Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898):

Life
 His mother died when he was only five years old, his younger sister died ten years later, and
then his father as well six years after that.
 Learned English and became a teacher, though he was never fond of the profession
 Suffered financial woes following the birth of his two children, and yet another death when
his son Anatole died at only age eight.
 Received high praise from Verlaine in Les Poètes maudits and from J.-K. Huysmans

Poetry
 Mallarmé wanted to forego the pains reality as it is to search for a new world in his poetry
(escapism). This idea was greatly influenced by Charles Baudelaire.
 Mallarmé’s ideal world was to be described in his dramatic poems L’Après-midi d’un faune
and Hérodiade which remained uncompleted at the time of his death.
 Similar to the Platonic forms, Mallarmé sought to capture the perfect essence of his
surroundings within his poems. Rather than depict the reality of, for example, a flower, he
could utilize language to solidify what a flower should be in its purest form.
 His main collection of poetry Grand Oeuvre was never finished. The completed portions
contained elegies to Charles Baudelaire, Edgar Allan Poe, Richard Wagner, Théophile
Gautier, and Paul Verlaine. He also wrote a set of sonnets to his mistress Méry Laurent
 In Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard, poème, he posited that finding success in his
poetry was a satisfactory step towards the ideal world he had envisioned

Source:
Burnshaw, Stanley. The Poem Itself. Fayetteville, University of Arkansas Press, 1995.

Underwood, Vernon Philip, “Paul Verlaine.” Encylopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica,

Inc. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Verlaine-Paul. Date Accessed 4 February
2020.
 Stéphane Mallarmé

Don du Poème

 There is a lot content-wise going on in this poem. The comparison of writing poetry to giving
birth, the child/poem being both a gift and a monster, the temporal setting shifting as dawn
approaches, the nourishment only a mother could provide. In my opinion, the ideas are a bit
cluttered for only fourteen lines.
 Strangely, there are elements in this poem that recall the modern day genre of horror. First,
there is a tension created by an unnatural birth. Not only is Mallarmé birthing his poem as a
man by himself, but the birth is bloody and the child is deformed. Further accentuating this
abnormality is the hostile smile of the father and the chilling description of a sterile, blue
solitude. Mothers are a staple of the horror genre, and Mallarmé’s wife here has her own
ominous peculiarities. He seems unsure of how to refer to her, switching between tu and
vous, and the finger she presses to her breast is shriveled.
 The whole poem is ironic; rather than a gift, it is the source of endless questions. There is
little connecting the frightening drama of this pseudo-sonnet to Mallarmé’s overarching goal
of crystallizing the theoretical, ideal world. Instead, the ideas presented here seem rooted in
the reality of a struggling poet with a tragic past.

Stéphane Mallarmé

Sainte

 This poem does not merely describe a Raphael painting. Mallarmé merges the content of the
image with the only auditory effect it can have: silence. Just as Saint Cecilia puts away
earthly instruments in favor of angelic music, Mallarmé uses the entire poem in preparation
of its final line. He references the Magnificat–Mary’s song recited at the sunset liturgy–as
well as the Compline–the final prayer of the working day. This last religious detail is of
particular interest because a great deal of monasteries practice the “Great Silence” whereby
every monk, and even guests, observe silence after Compline until morning.
 Beautiful imagery of an angel’s wing brushing past the saint’s fingers like the strings of a
harp, and then Mallarmé abruptly ends the poem. He has “put away” the earthly sounds of his
poetry for the following divine silence. The symbolists always aimed for their poetry to stir
up emotions and experiences within their readers, but Mallarmé has ingeniously stretched
this goal out into the space after the poem. It becomes the last prayer before silent meditation.
 Interestingly, Mallarmé rejected Christian belief in God or the afterlife. He is not suggesting
an act of pious meditation to draw closer to God, but to understand and accept the
Nothingness that comes after life.
 Stéphane Mallarmé

Toast Funèbre

 Of the 56 lines, only seven have an irregular alexandrine with a caesura before or after the
sixth syllable. With rime plat after rime plat, this funeral toast can get a bit monotonous, but
the literary interest comes from the images and ideology recorded in the poem rather than its
structure.
 Mallarmé admits that the toast is imaginary, pale, and without reason, so the title is meant
only ironically. So sure is he of a godless world followed by Nothingness that his toast to his
friend is more about the survival of Gautier’s art. He can honor the memory of Gautier, but to
Mallarmé, his friend’s worth has increased in death as his poetry is now unshackled.
 The word choice is this poem is haunting and ambiguous. The tomb is made of porphyry, the
unenlightened masses are « la triste opacité de nos spectres futurs », weeping causes “lucid”
horror, and a life spent on Earth is a memory of horizons.
 The poem takes certain ideas found in Gautier’s own poetry and reworks them in Malarméen
style: the duty of a poet to bring meaning to the world and any resulting glory, the
extinguishing of a poet’s flame at death, the final closing of one’s eyes and acceptance of the
permanence of death.

Stéphane Mallarmé

[Le vierge, le vivace et le bel aujourd’hui]

 One of Mallarmé’s principal assertions is that a poem will outlive the poet, and that the
creative work produced is greater than the man producing it. It might be controversial, but
throughout the works of his that I read–and in none more clearly than this poem–I think he
lacks a personal voice. I get no sense of Mallarmé from this work, and I suppose that even if
this was an intentional effect, it is nonetheless uncomfortable. Just as the swan and ice
become one and the same in line 4, the living portion of Mallarmé disappears into his
ideology. Rather than saying that the poet himself is stubborn for clinging to the concept of
an ideal world, I find it infinitely more natural to say that the poet’s ideas are
uncompromising in the face of reality. There is nothing inherently wrong with Mallarmé’s
insistence on Nothingness, but it leaves me wondering how this absence fits into the
Symbolist movement.
 Despite its impersonality, I enjoyed this poem for its restraint. There is only one image and
the purpose is clear and deftly accomplished. In structure, the poem is masterfully crafted.
The plight of the swan is a perfect 1:1 for Mallarmé’s existential dread. The pains of being an
artist trapped in a mortal body are evident, and all the sounds are unbearably sharp.
 Stéphane Mallarmé

Autre Éventail de Mademoiselle Mallarmé

 There is rich irony in the fan acting as both a prisoner (line 4) as well as a scepter of the
young mademoiselle’s imagination (line 17). The poem could be interpreted as Mallarmé’s
own appreciation of poetry, able to open up space itself and delay the setting sun but held
captive by a physical reality. There are strong ties between this view of art and the modern
day perception of technology. Currently, human innovation delivers « Une fraîcheur de
crépuscule » to almost all varieties of suffering; however, a large portion of science fiction
concerns itself with a future technology freed from human servanthood.
 This poem is Mallarmé’s most tender application of his ideology. Having lost his son at age
eight and being so fixated on mortality in his elegies, Mallarmé turns to the simple humanity
of Geneviève as a respite from ennui. He never ridicules her daydreaming or her anticipation
of womanhood. Instead, he unites the visionary fan and the passion of her imagination in the
last line. This detail is off because it seems to indicate that art truly untethered from the heat
of a human heart would serve no purpose, and yet Mallarmé was quite adamant that true art
was limited by the mortal form of its creators.

Stéphane Mallarmé

Le Tombeau d’Edgar Poe

 I have the same critique of Mallarmé in this poem as in [Le vierge, le vivac…]. I feel the rage
in the poem at the mistreatment of Poe’s genius in America and the common mass’
preference for drunken ignorance, but there is still an obvious disconnect from Mallarmé the
poet. The exaltation of art above even life itself is an interesting idea, but it leaves the reader
with only an enraged, impersonal ideology.
 Line 9 reminds me of God’s curse of man in Genesis 3:17 (“Cursed is the ground for your
sake; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life… For out of it you were taken; for dust
you are, and to dust you shall return”). The Grief or struggle Mallarmé describes is that of
overcoming mortality and meaningless toil. This unpleasant business is handed down from
the clouds as a curse up from the ground, and the poet issues a charge to everyone (nous) to
honor the art of a genius.
 The capitalization of « Blasphème » (Line 14) interestingly echoes that of « Cygne » in Line
14 of [Le Vierge, le vivace…] and « Homme » and « Maître » in Line 28 and 32 respectively
of Toast Funèbre. In these other works, Mallarmé elevates the status of a poet to that of God
through the majuscule, but here he refers solely to the poor treatment of Poe. Mallarmé may
be linking the very suffering placed onto Poe to the man himself, thereby suggesting that a
poet will be known by his torment. For an accursèd poet, particularly one obsessed with a
philosophy of art in relation to death, this would not be altogether unusual.