Divagations

by Mallarme, Stephane

• ISBN13: 9780674024380
• ISBN10: 0674024389
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-03-15
• Publisher: Belknap Pr

Summary

"This is a book just the way I don't like them," the father of French Symbolism, Steacute;phane Mallarmeacute;, informs the reader in his preface to Divagations: "scattered and with no architecture." On the heels of this caveat, Mallarmeacute;'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 Mallarmeacute; captured the tone and very feel of fin-de-siegrave;cle Paris, he went on to captivate the minds of the greatest writers of the twentieth century--from Valeacute;ry 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 Mallarmeacute; 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, Mallarmeacute; 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.

Table of Contents

Autobiography	p. 1
Divagations
Preface	p. 8
Anecdotes or Poems
The Phenomenon of the Future	p. 11
Autumn Lament	p. 13
Winter Shudder	p. 15
The Demon of Analogy	p. 17
Poor Pale Child	p. 19
The Pipe	p. 21
An Interrupted Performance	p. 23
Reminiscence	p. 26
The Fairground Declaration	p. 27
The White Waterlily	p. 33
A Man of the Cloth	p. 37
Glory	p. 39
Conflict	p. 41
Volumes on My Divan
Long Ago, in the Margins of a Copy of Baudelaire	p. 49
Piece: A Brief Summary of Vathek	p. 50
Capsule Sketches and Full-Length Portraits
Villiers de l'Isle-Adam	p. 55
Verlaine	p. 62
Arthur Rimbaud	p. 64
Laurent Tailhade	p. 73
Beckford	p. 75
Tennyson Viewed from Here	p. 86
Theodore de Banville	p. 91
Edgar Poe	p. 96
Whistler	p. 97
Edouard Manet	p. 98
Berthe Morlsot	p. 99
Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner: The Reverie of a French Poet	p. 107
Scribbled at the Theater
Scribbled at the Theater	p. 117
Hamlet	p. 124
Ballets	p. 129
Another Study of Dance: The Fundamentals of Ballet	p. 129
"The Only One Would Have To Be as Fluid as the Sorcerer"	p. 138
Mimesis	p. 140
Of Genre and the Moderns	p. 142
Parenthesis	p. 153
Stages and Pages	p. 156
Solemnity	p. 164
Music and Letters
Music and Letters	p. 173
Crisis of Verse
Crisis of Verse	p. 201
About The Book
Restricted Action	p. 215
Displays	p. 220
The Book as Spiritual Instrument	p. 226
The Mystery in Letters	p. 231
Services
Sacred Pleasure	p. 239
Catholicism	p. 243
The Same	p. 249
Important Miscellaneous News Briefs
Gold	p. 255
Accusation	p. 257
Cloisters	p. 259
Magic	p. 263
Bucolic	p. 266
Solitude	p. 271
Confrontation	p. 276
The Court	p. 281
Safeguard	p. 286
Mallarme's Bibliography	p. 293
Translator's Note	p. 299
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