Stéphane Mallarmé

Stephane Mallarme

"This is a book just the way I don't like them," the father of French Symbolism, Stéphane Mallarmé, informs the reader in his preface to Divagations: "scattered and with no architecture." On the heels of this caveat, Mallarmé's diverting, discursive, and gorgeously disordered 1897 masterpiece tumbles forth--and proves itself to be just the sort of book his readers like most. The salmagundi of prose poems, prose-poetic musings, criticism, and reflections that is Divagations has long been considered a treasure trove by students of aesthetics and modern poetry. If Mallarmé captured the tone and very feel of fin-de-siècle Paris, he went on to captivate the minds of the greatest writers of the twentieth century--from Valéry and Eliot to Paul de Man and Jacques Derrida. This was the only book of prose he published in his lifetime and, in a new translation by Barbara Johnson, is now available for the first time in English as Mallarmé arranged it. The result is an entrancing work through which a notoriously difficult-to-translate voice shines in all of its languor and musicality. Whether contemplating the poetry of Tennyson, the possibilities of language, a masturbating priest, or the transporting power of dance, Mallarmé remains a fascinating companion--charming, opinionated, and pedantic by turns. As an expression of the Symbolist movement and as a contribution to literary studies, Divagations is vitally important. But it is also, in Johnson's masterful translation, endlessly mesmerizing.

The Author's 1897 Arrangement ; Together with "Autobiography" and "Music and Letters"

Divagations

The leading poet of French symbolism, Stéphane Mallarmé has exercised an enormous influence both on French and on English and American avant-garde writers. In this volume C. F. MacIntyre has translated forty-three of his poems, including the "Ouverture" and "Scène" from Hérodiade, which was to have been a drama in verse, and the well-known L'Après-midi d'un faune, for which Debussy composed his orchestral prelude. The French text faces the English translations, which are both true to the original and poetic. Indeed, as MacIntyre suggests, Debussy is probably "one of the best guides into the mysterious realm of Mallarmé." The poet was more concerned with the music of words, their sounds and vague associations, than with their conventional meanings; one of the elements in his credo was that suggestion and evocation are of greater significance than statement. His syntax is fractious, his meaning frequently enigmatic; but the reader will find MacIntyre's notes helpful in savoring the translations and the original French verses.

Selected Poems of Mallarme, Bilingual edition

P. N. Furbank

A. M. Cain

In 1874, Stephane Mallarme, the great French poet, undertook a highly idiosyncratic project--the publication of a fashion magazine called La Derniere Mode (The Latest Fashion)--that he almost single-handedly compiled. Using a variety of feminine and masculine pseudonyms to theorize about fashion and to advise on popular vacation destinations, home furnishings, and entertainment, Mallarmé created a spectacularly original work. The distinguishing feature of Mallarme's magazine is that it explores the nature of fashion from the inside. While it is a genuine fashion magazine, it also satirizes the entire genre. Various theories have been entertained about the work: it has been viewed as a prose poem, a hoax, and a cynical money-making venture. Furbank and Cain, however, argue that such guesses are hopelessly off the mark. Complete with the original artwork and a contextualizing introduction and commentary, this is the definitive translation of one of French literature's greatest enigmas.

A Translation of the Fashion Magazine La Dernière Mode, with Commentary

Mallarmé on Fashion

A gorgeous facsimile of the epochal collaboration between Mallarmé and Manet that inspired Nijinsky's most famous dance The second published collaboration between Stéphane Mallarmé and Édouard Manet (after Mallarmé's translation of Poe's "The Raven"), L'après-midi d'un faune is one of the poet's best-known works. It provided the basis for Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (1894), which in turn inspired Nijinsky's ballet L'après-midi d'un faune, first performed in Paris in 1912, with Nijinsky famously dancing the title role. Mallarmé's poem unfolds in a sensual reverie as a Pan-like faun, arising from slumber, recollects his encounters with two forest nymphs in a monologue filled with pastoral and erotic allusions. For Mallarmé, such publications were total works, with attention paid to every detail of layout, typography, punctuation and artwork. For the original 1876 publication, Manet created four wood engravings: two drawings that open and close the poem, and a frontispiece and ex-libris sheet that the artist hand-tinted with pink wash. This volume reproduces that first edition at full size accompanied by a new translation.

Afternoon of a Faun / L'après-Midi D'un Faune

Professor in the Department of French and Italian Rosemary Lloyd

It is the reading world's good fortune that Stéphane Mallarmé's letters survived, allowing later generations an intimate look at the inner life of one of Europe's most important poets. Mallarmé (1842-98), often called the father of the Symbolists, has had an immense influence on the development of modern European poetry. It was his ambition to create a poetry pure of quotidian reality—autonomous, concentrated, linguistically inventive. His correspondence documents the evolution of this aim, the crafting of a poetics out of a life inescapably "real" in its pains and charms.

Selected Letters of Stéphane Mallarmé

Méry Laurent

Pendant quelque quinze ans, de 1884 à sa mort, Mallarmé écrivit à Méry Laurent, une demi-mondaine qui multiplia les amours éphémères et les amitiés durables dans le monde des arts et des lettres - elle fut un des modèles favoris de Manet avant de devenir la muse du poète, et prêta, dit-on, quelques traits au portrait de Mme Swann - des billets presque quotidiens. Quelques-unes de ces lettres avaient été publiées, d'autres n'étaient connues que par des fragments, mais la plus grande partie de la correspondance conservée - soit 166 lettres - restait malheureusement interdite. Ce sont ces lettres inédites, augmentées de toutes les lettres déjà connues, qu'on trouvera dans cette édition. À travers ces lettres de l'auteur d'Hérodiade ou du Coup de dés à celle qu'il appelait son 'Petit Paon', l'on chercherait en vain des confidences trop intimes, ou des considérations théoriques sur la poésie. Le Mallarmé qui s'y révèle est le secrétaire des riens d'une dame de coeur, mais ces riens-là ont encore à voir avec la littérature, avec cet art qui est par excellence, et à tous les sens du mot, l'art des lettres.

Stephane Mallarme

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