soli-
tude, de significatifs prestiges, que l'unique oeil
lucide qui en puisse penetrer le sens (notoire, le destin
de l'homme), un Poete, soit rappele a des plaisirs et a
des soucis mediocres (OC p. 299).
And while the poet there returns to "des soucis médiocres,"
the ideal poet of our poem leaves a mediocre existence to
attend the sublime performance.6
But restrained still by that mediocrity he is trying to

escape, his spirit cannot liberate itself yet-—reminiscent of

his eyes trying to reach beyond the phenomena of the city

284

toward the horizon--to meditate On that "quiétude menteuse,"
that deceptive calm pregnant with its own annihilation and
the storm which will disperse this wealth of flaming trees,
a splendor held suspended in an extraordinary state of illu-
sion of immortality. And so his mind falls back again not
only to an imaginary question, but even to an imagined
response, from that proudly dutiful master Of his railroad
station, for whom the poet—persona has but ironic condescen—
sion: "ta gare," do you really believe all these people have
left the city for it? "bon employé vociférateur par devoir."
"Vociférateur," recalling "une vociféretion, parmi trOp de

tacite félicité" of "La Declaration Foraine,' moreover by its
etymology, ygx_combined with fgrgs, recalls the "aboi indif-
férent" above and, with "bon" in the sense of "qui réunit les
qualités de son espece," further dehumanizes this man who is
later, similarly to the crowd above, chosifié as a mere
"uniforme inattentif." And the persona again pleads with

him for silence, merely long enough "de m'isoler de la déléga-
tion urbaine," which once more emphasizes his obstinate, but
at the same time necessary, alienation.7 Yet, he claims to
have no intention of hoarding "une ivresse a tous départis

par les libéralités conjointes de la nature et de l'Etat,"
reminiscent in its tone of the "vent inspire et égalitaire"
above. But in the very sentence which concedes, even if

ironically, the equal right of admission to the others, "les

touristes omniprésents," "ces voyageurs," the persona

285

intensifies his separation from them by an accumulation of
terms referring to the organized masses of society which
swallow up their individualities, "tous, Etat, délégation
urbaine," entitled all, certainly, to their kind of "ivresse,"
that is a holiday Outing in the public forest, earned by
their labor in the city. And in this poem-—contrary to the
next and last piece of the cycle--the poet-persona cannot
linger over their concerns, mere obstacles to his "isolating
himself toward" his aim, where the deliberately vague verbal
construction implies both the movement of separation from
the multitude and, at the same time, toward the solitary
vision, thus a physical and mental escape.

And then, within the same sentence, the ironic tone makes
room for the lyricism of "l'extatique torpeur de ces feuil-
lages la—bas trop immobilisés pour qu'une crise ne les
éparpille bientOt dans l'air," before Oscillating back to an
ironically condescending gesture. The tension of "l'extatique
torpeur" is like that Of a dramatic crisis, where Opposing
forces are momentarily interlocked, before that turning point
‘which tips the balance, turning—-in this supreme drama-—not
only the leaves' but the sun's glory into death. The "crise"
is thus both a culmination and an annihilation--the "memorable
crise" of the "Coup de dés" refers both to Man's tragic effort
and his naufrage--while the "trop immObilisés," with its
notion of the excessive, later accentuated with "ce pompeux

octobre exceptionnel,” "tr0p inappréciable trophée" and

286

culminating with "d'orgueils surhumains,‘ contains the
moment's threat, not without recalling that elevation-disin-
tegration complex celebrated in "Pauvre Enfant Pale," which
symbolized the poet's drama.8

But from its height the sentence falls--amusingly the
last words of the foregoing lofty phrase are "dans l'air"--
back to the immediate scene, where the pleading narrator now
wants to resort to bribery, "suborneur métal." However, in
one short paragraph the plan, as well as the whole imaginary
dialogue, collapses in an anti-climactic "real" confrontation
with reality. For the narrator "sans dire mot," which some—
what ironically contrasts with all those imagined ones, simply
hands over his ticket to the stationmaster, whose inattention
and at the same time professional politeness, "m'invitant,"
remind us that all along he was, of course, completely unaware
of the agitation he had caused, while "quelque barriere," on
the literal level the station gate, suggests perhaps once
more the Obstacles of this quest voyage.9

Yet it appears as though the stationmaster had done the
narrator's bidding, for no one else got off the train, and
he sees "l'asphalte s'étaler net de pas," the synecdoche for
the road suggesting civilization's subjection Of nature, its
enemy, while "net de pas," that is its cleanliness or purity,
vaguely intimates the stain of the feared "touristes omni-
présents vomis." Mallarme expresses his "hantise" of asphalt

as a symbol ofeprogress similarly in "Bucolique":

287

Longs faubourgs prolongés par la monotonie de voies

jusqu'au central rien qui soit extraordinaire, divin

ou totalement jailli du sol factice en echange des

lieues d'asphalte, de nouveau, a pietiner, pour fuir

(OC p. 402).
The very syntax of this sentence reflects that monotony which
the poet flees, and which characterizes big-city life also in
our poem, "une monotonie énorme."10 This notion of civiliza—
tion corrupting nature, which is in a sense an inversion of
the repeated superimposition of the artificial upon the
natural, evident throughout these prose poems, indicates the
mature poet's final acceptance of that nature, toward which,
as I pointed out in the preceding chapter, these poems
gradually move.11 But it is an acceptance of nature on the
poet's terms, where—-in contrast, for example, to that demon—
strated in "L'Ecclésiastique"--nature is spiritualized by
being endowed with a symbolic significance and meaning,
accessible to the poet alone, and so of access to the rest
of mankind only through his poetry. And therefore this "orphic
explanation" of nature is both the poet's highest task and his
obligation toward his fellow man:

L'explication orphique de la Terre, qui est le seul

devoir du poete et le jeu litteraire par excellence

(OC p. 663).

Our narrator can hardly believe that "en ce pompeux

12 none but he has felt its magic, but

octobre exceptionnel"
then the very difference between that exceptional moment in
nature and the city's monotony explains the latter's incom-

prehension of the former; and this sentence paragraph contrasts

288

precisely the city and its population with nature reflected
in the solitary poetic vision. For the exceptional moment
is directly juxtaposed with the empty durations of "millions
d'existences étageant leur vacdité," where the accentuated
emptiness Of existence suggests the absence of the essential,
real life, while in “en tant qu'une monotonie énorme de
capitale," the vague conjunction suggests that these wasted

13 u

lives make up that very monotony of the city itself, une

monotonie énorme de capitale" syntactically echoing une
approche de foret" above. Further, "énorme," that is the
exceptional, and ”monotonie," its Opposite, somehow cancel
each other, leaving nothing but that emptiness whose obses-
sion—-which is that same noisy Obsession with existence of
"Une Déclaration Foraine," there termed "la cacophonie a
l'ouie ... reste a vif devant la hantise de l'existence"--
will, however, dissipate itself with the whistle blast, like
one last shrill, discordant note of civilization, vanishing
with and in the disappearing locomotive's steam.14 For none
but the poet has stolen away to feel "qu'il est, cet an,
d'amers et lumineux sanglots, mainte indécise flottaison
d'idée désertant les hasards comme des branches, tel frisson
et ce qui fait penser a un automne sous les cieux."

"D'amers et lumineux sanglots," a synesthesia reminis-

cent of the early "blancs sanglots“ Of "Apparition, paints
both the forest's autumnal luminosity and conveys the bitter

funereal grief of approaching death, which Mallarmé in his

289

"Hamlet" essay calls "l'amertume feuillemorte" (OC p. 299).
But the year's approaching death agony is then transformed
into a magnificent analogy suggesting birth; for the falling
of autumnal leaves from the branches, its understood first
term, is likened to slowly ripened ideas disengaging them-
selves from the ramifications of chance, both constituting
a release and a liberation.15 And so, on the threshold of

both death and life, leaf and idea seem to hesitate, in-

décise," in this "suspens" which permeates "La Gloire,"

before floating-~Mallarmé again uses "flottaison,' which we
encountered in the "Nénuphar," a word he loves—-the one out
of, the other into, existence. The "idée" is, of course, a
poetic one, the hesitating leaves being an image for poetry
awaiting its birth, "désertant les hasards."16 Therefore,
"tel frisson" is both the shudder of approaching death, and
also a creative one, and only now "un automne sous les cieux"
is mentioned for the first time, an autumn already painted

and evoked throughout the poem.

Just as the preceding paragraph consisted of one long,
sinuous sentence, so the poem's last one is the delicate
tissue of a single intricate thread. The ablative absolute
of the opening merely suggests a concrete image, superimposed
by the second term of the rich analogy which it occasions,
and which, in turn, leads to a beautiful simile. As the still

astonished narrator ascertains that he is indeed alone, we

must imagine his arms raised up in a gesture of surprise, his

290

doubt now leaving him and animated by being likened to a
winged creature flown away, "les bras de doute envolés," and
this gesture of the persona's raised arms-~wing-like--is now
compared to his carrying something up high, "comme qui porte
aussi un lot d'une splendeur secrete, trop inappréciable
trOphée pour paraitre!" And this image is reminiscent of

the ending of the "Nénuphar,' where the poet's prize was like-

wise invisible, "mon imaginaire trOphée, like this "trop
inappréciable trOphée pour paraitre"-—because ideal. At the
same time, trOphy always suggests something won by conquest,
that is the poetic quest which.isla conquest in that it con-
quers reality, or experience, to yield the ideal, which
stresses again the poet's difference from the others--as for
example the ecclégiastinEe-who, instead of conquering experi-
ence, undergoes it. This proud trOphy—-and we saw above how
it supports the tone of the excessive, of hubris, emphasized
throughout the poem--is designated "un lot d'une splendeur
secrete"; for it cannot be divulged, in the etymological
sense of that word, rendered vulgar, because it is that
necessarily solitary vision, whose wealth can be imparted to
the many only in poetry, as, for example, this prose poem,
"La Gloire."

But now, finally assured of solitude, with all Obstacles
overcome, the poet persona does not need to dash into the

forest, or cross its threshold immediately, for his serene

possession of himself, and Of the moment, is in perfect

291

harmony with its "suspens," that momentary arrest of both
time and motion, reminiscent of the "Nénuphar's" lovely pond,
calm in its "nonchaloir," but "plissé des hésitations a
partir qu'a une source."

And the forest's splendor now reaches its climax, which
unites it with that of the sky; in "cette diurne veillée

d'immortel troncs," the trunks appear to hold a devotional

«"3 ”xv-e -..“; l :E
L

vigil, in preparation for the rite, "l'universel sacre," in
the day's, that is the sun's, glow which illuminates them.
They appear immortal as though their stasis, as well as that
of the vision beholding them, were forever out of time, in a
theatrical illusion, "une quiétude menteuse." But this stasis
is rich with tension, for the trees seem immobilized in a
gesture, that of bending down toward "un," the visionary

poet, and pouring over him--"déversement" contains both the
notions of bending and Of pouring out--"d'orgueils surhumains."
.And.in the forest's apotheosis, its "fierté" has become sub-
limated to the divine, thus also metaphysically linking its
‘trees with the heavens to which they are reaching out, and
*with.which splendor they will annoint the Poet. For all this
jpride and glory, it exists only through that vision which
authenticates it, " (or ne faut-il pas qu'on en constate

17

.l'authenticité?).“ Nature simply is, Mallarmé reminds us

1J1 "La Musique et les Lettres":
La Nature a lieu, on n'y ajoutera pas; que des cités,

les voies ferrées et plusieurs inventions formant notre
materiel (OC p. 647).

292

 

But on the metaphysical level, the Poet creates its signifi—
cance, which makes him a God himself--however, in his own
apotheosis, he, "the royal intruder," celebrates both his
divinity and his mortality.
The trees, like flaming torches, consuming their own
substance in a fire reverberating in the sky's imperial 3‘
purple clouds--reminiscent of the splendid image of a sonnet i
of those years, "Tout Orgueil fume-t-il du soir,/Torche dans ’
un branle étouffée"--in "consuming dreams" point back to the
analogy created above, where the leaves were likened to ideas
of poems at the moment of birth. So, the fire consuming
those leaves and dreams before their bursting forth suggests
the idea of poetry never to be uttered, arrested in a vision-—
perhaps reflecting a vision of the oeuvre which Mallarmé
frequently alluded to, but which he never wrote.
As the universal stage is set for the sublime solemnitag,
‘with earth and heaven aflame and waiting for the Hero, the
jpoet—persona knows that it is ready, waiting for him to cele—
'brate his imperial triumph. And this scene was already the
dream of the very young poet of "Symphonie Littéraire III,"
<3f which an early version reads as follows:
J'ai institué dans mon Reve la cérémonie d'un Triomphe
que j'aime evoquer aux heures de gloire et de feerie,
et je l'appelle la Féte du Poéte. ... Dans une apothéose,
i1 siege sur un trOne d'ivoire, cdfivert de la pourpre
que lui seul a le droit de porter,—-vous l'entendez, 6

rOis,-—et ce front couronné de feuilles géantes du
laurier de la Turbie.18

293

But our poet persona waits, celebrating not the realization

but the virtuality of his consecration, until the last ves—

tiges of reality, symbolized by the train "emportant du monde

quelque part," be reduced to the proportions "d'une chimere
puérile," before approaching his "Fete" alone.

And so this poem closes on this note of solitude of the
poet and his vision,19 and which endows it with its mysteri-
ous splendor; and at the same time it is reminiscent of the
advice Mallarmé gives to the true artist in "Crayonné au
Theatre":

peindre une solitude de cloitre a la torche de votre
immortalite ... (OC p. 298).

But the revelation of the vision, a vision which had carried

the Poet to the solitary and sublime heights of ideality, was

the destiny of Man; and so the cycle of prose poems does not
come to a close with the last word of this poem, "seul," but

*with a prose poem in which the poet celebrates ”l'homme."

294

LA GLOIRE

NOTES
1 The term "gloire" is frequent throughout the verse poetry,
where it always refers to the poet's renown as well as
his magnificence, both aim and reward of his quest:
Las de l'amer repos Oh ma paresse offense

Une gloire pour qui jadis j'ai fui l'enfance (1864)

Que ce beau monument l'enferme tout entier,
Si ce n'est que la gloire ardente du metier,

Retourne vers les feux du pur soleil mortel! (1873)

Non! Le bouche ne sera sure

De rien goflter a sa morsure

S'il ne fait, ton princier amant,
Dans la considerable touffe

Expirer, comme un diamant,
Le cri des Gloires qu'il-etouffe. (1885)

And in the early correspondence, the poet distinquishes
already, as he does in the first paragraph of our prose<
poem, between true and false "gloire." Cited in Mondor,
Propos, p. 71 (letter to Aubanel of 1866):
Que je prévois qu'il me faudra vingt ans pour ces
cinq livres dont se composera l'Oeuvre, et que
j'attendrai, no lisant qu'a mes amis comme toi, des
fragments,--et me moquant de la gloire comme d'une
niaiserie usee.

..And, in contrast to that false one, true glory is referred
to in a letter to Cazalis, of 1871, cited in the same work,
IP° 94:

Ceci peut ne pas rapporter un sou, et n'etre que

l'équivalent de ma gloire intérieure invéterée.
Je suis paye.

295

In the "Réponse a des Enquétes," of 1891, we find, about
Verlaine:
Les individus mélodieux, rien n'exige qu'un décédé
en soit un autre, avec hate; d'autant que tel, en
mourant, inaugure sa gloire (OC p. 873).
And this statement, similarly to our poem, links the
notions of glory and death implied in "apothéose." The E
poet's isolation from his contemporaries, who do not under- i
stand "gloire,” is brought out in a statement made by &
Mallarmé, and quoted in Naumann, Sprachgebrauch, p. 70:
Je crois que la poesie est faite pour les fastes et
la pompe supremes d' une société constitués ou aurait
place la gloire dont les gens semblent avoir perdu
la notion.
Finally, the notions of royalty and splendor are beautiful—
ly expressed in Mallarme's commemorative discourse on
Villiers, for him the ideal poet, whom he quotes in the
passage:
Ce qu 'il voulait, ce survenu, en effet, je pense
sérieusement que c 'était: régner. Aussi ce candidat
a toute majesté survivante, d' abord élut- i1 domicile,
chez les poétes; cette fois, décidé, 11 1e disait,
assagi, c1airvoyant"avec l' ambition d' ajouter a
l' illustration de ma race la seule gloire vraiment
noble de nos temps, celle d'un grand écrivain.l
La devise est restée (OC p. 489).

This highly aristocratic attitude is, indeed, reminiscent

of Vigny.

"L'or incompris des jours" is a beautiful example of that
new sense and beauty with which "ordinary" words are en-
dowed by the poet, which Mallarmé explains in "Crise de

Vers," and which is as true for his prose as verse poetry:

296

Le vers qui de lusieurs vocables refait un mot total,
neuf, étranger a la langue et comme incantatoire,
acheve cet isolement de la arole: niant, d'un trait
souverain, 1e hasard demeure aux termes malgré l'arti—
fice de leur retrempe alternée en le sens et la
sonorité, et vous cause cette surprise de n'avoir Oui
jamais tel fragment ordinaire d'élocution, en meme
temps que la reminiscence de l'objet nommé baigne dans
une neuve atmosphere (OC p. 368).

The curious use of the preposition "parmi" before a singu-

lar noun, "parmi l'exaltation de l'heure," is reminiscent

*1“

not only of "parmi trOp de félicité" of “La Declaration,"
but also Of the same construction in "L'Ecclésiastique,"
with "parmi cette robe spéciale." By an uncommon use Of
prepositions in general, Mallarme usually creates a greater
vagueness and therewith increases the suggestiveness of
the phrase. Those he uses most strikingly are "selon" and
"parmi," expressions of envelopment which create a special

ambiance around the beings and events of the poems.

I feel that "cimes" on the narrative level refers to tree—
tOps, with the suggestions indicated, rather than to
"mountain peaks," which is Bradford Cook's translation in
.Mallarmé: Selected Prose Poems, Essays & Letters (Balti-
more: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1956), p. 7. Cook's trans-
lations of four of our prose poems in that book are indeed
very poetic and beautiful, but, I believe, too free in

certain places.

'This unkind reference to his fellow man is very reminiscent

<3f two early verse poems, "Les Fenetres," of 1863, also

8

297

stressing the poet's (the narrator's) alienation, where
we find the stanza:
Mais hélas! Ici-bas est maitre: sa hantise
Vient m' ecoeurer parfois jusqu' en cet abri sfir,
Et le vomissement impur de la Bétise
Me force a me boucher 1e nez devant l' azur.

In the other, "L'Azur," of 1864, we find:

H...
..g
A

--Le Ciel est mort.--Vers toi, j'accours! donne,
O matiere,

L oubli de 1 Idéal cruel et du Péché

A ce martyr qui vient partager la litiere

Ou 1e bétail heureux des hommes est couché

EL. «ao‘n..-
., _ :4.

The notion of autumn as a theatrical spectacle, with its

atmosphere of heightened "suspens, is also expressed in

"Plaisir Sacré"-
Un vent ou peur de manquer a quelque chose exigeant
1e retour, chasse, de l'horizon a la ville, les gens,
quand 1e rideau va se lever sur la magnificence
déserte de l' automne. Le proche éparpillement du
doigte lumineux, que suspend le feuillage, se mire,
alors, au bassin de l'orchestre (OC p. 388).

Here, as in "Bucolique," the autumnal magnificence is

linked to that of Music.

Again, "Bucolique" marks the poet's similar need for iso—

lation from the city and its crowds:
Que l' artiste et lettré, qui se range sous l'unique
vocable de poete, n' a lui, a faire dans un lieu
adonné a la foule ou hasard; serviteur, par avance,
de rythmes-— (OC p. 40I).

(:ohn, L'Oeuvre, pp. 268—69, in discussing a passage of

tflhat poem ("le Coup de dés"), makes the following Observa-

tion:

10

298

Le mouvement vers le haut est annulé ar le mouvement
vers le bas dans le passage que nous etudions. ... ce
procédé se trouve a plusieurs reprises chez Mallarmé
toujours avec l' idée d' un orgueil enflé aboutissant a

une chute: "feuillages la-bas trop immobilisés (cf.
notre texte) pour qu' une crise ne les éparpille bien-
tOt" )289); "la tige/Grandissait trOp pour nos raisons"
(Prose, 56); plus subtilement: "trop inappréciable
trophee pour para1tre"(289);"un éclat triomphal

(note 1' élément phal) trOp brusque pour durer" (384),
... La défaite sera completement indiquée par la
foudre ui habituellement frappe les projections les
plus elevées, les projets les plus ambitieux; "l' hon-
neur d' Erechteus par la foudre frappé (701) en repré-
sente un excellent exemple qui évoque un hubris grec.
And though Cohn does not mention "Pauvre Enfant Pale" or
"Petit Air II" and the "Cantique" itself, I feel that they
are all part of that same idea Of excess which contains

and demands its own destruction here implied in "apothéose.

This oscillation, even within a single sentence, between
elevated and ironic voices, with neither destroying the
mood evoked by the other, evidences, again, Mallarme's
complete mastery of the genre, a genre all his own, more-
over, which, as he explained, draws from and exploits both
the factual and the ideal. Even a masterful translater,
like BradfOrd Cook, can manage this shifting tonality only

by breaking up the sentence.

.Another passage of "Bucolique" again contrasts nature and
city, with the latter seen as man's "fortress built against

'his own magnificence"-

Combien, véritablement, une capitale, on s 'exaspere
1e présent, restraint, dehors, la portée de ce
miasme ... i1 ne traverse pas 1' atmosphere de quinze
lieues, au-dessus d' herbes et de feuilles ... nul
intéret ne rappellerait sur le coup—-combien de la

11

.12

299

forteresse construite, par les gens, expres, contre
leur magnificence comme la répand la nature, sauf

un recours a la musique dont le haut fourneau trans-
mutatoire chame, ces mois--je dis combien, sur les
remparts, tonne, peu loin, le canon de l' actualité:
que le brut puisse cesser a une si faible distance
pour qui coupe, en imagination, une flute ou nouer
sa joie selon divers motifs celui, surtout, de se
percevoir, simple, infiniment sur la terre (OC pp.
404-5).

Here, as in our poem, the poet escapes the city's agita—

tion, and particularly its noise, to be alone in nature.

It is, therefore surprising, after having followed
Mallarme's work from the beginning toward its end-—as it
is reflected in our cycle-—to find some critics calling
the poet "un homme d'intérieur," as for example Guy Michaud
in Message, p. 189, where he draws on Claudel for support
of this view:
Selon le mot de Claudel, Mallarmé est irrémédiable-
ment un "homme d' intérieur." 11 no .voit plus an
dehors que "la nuit sans espérance." De meme que
Vigny était prisonnier du monde, Mallarmé est prison-
nier de sa chambre, c 'est- -a— —dire, au fond, d'un
rationalisme trop étroit.
For while the early autumn poem of our cycle, "Plainte
d'Automne," was indeed a poem of the "intérieur," where
the persona would not even look out of his window, "La
Gloire," the late autumn piece, on the contrary, shows

the persona's flight from the confines of not only a room,

(or house, but the city itself, into open nature.

(Dctober seems always to have been Mallarmé's favorite

Inonth; he already celebrated it in the early "Soupir":

300

--Vers l'Azur attendri d'OctrObre pale et pur
And in a much later (1883) letter to Verlaine, Mondor,

Correspondance II, p. 248, he says:

Tous les soirs de ce mois d' octobre.ou j' ai toute
une année de gagne-pain, en meme temps d' oeuvre
personnelle a préparer (sans compter des échappées
vers les fugitives beautés de 1' automne, notre
grande passion a tous les deux) j 'ai voulu vous
ecr1re.

13 Scherer, L'Expression, devotes a whole chapter to con—
junctions, pointing out Mallarmé's predilection for their
uncommon use; and he analyzes our phrase as follows, p.
128:
Parmi les conjonctions de subordination, en tant
est employé, un peu comme selon, avec des sens tres
varies, marquant l'unité du motif, ou de la direc-
tion, on de la substance, sous une diversité appar-
ente. Cette conjonction est aimeé de Mallarmé parce
qu'elle lui permet d' exprimer un grand nombre de
rapports subtils, et aussi parce qu 'elle peut s 'em-
ployer sans verbe. En voici quelques examples:
"million d' existences étageant leur vacuité en tant
qu' une monotonie énorme de capitale" (parce qu' au
fond elles sont), ...

.And on pp. 247—49, he analyzes the passage "Si discord

jparmi l'exaltation ... to "tiens, une monnaie." But the

.analysis, which is rather narrowly grammatical, does not

lparticularly aid in the interpretation of the passage.

14 Again "Bucolique" expresses, in almost the same terms,
tJIis obsession with the city turmoil, of which the train
is but an extension, while at the same time being the

means of escape:

15

16

18

301

Comme i1 suffit de 8' en aller, a une heure et demie
seulement que 1' obsession qui continue, par le
vacarme du train, finisse, prés: et accourt, avec
une épaisseur, ou la parité de végétations ultéri—
eures, tel bois (OC p. 404).

In an early (1866) letter to Aubanel, Mondor, Correspond-
ance I, p. 222, Mallarmé already compared with a natural
process this way that the idea, ripened into a poem,

detached itself:

Je travaille a tout a la fois, ou plutot je veux

dire que tout est si bien ordonné en moi, qu' a mesure,
maintenant, qu' une sensation m' arrive, elle se trans-
figure et va d’ elle-meme se caser dans tel livre et
tel poeme. Quand un poeme sera mur, i1 se détachera.
Tu vois que j'imite la loi naturelle.

For Cohn, L'Oeuvre, p. 295, this sentence reveals what

"gloire" meant for Mallarme:

... dans La Gloire, oh Mallarmé suggere qu'il trouve
1a vraie gloire dans son oeuvre en gestation: "Il
est, cet an, d' amers et lumineux sanglots, mainte
indécise flottaison d'idée désertant les hasards
comme des branches, tel frisson et ce qui fait pen—
ser a un automne sous les cieux" (289).

 

Cohn, Toward the Poems, p. 119, sees in this the revealing
of the significance of "the Dream," the orphic explanation,

and continues: "Which he proceeded to try to do in the

Coup de dés.

'rhis early version of the Theodore de Banville section of
"Symphonie Littéraire" is quoted in Mondor, Précisions,

I" 32.

302

19 Cohn, Toward the Poems, p. 122, in analyzing "Quand

l'ombre menaca de la fatale loi," says about its line
"Aux yeux du solitaire ébloui de sa foi":

solitaire ébloui de sa foi: this is the central
theme of the prose poem La Gloire.

And Pierre Beausire, Mallarmé Poésie et Poétique (Lausanne:

Mermod, 1949), p. 9, points to a certain solitude which

seems to characterize Mallarmé's poetry itself:

Je ne pense pas que l’on trouve dans toute notre
littérature poésie plus grave et plus étrange que
celle de Mallarmé. ... Elle est sans analogue,
rigoureusement pure et distincte, pleinement autonome
et 51 parfaitement solitaire, qu'elle retentit en
nous comme la voix meme de la solitude.

CHAPTER XIV
CONFLIT

This piece, which the Pléiade edition of Mallarme's
oeuvre has published together with other prose pieces under
the section "Variations sur un Sujet,” was chosen by Mallarmé
himself to be the closing poem of "Anecdotes ou Poemes" of

Divagations.l The Mondor edition merely acknowledges this

 

fact in a note; yet they chose to group "Conflit" under
"Variations sur un Sujet" because it had also appeared under
that general title in the series of prose pieces which the
poet had published in 1895 in LA REVUE BLANCHE. But the
other prose poems had likewise first come out separately in
various publications. Since the 1897 edition of Divagations,
one year before Mallarme's death, indicates the author's own
grouping and thus structural determination of his prose work,
it would seem to me more prudent to follow that order.
However, this is not a mere a priori proposition; for
'the study of the poem will show that it does, in fact,
§_ posteriori, constitute not only an important part, but the
(mnlmination of the "Poemes en Prose." Thus, rather than
innelve, there are thirteen pieces in this recueil, and the
uneven number is not insignificant: for just as the seven

stars which make up the constellation of the "Coup de dés,"

303

304

so here the odd thirteen somehow indicates a tension, rather
than rest; and we have seen that every single one of these
prose poem is characterized by tension. At the same time,
the thirteen also indicates a cyclical structure of this
group of poems, a structure already suggested by that old
Saxony clock of "Frisson d'Hiver," which struck the thir—
teenth hour. For the twelve hours of the clock's dial, just
as for the twelve signs of the zodiac, the thirteen suggests
a return to the beginning.

Since the original version of "Conflit" is of the poet's
very latest period, it did not undergo significant revisions
for its publication in Divagations.2 The poem's setting is
the narrator's country retreat, that beautiful forest and
river region we know already from "Le Nénuphar Blanc," where
'he has come for a quiet summer. But on his arrival, he finds
the ground floor of his vacation house invaded by a team of
railroad workers; and the anecdote, which is about his en—
counter with these working men, becomes the vehicle for the
tflneme of the Poet's relationship with the People, a theme
already touched uponin some of these prose poems, but de—
*veloped fully in this closing piece.

The tension of this piece is, of course, already inherent
le its very title, whose etymology, ggm_fligere, reveals its
lginetic quality. And as it thus evokes not a resolution,
Ifllt a clash, hostile encounter even, it is in harmony with

a: vocabulary cluster of the combative and the belligerent,

305

which is prominent in the poem: "envahie,.injure, ennemi,
force pure, défense, assaillant, stratégie, pugilat, lutte,
tomber champ de bataille." The antithetical tension of the
concept of conflict is further rendered by the sound-look
of the word designating it, the round-lettered "con," in

sound suggestive of "conque," the female, and "flit," with

its dominant 1," high and light sound and pointed letters,
suggestive of the male principle, its antithesis--thus
already prefiguring the image of "pioche" and "pelle" of the
poem.3 And as the male and the female principles stand in
antithetical relationship to each other, so does the master-
poet and the crowd. And this relationship of the poet to
mankind, his position in society, is the principal theme of
this poem, and already contained in its title.

The first word, "longtemps," reminiscent of the opening
chord of Proust's A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, evokes both
human freedom and imprisonment, in that Space and Time are
not only the categories of our mind which permit us to order
and rule the indeterminate manifold about us, but also the
protective modes of understanding beyond which Man--and even
artistic vision-—may venture only at the risk of annihila-

tion. And this deeper significance suggested by the word is

important here, where it opens not only a paragraph, but a

poem dealing with the poet-persona's secure order of existence,

one created by him, threatened from the outside, that is by

the unforeseen.

306

This threat of annihilation, a dominant theme in this
poetic universe, was celebrated in the dramatic Igitur, whose
hero, at the point of breaking beyond those mental categories
and thus ceasing to exist as an individual mind, overshadowed
several of the early prose poems; it was reflected further,
in some of the early pieces in the persona's hesitations and
fears, imaged, for example, in the trembling spider webs of
"Frisson d'Hiver," or the need for the protective shell of
rooms, but finally openly confronted in "Pauvre Enfant Pale"
with its celebration of elevation into death.4

For a long time, to proceed on the literal level, the
first—person narrator believed, that is felt secure, in a
certain order of experience created by himself; and the anec—
dote relates the threatened destruction of this order through
the fortuituous, which recalls, of course, the narrative
schema of most of the late prose poems. And this most diffi-
cult first sentence paragraph reflects this experience, so
that to force its seeming dislocation into a smooth rendition
*would be to destroy its intention. In "que s'exempta mon
idée d'aucun accident meme vrai," "mon idée," that is the
Inental representation and ordering of phenomena in and by the
Inind, and that mind itself, is contrasted with "accident,"
:namely the given, the uncontrolled confronting it. In this
‘encounter, the intellect's impulse is to "s'exempter," that
is free itself from the contingent by refusing it, even if

true. And, again, as in these last prose poems, in refusing

307

to submit to it, the mind can dominate chance by transform-
ing it into meaning. This Kantian transformation, £1; 22:—
ggmmg.§i,‘ggmmg.§i—-is that of art, like philosophy a fiction,
as if—-that is pretending—-mind were able to conquer matter,
or thought chance. The mind, then, prefers to plunge into
and draw from "puiser" later to be echoed by "puisatiers,"
its own principle; and just as "idée" and "accident" were
contrasted in the preceding clause, so here "principe" and
"hasard"; the object of this drawing forth from its own
principle is "jaillissement," a bursting or gushing forth of
idea or thought, reinforcing "puiser," both suggestive of
creation out of the first origin, water, £935 gt ggigg_both
individually and collectively, which vaguely intimates the
poet's kinship with the race.5

With the second paragraph begins the narrative proper,
the persona's return for his annual summer visit to his
country house, his partaking of the great rhythm of nature.6
His love for the deserted house is based on his disposition
to create in its calm the elements of his universe, so in
harmony with this quiet, hidden world. But even here, para-
doxically, once again the unexpected and hated encounter
‘with intruders to his peace, the cherished silence, will
occasion a poem. With the regularity of the annual cycle,
‘which infallibly turns the vines on the outside stairway green,
the pOet expects the same happiness at each return, upon

jpushing the shutters back against the old walls. And "année"

.u ,- .| pril ..hl...!, lull

308

underlines the security and predictable certainty of the
temporal and spatial laws, that rhythmical cycle in which
the earth always takes the same time to travel the same
space, and back again to the origin to repeat the same
revolution, while the becoming green again of the old stone
stairway is a beautiful image for both stability, that of
the stone, and rebirth, the new green leaves.7 The shutters,
"wintry" because belonging to the little house's winter dress,
are thus opened for the customary summer view; and the poet
links-—but the French "raccorder" is much richer as it imme—
diately points to "accord," "harmony," and thence "re-estab—
lishing harmony"--this view to past ones: "l'oeillade d'a
présent au spectacle immobilisé autrefois." When "today's
glance" is in this way linked to last year's and those of
the years before, namely to the recreated, the "fixed" mental
image of memory, it seems that in this act today's "live"
view is also already "immobilised." And the present is thus
rendered stable by being linked to the past, that is by being
internalized at once. This is reminiscent of what the poet,
at the conclusion of "L'EcclésiaStique," where he had like-
'wise "fixed" the fugitive in a permanent artistic image,
described like this:
Ma discrétion vis-a-vis d'ébats d'abord apparus n'a-t-
elle pas pour recompense d'en fixer a jamais comme une
reverie de passant se plut a la compléter, l'image
marquee d'un sceau ... (OC p. 288) [my italics]
.And nature as "spectacle" for the poet beholder prepares al—

ready for the poem's conclusion, where he will, again, become

309

a participant in its drama. By the expedient, this mechanism
of instantly connecting the outer view to the inner, thor-
oughly mental, one, the poet creates an illusion: "comme g;
pas d'interruption." [my italics] The real world of phenom-
ena is characterized by ruptures, breaks, interruptions, and
itis only with the mind that we create its form or order,
that we "fix" it.

But this year, the operation and its result, "contentement
pareil," the persona's reward-—and "gage" here is reminiscent
of "recompense" in the just quoted passage of the other poem--
for his faithful returns does not succeed. For as the shut-
ters, "worm-eaten" which stresses their great age, bang
against the walls--"battement" a fitting synecdoche for the
shutters whose noise is being emphasized, the word, which is
also an artillery term, moreover fitting into the vocabulary
cluster mentioned above-—this banging "scande un vacarme," the
latter alliterating with "vermoulu," unfamiliar to the custo-
mary scene. "Scander," a poetic term, is used ironically
‘here, for what is scanned is not verse, but clamor and Shouts,
"refrains" not of song, but of angry fighting from below.

The remainder of the sentence explains the phenomenon, for
the narrator now remembers having been notified that the
ground floor of the house was to be rented to a group of rail—
:road construction workers for the summer. And "légende de la
Inalheureuse demeure" is multivalent, in that "legend" besides

Ineaning simply "explanation," at the same time suggests

310

"livre contenant les actes des saints pour toute l'année,"
which seems to personify the house as a martyr, reinforced

with "malheureuse,' preparing for the narrator's resolution
at the end of the sentence, while etymologically, legere,
implying simply that the persona had read the letter inform—
ing him of the circumstance.

Again the great age of the house is brought out--in con-
trast to the new, progress, which echoes the mood of not only
the early "Plainte d'Automne" and "Frisson d'Hiver," but
especially the preceding poem, where one of the symbols of
progress was also the railroad, "chimera puérile"--with "dont
je hante le coin intact." And the verb here means not merely
"to frequent," but, from one of its English secondary mean—
ings, "to pervade with spectral activities." "Coin," in the
sense of "endroit retiré, peu fréquenté," prepares for
"solitude" farther on in the sentence, while "intact," tangere,
suggests undefiled, pure. "Envahie par une bande de travail-
leurs" accentuates the military tone in suggesting occupation
by force, reinforced with "bande," an antagonistic group.
"Travailleurs" already vaguely foreshadowing the contrast with
bourgeois to be developed further on, as a military term re-
fers to "soldats qu'on emploie a des travaux de retranche—

ments,‘ exactly the type of work these men do: moving the

earth for the building of embankments. The key term, however,

is "offenser,' and the victim, the country, is particularly

vulnerable "parce que tout de solitude," thus in harmony with

311

its solitary poet inhabitant, and martyrized as the old
house. When the unwelcome news about the workers had arrived,
it had so anguished the narrator that he had hesitated
whether he should come this year, "irais-je on non" marking
this conflict of alternatives. But, assuming a knightly--
coming to the rescue of the defenseless--somewhat military
stance, in his turn, he decided ”a défendre, comme mien," and
even "arbitrairement s'il 1e faut, 1e local," which tells us
also that he does not own this property, "comme mien," a
point he will develop later. And so, overcome by "une ten-
dresse, exclusive dorénavant," excluding any other feelings
or considerations, "that it was it," after all, "le local,"
which had received the greatest wrong and insult, and which,
‘we remember, is totally defenseless, he assumes his task of
"hate de sa déchéance.” And "hate" of what later is called
“séjour” points again to the narrator's non-ownership of this
property, where he is, thus, somewhat like these itinerant
*workers, merely a passing occupant himself, which vaguely
suggests a certain kinship between them. The old house's

"déchéance," decadere, is reminiscent of the decadence theme

 

(of "Plainte d’Automne," while at the same time distantly
recalling the Igitur-Hamlet—Villiers complex, that is the
idealized figure of "the last prince of his line." Further,
'Hians la suppression concernant des sites précieux" is not
cnily a characteristic nominalization but also extremely

Erécieux, and the "précieux" of the clause itself, which on

312

the narrative level refers to the priceless beauty of the
country, may very well at the same time constitute a veiled
description of the style of the very sentence in which it
appears.

The "invraisemblablement," which opens the concluding
section of this long sentence, is a typically Mallarméan
beginning, with the elaborate adverb setting the tone;8 but
here its use is even more striking than usual, as it is an
ellipsis swallowing up subject pronoun, verb, and relative
pronoun. The narrator can hardly believe that his summer
place, so loved for its "désuétude" echoing "abandonnée" above,
and "l'exception," phonetically echoing ”s'exempta" of the
first sentence, a place so exceptional, should have been
turned into--and what a contrast!--a "cantine" for the workers,
namely a "lieu," by suggestion through its secondary meaning,
"ou l'on vend a boire dans des casernes, les prisons," which,
though not the literal meaning of the term here in its narra—
tive use, already foreshadows the workers' drinking which will
figure prominently later on, while, once again, intimating a
military ambiance. At the same time, "ouvriers" is already
different in tone than the above "bande de travailleurs," in
that it suggests the word's collective use for the whole class
of working people, which these men will come more and more to
represent for the poet-persona. And really, the aggressor
threatening here is progress, rather than the workers who are

merely its instrument. And the use of progress in the plural,

 

313

a word which is usually in the singular when it refers to
"le progres: l'évolution de l'humanité, de la civilisation

(vers un terme idéal),' might constitute an ironic fragmenta-
tion of the apparent general "mouvement en avant."

But now, in fact accepting the feared confrontation,
the narrator from his window looks these men over: "terras-
siers, puisatiers,“ men who work "a remuer des terres" and
"a creuser les puits"; and are not earth and water the ele-
ments from which the poet also draws—-Valvins, loved for its
land and river. At the moment, the men are "au repos, dans

une tranchée,‘ and "tranchée," on the narrative level the
ditch in which they are stretched out, by association suggests
a "terme de guerre," namely the trench, which had for hundreds
of years been a fundamental part of European wars, and which
foreshadows the poem's culminating image of the "champ de
bataille." Characteristically, the poet-persona meditates on
the clothing people wear: "velours have aux jambes" indi-
cates that, because their working clothes are worn, the pro-
ject must be going ahead, "le remblai bouge"; but "velours,"
on the literal level the corduroy pants, by a secondary mean—
ing suggests plush velvet cloth, so sharply contrasting with
"have." The transverse blue and white stripes of their
jerseys occasion a comparison rendering the humble work cloth-
ing deeply symbolic: for they resemble a watery surface, water

reminiscent again-—as already suggested with "jaillissement"

and "puiser” above--of first origins, which is reinforced

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with the men's lying in the earth, an image fully developed
at the closing of the poem, also suggestive of a return to
the origin. And so the clothing symbolizes the human life
cycle, "(vétement oh! que l'homme est la source qu'il
cherche)," which is in harmony with the evocation of the
solar—annual one above. Blue and white might further suggest
milk as original substance and sustenance, reminiscent of
Hérodiade's memories of the "lait bu jadis," and that
"blancheur sibylline” of "Don du Poeme." And as man's "being
the source which he searches" points back to the opening
where the poetic act was termed as the mind's drawing from
its own principle, the suggestion here is that not only poet,
but the laborers also, that is both physical and spiritual
workers, pursue a quest, whose circularity is further inti-

mated by "chercher,'
"9

etymologically circare, "faire le tour
de.
And so gradually a secret kinship of the poet-persona
with his unwelcome intruders suggests itself, perhaps even
symbolized by "co—locataires." "La rumeur les dit chemineaux,"
on the narrative level “reportedly they are itinerant workers,"
connotes society's negative judgment of them--"rumeur" can

be "soupcon du public contre quelqu'un" and chemineau"
tramp—-preparing for the notion of their being victimized by
that society, developed later on. The poet sees in the
workers the contradiction of weariness and strength, though it

is not quite clear whether their independance, "en absence

315

d'usine," is a chosen or imposed one. "Grouillement partout"
is somewhat evocative of the crawling workers of an anthill,
perhaps reinforced with the ironic "partout oh la terre a
souci d'etre modifié," for at the moment the men appear
vanquished by and in that impassible earth.

The short Opening sentence of the following very long
paragraph is characteristic of Mallarme's latest manner:
entirely lacking in verbs, it is tersely difficult. "Les
maitres quelque part" are the workers, which is again indica—
tive of a certain progression from "bande de travailleurs,"
to "les ouvriers quelconque par excellence" to this appela-
tion, which, while designating foremen, in the sense of
"maitre ouvrier," also suggests that they are now the masters
of the region, "envahie" as we read above, by them. And both
meanings support their behavior, free of constraint and noisy,
where "verbe haut" likewise shows a progression from their
"vacarme" and "altercations" above. In the narrator, "1e
malade des bruits," we recognize the hero of "Plainte
d'Automne," who always cherished solitude, that of "Frisson
d'Hiver," who in his companion loved a "calme enfant," and
the persona of "Le Démon de l'Analogie," who listened only to
an inner voice, to mention the early prose poems. In the late
ones, the clash of silence and harmony with noise and discord
opened the anecdotes of "La Déclaration Foraine" and “La

Gloire," while "Le Nénuphar Blanc" celebrated silence.10

316

But slowly the narrator becomes accustomed to the rhythm
of these workers' lives, whose steady monotony is beautifully
rendered in "cette cohue entre, part, avec le manche, a
l'épaule, de la pioche et de la pelle," which not only con—
veys the eversame, simple rhythm with these one and two-
syllable words, but reinforces it with internal alliteration;
"cohue" again stresses their noisiness so painful to the poet,
while "pioche" and "pelle" are introduced here to be picked
up again and fully developed later on in inverse order. And
this way of life causes the persona to reflect, "inviting in
its favor" rather vague emotions, "de derriere la téte," not
quite thoughts yet, but impressions forcing him "to go
directly beyond" notions of which one says "c'estde la 1;;-
térature," where the author's italics underline a derogatory
intention, "idées" here meaning purely intellectual notions--
which are not felt but thought--while "littérature" is to be
read in the sense of Verlaine's "Et tout le reste est littéra—
ture."11

The following sentence defines this vague feeling, for,
seeing in a storage cellar the workers' shovels and picks
neatly lined up, the poet is overcome by a "religious" emo-
tion, forcing him to his knees, as he reflects on the basic
life-creating force, the sexual one, doubly symbolized here
by the workers who impregnate the earth by their labor, and
their tools, shovel and pick, womb— and phallus-shaped.12

And this religious emotion is not merely stated, but accentu-

ated with the vocabulary cluster "dévot, crypte, religion,

317

m'agenouiller." "Dévot ennemi" suggests the narrator's
ambiguous attitude, with its tension of both love and hate
for those men, a tension which underlies the whole poem,

and which is that indicated by its title, "Conflit."
"Pénétrant" is richly suggestive, for, while on the literal
level referring to the persona's stealing into the tool shed,
it has the sexual connotations—-to pierce, diffuse itself
through-—in harmony with other elements of the sentence; and
as the poet penetrates the cellar, he is in turn penetrated
in the sense of "being deeply affected in senses or feelings."
And the partly visually alliterating "crypte ou cellier en
commun" suggests the workers' forming a kind of spiritual
community, the instruments of their labor functioning as a
synecdoche for the men, for "crypte" aside from being the
cellar with its sepulchres of European churches, is also a
"terme d'antiquité chrétienne," referring to a certain kind
of church itself, while "en commun" reinforces the communal
idea. It is thus as though the poet had stolen into "their"
church secretly, where the images before which he bows are
the instruments of their toil: "la‘rangée de l'outil double,
cette pelle et cette pioche, sexuels"; and in "l'outil
double" there is a suggestion of an androgynous quality,
vaguely evocative of a first mythical stage of life, before
the sexes were divided. The instruments' metal, which it—
self had to be wrought from deep within the earth, sums up

"la force pure du travailleur," the latter now seemingly

318

totally redeemed with "pure,' for the worker, too, though
unlike the farmer who tills and sows, renders the earth

fruitful by his labor. And the narrator's inner conflict of
attitudes is characterized by the simultaneous emotions of
"religion" and "mécontentement," respect for these men and

at the same time annoyance, reinforcing the "dévot ennemi"
above.

The following sentence has a rich ambiguity suggested by
the singular definite article of "intrus“; for from the nar-
rator's viewpoint, the intruders are the workers, whom no
man of law, that is country constable or sheriff, prides him-
self in ousting. And the self-importance of this imagined
constable is nicely rendered with "se targuer," a verb imply-
ing something of the ostentatious pretentiousness of the
small official, reminiscent of the stationmaster of "La Gloire."
But "l'intrus," in view of the foregoing sentence, might also
refer to the narrator himself, who had stolen into the work-
ers' toolshed, and we recall that in the preceding poem, the
poet persona had designated himself "l'intrus royal," this
being the only other use of the noun in these prose poems.
Further, some of the rest of the clause could also equally
well apply to the workers and to the narrator: both have
paid the owner, and both might be there on the basis of a
verbal agreement, rather than a formally written contract,

the less formal way being customary in the country, "beaux

tacites, usages locaux." And "établi par surprise" could

319

refer to the workers being there, which surprised the nar-
rator, who had forgotten the letter telling him about it,
while for the workers, the narrator's sudden presence was
probably just as surprising as theirs to him. And it is in
this "établi" in the masculine singular which grammatically
modifies "l'intrus" where the ambiguity lies, an ambiguity
which somehow again vaguely intimates a kinship between the
narrator and the workers, setting them both off against the
"propriétaire." The last clause shows the narrator's reac-
tion to the situation as a balancing of alternatives: play
along with them, or defend himself against them, reflecting
the tension of his conflicting feelings. The "rale" he.
might play is, therefore, ambiguous-~is it that of "homme
de loi" or of "intrus"--and its uncertainty becomes evident
in the following section, where he plays it out mentally, in
an inner dialogue, reminiscent of that engaged in with the
stationmaster in the preceding poem. In this role, he will
both "restrict" the intruders "a mes droits"--represented by
the little garden he closes off to them, for their presence
there would be an "empiétement," a transgression, into some-
thing too private to be shared-—but also assume the part of
fellow-intruder, "camarades" accentuating his kinship with
the men. The narrator's "rale," thus reflects his attitude
of irresolvable conflict.

Now he mentally "acts out," then, his approach, not with-

out misgivings as to a certain disdainful tone of language,

320

should he speak to the men, a tone which would be due not to
condescension on his part, but simply to the fact that he has
no taste for "promiscuité." And this word, "mélange confus

et désordonné, en parlant des personnes,“ intends no value
judgment here, but accentuates the persona's fear of the dis-
order of hasard. However, might he not, after all, fall into
the "note juste"? Now these are terms of music, the former
designating intonation and length of sound, the latter con—
formity to the rules as to scale and tonality. And the sig—
nificance of the musical terminology here lies in its connota—
tion of the formal, the artistic: for as the poet persona
discloses his imaginary address in the following sentence,

we recognize in it the language of art, of poetry, écriture,
rather than parole. The only term the men would have under-
stood, really is the first word: "Camarades," which continues
the progression we have been following from the beginning of
the encounter, with the gradually increasing rapprochement of
poet and people. Again, this is a military term also, but

the solidarity suggested here ispredominantly social.

The very first clause of the lengthy sentence addressed
to the workers is extremely précieux; the use of "vous ne sup-
posez pas” for "you can't imagine" sounds formal and distant,
so that the preceding "camaradeS" seems somehow nullified by
it; and the rest of the clause, where the narrator refers to
himself with the very impersonal "quelqu'un" further increases

the distance, which direction is continued by the use of the

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definite article: "l'état de quelqu'un." Again, not this
region, but "un paysage celui-ci" stresses the remoteness

not only of the speaker, but also of the setting, from those
spoken to. There is, thus, again a tension between a desired
rapprodhement and a factual distance, the attempt of a per-
sonal tone, which is then undercut by the most highly imper-
sonal style possible.

"Epars" here as in the “Nénuphar" and the "Ecclésiastique"
refers to something characterizing the natural setting; in
the former it was a "vierge absence éparse en cette solitude,"
and in the latter a "solitude, froid silence épars dans la
verdure." In our poem it is "l'état de quelqu'un épars dans

un paysage, Which suggests that not "quelqu'un," but "l'état

de quelqu'un,’ namely one characrerized by "absence, solitude"
and "silence" is dispersed in the landscape, again accentuat-
ing the correspondence between the poet and his chosen
paysage.l3 And this landscape, "ou toute foule s'arrete"
underlining absence, solitude and silence, is an ambiance pro—
tected by the forest's density, where the protected "isole—
ment," etymologically suggesting "island," is the water's
guardian. So, the forest protects the land, and the land the
still water, which recalls the secret magic landscape of the
"Nénuphar," which similarly to ours was also evocative of the
protective shelter of the womb, and symbolized perhaps by

that closed water blossom itself.14

In our poem this land;
scape gently modulates the motif of the return to the source

introduced at the beginning.

322

"Or mon cas, tel," characteristic by the absence of
the verb, suggests by its brevity a shyness almost on the
part of the poet, the small one-syllable words expressing
his reluctance to tell the workers that their noisy behavior
hurts him, while their activities are at the same time
rendered somewhat less offensive by the use of the impersonal
pronoun. The enumeration of vulgarities is summed up in
"discordance," a discord causing an "intolerable, if invisible
rent" in the poet's soul which wants to remain in harmony
with the atmosphere, "ce suspens lumineux de l'air." And
this impressionistically rendered ambiance of vibrating airy
brightness, a calm only broken by the trembling of light, is
reminiscent of that golden equilibrium of "La Gloire."

Though it is clear that the workers would not have
understood this language, they might have understood the
solitary man's need for solitude instinctively, and certainly
better than others, more SOphisticated than they, which accen-
tuates the bond, so far merely intimated, between poet and
workers, setting them off from the broad middle—class bour-
geoisie, here represented by "onze messieurs," such as the
property owners of the region.15 And it is thus not because
he fears the "inanité," the emptiness, of his confession as
it would strike the workers' ears that the narrator refrains
from speaking out. The lack of understanding and care for
the poet on the part of society, a theme familiar from the

early "Guignon" as well as the mature "Tombeaux," is here

323

sumbolized by the "rire immédiat," a response as cruel as it
is ugly, and which has nothing in common with the working
man's innocent and incomprehending, but not unfeeling,
simplicity.

And these reflections are confirmed by a characteristic
of these men's lives, their drinking, both bane and blessing
for them. For they have, it seems "le sens du merveilleux,"
that sense which the poet also has, and which the materialis-
tic bourgeoisie does not know, precisely because they are
"pochards," drunkards. Is it not by means of their kind of
"ivresse" that they turn their back on an unacceptable here
and now to enter another world; and is it not because of
their brutish hard toil, "soumis" and "corvée" reminiscent of
the soldier's unquestioning performance of his duty, that they
have a sense, however vague, "de délicatesses quelque part
supérieures?" For this reason, then, might they not perhaps
see in the narrator's "douloureux privilege," namely a life
and work condemning him to solitude--where we feel the tension
between the privileged calling and the price paid for it——
might they not see in it a personal rather than a social
distinction and thus not be suspicious and defiant? Again,
here, the tension of rapprochement and distance between poet
and workers is spelled out. Might these men, therefore, not,
if but for a short time, try to disturb the poet less? But
no, much more "plausibly," habit would get the upper hand

soon, and by its etymology the adverb suggests that the

324

workers would rightfully go back to their own noisy ways.
And the following sentence develops the poet's understanding
of the necessities of these men, as vital to them as his
own-—such different ones--to himself. But we must remember
that this dialogue is merely imaginary, an idealized one,
which will soon clash with a real one. "A moins qu'un ne
répondit, tout de suite, avec égalité" stresses that they are
now on equal terms with him, while "avec égalité" at the
same time even suggests on their part a certain dignified
manner of presentation, "moderation que ne trouble aucune
impatience." And so, at this point, poet and workers seem
to have reached a temporary balance of equality. The imagie
nary justification of the workers explains that for those
short periods when work ceases, they need each other's shout—
ing to continue to exist; to keep them alive, from sinking
into unconsciousness, they need to be encouraged by it, their
own and that of the others, like a chain of hands, where
each individual is at the same time supported by, and sup-
porting, himself and the whole group. The shouting of a
comrade is exhilarating almost likedrinking--and costs noth—
ing; and so the poet understands that "leur choeur, incoherent,
est en effet necéssaire."

How quickly the narrator becomes less firm in his

"défense,' now as sensitive to their needs as he had been--
and still is--to his own! Is he not almost ready to lead the

"assaillant" in by the hand? But "défense" and "assaillant,"

325

again military terms, suggest that, even now that the poet's
attitude has shifted from his former martial stance, the
tension remains insurmountable. For the countryside itself,
this-small domain exactly right for "l'usage du reveur,"
closed off from the outside world by the forest shade—-
echoing "ou toute foule s'arréte, en tant qu'épaisseur de
forét a l'isolement" above--this land carefully enclosed like
that of the "Nénuphar," its isolation stressed with "se
cloture, au noir d'arbres," how can it accommodate those
intruders? And this land is, of course, the symbol for the
poet's mind--as had been the room in the early prOse poems,
"spacieux" symbolizing that mind's expansion, jealously
closed off from the outside world, "retirement," but vast in
its "distances intérieures."

But the term "Propriété" is not the narrator's desig-

nation of this spot, but "comme 1e veut 1e vulgaire.‘ imply—
ing here "la chose qui appartient en propre a quelqu'un" in
the sense of legal possession, an ownership which is held,
ironically, by absent owners; and their kind of possession

has nothing in common with true "belonging" in the sense of
that spiritual affinity which is meaningless to the "vulgaire,"
a term again designating the bourgeoisie, those property
owners precisely in the legal sense, who were above repre-
sented by the "onze messieurs" with their brutal and vulgar

laughter. And now the already intimated non-ownership on the

part of the narrator of this property is being fully develOped.

326

Yet there is a curious juxtaposition in "il faut que je l'aie

manquée, avec obstination,‘ namely the acquisition of this
summer place in the legal sense. For "manquer" implies
passivity, and "avec obstination" its opposite, action with
tenacity. At the same time the poet muses on his factual

lack of funds, "omettant le moyen d'acquisition," but then
again suggests choice with: "pour satisfaire quelque singulier

instinct de ne rien posséder et de seulement passer,‘ where
"singulier instinct" again evokes the notion of the exceptional
being's isolation and at the same time the involuntary nature
of his calling. "De ne rien posséder et de seulement passer,"
which reads like an alexandrine with internal rhyme, and which
on the narrative level refers to the poet's poverty, at the
same time plays with the notion: "not to possess anything" =
"to possess nothing."16 And the poets' designation of himself
as "passant" is reminiscent of "une reverie de passant" at

the conclusion of "L'Ecclésiastique."

Or had the narrator not refrained from acquiring property
also so as not to risk a disturbance such as the present one?
In other words, in not binding himself to material possessions,
had he not hoped to remain free of chance--"hasard" always
of the domain of "matiere"--"l'aventure"? But then, immedi-
ately, the meaning of this word, "ce qui advient par cas
fortuit," is negated, "l'aventure qui n'est pas, tout a fait,

le hasard,‘ which shows a most significant shift from the

position at the poem's Opening, where, as we saw, "idée" and

327

"accident," as well as "principe" and "hasard," were still
in diametrical opposition. But what has really shifted, of
course, is the workers' presence as representing "hasard."
Not a purely chance encounter this, which draws the poet
nearer, lg rend voisin, not to propriétaires, but to

"prolétaires,' with whom, again by some "singulier instinct,"
he vaguely feels a growing spiritual kinship.

The following line, one of the most beautiful of the
poem, is a restatement of the title, "Conflit." "Alterna-
tives," so much softer than the former word, poses, again,
no resolution, but simply balances rapprochement or éloigne—
ment, conflicting attitudes which result in the tension of
conflicting feelings: "sympathie" and "malaise.” And "je
prévois" suggests the poet's funCtion of voyant in the
widest sense, for this "saison, de sympathie et de malaise"
exceeds the sphere of the poem and might well reflect
Mallarme's historical moment, that is his socially revolu-
tionary nineteenth century,17 for whose conflicts the poet
sees no resolution.

On the literal level, the narrator, who had above
leaned toward rapprochement, "et j'introduis, par la main,

1'assai11ant,‘ now suggests-—we note the importance of "ou"--
in fact the alternative, that is breaking off the connection
by means of a quarrel. And in "ou souhaiterais, pour couper
court, qu'un me cherchat querelIe," "couper court," aside

from its literal function, again describes the sentence

328

itself, similarly to the use of "précieux" above. "Pour
couper court," the idiom "in short," literally also means
"to cut short," namely relations with the workers; and the
military connotation of "querelle" is reinforced by
"stratégie," which, ironically, on the narrative level
amounts to closing a garden gate. And this little garden,
created "par mon art," is not part of the surrounding land,
but an artificial creation, set off against the natural set—
ting. While the poet is almost willing to share the latter
with the workers, he protects this garden, which might be a
symbol for artistic creation, a poem perhaps.18 In fact,
"qu'étranger ne passe le seuil" is an exhortation which seems
to apply to the very poem in which it appears.19 The poet's
"jardinet" is juxtaposed and contrasted with the worker's
"cabaret"; as to a tavern, might the men find another way to
the workyard: let them cut through the fields.

At this point a shift occurs, for now the internal,
imaginary, dialogue ceases: for as the narrator is closing
the little garden gate, one of the drunken workers angrily
reacts with a very real curse, as violent as his gesture is
furious. And in "fumier! se profere violemment," the con-
trast between the curse and the préciosité of the phrase
introducing it is not devoid of humor. "Je comprends qui
l'aménité nomme" means both "I understand who the compliment
refers to" and "I understand who calls the compliment," while

"aménité," referring to the curse is again humorously ironic.

329

And as the drunkard leans over the garden gate shouting his
insult, the poet is annoyed despite himself, that is al-
though he understands that the other through his drunkenness
is no more responsible than an angry child, "grand gars."

But after the long imaginary encounter with the rather idea—
lized workingmen, he can't but consider the other his equal:
simply another human being. "Est-ce caste, du tout" poses

and at the same time answers the question of class distinction
as it affects this encounter, which is, then, purely that of
one individual with another. The poet is "en ce moment" still
under the spell of the inner and imaginary confrontation,
despite the intrusion of outer phenomena: the anger of a
vulgar drunkard, and cannot quite distinguish yet between the
"forcené, titubant et vociférant," who in fact threatens him,
and the "homme" of the vision. And "considérer" by its

etymology, cum sidus, "looking at the stars,‘ suggests some-
thing of the conflict of dream and reality.‘ With "forcené"
and "homme" the irrational and the rational are contrasted,
while "vociférant" recalls the "vociférateur" of "La Gloire."
The persistence of the factual is reflected in the short
blunt sentence, with its harsh sounds: "Tres raide, i1 me

scrute avec animosité,‘ while "impossible de l'annuler men-
talement" admits the mind's defeat by matter.

Above the narrator had mused upon the blessing of drunk—

enness, and here its bane confronts him in fact, represented

by this dehumanized human being, "ce colosse tout a coup

330

grossier et méchant." whom he can't overcome mentally. "Le
coucher en la poussiere," reminiscent of traditional epic
combat, where "mordre la poussiere" and "laisser sur la pous—
siere" mean being killed and killing on the battlefield,
again already foreshadows the final scene. But the narrator

won't yield to the other's further "provocations, or the
fistfight, which would illustrate the class struggle. Thus,
whereas above there was a total rejection of the notion of
"caste," here it is reintroduced; for although the fight is
refused by the persona, he feels that had it taken place, it
would have been an image of the conflict of the classes.
At the same time, of course, "1a lutte des classes" is
ironically undercut with the mundane phrase "sur le gazon."
Moreover, are these men not already condemned by their vice?
Now the poet feels guilty at silently beholding this man's and
his brothers' fate--for does his indifference not make him an
accomplice of it? And this is a rare, but clear, indication
of Mallarme's social conscience, for under his and the per-
sona's merely apparent indifference lies not only sympathy,
but compassion, for the people, whom the poet will serve in
his way, that is by celebrating them.

Just as above the short "Alternatives ... " was set off
in a separate paragraph, so here "Un énervement d'états ... "
interposes itself into the flow of the narrative. And its

absence of verbs accentuates the moment where all action,

external and internal, stops: for the persona is himself now

331

victimized by the continual tension of conflicting feelings
and states of mind, to the point where he seems contaminated
by "le mal" surrounding him, that is as though intoxicated
himself by debilitating and enfeebling confusion.

Yet, at times there is also "le calme,‘ tranquillity

of soul and quiet "jusqu'au silence,‘ in windstill evening

hours, in this "région d'échos," later called "cette contrée

de luxe et sonore." "Comme on y trempe,’ where the pronoun
refers both to the calm and the country, that is the éEéE
g;§m§ and its corresponding symbol in nature, intimates that
the mg; participates in the privileged moment by immersing
itself in it as in water, pointing back to the water motif
modulated in the opening. "Soirs de dimanche" designates not
only the poet's favorite hour of declining day, but with

"dimanche" suggests the notion of fete, somewhat like the

German Feierabend. But the poet has fearful forebodings that

 

"this hour" might be disturbed by the men. As in "La Gloire,"
the holy moment is that instant of "suspens lumineux de
l'air," the epiphany before the end, a timelessness, where
everything becomes transparent in evening's glow, before flow-

ing "lucide vers quelque profondeur,‘ "lucide" describing
both the brightness of the sunset hour and at the same time
the poet's state of heightened consciousness, as “profondeur"
means the shades of the oncoming night, death, and those of

the mind. And, again as in "La Gloire," this moment of

equilibrium between the forces of light and night is "la

332

crise," symbolic of the human drama: "may it claim kinship
with someone."

But "les compagnons,‘ suggestive at once of "journeymen,"

and also "compagnons d'armes, gens qui font la guerre en—

semble," but above all, "friends,' appreciate the instant
in their own way, by ceasing to fight, "se concerter" imply-
ing at least some degree of harmony, which weakens the aggres-
sive tone of "disputent." The subject of "les salaires,"
etymologically, salarium, again fitting into the dominant

vocabulary cluster, preoccupies them "entre souper et coucher,"

their respite from toil, Feierabend, thus a festive hour also

 

for them. Yet, "en 1e décor vautrés" suggests a contrast of
the animal-like in the men and the art-like in nature--nature
spiritualized by the poet--as they "wallow" in its "décor."
And though the narrator does not leave his window to go out—
side and talk with the workers-—and this very passage of the
poem is about the impossibility of communication-—he at the
same time neither physically, "quitter ... la fenetre," nor
mentally isolates himself from them, "s'abstraire, s'isoler
mentalement," though he is, in fact, isolated from and by
them, "exclus." "Conflit," though about Poet and People,
continues to stress, as did the other prose poems, the former's
isolation and solitude. And as the window looks out from the
old house, "l'ancienne batisse," which had already been per-
sonified in the opening, "sur l'endroit qu'elle sait," where

the window becomes a beholding eye, so the poet becomes a

333

"regard moi." At this point the theme of conflict reaches
a climax, for the desire and attempt of rapprochement are
definitely frustrated now, "sans effet," which accentuates
the "sympathie et malaise” permeating the poem, which now
points to one of the harshest truths of human existence in
general: Man is condemned to solitude: "un contact peut
... n'intervenir entre des hommes."20

As the poet—persona overhears their talk, mere voices,
for he is cut off from the men, the source, he mentally,
maybe even in a whisper, corrects their misconceptions: not
only do they labor for the profit of others--a motif already
prepared for above--but they even sell themselves. "Afin
qu'on vous paie et d'etre légalement" implies that they not
only sell themselves for the profit of others, but that they,
in this way "legally" buy their very existence, their right
to be, from their oppressors. And here, again, a kinship,
but also a difference, is suggested between poet and working
man: both work “au profit d'autres," but the poet cannot sell
his soul, cannot buy his right to exist.

But all is silenced now by the magic of the starry sky:
"quelle pierrerie, ce ciel fluidel," and the unusual singular
use of this noun, "pierrerie ne se dit jamais au singulier,"
refers to a multitude of stars on this sky which, designated
"fluide," not only suggests the flow of water, but also the

harmony of sound, evocative of the revolving spheres of the

ancient heavens, with their music and the many stars fixed,

334

in a set order, in each sphere as in one immense precious
piece of jewelry.

"Bouches ordinaires" is a synecdoche for the workers
and their banal talk, in other words parole, now silenced by
the night, stretched out on the ground like dead men, sleep-
ing open-mouthed after having vomited forth empty bombast.
But the poet beholding them thus, finally come to rest,
after hard work and hard talking, again feels drawn to them,
"peut-étre, moi, aussi, je travaille ... " With the men now
distanced from him by their sleep, and which distance para-
doxically makes this rapprochement possible, the poet again
mentally creates the working man's idealized response: yes,
they appreciate, without objection, that some work with their
mind rather than with their muscles: do not all workers—~as
all soldiers-—know to esteem the bookkeeper's occupation.
And though this implies some irony, the dominant note is
that of simplicity on the part of these men who unquestionably
accept this age-old division of human labor. But for the poet
the dialogue culminates in a question of conscience: "a
quoi?" For, if this division of labor is just, of what use,
"parmi l'échange général," is the poet's work to the others?
For these men at least, he sadly feels, and "tristesse" here
really means souffrance morale, that his production remains
"par essence," that is in its ultimate and intrinsic nature,
"vaine." echoing the above "vanité de parole" of the workers.

But then the comparison, "comme les nuages au crépuscule ou

335

des étoiles,‘ somehow weakens "vaine,' for did the narrator

not say above that "les compagnons apprécient l'instant,"
namely the twilight's clouds and the rise of the stars, "a
leur facon?"

The now complete silence of the workers, to which the
poet is not accustomed, wakes him from his musings, and as
he looks down upon them, he sees the familiar lawn turned
into a battlefield strewn with the bodies of its victims.
And the poem's war imagery reaches its greatest concentration
here: "l'escouade du labeur," the work gang, is also a "terme
militaire," and "gésir" recalls the formula of epitaphs.
”Rendez-vous," on the literal level referring to the customary
place and hour for the men's brief leisure time, in the light
of the other vocabulary of the sentence suggests "une assigna-

tion de duel,‘ which association is reinforced by "vaincue,"
suggestive of "qui a succombé en guerre, en combat." And now
the poet narrates the end of the battle, namely how they have,
one after another, "fallen." How, as though hit by a "pro-

jectile," they stagger before sinking onto the grass, cet
étroit champ de bataille." "Etroit" here not only designates
the smallness of the lawn on which the men are resting, but
suggests that their "battle field" has none of the grandeur

by which history extends its limits beyond time. "Quel som-
meil de corps" likens this sleep to death, and "la motte sourde"
suggests the impassibility of the earth to whiCh Man must

inevitably return, once more recalling the return to the

336

origin motif of the beginning, while at the same time evok—
ing the dull sound of bodies falling to the ground.

And with the intruders thus finally vanquished, by their
own fate, is the one intruded upon at last free? As the poet,
”lecteur d'horizons," raises his eyes toward the horizon--
the glance we remember from "La Gloire"--to admire, and abandon
himself to, the sunset, the open window, "l'ouverture ou je
m'accoude," does not set him free, for he could liberate him-
self only by, and an American idiom puts it most aptly,
"walking over dead bodies," in the sense of "at the expense
of the others." He would thus be repaying the men their lack
of understanding for him "avec manque d'égard et de convenance
a mon tour," were he to abandon them now, they reduced to
"cette jonchée d'un fléau," recalling both the image of the
battle field and the just mentioned idiom. As poet, "en ma
quualité," it is his duty to "comprendre le mystere et juger
1e devoir," "comprendre" here implying more than merely intel—
lectual understanding, but its literal sense of "prendre en
soi, contenir," so that the fallen workers must, in this way,
become part of the poet. And so, just as they have become
his task, as it were, his responsibility, he must now judge
theirs.

In the following sentence the poet exposes "le devoir,"
which he had already judged above, their labor sold to, and
their right to exist bought from, society, legally. "Ils ont

peiné une partie notable de la semaine pour l'obtenir," that

337

is their daily bread and hence their life. But "semaine" is
not only the measure of worktime, but also "payement de

travail de-la semaine,‘ with which they have, of course,
bought their escape. And this is precisely their "mystery,"
which the poet understands, this escape which the majority of
society, the "fortunate" bourgeoisie, does not need, but which
the poet, in his own way, knows--"ma vue ne peut ... s'échap-
per." Once again, then, the narrator tightens the bond be-
tween himself and the working people by setting himself and
them apart from society; and as widely as their needs may
differ, nothing sums up better wherein they agree than: "le
pain ne lui a pas suffi." It is in this that they both differ
from the materialistically-oriented majority whose designa-
tion as "fortuné" is ironic in that their material wealth
implies their spiritual poverty.

Above the narrator, growing accustomed to the steady
rhythm of these workers' lives, was led to reflections and
emotions of a religious nature. Here, again, the monotony of
the men's lives is emphasized: how they have toiled upon the
earth on which their bodies are now resting, knowing nothing
of tomorrow, but that they shall toil again, "rampent par le

vague et piochent sans mouvement." "Rampent,' as the above
"grouillement," again likens theirs to an animal existence,
close to and even in the earth. And "le vague" refers both
to the apparent emptiness of their lives, the lack of conscious-

ness and orientation in their daily activity of blindly and

338

aimlessly working in the earth, where they "piochent sans
mouvement," dig without going anywhere. And with this
wearisome work, day after day, of turning up the soil, they
are digging a hole not only in the earth, but their very
existence, their life. Yet, as they thus undermine and
spend their "sort," digging in "la réalité des terrains," are
they not setting the foundations of temples? And so the poet
is again overcome by a religious emotion in considering these
lives, "fondation ... de temple" having both physical and
metaphysical implications. Not only is it their labor which
allows human civilization to erect its monuments on the face
of the earth, but it is their labor alone which even makes
possible the very civilization of which these monuments are
the symbol. In this sense, then, these men are a symbol of
what Robert Greer Cohn calls the "hardy ancester," founders
“efefathers of culture, which produced the poet. The kinship
of the persona and the working men in our poem thus grows in
complexity; for while the poet-persona assumes, on the one
hand, the paternalistic role vis~a—vis the men of shepherd
and pastor of the sleeping flock, and further that of celebrant
of a rite for them, the incomprehending crowd, he at the same
time, paradoxically, stands in a filial relationship to them.21
Thus, as the narrator likens their blind activity almost
to that of animals, by a curious inversion, he at the same
time raises these workers, then, to the founders of culture

through their work. Similarly, they, though unconscious of it,

339

honor the sacred of human existence by their brief repose
from toil, unknowing participants in the human tragedy,
whose symbolic reflection in nature-—as we saw in "La
Gloire"—-is accessible to the poet alone. And so they cele-
brate through the poet's consciousness, the "fete," which
their sleeping eyes cannot see, and whose symbolic signifi-
cance they could not comprehend.22 Further, their deep sleep.
that "momentané suicide" reflected in the sunset, and which
they have chosen by their drinking, is reminiscent of
Mallarme's meditations on suicide elsewhere: for example, the
voluntary death dramatized in Igitur, and which we discussed
in connection with "Le Demon de l'Analogie." There is here,
then, a suggestion that the men have in their own way, by
their choice of a "momentary suicide," this only "free" act
possible, negated chance.23
"Une colonnade de futaie," those proud columns of huge,
old trees, which recall the "immortels troncs" and "orgueils

surhumains" of "La Gloire,‘ might symbolize and "magnify

round about" the resplendent feeling of pride in their work

for these men--if fate permitted. For this ideal "connais—
sance" contrasts, in fact, with their dull sleep, and
l‘resplendirait" with the actual darkness in their minds.24

And instead of standing upright and proudly, they have followed
"quelque instinct" which has victimized them: again, the
drinking is paradoxically both their escape from--and their

victimization by--chance.25

340

"Déjeter" describes the twisted postures of their bodies,
contrasting with the ideal upright position of "une colonnade
de futaie" above, the term lexically referring both to the
human body and to trees: "s'écarter de sa direction naturalle

en parlant d'une partie du corps, and "se déjeter, en parlant
des arbres qui viennent mal." At the same time, the poem's
circularity is accentuated by this image Of the men lying on
the ground, which recalls the Opening one, where they were

26 And so their physical condi—

"au repos, dans une tranchée."
tion reflects these working men's metaphysical one: they are
victims both in the theological, Promethean, and Christ-like
sense of "la victime offerte pour le salut des hommes," and
also in the social sense deVeloped above, "celui qui est
sacrifié aux intéréts d'autrui." They are victims, further,
in and of the fgtg, rather than "Officiants": of the drama,
celebrated here by the poet-priest, whose consecration was

the theme of "La Gloire." "Avec l'absolu d'un accomplisse—
ment rituel” echoes "la part du sacré" above: the solar drama
reflects the human one, and the poet-Officiant's regular
Observance and celebration of it endows it with the ritualism
of a religious ceremony, where, as in its Greek origin, life
and death are symbolized. This is the ideal theatre——already
announced in "Un Spectacle Interrompu"--where the workers now
figure and represent the sacrifice paid by human labor: and
"si l'observance releve de la fatalité plus que d'un vouloir,"

means that their role in the drama is assigned not by their

will, but by fate.

341

Now the sun has died, and "les constellations s'ini-

tient a briller"; significantly not "étoiles,' as above, but
"constellations" now, not the fortuitous and random multiple
points of luminosity appearing arbitrarily on the night sky,
but those configurations of fixed stars, upon which imaginary
connecting lines confer their special significance, and which
symbolize in our poem the poet's new insight, which endows his
world with greater meaning. "Le hasard" has, thus, been
encountered and transformed into order by the poetic mind.

At the same time, the verb "s'initier," which seems rather

précieux, with "briller" and the repetition of high and bright

 

i'sounds, somehow renders the sparkling in the sky. And just
as the workers partook of the sunset ritual, though unknowing-
ly, so the poet now wishes that they might share in this

7 ”Parmi l'obscurité qui court sur l'aveugle troupeau"

light.2
likens the men once more to animals, sheep, with the poet
their shepherd, while the darkness is both that of the sur-
rounding night and that of their minds, which, however, might

also veil a secret. Their eyes, "aveugle, later rein-
forced with "ces yeux scellés," contrast with the poet, become,
as we saw, a "regard." When he wants his wish, namely that
some of the stars' light might stay over the sleeping flock,
and some lucidity in their minds, to be uttered, not only for
the sake of justice for them, but also for the sake of his

own peace of mind, we are reminded that the name of an article

by Mallarmé, likewise dealing with the Poet and the People,

"Confrontation," was originally "Cas de Conscience."

342

And so, of them alone he will think, "les importuns,"

who have cut him off from “le lointain vesperal," which is
evocative Of the penultimate of the canonical hours and thus
the poet's priestly function, announced with the "religious"
emotion above. The poet performs, in fact, a prayer vigil

for these men, whose designation of "artisans" again points

to their secret kinship with the artist. And the poet—priest's

"il m'est loisible" has something of the tone of the dignum et

justum est of the Mass, and the workers' individualities--as

 

that of the faithful in the ritual--are at once annihilated
and magnified as they are taken up in the flow of humanity, a
flow "unbroken" as that of the river by their side, inevitable
death and rebirth into which they have poured their toil and
their lives.

In conclusion, the themes develOped in the poem are summed
up again: these working men, too, with their toil, render the
earth fruitful, though "sans l'intermédiaire du blé." And
with their "intelligence robuste" they also have an understand—
ing--though not the poet's high consciousness--Of the human
condition, a condition, above all, which they alone make even
possible by their labor "le miracle de vie qui assure la
présence."

The "défrichements passés," as well as the work of gen-
erations to come, are part of them, and they, in turn, part
of past and future, "les memes." Aqueducts and provinces

establish the historical dimension, linking present to

343

antiquity and "tous les sieclesfl'gaecula saeculorum. What—
ever their individual names, their lives, may be, they flow
into the stream of humanity anonymously, as does the Ideal
Poet:
... mon travail personnel qui, je crois, sera anonyme,
1e Texte y parlant de lui-meme et sans voix d'auteur
(OC p. 663).
Their sleep on the earth symbolizes the return to the
common origin, "sombrer" implying a sinking as into water,

"l'immense sommeil,‘ the source. And the earth, "la généra-
trice," on which they are resting--and which they have also
rendered fruitful—-is the giant womb from which all life
springs, and the giant tomb to which all must return. "Subir,"
literally "to go under," is that sinking back in which the men
are both magnified, "un élargissement," and liberated, freed
to sink into the stream of time, and, "autant cela possible,"
of eternity.

We mentioned above that their “étroit champ de bataille"
denied these men the grandeur by which history extends limits
beyond time: yet the Poet, who serves the People in celebrat-

ing them, with this poem, confers upon them an immortality

only art can give: "Conflit" in their tombeau.

NOTES

1

L)

344

CONFLIT

Bernard, Le Poeme en Prose, p. 310, notes:

Fait significatif, Conflit, qui faisait partie de
ces Variations, devait etre joint par la suite aux
poemes en prose des Divagations, ce qui prouve bien
qu'il n'y a pas, de l'un aux autres, une différence
fondamentale.

 

And she thus points to the stylistic similarity between

Mallarmé's "articles" and his "prose poems." I have al-

ready noted that, rather than distinguishing between

"poetic“ language and "prose" language, Mallarmé distin—

guished between écriture and parole. The fact that only

"Conflit" of all the REVUE BLANCHE pieces was chosen to

appear not only among, but as the closing piece of, the

prose poems is due not only to its style, but also to its

structure and theme.

Paxton, who in The Development examines the variants of

all the REVUE BLANCHE pieces, discusses those of "Conflit"

on p.

88:

The next article Conflit, was placed among the prose
poems in Divagations, from which we may perhaps as-
sume that it might incur a different treatment in
revision from that accorded to the others. One dif-
ference does indeed stand out: the number of altera-
tions made in the text of Conflit although it is the
longest of the 1895 Revue Blanche articles, is sig-
nificantly smaller than with any of the others, and
only about half of the average for the series. More—
over the majority of the emendations consist of minor
adjustments of punctuation, or of relatively insig-
nificant alterations such as the removal of capital
letters from "Messieurs," "Dimanche," and "Sacré,"

345

or the removal of an article from "le verbe haut“
and of the second pronoun from "je dois jouer 1e
rOle moi—meme.”

Two pleasing ellipses are induced when
"Terrassiers, puisatiers, par qui a tel lieu, du
fait d'un velours have aux jambes, semble que 1e
remblai bouge" becomes "Terrasiers, puisatiers, par
qui un velours have aux jambes, semble que le remblai
bouge" and when “1a promiscuité, pour parler couram—
ment, me déplait" becomes “La promiscuite, couramment,
me déplait"; and a finite verb is removed when
"grouillement qui abonde partout" becomes "grouille-
ment partout." Adverbs such as "ici" and ”enfin" are
removed when non-essential, and the word—order is
changed to make "qu'on vous paie afin d'etre légale-
ment" into "afin qu'on vous paie et d'etre legalement,‘
which does some violence to normal syntax.

Cohn, Toward the Poems, p. 270, says:

o--stasis, circularity ... A corollary of the circu—
larity is evidently the feminine principle ...

And on p. 268:

i-—male principle, hero, light, centripetal ...

In an early verse poem, "Les Fenétres," this threat is
imaged in a persona who, pushing through the window out
into the infinite, risks falling through eternity:

Est-il moyen, O Moi qui connais l'amertume,’

D'enfoncer le cristal par le monstre insulte

Et de m'enfuir, avec mes deux ailes sans plume

—-Au risque de tomber pendant l'eternite?
And in the late "Prose," there is an image most reminiscent
of Nerval, that Symbolist precursor who did, in fact,
"assume the risk" of poetic vision threatening to destroy

the mind:

Que de lis multiples la tige
Grandissait trOp pour nos raisons

346

and which we quoted already in connection with "Pauvre

Enfant Pale."

5 This "jaillissement,' poetic inspiration, was forever
latent in the "noble oeuf de cygne, tel que n'en jaillira
le vol" of the "Nénuphar"; and in an undated letter to
Charles Morice, quoted in Mondor, Propos, p. 164, Mallarmé
writes:

Le chant jaillit de source innée, antérieur a un
concept, si purement que refleter au dehors mille
rythmes d'images.

6 Mallarme's summer retreat, Valvins, the setting also of
"Le Nénuphar Blanc," was celebrated by Valéry, Oeuvres I
(Paris: Gallimard, 1957), p. 85, in a poem by that name
where even the "Nénuphar's" yole gets its due:

Si tu veux dénouer 1a forét qui t'aere
Heureuse, tu te fonds aux feuilles, si tu es
Dans la fluide yole a jamais litteraire,’
Trainant quelques soleils ardemment situes
Aux blancheurs de son flanc que la Seine caresse
Emue, ou pressentant l'apres-midi chante,
Selon que le grand bois trempe une longue tresse.
Et melange ta voile au meilleur de l'ete.
Mais toujours pres de toi que le silence livre
Aux cris multiplies de tout 1e brut azur,
L'Ombre de quelque page eparse d'aucun livre
Tremble, reflet de voile vagabonde sur
La poudreuse peau de la riviere verte
Parmi 1e long regard de la Seine entr'ouverte.

7 Mallarme's country house at Valvins did, indeed, have this

outside stairway of stone, which Ghil, Les Dates, p. 25,

mentions in describing one of his visits at Valvins:

347

Une porte campagnarde, et la cour, d'ou parmi des
rosiers monte l'escalier de pierre haut et rustique.

8 This device, which we already mentioned in connection with

"Reminiscence," (note 6), is even more common in Mallarme's

verse than in his prose: "Victorieusement fui ... ;
Il

"Indifferément sommeillez ... ; "Mais langoureusement

longe ..."; "Indomptablement a dfi ..."; "Abominablement

quelque idole ...

9 The circular form was evident in the structure of some Of
these prose poems, and is the form, moreover, of the
recueil, as will become more evident later on. Circularity
is also the form underlying Mallarmé's most important poem,
the "Coup de dés."

In a letter of 1889 to Vielé Griffin, quoted in Mondor,
Propos, p. 142, Mallarmé writes:
C' est une oeuvre comme il en pourrait surgir au début
d' une littérature, si tout ne finissait, au contraire,
par les commencements.
And Richard, L'Univers, p. 264, in discussing in this con-
nection a line from "Une dentelle s'abolit" sums up:
Naitre en soi, et a partir de soi. Mieux que tout
autre objet sensible, la mandore nous aura fait
comprendre "que l'homme est la source qu'il cherche."
Rythme des saisons, alternance des jours et des
nuits figureront le méme drame ontologique, que

refléteront aussi pour Mallarmé, fidele en cela aux
modes de son époque, les mythologies et les religions.

10 Richard, L'Univers, p. 440, notes:

Autre grief de Mallarmé contre la matiere: sa crudité,
son aggression immediate, par celle surtout exercé,
dans le domaine des sons.

11

12

13

'348

The implied contrast is that between literature and poetry,
or littérateur and pgégg, the former designating the
superficiality of dilettantism as Opposed to the complete
devotion of the poet and the high seriousness of his art.
This is reminiscent of Vigny——just as the offensive rail-
road as a symbol of progress recalled "La Maison du Berger"--

who in "Derniere Nuit de Travail,’ the preface to

Chatterton, his play about the poet in society, made a

 

similar distinction between "l'homme de lettres” and "le

poete, adding, however, the intermediate category of
"le grand écrivain."

In Mallarmé's verse, littérature in this derogatory

 

sense of the sterile and livresque might be implied in the

 

famous opening, and somewhat Faustian, line of "Brise
Marine":
La chair est triste, hélas! et j'ai lu tous les
livres.
Though any instrument with which the laborer impregnates
the earth is in that sense phallic, I feel that the sexual
aspect of the shovel and the pick here refers not only to
this figurative sense, but also to the very shape of those

instruments themselves, suggestive of "female" and "male."

This correspondence between paysage and poet is not so
much Baudelairean, but most suggestive of the early Gide's

Symbolist "Le Voyage d'Urien," which he comments himself

in a bibliographical note, André Gide, Romans, Récits et

349

Soties Oeuvres Lyrigues (Paris: Galllimard, 1958), pp.
1464-65:

11 y a la une sorte d' algebre esthétique: émotion
et manifeste forment equation; 1' un est 1' equivalent
de l' autre. Qui dit émotion dira donc paysage; et
qui dit paysage devra donc conna1tre émotion.

11 n' y a pas d' émotion, si particuliere et neuve

qu 'elle puisse paraitre, qui n,ait en la nature

tous ses equivalents—-

14 Richard, L'Univers, p. 134, who generally tends toward a

15

 

rather Freudian interpretation, comments on the ideal land-
scape as follows:

Cette double valeur, végétale et aquatique, du paysage
de Fontainebleau lui permet aussi de satisfaire au
voeu d' intimité. Cf. par exemple 1' évocation dans
Conflit d'"un paysage celui ci, ou toute foule s 'arrete
en tant qu' un épaisseur de foret a l' isolement que

j 'ai voulu tulélaire de l' eau. ... ou l' intimité
herbeuse et fluviale retrouve une charge érotique:

"un joli voisinage. La nature d' une personne qui

s 'est choisi retraite aussi humidement impenetrable

ne pouvant etre que conforme a mon_g6ut.

This stance not only recalls the persona's attitude toward
the city population in the preceding poem, but was already
that of the very young pOet, who wrote in 1867 to Villiers
de l'Isle-Adam, who certainly shared it, as quoted in
Mondor, Correspondance I, p. 261:
... je veux, dans un mois ou deux, vous envoyer une
Nouvelle. J' en avais un vague plan, mais 1a conser—
vais pour l' avenir, dans plusieurs années, alors que
mon livre de "Beauté" serait achevé. Cela s 'appelle
en effet Esthétigue du bourgeois, ou la Théorie uni-

verselle de la laideur.

The project was probably never realized.

16

17

350

And this pun--we remember that the major phrase of the
"Coup de dés" is a pun--might be a vague evocation of the
poet's having come to terms with ”le néant," that decisive
outcome of the ”Crise de Tournon," discussed in connection

with some of the ear1y_prose poems.

Robert Greer Cohn in Mallarme's Masterwork: New Findings
(Paris: Mouton, 1966), p. 48, alludes to Mallarmé's socio-
historical sense, in which connection he also mentions
"Conflit" and "Confrontation," as follows:

We may recall the moving invocation to the crowd in
"Toast Funebre" "O vous tous oubliez une croyance
sombre." And we may reflect that the ouvrier repre-
sents partly an at least passing interest on Mallarmé' 3
part in the key social phenomenon of his times, the
rise of the working class and its ideology, Marxism:
the poet is always something of a revolutionary politi—
cally, and Mallarmé tended to defend the underdog,
whether anarchists, like his friends Fenéon and
Tailhade, or occultists (who were being persecuted)

or Lesseps or Dreyfus.

18 The analogy of garden and poetry is also suggested by Paul

Valéry, Oeuvres, p. 657, who in one of his "Variété's"

about Mallarmé says:

Un poete use a la fois de la langue vulgaire,—-qui

ne satisfait qu' a la condition de comprehension et
qui est donc purement transitive,—-et du langage

qui s' Oppose a celui- -ci,--comme s' Oppose un jardin
soigneusement peuplé d'especes bien choisies a la
campagne toute inculte ou toute plante vient, et d' ou
l'homme préleve ce qu 'il y trouve de plus beau pour
le remettre et 1e choyer dans une terre exquise.

19 Eliade, Theggacred, p. 25, points out the importance of

the notion of the "threshold" (seuil) as marking off

20

21

351

"sacred" and "profane" space, which, by analogy, might be
likened to the demarcation of the poet's realm from that

of "the others":

For a believer, the church shares in a different
space from the street in which it stands. ... The
threshold that separates the two spaces also indi—
cates the distance between two modes of being, the
profane and the religious. The threshold is the
limit, the boundary, the frontier that distinguishes
and opposes two worlds--and at the same time the
paradoxical place where those two worlds communicate,
where passage from the profane to the sacred world
becomes possible.

And this conclusion is also that of one Of Mallarmé's
essays, significantly entitled "Solitude":

J'attribue a la conscience de ce cas, dans un temps
que deux hommes ne se sont, pent-etre, malgré la
grimace a le faire, entretenus, plusieurs mots durant,
du meme objet exactement, 1a restriction qui garde
des interlocuteurs de rien livrer a fond et de

préter souci; mais les persuade, par ruse mutuelle
avec de la bravade, reliquat des surannés combats
d'esprit généreux et baroques ou conformément au
monde dont les lettres sont 1e direct affinement—-

de soustraire autant que révéler sa pensée, 1e premier;
1e second, de saisir, obstinément, autre chose--pour
réserver leur integrité, quand un besoin cordial les
leurre a se rencontrer (OC pp. 408—9).

Cohn not only discovers and developes this notion as it is
reflected in the "Coup de dés," with the "Maitre" and his
son, "l'ombre puérile," but points to the reappearence of
the motif in both our poem and Mallarmé's essay dealing
with the theme of the poet's confrontation with the working

man, "Confrontation." See Cohn, L'Oeuvre, p. 161 and pp.

193-94.

352

22 Richard, L'Univers, p. 231, points to the function and

 

"service" of the poet here implied:

L' office du poete est d' abord de donner une fete.
Fete qui sera donc organisée, comme une cérémonie
reglée par un pour tous. Les soirées de la rue de
Rome, les conférences de Mallarmé, la lecture revée
du Livre sont bien des sortes de fetes. Or ce sens
de la festivité, publique ou intime, manque cruelle-
ment a notre époque: sa platitude, sa crainte de

1' éclat, sa division en classes, 1' empechent de se
découvrir elle-meme en cette sorte d' explosion com—
munautaire d' etre, en cette "fete" cet "embrasement
idéal,‘ (OC p. 1563), on se manifesterait brusquement
"la part du sacré dans 1' existence." Conflit.

 

23 Richard, L'Univers, p. 240:

 

On sait que 1' idée de son propre suicide occupa lon —
temps Mallarmé. ... C' est que, comme le dit Mallarme
dans la Fausse Entrée (OC p. 348), tuer est ”le seul
acte en soi surnaturel commis a la disposition de

1' homme." Se tuer est peut- -etre alors le seul moyen
d'accéder a la fois a soi, a l' esprit et au sacré.

C' est bien.letsens que Mallarmé donne, dans Conflit
(OC p. 359), a ce "momentané suicide," cette ffilgura-
tion mineure, d' ivresse.

 

24 This last reference to trees in these prose poems reveals
a significant progression-—as though trees symbolized
somehow the poet's own growth-—from the early pieces. In

"Le Phénoméne Futur, we encountered "les arbres ... leur
feuillage blanchi (de la poussiere du temps)": in "Plainte
d'Automne," "des peupliers dont les feuilles me paraissent
mornes meme au printemps"; in "La Pipe," "ces arbres

malades du square." But the nocturnal trees of "La Déclar-
ation Foraine" had an almost nourishing quality, drunk in by

the woman with the night air, while in the "Nénuphar," the

"buée d'argent glacant des saules" became the ideal woman's

25

26

N
a.)

353

"limpid glance" itself. The "ombrage environnant d'hier
la ville" becomes the setting Of “L'Ecclésiastigue.”
while the magnificently proud trees of both "La Gloire"
and "Conflit" are celebrated as symbols of human pride

and strength.

"Se montrer debout" is a gesture symbolizing control and
even defiance; this was clearly brought out in, for

example, the "debout dans les rues" of "Pauvre Enfant P31e,‘
with its Opposite in the ecclesiastic's position "contre

la terre."

When I use the term "circular," I assume it understood

that this is always the circularity Of a spiral; in other
words, the poem comes back to its starting point--as does
the whole cycle--while at the same time evidencing progres-

sion, namely the poem's, or cycle's, significance.

Not only is this reminiscent of the final constellation
of the "Coup de dés," but, as Richard sums‘up in L'Univers,
p. 514:

Car 1e champ d'étoiles symbolise d'abord 1e fourmil-
lement de la contingence, "1e hasard infini des con-
jonctions" (Igitur p. 435) mais chaque étoile inscrit
aussi sur le fond noir de la nuit les signes-lumineux
d'une pensée, pent-etre d'une écriture. Dans Conflit,
par exemple, Mallarmé constate que “les constellations
s'initient a briller," et 11 émet le voeu que "parmi
l'obscurité qui court sur l'aveu le trou eau, aussi
des points de clarté, telle pensee tout a l'heure,

se fixassent."

CHAPTER XV
CON CLUS ION

At the conclusion of our reading of these thirteenprose
poems, it is evident that, taken together, they tell a single
story, that, on the one hand, of the poet in his relationship
to the raw data of human experience, and, on the other, to
the transformation of that experience into an ordered artistic
universe through the poet's vision. At the beginning of this
study, I indicated my awareness of the exaggerated emphasis
which modern critical interpretation tends to place on.poetry
as "poetry about poetry"; but, at the same time, I draw atten-
tion to Mallarmé's own comment about Divagations: "Les Diva-
gations apparentes traitent un suject, de pensée unique,“l
namely the subject Of his poetic theory, or of art in general,
always related to it. Yet Mallarmé seemed to except the
"Anecdotes ou Poémes" from his statement, and to belittle them:
"a part des poemes ou anecdotes, au debut que le sort, exa-
géré, fait a ces riens, m'obligeait (envers le public) de
n'omettre." But now that we know these pieces also to be

concerned withpoet and poetry, "de-pensée unique,‘ we may well
ask why Mallarmé suggested their exception. One answer might

be that these pieces are not "poemes critiques," that is, of

354

355

an interpretative or theoretical nature. They are poems
showing thought dependent upon the contingencies which the
surrounding material world thrusts upon the perceiving
consciousness, rather than illustrating the movement of a
more purely self—reflexive thought. Moreover, it is entirely
possible that the poet himself was not fully conscious of the
underlying thematic unity Of these poems, written over a
period of more than thirty years, even though he suggested
this unity by placing them together in Divagations. Further,
Mallarme's comment about these pieces seems somehow to under—
cut their value by its tone of exaggerated modesty. But,
again, is his judgment Of these prose poems not, in fact,
suggested by their very inclusion in this "late" book? We
must remember that the poet could, at times, be as modest
about his work, as he could sound confident at others, though
both extremes were never totally devoid Of that irony which
we have encountered again and again in our reading of these
poems themselves. Did he not at one time view his whole
poetic output as mere "exercises,"2 while at another esteem-
ing himself as one Of his own "favorite" poets?3

And so, in concluding this investigation, I would like to
retrace briefly once more the theme revealed in these poems,
namely the story of the poet, from his artistic birth to his
maturity--with this progression reflected in the development
of the style of the recueil itself--following, and at the same
time confirming, the structural form of the cycle imposed by

Mallarmé himself.

.4. Th

 

 

356

The prose poem cycle Opened with a vision of Beauty:
Venus at the moment of her birth out of the primeval sea,
preserved "par la science souveraine," that is, the magic
of language. The "boniment" Of the "montreur" alone can
describe what humanity is no longer capable of comprehending:
a memory of Eden, the vision of which will, for a privileged
moment, intoxicate the poets alone with an overwhelming
glory. And we found this role of the "montreur" poet echoed
also in the verse poetry; it was a recurring one in the
recueil, as was the motif of the poet's isolation from and
in the society of man, without which, however, he, poet and

"montreur,' would cease to exist. Mallarmé, in a group of
essays entitled “Quant au Livre," says:

L'écrivain, de ses maux, dragons qu'il a choyés, ou

d'une allegresse, doit s'instituer, au texte, 1e

spirituel histrion (OC p. 370).

"Plainte d'Automne" celebrated one Of the Orphic func-
tions oproetry, and the quest for Eurydice led necessarily
"out of this world," but the persona--from here on and through-
out the remainder of the cycle a first-person narrator-—hesi-
tated at this point before the double calling; the descent
into the crepuscular realm of the mind, and the ascension
toward the ideal, his vocation. .He was a reader of decadent
literature and a listener to Old-fashioned airs, that is,
romantic poetry; and he appreciated a moment Of art character-

ized by the refusal of the now, death-directed as the very

hour he preferred: "chute." And in this piece we saw only

357

the sunset, not the constellations, while only its last words
vaguely suggested the first stirrings of song.

The third piece moved us into the "saison de l'art
serein," haunted by the ennui Of sterility--pure white as
the page on which the poem cannot be born. The key images of
"Frisson d'Hiver" are the room, the mirror, the window, the
spider's lace, and the fragile china clock. And this room,
so jealously and anxiously protected, emerged as a symbol of
the poet's mind, with its familiar Objects, cherished and old.
But the persona still hesitated to look deep into the Venetian
mirror, profound and deep fountain of the sou1--what un-
familiar phantoms might it not reveal? The other threat was
from without: from those windows, at once shielding and
exposing the meditations of this calm, pale solitude, whose
narcissistic fragility was imaged in the trembling spider-
webbing. In one of his letters of those years, Mallarmé
wrote:

Ma chambre est si grande, et haute, que j'y suis encore

un etranger et ne l'ai pas peuplee de ma pensee et de

mes paroles.4
And just a few years later, as we saw, with the plan Of his
oeuvre beginning to take shape in his mind:

-—centre de moi-meme, Ou je me tiens comme une araignée

sacree, sur les principaux fils deja sorties de mon

esprit, et a l'aide desquels je tisserai aux points de 5

rencontre de merve1lleuses dentelles, que je dev1ne ...
And as Mallarme wrote to the Same correspondent of his need

of the greatest "silencieuse solitude de l'éme,‘ in order to

hear the inner melody, so "Frisson d'Hiver" in the cycle

358

marks this moment of withdrawal from the outside, so that
the poet may listen to the melody within.
This "chant intérieur" and the poet's enslavement to it

was the theme of "Le Démon de l'Analogie.’ with its dominant
vocabulary cluster of rhetoric and music, and whose key sym—
bols are those of poetry: the traditional lyre, and lute,
the wing and bird, and "palme" and "plume." But this engage-
ment, we saw, is at the cost of a death--of a former setff‘
and this prose poem is at onCe a poetic rendition Of the
creative process and a monody, celebrating thus both a becom—
ing and a dying. And the general feeling Of the poem was
that of the persona controlled by, rather than controlling
his inspiration, the furor poeticus. But he was now driven
to look into the mirror reflecting his own image: a poet
caressing the voice; and, as the mirror turned into a window,
it revealed to him the symbols of his art.

The poet's sacrificial death, Promethean and Orphic,
was the theme of "Pauvre Enfant Pale," which we did not read
as a commentary on Mallarmé's compassion for the unfortunate
of'society. NO, the poet projected himself into the pale
singer who sang "fatalement," that is, who was fated to sing,
and ”qui s'en va seul par la vie." And we demonstrated how
this prose poem announced the "Cantique de Saint Jean" and
its decapitation theme. Now the poet-singer is "outside" the
windows: his vision--the nudity of Hérodiade?-—sets him apart,

and as his head rises higher and higher, his voice strains tO

359

the breaking point, just as that string of the lyre of "Le

Demon de l'Analogie.“ And, as in the "Cantique," in this
poem death was the punishment of a crime--both hubris and
a sacrificial death as in the myths--committed "pour moi,
pour ceux qui valent moins que moi."

The last Of the early prose poems, whose title played
with both the instrument of the privileged moment, its

madeleine, and by association with the instrument which sang

 

it, was the objectification Of an epiphany aroused by the
mechanism of involontary memory. Our poet now knows "l'art
d'évoquer les minutes heureuses," that is, he has mastered

the art of traditional poetry. And it is precisely here,

as we saw, that a break occurs--with tradition--in these prose
poems, "La Pipe" constituting the last Of the "early," the
traditional, pieces Of the cycle.

The seventh poem marked a decisive change: Mallarmé has
now forged a new language Of art: for he, as we saw, dis-
tinguishes not, in the traditional way, between a language of
verse and one of prose, but between one of art and one of
communication, the former being a closed system of artistic
expression, which, like music, requires its own mastery. And
Mallarme once expressed this develOpment to a friend:

... j'ai résolu de me mettre a écrire les livres que je

portais dans mon cerveau, en me contentant d'une forme

francaise habituelle; ... et puis, au moment de com-

mencer, je sentais que je ne pouvais pas, que l'on n'a

pas le droit de mesuser ainsi de la langue ecrite--et

je recommencais a étudier ce qu'elle exige.6

Much later in his life, in 1891, the poet still says:

360’

Dans le genre appelé prose, 11 y a des vers, quelque—

fois admirables, de tous rythmes. Mais, en verite, il

n'y a pas de prose: il y a l'alphabet et puis des vers

plus ou moins serres: plus Ou moins diffus. Toutes les

fois qu'il y a effort au style, 11 y a versification

(OC p. 867).
And we saw how "Un Spectacle Interrompu" not only discussed,
but demonstrated, the distinction between écriture and parole,
between writing and journalism, the poem's anecdote being the
vehicle for its demonstration. Therefore, at the end of that
piece, Mallarme very emphatically set artistic vision apart
from the common one, contrasting "mon regard de poete" with
that of the "reporters.” At the same time, the poem's style
was, of course, the objectification of this artistic vision.
Moreover, we saw in this first "late" piece a reflection of

the mature poet's calm serenity: ... car ma facon de voir,
apres tout, avait été supérieure, et meme la vraie."
The distance which separates its original version,

"L'Orphelin," from "Réminiscence,' we suggested, provides a
demonstration Of the difference between the "early" and the
"mature" style of these prose poems. And "Reminiscence" is,
where it stands in the cycle, indeed a remembrance of things
past, an evocation of the poet's youth, this "... orphelin
... en noir et l'oeil vacant de famille," the archetypal,
solitary Hamlet:

... l'adolescent évanoui de nous aux commencements de

la vie et qui hantera les esprits hauts ou pensifs par

le deuil qu'il se plait a porter (OC p. 299).

At the same time, the fairground, reminiscent Of the first

poem Of the recueil, to which the child felt already drawn,

 

 

,.|.IJ

 

361

presaged, then, with its ambiance of "fete, choeurs, drame,
sainte heure," and the allusion to the poet Of the Divine
Comedy, already something of the sacredness of the ideal
ritual theatre, where the poet will finally, at the close of
the cycle, celebrate his mysterious hymn with and for his
fellow man.

We found the same setting in the following piece, "La

Declaration Foraine,' where an anonymous poet rose out of
the crowd to celebrate Beauty for and before it: "improviser
ici, comme les voiles dans tous les temps et les temples,
l'arcane!" And so this poem also reaches back to "Le
Phenomene Futur," but now the poet showman's "boniment" has
become a formal love poem. But, we suggested, Minne--and we
recognized in this piece a courtly love poem, where the "Old"
sonnet form, inserted in the prose, was in harmony with an

"old" tradition--never was a way of life or love, but one of

art, where for the Minnesanger, our courtly prose poet, his

 

Lady is but the occasion for his song. The poem, then, was
neither about a woman, nor about love, but again about poetry,
and the only absolute power appealed to in it was that of
"metaphor." Further, this piece introduced a theme already
touched upon before, the poet's paradoxical love and hate for
the crowd,7 his fear of it even: and the significant conclu-
sion admitted that not only would the poet never have pro-
claimed his poem without 12 fgglg, but the Lady could not have
understood it, "... Bi chaque terme ne s'en était réprecuté

... par de variés tympans." And so, reaching back to the

362

Opening of the recueil, that is to a "montreur" who needs
the crowd to exist, "La Declaration Foraine" at the same
time points ahead to the end Of the cycle, where this theme
of Poet and People receives its full development.

The magical Opening of "Le Nénuphar Blanc" was an awak—
ening from lethean Oblivion into the light of a midsummer
day; the emergence and separation of an individual conscious—

ness from the timeless Urelement. But it was a poetic

 

consciousness which set out for the quest through the magic
forest, which, therefore, became an artistic quest, with
nature transformed and sublimated, so that the fountain be-
came a mirror, the forest a park, and woman the lustral ideal
evoked by the poet. .He sacrifiCes life to art, in order to
reduce it to order and form, a fiction: "... le délice
empreint de généralité qui permet et ordonne d'exclure tous

visages ... Thus the poet—hero remained the master of his
ideal world, rather than becoming the slave of that other,
the "real" one, which mastery we saw symbolized by the rower's
control over his boat. And the tension throughout that piece
was that of the erotic and its sublimation-—life and art--
culminating in the "rapt de mon idéale fleur."

The "Ecclésiastique" is, in a sense, the "Nénuphar's"
antithesis: the only spring—time poem in the recueil, it
displayed "les allures d'individus faits pour la spiritualité,"

their abandoning themselves to nature. At the same time, the

piece constitutes again what Mallarmé, in the Opening of

363

"Un Spectacle Interrompu" had designated reportage of a fact,
an anecdote "comme elle frappa mon regard de poete." And
though the image of the priest necessarily suggested the
poet's sacerdotal function, both the irony of tone and the
"préciosité of style maintained the persona's distance from
his vision. The ecclesiastic, encountered by chance, was,
again, merely the pretext Of the poem, his description being
abandoned half-way through the piece for that of the poet's
mental image, "me figurer en esprit l'apparition quasi
diabolique," so that the persona could designate him at once
ironically and correctly "le héros de ma vision." Again,
then, in this piece the fleeting phenomena of reality were
reduced to a fixed image, for, as we said, what is more fugi—
tive, in fact, than those temporary divagations under the
influence of the season? But the poet-persona had trans—
formed the fugitive into the permanent: "Ma discretion
vis-a-vis d'ébats d'abord apparus n'a-t-elle pas pour récom-
pense d'en fixer a jamais ... l'image marquee d'un sceau
mystérieux de modernité, a la fois baroque et belle?" And in
those last words we saw, again, the confident judgment of his
work by the master poet, as well as a restatement of the
definition of the prose poem, "l'image marquee d'un sceau
mystérieux de modernité."

Not only confidence, but certitude, and triumph burst

forth--exultant "jaillissement"--in "La Gloire,‘ whose very

title sounded like a trumpet call of victory: the poet now

 

4...,

 

 

364

has seen true glory, and the faith in his vision sets him
apart from those who could not share it: "La Gloire! je ne
la sus qu'hier, irréfragable, et rien ne m'interessera
d'appelé par quelqu'un ainsi." The anecdote was about the
persona's anxious effort to withdraw from "the others," the
city first, and then his fellow travelers, "million d'exis—
tences étageant leur vacuité." But they could not even hear
the magic calling of that name, "Fontainebleau," and so the
solitary pilgrim found himself doubly isolated: Abandoned
by those whom he had to reject. Thus we saw him waiting to
approach the autumnal forest alone, the stage of the sublime
drama, in its turn, waiting for him alone--in a suspended
moment Of pure expectancy of the anointment and the coronation
of the "royal intruder." This poem, then, marks the Poet's
consecration in a supreme solemnitas, but though the poet's
vision was solitary, its revelation was the destiny of Man.
And it is to his fellow man that the last and culminating
piece of the cycle is devoted, a cycle whose final note is
not that of the poet's isolation in the stasis of Vision, but '
that of his return from the solitary mountain top into the
community of his fellow man. Having received his sacerdotal
ordination in "La Gloire," the poet-priest descends as cele-
brant for the people. And here the structural circularity of
the cycle becomes evident. For did not the "montreur" of
"Le Phenomene Futur" need his audience, even if it were un—

comprehending? But at the same time, the circle closing is,

365

as I suggested, that of a spiral. For along with the poetry,
the poet—persona has progressed through the recueil from
"saltimbanque" to the consecrated Officiant Of a rite, a
rite both for and before the People. This is the final image

Of "Conflit" and the "Anecdotes ou Poemes,' an indeed solitary
celebrant Of a ritual, the meaning of whose language, simi-
larly to the Latin of the Christian Mass of Mallarmé's day,
is mysteriously veiled from those for whom it is intoned:
La nef avec un peuple je ne parle d'assistants, bien
d'elus: quiconque y peut de la source la plus humble
d'un gosier jeter aux voiltes 1e repons en latin in-
compris, mais exultant, participe entre tous et lui-
meme de la sublimite se reployant vers le choeur (OC
p. 396).
And so, again chance encounter was transformed into meaning,
the intruders becoming the heroes celebrated in the tombeau,
erected for them by the poet, who, at the same time, discovers
here his own highest function and fulfillment.
The poet's growth is reflected, moreover, in the cycle,
by a progression, already touched upon, that from "inside,"

as it were, to the "outside,' or more literally from indoors
to outdoors, a development which seems to parallel the poet's
growing independence. As we saw the early prose poems over-
shadowed by the influence Of Baudelaire—-with the very first
piece of the recueil at the same time a Stimmungsgedicht per-- .
haps somewhat reminiscent of the manner of Bertrand——so the

persona in those early pieces is still protected by the shell

of the room shielding him from the world. This artificially

created shell--which at the same time symbolizes the persona's

366

mind--was celebrated especially in "Frisson d'Hiver," which
is the very prose poem in which the young Mallarme cites a
phrase from his prose tribute to Baudelaire. And it is with
the crisis of "Le Démon de l'Analogie" that the poet attains
and accomplishes both his deepest descent and his liberation.
For both his independence of literary influences, as well as
his movement out and into nature, symbolizing acceptance of
the world--an acceptance, as we saw, however, always on the
poet's terms--progress from that early moment in the cycle
to a culmination in its end: in "Conflit" Nature is the
Poet's stage.8
At the time of the early projection of his oeuvre, in
1871, shortly after his metaphysical crisis and its purgation
in Igitur, Mallarme wrote to his friend, Cazalis:
Je redeviens un littérateur pur et simple. Mon oeuvre
n'est plus un mythe. (Un volume de Oontes, revé. Un
volume de Poesie, entrevu et fredonne. Un volume de
Criti ue, soit ce qu'on appelait hier l'Univers, con—
sidére du point de vue strictement littéraire.9
And Robert Greer Cohn says about this-passage:
Ce passage est remarquablement prOphétique. Les Contes
sont devenues les Poemes enjprose, les poemes Ont ete
écrits ainsi que les Divagations.10
I agree with this position, for in each prose poem we find a
"conte" or anecdote, which is the vehicle of the major theme,
and its lesser satellites. And in this structural character-
istic, "Conflit" likewise reveals its kinship with the other

twelve pieces, for its anecdote relates the poet—persona's

encounter with the unforeseen, those invading railroad workers,

flfinl! IN I.

 

367

and his coming to terms with it, which serves as the vehicle
for the theme of the Poet and the People.

"Conflit," moreover, has in common with the other pieces
of the collection its tension, which is forcefully evident in
its very title and permeates the poem. Tension and the pre-
dominance Of a specific vocabulary cluster characterizes al-
most every prose poem. In the Opening piece, the tension was
that of the contrast between the blindingly bright vision
of "Le Phenomene" with the decrepit and dull civilization in
which it appeared; in "Plainte d'Automne" it was that Of a
simultaneously ascending and descending movement still so
reminiscent of Baudelaire's "double postulation." But most
notable, in this respect, among the "early" prose poems was
"Le Démon de l'Analogie" with its celebration of the birth-
and-death theme. In the second half of the cycle, "Un Spec-
tacle Interrompu" achieved this tension by its juxtaposition
Of the poetic vision with that of la foule, represented both
by the theatre audience and the reporters; while the para-
doxically ambiguous relationship of the poet and audience,
his contempt for them as well as his need of them, was one
of the most important themes of "La Declaration Foraine." In
“Le Nénuphar Blanc," the tone was set throughout by eroticism

and its sublimation, while in the late "La Gloire,‘ a most
remarkable tension was achieved by the feat of closely juxta—
posing the ironic and the elevated manner in a totally un—

precedented way.

 

fll‘iip .

W0 ...Ofllu".% I

368

The tension which characterizes each Of the prose poems,
this somewhat Hegelian play of opposites, invites the ques-
tion Of their philOSOphic nature. DO they convey any particu—
lar philOsOphic thought in a formal sense, or do they suggest,
at least, a philOSOphic stance on the part of the author?
Though the Hegelian hero of Igitur suggested his presence,
by association, in some of the early pieces, I see no evidence
of Hegelianism in these prose poems, other than a certain
Hegelian turn of mind, at best, in that the play of opposites
in most of them creates the living tension which makes the
poem. Similarly, Steland found not a Hegelian dialectics,
but "Dialektische Gedanken," in some of the critical pieces

of Divagations, as I mentioned in discussing "Un Spectacle

 

Interrompu." And though we found in the "Nénuphar" a vaguely
Hegelian movement which synthesized the specific woman by
"negating" her, as it were, into her ideal Pure Notion, yet
this reflects no Hegelian thinking but could equally well and
equally loosely be said to reflect Platonism.11

Mallarme invites an association with Hegel by his frequent
use of Hegelian terms in his prose; and he was, Of course, at
least indirectly acquainted with that philosophy through his
close friendship with Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, about whom he
said, in his commemorative lecture:

... Saint-Bernard, Kant, le Thomas de la Somme, prin- .

cipalement un designe par lui le Titan de l'Esprit

Humain, Hegel, dont 1e singulier lecteur semblait aussi
se revendiquer ... (OC p. 491).

369

In the poetry, it is principally Igitur which reflects Hegel,
as its hero moves through the Triad, by first divorcing his
consciousness from phenomena, in order to reach a pure
consciousness of the self, and finally rising up to the dis—
solution Of that individual consciousness in the Absolute
Spirit. And as for Hegel this pure self—thinking thought
would actualize itself in the final stage Of the historical
process, so Igitur, "the last of his line," symbolized the
final aboutissement of the human spirit, where it merges

into the Weltgeist. And surely, the young Mallarme was

 

haunted by this temptation of "losing his mind," which was
at the same time a threat, in a spiritual self-annihilation,
Which we-discussed.12 And it is evident, of course, in
Igitur's‘play on "fiole-folie." Since Igitur was a most im-
portant stage in Mallarmé's development, its hero did, in
fact, find his image reflected in some of the early prose
poems.

But at the foundation of Hegel's philosophy lies the
belief that the rational is the real, and the real the ra—
tional, and I do not feel that Mallarmé shared that Optimistic
faith. Nor do I believe that Mallarme ever considered the
phenomenological world--the domain Of "la matiere"--to be
the manifestation Of infinite reason. Rather, the Absolute

for Mallarme, we saw, was "le Rien,’ which, by the way,
reappears in the "Coup de dés." A thinker who seems to me

much more profoundly akin to the poet is Kant. For just as

he constructed his whole Idealistic system, that intricate
Critique Of Pure Reaggg in the face of Hume's radical em—
piricism, so, by analogy, Mallarmé built the equally intri-
cate fabric of his symbolist and poetic universe in the
face of the reigning naturalism and positivism of his day;
and we have already quoted his statement to one of his
disciples: "Non, Ghil, l'on ne peut se passer d'Eden!"
Further, just as Kant's "Copernican Revolution" made the
human mind the center Of the world, so the poet's mind is
the center, that "sacred spider” of the web.

Again and again, Mallarmé's answer to chaos and hasard
has been to construct comme gi—-as if a poetic cosmos and
order could be imposed on reality. And it is this tendency,
which becomes more and more evident in the later prose poems,
which points to the "Coup de dés." And here, again, an ana-
logous but deep kinship with Kant comes to light. For at
least is not all of the Critique of Practical Reason based
on §l§_gb? The categorical imperative itself, after all,

contains this important clause, ... as if the maxim of your

action were to ..." And as Kant, then, demolishes systema—
tically the traditional proofs for the existence Of God, he
founds, similarly, his whole religious philOSOphy on those
two small Mallarméan words: ‘ggmm§,§ir§l§_gb. In other words,
I feel that both the greatest Idealist philosopher and the

greatest Idealist poet are heroically constructing each his

own system, his world-order, the one a philosophical, the

371

other a poetic, fictional Cosmos--against the Chaos which
they know to be the truth.

One of Mallarme's late letters to Odilon Redon,13
describing the latter's lithograph "Dans mon reve, je vis au

ciel un visage de mystere," expresses his sympathy with an

image in which he recognized himself:

... mais mon admiration tout entiere va droit au grand
Mage inconsolable et obstiné chercheur d' un mystere
qu' i1 sait ne pas exister, et qu 'il poursuivra, a
jamais pour cela, du deuil de son lucide désespoir,
car c 'efit été la verité! Je ne connais pas un dessin
qui communique tant de peur intellectuelle et de
sympathie affreuse, que ce grandiose visage.

372

CONCLUSION

NOTES

1 Mallarmé, Divagations, p. l.

2 Cohn, An Exegesis, p. 3:

For, everyone knows that Mallarme, whom Gide has
called the most stubbornly literary figure "in our
literature," regards everything he had accomplished,
... as mere "exercises."

In his famous "biOgraphical" letter to Verlaine, Mallarmé
says:

Rien de si simple alors que je n'aie eu hate de
recueillir les mille bribes connues, qui m 'ont, de
temps a autre, attiré la bienveillance de charmants
et excellents esprits, vous le premier! Tout cela
n 'avait d'autre valeur momentanée pour moi que de
m 'entretenir la main: et quelque réussi que puisse
etre quelquefois un des [un mot manque] a eux tous,
c 'est bien juste s 'ils composent un album, mais pas
un livre (OC p. 633).

3 In the "Introduction" to the Pléiade edition, the editors

relate:

Aucun n'avait placé 1e Poete au sommet supréme avec
moins d' hesitation, mais lorsqu' une jeune femme lui
tendait 1' album ou se trouvait preparée cette ques-
tion: "Quels sont vos poetes favoris?" i1 répondait
avec la simplicité de son orguei1:'Quelques—uns dont
je suis" (OC p. x).

4 Mondor, Correspondance I, p. 176, letter to Eugene Lefébure

from Tournon, dated "octobre—novembre 1865. by the editor.
5 "Frisson d'Hiver," note 15.

6 Cited in Mauclair, Princes, p. 112.

7 Mallarme's attitude toward lg foule, an attitude some of
whose complexity we saw reflected in the prose poems, is
beautifully discussed in an article by Paul Bénichou,

"Mallarmé et le public," Cahiers du Sud, 30 (1969), 272-90.

8 Significantly, Mallarmé's adolescent poetry collection,
which was, of course, strongly influenced by the poets

the child was reading, particularly Victor Hugo, was

entitled by him "Entre Quatre Murs." (Mondor, Lycéen, p.
121.) In the same volume, Mondor prints the long prose
piece, "Ce que Disaient les Trois Cigognes," (pp. 338-56)

which has as its theme the visit of a revenant, a piece

which Mondor entitles "Premier Poeme en Prose."

9 Mondor, Correspondance I, p. 342.

10 Cohn, L'Oeuvre, pp. 475—76.

 

11 This, as a matter of fact, has been done. Thibaudet, in
La Poésie, p. 108, says:

Comment donner au non-étre une certaine existence?

Et cette vision de l'absence chez Mallarmé, cette
existence du non-étre chez Platon, naissent pareille-
ment, a la fois, de la conscience et de la hantise

des Idées, d'une croyance obstinée de visuels a

l'étre nécessaire et suffisant du Mot. Le Nénuphar
Blanc m'apparait comme 1e Parmenide esquissé, désarti-
cule et flottant d'un poete et d'un réveur.

12 This fear and temptation is reflected in the correspondence,
where indeed it is often dreSsed in Hegelian terms.

Already in 1864, Mallarmé wrote to Cazalis, Mondor,

13

374

Correspondance I, 152:

... et je passe des heures a observer dans les glaces
1' envahissement de la betise qui éteint déja mes
yeux aux cils pendants et laisse tomber mes lévres.

The crisis then becomes acute in 1867, when he writes
again to Cazalis, and this time in Hegelian terms, Mondor,
Correspondance I, p. 242:
C' est t'apprendre que je Suis maintenant impersonnel
et non plus Stéphane que tu as connu,-—mais une apti-
tude qu' a 1'Univers spirituel a se voir et a se
développer, a travers ce qui fut moi.

Fragile comme est mon apparition terrestre, je
ne puis subir que les develOppements absolument
nécessaires pour que 1'Univers retrouve, en ce moi,
son identité. Ainsi je viens a l'heure de la Syn-

these, de délimiter 1' oeuvre qui sera 1' image de ce
développement.

And though this seems to announce "Hegelian poetry," if
such a phenomenon is possible, only Igitur, the fragment

of purgation of this same crisis, really is.

Mondor, Correspondance II, p. 280, letter to Odilon Redon,

2 février, 1885.

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