Les Poésies de Stéphane Mallarmé by Stéphane Mallarmé;
"Les Poésies de Stéphane Mallarmé" is a collection that showcases the evolution and complexity of the French poet Stéphane Mallarmé’s work. The volume reflects his intense engagement with the creative process, where moments of hope and expressions of despair coexist. Mallarmé’s early poems, influenced by Charles Baudelaire, often explore themes of alienation and the struggle for artistic expression. For instance, in "Le Sonneur," he draws a parallel between a child ringing a church bell and his own inability to convey his poetic aspirations, evoking feelings of longing and despair.
As his style evolved, Mallarmé incorporated more abstract allusions, demanding deeper engagement from readers. Notably, "Le Tombeau d'Edgar Poe" serves as both a tribute to the American poet and a meditation on the isolation of the artist, illustrating the disconnect between the poet and the public. The imagery in his work frequently juxtaposes life and death, with elements like flowers representing the unattainable nature of poetic inspiration. Overall, "Les Poésies" invites readers into a rich exploration of the relationship between the artist, their art, and the often ungraspable nature of existence.
Les Poésies de Stéphane Mallarmé by Stéphane Mallarmé;
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of World Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1887 (English translation collected in An Anthology of French Poetry from Nerval to Valéry in English Translation with French Originals, 1958)
Type of work: Poetry
The Work
In Les Poésies de Stéphane Mallarmé, Mallarmé combined examples of his various poetic styles and documented his own intense relationship with the creative process. Throughout the collection, the poems’ moments of renewed optimism collide with emblems of failure.
Early poems composed in the 1860’s typify the period when Mallarmé was under the influence of Baudelaire. “Le Sonneur” (“The Bell Ringer”) uses both the sonnet form and contrast of high and low objects that had appeared often in Flowers of Evil. Here the octave of the sonnet describes the situation of a child who has been sent to ring a church bell to announce the Angelus. The call to prayer rings forth in the morning air, but the child himself, inside the church, can hear it only faintly.
In the sestet, Mallarmé likens himself to the bell ringer in that he can not hear the poetry he longs to create. Unable to sound out his ideal, he desires night, emblematic of death, and considers suicide. While this sonnet expresses Mallarmé’s continuing desire, the use of imagery in which the bell ringer and night are explicitly paired with the poet and death marks this as an early composition.
A similar theme and even more Baudelairian images appear in “L’Azur” (“The Azure”). Mallarmé sees the powerless poet traversing a sterile desert, mocked by an azure sky that is described in terms of flowers. Flowers, emblematic of both life in nature and poetic productivity, remain in an inaccessible, heavenly realm. By the end of the poem, however, Mallarmé incorporates a musical element that goes beyond the visually paired images. The sky itself reasserts its presence like a ringing bell that haunts the poet.
As Mallarmé’s style matured he incorporated more varied and less defined allusions in his verse. Another sonnet, “Le Tombeau d’Edgar Poe” (“The Tomb of Edgar Poe”), commemorates the American poet in a style that requires the reader to interpret its meaning. When Mallarmé writes that eternity has made the poet even more himself, readers must interpret “eternity” as meaning death and be aware that Edgar Allan Poe’s poetry was characterized by themes involving death.
Poe also represents the superiority and the isolation of the artist. The public appears with the classical image of the hydra, a serpent with multiple heads that may represent a crowd. The public does not understand the poet, who gives a new, superior meaning to common language.
Mallarmé seeks above all to honor poetry and the poet. In the sestet, he states that he would commemorate Poe with a monument made of the stone of a meteorite, a thing fallen to earth from heaven and thus representative of the link the poet establishes between this life and a transcendent vision.
Bibliography
Cohn, Robert Greer. Mallarmé’s “Divagations”: A Guide and Commentary. New York: Peter Lang, 1990.
Fowlie, Wallace. Mallarmé. Chicago: University of Chicago Press/Phoenix Books, 1962.
Kinloch, David, and Gordon Millan, eds. Situating Mallarmé. French Studies of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries 10. Oxford, England: Peter Lang, 2000.
Lloyd, Rosemary. Mallarmé: “Poésies.” Critical Guides to French Texts 42. London: Grant and Cutler, 1984.
Lloyd, Rosemary. Mallarmé: The Poet and His Circle. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999.
Michaud, Guy. Mallarmé. Translated by Marie Collins. New York: New York University Press, 1965.
Pearson, Roger. Unfolding Mallarmé: The Development of a Poetic Art. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1996.