With Verlaine, Stéphane Mallarmé is the poet who has had the most
direct influence on the poets of today. Both were Parnassians and first
Baudelairians.
Per me si va tra la perduta gente.
(Tr. 16)
With them one descends along the gloomy mountain to the doleful city of
_Fleurs du Mal_. All the present literature and especially that which
is called symbolistic, is Baudelairian, not doubtless by its external
technique, but by its internal and spiritual technique, by the sense
of mystery, by the anxious care to hear what things say, by the desire
to harmonize, from soul to soul, with the obscure thought diffused in
the night of the world, according to those so often quoted and repeated
verses:
La nature est un temple où de vivants piliers
Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles;
L'homme y passe à travers des forêts de symboles
Qui l'observent avec des regards familiers.
Comme de longs échos qui de loin se confondent
Dans une ténébreuse et profonde unité,
Vaste comme la nuit et comme la clarté,
Les parfums, les couleurs et les sons se répondent.
(Tr. 17)
Baudelaire had read the first poems of Mallarmé before dying. He was
troubled; poets do not like to leave a brother or son behind them.
They would like to be alone and have their genius perish with their
brain. But Mallarmé was Baudelairian only by filiation. His so precious
originality quickly asserted itself. His _Proses_, his _Après-midi
d'un Faune_, his _Sonnets_, came, at too long intervals, to tell of
the marvelous subtlety of his patient, disdainful, imperiously gentle
genius. Having voluntarily killed in him the spontaneity of being
impressionable, the gifts of the artist by degrees replaced the gifts
of the poet. He loved words more for their possible sense than for
their true sense, and combined them in mosaics of a refined simplicity.
It has been well said of him that, like Perseus or Martial, he was
a difficult author. Yes, and like Anderson's man who wove invisible
threads, Mallarmé assembles gems colored by his dreams, whose richness
our care does not always succeed in divining. But it would be absurd
to suppose that he is incomprehensible. The trick of quoting certain
verses, obscure by their isolation, is not loyal, for, even in
fragments, Mallarmé's poetry, when good, is incomparably so, and if
later in a corroded book we only find these debris:
La chair est triste, hélas! et j'ai lu tous les livres.
Fuir! là-bas fuir! Je sens que des oiseaux sont ivres
D'être parmi l'écume inconnue et les cieux....
Un automne jonché de taches de rousseur....
Et tu fis la blancheur sanglotante des lys....
Je t'apporte l'enfant d'une nuit d'Idumée....
Tout son col secouera cette blanche agonie....
(Tr. 18)
we must attribute them to a poet who was an artist to the highest
degree. Oh! that sonnet of the swan (of which the last verse quoted
above is the ninth) where all the words are white as snow!
But everything possible has been written on this beloved poet. I end
with this comment.
Recently a question, something like this, was asked:
"Who, in the admiration of the young poets, will replace Verlaine, who
had replaced Leconte de Lisle?"
Few of those questioned answered. Two-thirds of those who abstained
were influenced by the ridiculous appearance of such an ultimatum. How
in short could it be that a young poet should admire, "exclusively
and successively," three "masters" so different as those two and
Mallarmé--incontestably chosen? Thus, many were silent because of
scruples--but I now vote, saying: Greatly loving and admiring Stéphane
Mallarmé, I do not see that Verlaine's death is a decent reason for
loving and admiring him more today than yesterday.
Nevertheless, since it is a strict duty ever to sacrifice the dead to
the living and to give the living, by an increase of glory, an increase
of energy, the result of the vote pleases me, and we, who were silent,
would have been bound to speak. What a pity if too much abstention had
perverted the truth! For, informed by a circular, the press in this
item has found a motive the more for laughing and pitying us, as long
as, riding on the inky waves of the sea of intellectual night, but
subduer of shipwreckers, the name of Mallarmé, at last written on the
ironic elegance of a racing cutter, sails and now defies the emptiness
and the bitter-sweet foam of the hoax.