Mallarmé’s "Sonnet Allégorique de Lui-Même" – Allegorical of

Itself or of Himself?
Chadwick, Charles.

Nineteenth-Century French Studies, Volume 31, Number 1&2,

Fall-Winter 2002-2003, pp. 104-110 (Article)

Published by University of Nebraska Press

DOI: 10.1353/ncf.2002.0042

For additional information about this article

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/ncf/summary/v031/31.1chadwick.html

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Mallarmé’s “Sonnet Allégorique de Lui-Même” –
Allegorical of Itself or of Himself?

 

The title “Sonnet allégorique de lui-même,” which Mallarmé gave to the first
version of “Ses purs ongles,” dating from 1868, and which is assumed to be also
relevant to the final version, published in 1887, is generally taken to mean
“Sonnet allegorical of itself.” But can something be allegorical of itself? Must it
not, by definition, be representative of something, or someone, other than itself?
Must not the title of the poem therefore mean “Sonnet allegorical of himself,”
rather than “itself”? The objection that if Mallarmé had meant the poem to
depict symbolically his own situation he would have entitled it “Sonnet
allégorique de moi-même” can be countered by pointing out that in the second
quatrain he also figures in the third person as “le Maître.”
If the title is to be understood in this way, one would expect Mallarmé to
appear in the poem on more than that one occasion, in which case the term
“Phoenix” in the first quatrain, bearing in mind that in its allegorical sense of
“paragon” or “exceptional person,”1 it is related to the term “Maître,” could also
refer to the poet. In the much altered final version of the first four lines there is
certainly a strong case for identifying the Phoenix as Mallarmé, who has
sorrowfully burned the manuscripts of poems which he now rejects in the flame
of a lamp held between the uplifted fingernails of an onyx statuette:
Ses purs ongles très haut dédiant leur onyx,
L’Angoisse, ce minuit, soutient, lampadophore,
Maint rêve vespéral brûlé par le Phénix
Que ne recueille pas de cinéraire amphore.

The first version of these lines, however, is much more complicated and
much more confusing, not least because of the awkward syntax, with “crime du

104 Charles Chadwick

soir” clumsily split by the parenthesis of “lampadophore,” widely separated
from “la nuit” to which it stands in apposition:
La Nuit approbatrice allume les onyx
De ses ongles au pur Crime, lampadophore,
Du soir aboli par le vespéral Phoenix
De qui la cendre n’a de cinéraire amphore.

Whereas in the final version there is no mention of the night and it is the lamp
which holds centre stage along with the burning by the Phoenix of his evening
dreams, in the first version the opening reference to the night is generally taken
to set the scene and “lampadophore” is regarded as a metaphorical reference,
along with “allume les onyx de ses ongles,” to the stars lighting up the night sky.
In this context one is naturally led to interpret the Phoenix, bearing in mind its
mythological meaning, as the setting sun, with the night approving of its death
and celebrating this “pur Crime . . . du soir.” But why should the death of the sun
be a “pur Crime,” or indeed a crime at all? Why should the first quatrain be set
in a vast starlit sky and the remainder of the poem in the confined space of the
“noir Salon” of the fifth line?
If, on the other hand, one takes the Phoenix to be Mallarmé, it is he who has
abolished the evening in the sense that he has lit the lamp by whose light he is to
continue his work through the night.2 Instead of the “lampadophore” being a
metaphor for the starlit night, the roles are reversed and the “Nuit approbatrice”
becomes, like “l’Angoisse” in the final version, a name for “la lampe
angélique,” as he had called it in “Don du poème,” presiding approvingly over
his labours. “Les onyx de ses ongles” are precisely that – the fingernails of the
onyx statuette-lampholder which has been lit so that the poet can destroy in its
flame poems which he now feels are unworthy of him and whose destruction is
therefore justified – hence the oxymoron “pur Crime.” But in so doing he is
destroying his former self in the hope of being reborn a different poet.
This image of the rejection of past work is extended in the second quatrain by
the absence of any vessel in which even the ashes of the burned manuscripts can
be collected and by the departure from the room of the “Maître/Phoenix” who
has gone to “puiser de l’eau du Styx” – a further allusion to the death of the poet
he has so far been:
le vespéral Phoenix
De qui la cendre n’a de cinéraire amphore

Sur les consoles, en le noir Salon: nul ptyx

Insolite vaisseau d’inanité sonore,

Nineteenth-Century French Studies , Nos.  &  Fall–Winter - 105

 Car le Maître est allé puiser de l’eau du Styx
Avec tous les objets dont le Rêve s’honore.

In the tercets the total emptiness of this dark and deserted room is
emphasized still further by its being reflected in an ornate gilt-framed mirror.
But in the last two lines of the poem a remarkable change suddenly occurs. The
mirror stands opposite an open window facing north and the “décor de
l’absence” reflected in the “obscurcissement de la glace” is filled by seven
sparkling points of light, the reflection of the seven stars of the constellation of
the Big Dipper. The darkness and emptiness of the enclosed room is trans-
formed into the glittering expanse of the starfilled sky. The Phoenix of the first
quatrain rises from the ashes of his own destruction. Mallarmé’s resolute
rejection of his past work finally opens the way to a more ambitious kind of
poetry:
Et selon la croisée au Nord vacante, un or
Néfaste incite pour son beau cadre une rixe
Faite d’un dieu que croit emporter une nixe

En l’obscurcissement de la glace, décor

De l’absence, sinon que sur la glace encor
De scintillations le septuor se fixe.

Although there is no evidence that Mallarmé burned the manuscripts of past

poems in anything other than an allegorical sense, there is no doubt that during
his years at Tournon, Besançon, and Avignon from 1864 to 1868, he was deeply
dissatisfied with his facile earlier poetry. In a letter to Cazalis dating from
January 1864 he talks of “bannissant mille gracieusetés lyriques et beaux vers
qui hantaient incessamment ma cervelle.” “Le Pitre châtié,” the first version of
which dates from March 1864, is a guilty admission that he has allowed himself
to be tempted by the easy charms of lyric verse instead of striving to achieve “l’art
d’attifer la sanglotante idée,” as he had put it in “L’Azur,” written in January
1864. In “Las de l’amer repos,” written in February 1864, the tranquil, moonlit
landscape which he depicts at the end of the poem can also be seen as a guilty
escape from the dilemma of being weary of writing nothing and of being “plus
las sept fois du pacte dur / De creuser par veillée une fosse nouvelle / Dans le
terrain avare et froid de ma cervelle.”3 “Le vierge, le vivace et le bel aujourd’hui”
which, although published only in 1885, is generally agreed to date from this
period, is another poem which can be linked to this conflict between past and
present poetry, with two allegorical swans, the “cygne d’aujourd’hui” and the
“cygne d’autrefois” representing Mallarmé as he now is and as he once was. In
the final lines of the sonnet the scorn which is heaped on the “cygne d’autrefois”

106 Charles Chadwick

in its useless exile by the “cygne d’aujourd’hui,” proud of his “pur éclat,” can be
seen as another example of Mallarmé spurning his earlier “escapist” poetry:4
Il s’immobilise au songe froid de mépris/Que vêt parmi l’exil inutile le Cygne.

“Tout Orgueil fume-t-il du soir,” the first of the group of three octosyllabic
sonnets which are generally agreed to date initially from 1866, although
published only in 1887 along with “Ses purs ongles,” has particularly close links
with the latter poem. The “Orgueil du soir,” like the “Phénix,” is usually taken
to be the setting sun, swinging down to the cloudy horizon like a torch being
extinguished in a puff of smoke puzzlingly described as immortal. But, like the
“Sonnet allégorique,” the poem, as from the second quatrain, is set in a deserted
room, which again suggests that the imagery of the first quatrain should be
interpreted allegorically as the occupant of the room, namely Mallarmé
himself, proudly determined to stifle the poetic voice he has so far used. The
“immortelle bouffée” can now be seen as another oxymoron, with the poet
ironically dismissing his past work which cannot tempt him to postpone its
abandonment:
Tout Orgueil fume-t-il du soir
Torche dans un branle étouffée
Sans que l’immortelle bouffée
Ne puisse à l’abandon surseoir.

In the second quatrain, again as in the “Sonnet allégorique,” the room has
been abandoned by its occupant, described as the heir to a rich but outmoded
tradition which, if he were to return to it, would hold no attraction for him:
La chambre ancienne de l’hoir
De maint riche mais chu trophée
Ne serait pas même chauffée
S’il survenait par le couloir.

In the tercets there is a specific reference to the painful but necessary

destruction of the past, achieved, as in the “Sonnet allégorique,” by its products
being burned – not, however, in the flame of a lamp but in a fireplace, gripped by
the claw-like feet of a marble-topped console table standing in front of it. But at
this stage, two years before the “Sonnet allégorique,” no new fire has been
kindled, no reborn poet emerges, Phoenix-like, from the ashes. Within this
sepulchre of the verse he has disavowed there is no light other than the cold
gleam of the gilded table legs:
Affres du passé nécessaires
Agrippant comme avec des serres

Nineteenth-Century French Studies , Nos.  &  Fall–Winter - 107

 Le sépulcre de désaveu,
Sous un marbre lourd qu’elle isole
Ne s’allume pas d’autre feu
Que la fulgurante console.5

Parallel with this rejection of his earlier poetry there is equally no doubt that
Mallarmé was striving to define the nature of the new kind of poetry he
envisaged, as numerous references in his correspondence at this period make
clear. In a letter to Cazalis in January 1865 he talked of “la lutte avec l’ Idéal”; in
May 1866 he informed him that “mon esprit se meut dans l’Eternel”; two
months later he wrote: “Je te dirai que je suis depuis un mois dans les plus purs
glaciers de l’Esthétique – qu’après avoir trouvé le Néant j’ai trouvé le Beau –, et
que tu ne peux t’imaginer dans quelles altitudes lucides je m’aventure.” Par-
ticularly relevant to the “Sonnet allégorique de lui-même” is a phrase from
another letter dating from July 1866 to Aubanel: “Je suis mort et ressuscité avec
la clé de pierreries de ma dernière cassette spirituelle” and a not dissimilar
phrase from a letter to Cazalis dating from May 1867: “Je suis parfaitement
mort, et la région la plus impure où mon Esprit puisse s’aventurer est
l’Eternité.” Perhaps even more relevant is another phrase from this letter to
Cazalis: “Je suis maintenant impersonnel et non plus Stéphane que tu as
connu, – mais une aptitude qu’a l’Univers Spirituel à se voir et à se développer
à travers ce qui fut moi.”6
Although all these references lend support to the view that the “Sonnet
allégorique de lui-même” is an allegorical representation of Mallarmé going
through a process of poetic death and rebirth by rejecting his facile earlier verse
in favor of a kind of poetry aiming at a much higher goal, in the letter to Cazalis
dating from 18 July 1868 in which he enclosed the first version of the poem, he
commented on it at some length in a way which seems to undermine this
interpretation: “J’extrais ce sonnet, auquel j’avais une fois songé cet été, d’une
étude projetée sur la Parole: il est inverse, je veux dire que le sens, s’il en a un
(mais je me consolerais du contraire grâce à la dose de poésie qu’il renferme, ce
me semble), est évoqué par un mirage interne des mots mêmes. En se laissant
aller à le murmurer plusieurs fois on éprouve une sensation assez cabalistique
. . . J’ai pris ce sujet d’un sonnet nul et se réfléchissant de toutes les façons. . . .”
But, as Paul Bénichou has pointed out,7 it is difficult to see that these curious
comments make much sense. Can Mallarmé really have been unaware and
unconcerned as to whether or not his poem had a meaning? How can the
meaning of a poem be “évoqué par un mirage interne des mots mêmes”? If this
is the converse of what is usually the case, how can an internal mirage (or
mirroring?) of a poem’s words be evoked by the meaning? What is meant by the
“sensation assez cabalistique” that emerges on reciting and re-reciting the

108 Charles Chadwick

poem? Its description as “un sonnet nul et se réfléchissant de toutes les façons”
seems particularly intended to play down its content and to suggest that it is no
more than a kind of verbal exercise. But in the light of Mallarmé’s well-known
tendency to make deprecating comments on his poems,8 it seems not un-
reasonable to interpret these remarks in this sense rather than as a refutation of
the substantial body of evidence in support of the view that the sonnet is an
allegorical account of the crisis that Mallarmé went through in the years 1864 to
1868.

The Beeches, William Street

Torphins
Aberdeenshire
AB31 4FR UNITED KINGDOM


1
See also my article “Mallarmé le Phénix” in French Studies Bulletin, 25, 1987-88, 16.
2
There are two other references, in the poems of this period, to Mallarmé working by
the light of his lamp – “Ma lampe qui sait pourtant mon agonie” in “Las de l’amer
repos” and “la clarté déserte de ma lampe” in “Brise marine.” In a letter to Villiers de
L’Isle Adam dated 31 December 1865 he also referred to his “travail de la nuit,” which
he further mentioned in a letter dating from April 1866 to Cazalis who had written to
him: “Il paraît que tu ne travailles plus que la nuit” – see Correspondance, Vol. 1, 1862-
71, 209. See also note 5 below.
3
See my study Mallarmé, sa pensée dans sa poésie, 12.
4
For a more detailed explanation of this interpretation see my essay “Mallarmé et ses
critiques” in Colloque Mallarmé, 79-82; my article “Misleading ambiguities” in French
Studies Bulletin, 51, 1994, 16; and my translation of the sonnet and the accompanying
note in my bilingual edition of Mallarmé’s poetry, The Meaning of Mallarmé, 37 and
170.
5
The two other sonnets in the trilogy, “Surgi de la croupe et du bond” and “Une
dentelle s’abolit,” also end on a note of failure. It is worth noting too that the three
sonnets can be added to the examples quoted in note 2 above of Mallarmé’s “travail
de la nuit” as he labours from the sunset of the first sonnet, through the “veillée
amère” of the second, to the pale dawn light of the third.
6
See Correspondance, Vol. 1, 1862-71, 151, 216, 220, 222, 240, and 241.
7
See Paul Bénichou, Selon Mallarmé, 145.
8
In a letter to Cazalis in December 1865 sending him “Sainte Cécile jouant sur l’aile
d’un chérubin,” later entitled “Sainte,” Mallarmé referred to it simply as “Un petit
poème mélodique.” “Voici un rien” was his comment on “Dame sans trop d’ardeur”
in a letter dated February 1896. “Au seul souci de voyager” was dismissed as a mere

Nineteenth-Century French Studies , Nos.  &  Fall–Winter - 109

“confiserie” in a letter dated March 1898. See Correspondance, Vol. 1, 150; Vol. 8, 52;
Vol. 10, 123, note 2.

 
Bénichou, Paul. Selon Mallarmé. Paris: Gallimard, 1995.
Colloque Mallarmé. Ed. C.P. Barbier. Paris: Nizet, 1975.
Chadwick, Charles. Mallarmé, sa pensée dans sa poésie. Paris: Corti, 1962.
—. “Mallarmé le Phénix.” French Studies Bulletin 25 (1987-88): 16.
—. “Misleading ambiguities.” French Studies Bulletin 51 (1994): 16.
—. The Meaning of Mallarmé. Aberdeen: Scottish Cultural Press, 1996.
Mallarmé, Stéphane. Correspondance, 11 vols. Ed. Henri Mondor and Jean-Pierre
Richard (vol. 1), Henri Mondor and Lloyd James Austin (vols. 2-11). Paris: Gal-
limard, 1959-85.

110 Charles Chadwick