Mallarmé's Masterwork: New Findings 9783111342436, 9783110991147

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D E PROPRIETATIBUS L I T T E R A R U M edenda curat C. H. VAN SCHOONEVELD Indiana University

Series Practica, 1

MALLARM E'S MASTERWORK New Findings

by

ROBERT G. COHN Stanford

University

1966

M O U T O N & CO. THE H A G U E · PARIS

© Copyright 1966 Mouton & Co., Publishers, The Hague, The Netherlands. No part of this book may be translated or reproduced, in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publishers.

Printed in The Netherlands by Mouton & Co., Printers, The Hague

to Valentina

PREFACE

The purpose of this little "book" is to provide further clarification of Mallarme's Un Coup de Des, supplementing the work we had begun in our earlier studies on the subject and, in particular, taking advantage of the considerable amount of new material which has recently appeared. In successive sections, the following will be presented: Part I. Introduction: a review of the evidence, old and new, regarding the general nature of the Poem. Part II. Some Important Stages in the Genesis of the Poem. Chapter 1. Adolescent Poems (in Μ allarme lyceen, Gallimard, 1954): their bearing on the Coup de Des. Chapter 2. Le Tombeau d'Anatole: an examination of the recently-published notebook (Editions du Seuil, 1951) which is seen to be a major step in the conception of the Grand '(Euvre, of which the Coup de Des is the final stage (the fullest version or sketch). Chapter 3. Le Livre: a discussion of the fragments called "Le Livre" (Gallimard, 1957), which represent a further advance in this evolution. Part III. Afterthoughts on the Coup de Des: added elucidation of difficult passages in the text, using the fresh material to confirm or modify our earlier comments. Part IV. The Lahure Edition: a reproduction, for the first time anywhere, of the original proofs of the edition Mallarme was preparing at the time of his death, together with the commissioned illustrations of Redon and our comments on the document. Parts of this study appeared, in somewhat different form, in Modern Language Notes and L'Esprit createur.

CONTENTS

Preface

7

Abbreviations I.

10

Introduction: The Coup de Des

11

Some important Stages in the Genesis of the Poem . . . 1. Adolescent Poems (Entre Quatre Murs) 2. Le Tombeau d'Anatole 3. "Le Livre"

21 23 28 38

III.

Afterthoughts on the Coup de Des

49

IV.

The Lahure Edition of the Coup de Des 1. Comment 2. Redon's illustrations (photographic reproduction) . 3. The Unpublished Text (photographic reproduction) .

75 77 81 87

II.

Bibliography

. .

113

ABBREVIATIONS

Number without other indication: Mallarme, CEuvres, Pleiade edition. N: Les Noces d'Herodiade, ed. Davies T: Pour un Tombeau d'Anatole, ed. Richard. f.: the feuillet of the text of the Tombeau d'Anatole. C: L'CEuvre de Mallarme, Cohn. ML: Mallarme lyceen, Mondor Corr.: Mallarme's Correspondance (Gallimard). Page (capitalized): the double-page of the Coup de Des. Italics, unless otherwise specified, are our own.

PART I: INTRODUCTION

THE COUP DE D£S

The fortune of the Coup de Des has been unusually strange and undulant one: the difficulty of the Poem, the outward modesty of its author, the oblique nature of his revelations concerning the work (for example, in the rather coy Preface), all this long prevented the critics from identifying it as being anything at all, much less the Grand' (Euvre, the madly ambitious project of which the poet had spoken to his friends. Since Thibaudet's pioneering study, in 1913, however, many commentators have adopted the line that the Coup de Des is a sort of confession of the failure of his dream, its abandonment. Marcel Raymond, Guy Michaud (in his general study of Symbolism) and, more recently, J.-P.Richard, to name a few well-known figures, have gone along with this wobbly view. Still there have been, ever since the work first appeared (in the review Cosmopolis, 1897, in unfinal form), a comparable number of qualified voices asserting the opposite, i.e., that this was at least an "attempt" (the term most often used) at the Grand' (Euvre. Claudel, Dujardin so stated unequivocally, Gide, Mauclair, Regnier somewhat more ambiguously, and so on. Subsequent critics have on the whole prolonged the unsureness, partly because until quite recent years no close exegesis of the Poem had been undertaken; and yet, somewhat inexplicably, many of them have sided with the affirmative view, in however tentative a manner. There are dozens in this category including Francis de Miomandre, Suzanne Bernard, Deborah Aish, but the most prominent example is Guy Michaud, who, reconsidering the matter, in his Mallarme (Hatier-Boivin, 1952) radically altered his earlier view: "fragment ou ebauche, le Coup de Des est done bien la premiere realisation du grand projet que Mallarme caressait depuis plus de trente ans, et nous sommes non seulement invites, mais requis d'y chercher 'l'explication orphique de la Terre' dont Mallarme parlait ä Verlaine" (p. 171). Let us review the various statements of those who were in the best

14

THE COUP DE D i S

position to know, first of all Mallarme himself: in a letter to Gide,1 he spoke of the Coup de Des as "cette tentative, la premiere, ce tätonnement". Taken together with the obvious excitement of similar remarks made to Mauclair and Valery, which we shall quote in a moment, plus the clear correspondence between the terms he used to describe the work in the Preface and the terms he had previously used in referring to the projected (Euvre, which we shall also cite, there is already an indication of the nature of the work. We should observe, moreover, how frequently his close friends use this word "tentative" or similar ones to characterize the Coup de Des. Henri Regnier: "le mysterieux morceau intitule le Coup de Des, qui fut, je crois, la supreme tentative du poete".2 Camille Mauclair: "je puis affirmer, en ayant lu plusieurs, que les notes de Valvins etaient les ebauches d'essais et de poemes, et notamment pour le fameux Coup de Des dont le maitre me parla souvent comme d'une tentative qui, me disait-il en souriant, 'ne me donnerait pas plus de vertige qu'ä luimeme' ".3 Claudel: "dans l'esprit de Mallarme ce travail n'etait que le premier essai d'un grand poeme ou . . . il voulait renfermer l'explication du monde".4 Elsewhere in the same book he calls it "son grand poeme typographique et cosmogonique". The following, to me equally convincing, evidence from Edouard Dujardin has not appeared in my previous studies: "ce livre, il en existe, dirai-je un chapitre? dirai-je un abrege? dirai-je une ebauche? C'est le Coup de Des, qui donne tout au moins un apergu de ce qu'aurait ete l'ceuvre projete par Mallarme, et qui peut-etre en fut le premier essai . . . l'ceuvre revee par Mallarme est c e l l e . . . dont il realisa un aspect dans le Coup de Des".5 This testimony comes from a man who, as he said, "a suivi [Mallarme] pendant ses treize dernieres annees et, ä un certain moment, l'a vu presque quotidiennement".6 Valery, who was probably the best placed of all the disciples to bring out the meaning and importance of the Coup de Des, chose to speak 1

See La Vie des Lettres, April 1914, pp. 12-13. Portraits et souvenirs (Paris, Mercure de France, 1913), p. 86. Elsewhere, it is true, Regnier speaks in his turn (Proses datees, Paris, Mercure de France, 1925, p. 33) of the Work's being "unfinished" but in a way which shows the same unsureness as Valery's dazzling and perfectly vague pages on the Coup de Des. Clearly, these ambitious young men didn't want to bother that much with another man's work, even the revered Mallarme's. 8 Mallarme chez lui (Paris, Grasset, 1935), p. 97. 4 Positions et Propositions (Paris, Gallimard, 1938), p. 123. 5 Mallarme par un des siens (Paris, A. Messein, 1936), pp. 84-5. β Ibid., p. 7. 2

THE COUP DE DES

15

about it only in the most vague and general, thought reverential, tones, e.g., "il a essaye, pensai-je, d'elever enfin une page ä la puissance du del etoile!"7 The most revealing thing we leam from Valery's various essays on the subject is the effervescent remark Mallarme made to him after first reading his new poem to his favorite: "Ne trouvez-vous pas que c'est un acte de demence?" Gide, another favorite, chose to speak a bit more plainly: "ce deuil subit [Mallarme's death in 1898] venant si tot apres l'apparition d'Vti Coup de Des m'aide . . . ä croire . . . que ce dernier poeme est un des points extremes ou se soit aventure l'esprit humain".8 It would be hard to deny that, if this were so, the Poem had to be something like the dreamed-of Work: even a (rather especially a) Mallarme has not so many strings to his biggest bow.® The Preface preceding the unfinal version which appeared in Cosmopolis is perforce not very revealing in any direct sense: Mallarme could hardly have admitted there that he was undertaking anything like even a remote approximation of the Poem of humanity, which was his eventual hope, or even hint at such an idea: inspired genius that he was, he was not lacking in realism, or common sense or even a sort of shrewdness, as the merest perusal of his correspondence indicates. Apparently because of his reluctance to blurt out the embarrassing truth, he cautions us in the Preface that this prose won't be of much help: "J'aimerais qu'on ne lüt pas cette note ou que parcourue, meme on l'oubliät; eile apprend au Lecteur habile [no doubt that one ideal "tel autre" for whom he wrote and whom he never really found], peu de chose situe outre sa penetration." Equally curious, and characteristic 7

Ecrits divers sur Stephane Mallarme (Paris, Gallimard, 1950), p. 18. Valery, in the same essay, speaks of the "ceuvre inaccompli" (p. 14) but since he obviously had never seen the notes for it ("materiel secret", p. 14) and on the other hand uses such a reverential tone in speaking of the Coup de Des, as if it were the highest thing Mallarme or anyone else had ever written, one wonders why he never saw a possible contact between the two entities, unlike Gide, Dujardin, Mauclair, Regnier, Claudel. But the sad fact is that Valery, who could have had penetrating insights into it, never chose to reveal any of the meaning of the Coup de Des. Many of his own works, including his best, are often parallel to Mallarme's complex Poem. His minor poem Sinistre is practically a brief pastiche of it. Perhaps his silence is not too difficult to understand, on quite human grounds. 8 Op. cit., p. 12-13. β The testimony of Gustave Kahn in Symbolistes et decadents, p. 14, that the Coup de Des was to be followed by nine other similar Poems may seem odd in the light of the foregoing or of the following statement by Mallarme in a letter to Octave Mirbeau which was probably written in 1897: "L'explication orphique de l'univers, s'il y en a une . . . atteindrait tout juste les quarante pages d'un article de revue" (Collection Doucet). The Coup de Des itself is almost this length (eleven double pages, or twenty-two single) and it first appeared in a review. The

16

THE COUP DE DES

of this desperately modest man, is the "le tout [est] sans nouveaute qu'un espacement de la lecture!" But if we try t o meet his conditions of "Lecteur habile" and "penetration" a little, and apply them to the Preface, w e make an interesting discovery. After an ambiguous, and ambivalent, remark: "Sans presumer de l'avenir qui sortira d'ici, rien ou presque un art" he adds: Le genre, que e'en devienne un comme la Symphonie, peu ä peu, ä cote du chant personnel, laisse intact l'antique vers, auquel je garde un culte et attribue l'empire de la passion et des reveries; tandis que ce serait le cas de traiter, de preference (ainsi qu'il suit) tels sujets d'imagination pure et complexe ou intellect: que ne reste aucune raison d'exclure de la Poesie - unique source. A s the following passage from "Crise de Vers" indicates, the symphony of which he speaks here had long been at the center of his conception of a total Book: . . . nous en sommes lä, precisement, ä rechercher . . . un art d'achever la transposition, au Livre, de la symphonie ou uniment de reprendre notre bien: car, ce n'est pas des sonorites elementaires par les cuivres, les cordes, les bois, indeniablement mais de l'intellectuelle parole ä son apogee que doit

puzzling testimony is confirmed by a statement of Paul Valery: "Ce jour-la, Mallarme me confia qu'il ne ferait plus de vers et que, chaque annee, pour illustrer une idee chere, il essayerait, ä la maniere du Coup de Des, quelque chose d'intermediaire ä la musique et l'abstraction" (Propos familiers de Paul Valery, p. 211). However, no one has made the claim that the Coup de Des was the last word on Mallarme's full intentions in regard to the Work. Throughout his career he made various bold forays in its direction - in everything of any consequence that he ever wrote he tends to remain his whole intransigent self, the "sacred spider" at the center of his cosmic web - and one must assume that until his death he was aiming at something even bigger, of which the successive Poems might have been aspects, or approximations, like Valery's successive versions of La Jeune Parque (in his way, Valery too was always writing towards the same Work). Certainly the "quelque chose d'intermediaire ä la musique et l'abstraction" was at the core of his conception of the (Euvre as we shall soon see. And the other evidence we shall present in this book, confirming the statements of his friends, adds up to the conclusion that (as we demonstrated in our (Euvre de Mallarme) almost every word he had ever written, theoretically, on the (Euvre plus an overwhelmingly large proportion of the images and effects of the major poems or fragments (such as "Le Livre") leads to this or that precisely equivalent aspect of the Coup de Des and that thus, anything further or bigger he had in mind would have had to go over this general path. If, in spite of Mallarme's orders to burn, the famous notes of Valvins were to miraculously turn up and, against all the odds, show us some radically new material, we would of course have to revise this opinion. But there is the testimony of Mauclair that the notes led particularly to the Coup de Des and moreover the few sample notes that Henri Charpentier showed to me seemed to be generally of this nature, though I was not allowed to examine them for more than a few minutes.

THE COUP DE DES

17

avec plenitude et evidence resulter, en tant que l'ensemble des rapports existant dans tout, la Musique. 10

To this we may add a phrase from a letter to Valery in 1891: "II faut, pour concevoir la litterature, et qu'elle ait raison, aboutir ä cette 'haute Symphonie' que nul ne fera peut-etre . . . La musique . . . suggere tel poeme". 11 That the Coup de Des (of which the main title is precisely "Poeme") is "[un] tel poeme" is sufficiently demonstrated by these confrontations. In 1953 there appeared a book by Gardner Davies: Vers une Explication

rationnelle

du Coup de Des.12

Because his has been the

most serious attempt to reduce the Coup de Des to a relatively random status, it will be useful to present his main arguments here: En remerciant Mauclair en 1898 de l'envoi de son roman Le Soleil des Morts, ou il lui etait facile de se reconnaitre sous les traits du heros, Mallarme laisse entrevoir ses doutes: "les ans, pour peu qu'il m'en reste, ne m'exauceraient pas litteralement, declare-t-il, que je me contenterais, pour destin, de vous etre apparu cet homme-la".

What is the value of such a "proof" which proves nothing but the wellrecognized unfailing courteousness of Mallarme? We must remember, moreover, that the Poem had not been published by that date in its full final form. A remark of Gide's, who was very close to Mallarme at the time, is helpful here: "certains jours de decouragement il put se demander si le vol surhumain qu'il tentait n'etait pas, au sens propre du mot, une extravagance".13 This has the ring of authenticity about it: we should never forget that the capacity of genius to doubt is almost as complete and terrifying as its faith. Mallarme could see that even the best-equipped of his disciples, Valery, when shown the proofs, for all his reverence ("j'ai adore cet homme"), simply did not understand. Has there ever been a lonelier and loftier spirit than Mallarme? In this light, we may understand further why Mallarme would mention his Poem almost negligently in the sort of testament he wrote the evening before his death. Or, again, we may see why he would contemplate writing nine other Poems in the same vein (as Kahn claimed) or, as seems even 10

Note the conception of ambitious Poetry as being (in part) intellectual, which is stated in the Preface. This disproves Davies' assertions about the nature of the Coup de Des, as we shall see. 11 Reproduced in Propos sur la poesie, edited by Henri Mondon (Monaco, Editions du Rocher, 1946), p. 147. 12 Paris, Corti, 1953, see esp. pp. 169-70. 13 Op. cit., pp. 12-13.

18

THE COUP DE DES

likelier, that he would at least, with some pathetic and merely-human desire to impress his favorites, say he would, just as he had intermittently been promising his intimate comrades that the Work was imminent for thirty years. Not, pace Sartre, that he was a farceur; this sort of judgment only judges the maker of it. (Sartre, incidentally, considers Mallarme also to be "notre plus grand poete"). Rather he was an exemplary artist and, as such, a very human man, with all the attendant foibles. Davies goes on as follows: Enfin, dans la lettre ecrite la veille de sa mort, sorte de testament litteraire, le poete donne ä entendre, en parlant du "monceau demi-seculaire" de ses notes, que le temps ne lui a pas permis de realiser son projet: "Moi-meme, l'unique pourrais seul en tirer ce qu'il y a . . . Je l'eusse fait si les annees manquant ne m'avaient trahi. Brülez, par consequent . . . " But there is no indication whatsoever that the pile of notes to which he refers here had not been already mined for the Coup de Des and Herodiade, etc. — indeed, as Mauclair's testimony indicates as well my own swift perusual of some of the fiches (see note 9), it had. Again, and more importantly, the recently-published Livre and Tombeau d'Anatole which were undoubtedly a part of this "heap" (obviously a great deal was not burned; some day all this should be clarified by simple investigation of the material at Valvins and that left behind by Charpentier and Mondor, who were fairly mysterious about it) are, as we shall show, for practical purposes, earlier versions of the Coup de Des. But since the Coup de Des was only a tentative, to use the poet's own word, there would no doubt have been, if the poet had lived, further attempts to exploit or reshape this rich material accumulated during a lifetime of extraordinary reserve. The apparently offhand mention he makes of the Coup de Des in the testament can be explained on four grounds: a) the discouragement described by Gide; b) the spirit of modesty and the desire for anonymity he always displayed in these realms, partly out of the desire to be recognized, so to speak, gratuitously, as the child desires to be loved, wholly, without any intervention on his part (a desire common to creators of this stripe); c) there is no direct connection between the allusion to the Coup de Des and the statement, in a preceding paragraph, that "il n'y a pas la d'heritage litteraire"; d) the most important: a total modesty, a strategic moral penance, summoned up at this dire moment in fear of cosmic retaliation, impending death. We note the wistful hope to survive, "s'il plait au sort" and finish Herodiade as well as, we may

THE COUP DE DES

19

suppose (it is mentioned in the same breath) see the Coup de Des printed in its final form. And so it is, finally, religious or metaphysical awe which accounts best, I think, for the striking contrast between the humility here and the demonic excitement of his earlier remarks on the Poem. A corollary to this truism is the penitential awareness that he was leaving behind his family, perhaps prematurely because of his narcissistic ambition, and clearly in financial straits (as Valery has reported). The note is a sort of apology to his wife and daughter. At such a moment, of farewell to his loved ones and life, perhaps even the greatest of creations is dwarfed in the maker's mind. Another point Davies makes is: L'CEuvre, en tant que "explication orphique de la Terre" ou encore "l'hymne des relations entre tout", devait presenter un caractere essentiellement lyrique; or la preface du Coup de Des nous apprend que le sujet du poeme est purement intellectuel. But the reader will recall that the Preface said nothing of the kind, and that it speaks of "Musique . . . symphonie" and "imagination pure . . . ou intellect" (my italics). Obviously, moreover, the word "intellect" is used here in a special way, to designate an artistic brand of it (like the word "Idee" so favored by this poet). We can easily grant that the ambitious Work that this Preface envisages - like the autobiographical letter to Verlaine ("explication orphique") - encompasses, dialectically, an intellectual phase. All the theoretical writings of Mallarme on the Work discuss the idea of a fusion of two terms representing two poles of art - intuitive and rational - such as hymne et relations, orphique and explication, poeme and critique, or Art and Science.14 The Preface speaks now of "musique . . . symphonie . . . imagination", now of "intellect" but undeniably of two poles and not at all of only one pole as Davies would have it. The notion of a final dialectical fusion (synthesis) is also clearly envisaged in the ultimate term "Poesie - unique source" which echoes the "Poeme" which is the very title of the Work (Un Coup de Des, etc. being the subtitle). In one of his earliest mentions of his future Work, Mallarme called it "Poeme . . . l'GBuvre" (Corr., p. 195). Davies' final point is: II est difficile de croire que Mallarme eüt abandonne le vers traditionnel 14

See the letter to V. Pica in Henri Mondor, Vie de Mallarme (Paris, 1946), p. 598: "Je crois que la litterature, reprise ä sa source qui est Science, nous fournira un Theatre, dont les representations sont le moderne; un Livre explication de l'homme süffisante ä nos plus beaux

Gallimard, ΓArt et la vrai culte reves . .

20

THE COUP DE DES

dans une ceuvre qui devait representer l'archetype du Livre. Dans la preface du Coup de Des, d'ailleurs, le Poete reaffirme le culte qu'il a voue ä l'alexandrin, reserve, dit-il, aux sujets proprement lyriques; la forme nouvelle interesse au contraire des sujets intellectuels.

In truth, Mallarme is saying here exactly the opposite: the new genre is bigger, more objective and ambitious on an absolutely artistic plane: "Poeme . . . Symphonie . . . imagination pure et complexe ou intellect", as opposed to relatively minor works, more subjective and more narrowly personal: "chant personnel . . . empire de la passion et des reveries".

PART II SOME IMPORTANT STAGES I N THE G E N E S I S OF THE POEM

I ADOLESCENT POEMS: ENTRE QUATRE

MURS

In 1954, Henri Mondor brought out the volume Μallarme lyceen,1 containing the previously unpublished collection of adolescent poems (1859-60) entitled Entre Quatre Murs. Although Mallarme's famous vision which was the source of his conception of the Grand'CEuvre occured only many years later, it is clear that, influenced by lyric mages like Lamartine and Hugo, who are both often echoed in this early verse, the young Stephane had already begun practicing a sweeping cosmic manner. In at least one major respect, this material leads in a revealing way through three decades straight to the Coup de Des, reminding us of Mallarme's quietly proud statement to an interviewer toward the end of his days that he had remained quite faithful to his adolescent self. A brief poem entitled Tout passe! reads as follows: Tout passe: le printemps tombe sous la faucille Du blond ete. Tout passe: l'ete voit se jaunir sa charmille Au vent hate. Tout passe: sur l'automne, ö vieux hiver, tu jettes Ton blanc manteau. Tout passe: au gai printemps, la neige aux violettes Laisse un berceau. L'homme coule pousse par l'homme qui le suit Comme la lame! - Tu restes seule, etoile en l'eternelle nuit, Seule, ö mon äme! The first strophe features the "symphonique equation propre aux saisons" which Mallarme announced, in "La Musique et les Lettres", would be the core of his Work and which, in our CEuvre de Mallarme, we discussed in connection with the total tetrapolar structure of the Coup de Des (including prominently the four stages of the title phrase 1

Paris, Gallimard, 1954.

24

"ENTRE QTJATRE MURS"

which runs through the Poem). We further note the cyclic renewal, as the low "trough" of winter turns mysteriously into a berceau for the springtime rebirth of nature (violettes). This was a major aspect of the Poem; in our book (C, p. 20) we commented: "la phrase de titre . . . [correspond] ä un cycle saisonnier qui revient sur lui-meme et promet de continuer ainsi [as opposed to the] aveu de defaite [that most critics had read into it]". We also discussed at length the idea of eternal return or cyclic metamorphosis (the "vieux hiver . . . berceau" of Tout passe!), as, for example, in the following passage: "le Maitre deviendra graduellement un naufrage, un vieillard, simple site pour son fils qui monte" (C, p. 163), indicating the mentioned linkages with winter, wave-trough, etc. We shall return to this complex network in our next chapter.2 As important as the tetrapolar cycle is the overall conception, in Tout passe! and the Coup de Des, of a cosmic wave-movement (of seasons, or of total time and its other subdivisions), a parent rhythm from which all the subsequent sub-rhythms of reality derive. In this respect, the lines: L'homme coule, pousse par l'homme qui le suit Comme la lame! are directly echoed in the Poem: on Page 3, the archetypal wavemovement, rise and fall, is described in terms of the primeval ocean; on Page 4, Man appears on this cosmic stage, and his rhythmic strivings and defeats are sung in these words: Le Maitre/surgi . .. au nom des flots/ [dont] un envahit le chef/coule en barbe soumise/ naufrage cela direct de l'homme . . . In this connection, we wrote (C, p. 186): "la vague [envahissante] est essentiellement la realite ä venir, un fils". All this, of course, is perfectly standard lieu commun\ for example, Proust's vision of time, at the end of Jean Santeuil, is presented in these same terms of son replacing father as wave replaces wave at the ocean-edge; but the important point is that this confirms our view (as opposed to the prevailing one that the Coup de Dis is an account of Mallarme's individual experience of echec) that the Poem, like the early verse, is conceived in cosmogonic and evolutionary terms. The Maitre, accordingly, is not Mallarme himself (though he is included), but Man, and the story is that "Passion de L'Homme" (296) which he had previously announced (in "Crayonne au 2

We note in passing the resonance, in Tout passe! of lame as, ambiguously, wave and gravestone, symbolizing the life-death wave-movement, cf. Le Pitre chätie: "dans l'onde mille sepulcres".

"ENTRE QUATRE MXJRS"

25

theatre", his essay on Wagner, etc.) as the central drama of his Work. The following lines: - Tu restes seule, etoile en l'eternelle nuit, Seule, ö mon äme! are also closely connected with imagery of the Coup de Des: the distant star-cluster symbolizing the poet's immortal soul - or this lasting Work - is, mutatis mutandis, the final figure of the Poem: Excepte . . . UN Ε CONSTELLATION. Les Trois Couronnes is very near in spirit to Tout passe! Here, instead of a seasonal equation, the passage of time is primarily associated with the ages of one man, from youth to senility. In the final phase, these lines occur: Quand . . . Comme un flot qu'un flot chasse on voit couler ses ans, Et Ie soleil s'eteindre en ses flots infideles, Le temps vous met au front, vieillard aux froides ailes, La couronne de cheveux blancs. This is the Maitre . . . maniaque chenu . . . [qui] coule en barbe soumise of Page 4, associated with hoary winter (as in Tout passe!). And, further, the image of sunset (total, seasonal, daily) in the youthful poem is found on Page 4, in the same sense: cette conflagration a ses pieds/ de l'horizon unanime. Various of the early poems describe the hyperbolic rhythm of creativity in terms of the Icarus flight and fall which, in our book, we discussed at length in connection with various images of the Poem, particularly the "aile . . . vol" of Page 3; although this wing-metaphor is traditional, we single it out here because Gardner Davies and others see the aile of Page 3 as referring univocally to a drooping cloud, whereas it refers mainly to this wave-rhythm of (defeated) aspiration, as in the following: L'art ose, dans ces jours, sur les plumes d'Icare S'elancer, aigle, oü dort la foudre, voir des cieux! (p. 210) Here the hubris-rise meets with a punishing foudre, as on Page 7 of the Poem. Again: Mais pour suivre le Maitre et ravir l'etincelle Aux astres, c'est ä toi d'entendre ta jeune aile (p. 208) A similar example:

26

"entre quatre murs" Surgit du sein des flots son poeme geant (p. 213)

As in the Coup de Des, all reality is depicted in terms of oceanic wavemovement from which the gigantic wave of the poet's creation soars, beyond the minor wavelets, which it represents as a sort of bardic spokesman: surgi . .. au nom des flots (Page 4). Another little poem, Le Nuage, treats this same theme of aspiration in the corollary terms of a cloud, associated with ocean foam and a feather, as it is in the Coup de Des (the blanchi of Page 3 may, as Davies has observed, also refer to cloud, though he is wrong in restricting the main imagery of the Page to this; we shall return to this later, in Part III): Nuage es-tu l'ecume De l'ocean celeste au flot limpide et pur? Es-tu la blanche plume Que detacha la brise, en traversant l'azur, De l'aile d'un des anges? Du ciel ou de la France As-tu pris ton essor? This doubt about the cloud's source persists on Page 3, where the Abime can be sky or ocean, along with the overlapping ambiguity whether the aile is a wave of water soaring and dropping or a higher and freer-flying emissary of the depths, distilled from water, ultimately defeated and returning to the Abime, its mother-ocean (aile ... la sienne). Actually, the blanchi of Page 3 mainly refers to foaming water (it is immediately followed by the clearly marine term etale), as in: Vague d'azur Toi dont la blanche ecume Fut mere de Venus (p. 141) This image, linked with the basic theme of wave-movement, takes on a complex and delightful development in the Poem which in a sense is a "symphonie en blanc"; from this source, something like total Eros or light, derive the related images of wing-sail on Page 3, of old man's hair on Page 4, plume on Pages 6 and 7 and a return to the ecumes originelles on Page 9. As in the birth-of-Venus myth, the foamy whiteness is linked with purity, fertility or creativity, beauty.3 3

There is an allusion to this myth in C, p. 282.

"ENTRE QUATRE MXIRS"

27

There are various other images in Entre Quatre Murs which will be discussed later, in Part III, in conjunction with details of the text. We are limiting ourselves here to these few seminal indications in order to get on with the far more abundant and promising material of our next chapters.

2 LE TOMBEAU

D'ANATOLE

The juvenilia of the preceding chapter date from 1859-60. Mallarme's first group of adult poems, including the Scene of Herodiade and the Apres-midi d'un faune belong to the next decade as does the wellknown crisis (roughly 1866-69) during which he conceived his Work, certain fragmentary aspects of which (such as the dice-theme) are visible in Igitur written at that time. As we follow in his correspondence with his friends, the attempt to record the Work was provisionally abandoned in 1869 for reasons of mental and physical health and, furthermore, because he realized that it would take many patient years to amass the richly detailed concrete means, in language and thought, that would do justice to the dazzling inner landscape (cf. Prose in Toward The Poems of Μallarme, Cohn). Meanwhile, he moved with his family to Paris where Toast funebre appeared in 1873, the Faune in 1876; he edited those few fascinating issues of La Derniere Mode. In 1879, his son Anatole, then eight years old, became ill and died. During the illness and after, Mallarme kept a sort of poetic journal (published in 1961) 1 constituting a dialogue with the self, an attempt to appease his concern and final grief. Certain episodes speak of a promise to be worthy of the memory of the boy and of a desperate need to mysteriously make him live by incarnating him in a Work. The fragments — 202 minuscule loose sheets - are already somewhat arranged as a sketch for a dramatic poem with the boy as hero which, as such - apparently it was too close, too personal - never appeared. But, as we shall see, we are here on the main route leading to his major attempt at the Work, the Coup de Des. Although J.-P. Richard has done a generally commendable job of editing and elucidating, the important connection with the Grand'CEuvre is, for practical purposes, totally missed. 1

Stephane Mallarme, Pour un Tombeau d'Anatole. Introduction de Jean-Pierre Richard (Paris, Aux Editions du Seuil, 1961, 318 pp.).

"LE TOMBEAU D'ANATOLE"

29

Apparently the shock of anxiety and grief stirred Mallarme's creative depths, as it had Hugo's, though with very different results. The aim of making the boy survive through a masterpiece necessarily involved his Creation-rivalling dream, his Promethean or Luciferian ambitions. Digging down into his essential apprehension of reality, he came up with a syntactical structure, an objective, organic architecture which, after further modifications in subsequent sessions with the uttermost self, became the armature of the Coup de Des. The story Mallarme proposed to tell was to be based on the personal experience but generalized into something universal: "Quoique poeme base sur faits toujours - doive ne prendre que faits generaux" (f. 66-67: we are numbering the sheets following Richard: f. represents "feuillet"). The boy's life before his crisis was to be presented, a period of childhood happiness playing in the fields. Then, the first blow of the malady causes his parents to cry, with foreboding, "il est mort" (f. 53). The sickness is seen as an integral part of death, "il est. . . mort absolument - c'est-a-dire frappe, sa mere le voit tel" (f. 53). Thus the basic paradox of existence (life-death) is established from which later, in reverse, will be established the resurrection in memory, of the dead child (death-life). This paradox is the core of the drama around which Mallarme's thought and feeling turn desperately. At one point he sees the consolation provided by the paradox as being too easy a way out, a violation of the absolute nature of the laws of reality; no, death is death! And he experiences a jolt of guilt at exploiting the dead child for his own work: "Quoi! jouir de la presence et l'oublier absent - simplement! ingratitude!" (f. 102). Hence the need to go the "cimetiere - necessaire d'y aller pour renouveler douleur - dechirure - par idee de l'etre eher lä - quand l'illusion trop forte de l'avoir toujours avec soi (non, tu n'es pas un mort - tu ne seras pas parmi les morts, toujours en nous) devient une jouissance (point assez amere) pour nous - et injuste pour celui qui reste lä-bas ct est en realite prive de tout ce ä quoi nous l'associons" (f. 126-129; Mallarme's italics). But, in almost Kierkegaardian fashion, the tragic totality of this unsentimental realism is converted into a poetic faith that the worst has been conquered. The consciousness and self of the poet have been stripped away in this sacrificial fire of agony, giving life to the spirit in which the boy survives: "douleur - non larmes vaines tombant en ignorance - mais emotion, nourrissant ton ombre qui se vivifie en nous >- l'installant - tribut vivifiant pour lui" (f. 114); "Oh tu sais bien que si je consens ä vivre - ä paraitre t'oublier - e'est pour nourrir ma douleur - et que cet oubli apparent - jaillisse plus vif en

30

"LE TOMBEAU D'ANATOLE"

larmes, ä un moment quelconque, au milieu de cette vie, quand tu m'y apparais" (f. 161-162). Richard has summarized this inner drama admirably: Le souci du salut eternel ne se separe done ici d'une culture toute terrestre de la douleur et de l'emotion. La tentative spirituelle s'installe dans "cette vie", elle epouse le cours de notre humble duree, tragique et familiere. Elle devient le fait d'un homme qui souffre, mais aussi qui espere, qui a peur de trop esperer, et que cette peur fait vivre. Et e'est en situant son entreprise au niveau d'une realite aussi simplement humaine que Mallarme lui donne les meilleures chances de succes. (p. 91) We have skipped over a great deal of material purposely in this rapid outline, but much of it wlil be filled in through our detailed comparisons. At first glance, it might seem that this familiar drama has little to do with a cosmogonic Poem, but the basic structure is parallel to a remarkable degree, for the reasons we have already mentioned. The persons of the drama are the same: an eternal Man, Woman, Son and Daughter (or, at other points, a Fiancee that the boy would have had), i.e. the tetrapolar pattern of all reality (here extending to family relations, etc.; a compelling comparison with Finnegans Wake arises). The parodox of life and death (which becomes through a wave-movement) is the key relation j o i n i n g these various entities: in both texts, the total permanent Life aimed at ends in total Death (with a rebirth promised or hoped for), but there are intermediary phases of this rhythm generated by the struggle to Live, the subsidiary rhythm of lifedeath involved in the creation of progeny or of a work. And as we said, all these entities are joined through the multiple "dimensions" of polypolar paradox, in couples, four-polar groups, etc., in both texts. In the next section we shall show how this pattern develops in the confronted texts. I anticipate that the reader may be surprised at the fact that in the texts which will be quoted from my (Euvre de Mallarme occasionally occur precisely the same terms that Mallarme had used in the Tombeau, which was then totally unknown to me. But there is an explanation: working back from the poetic synthesis of the Coup de Des to abstract or analytical critical formulations, I often encountered in my own mind the relatively naked patterns Mallarme was preparing as the skeleton of his future Work. To demonstrate all this we need only line up passages from the Tombeau (with Richard's comments) opposite passages from the Coup de Des (with my comments):

" L E TOMBEAU D'ANATOLE"

31

T O M B E A U (and Richard)

COUP D E D£S (and Cohn)

Pere, c'est en effet pour Mallarme pere plus mere; - et mere, c'est mere plus pere . . . si bien qu'il y a "le double cote homme-femme tantot chez l'un chez l'autre, d'oü union parfaite" (f. 56), (Richard, p. 56). . . . les figures dominantes de cette dramaturgie se fussent organisees en couples, binaires ou quaternaires (Richard, p. 53).

le produit homme-femme X femme-homme implique par la mer par l'äieul tentant ou l'äieul contre la mer (Page 5), (Cohn, p. 209). Mallarme place un archetype quadripolaire a la base de son projet d'un CEuvre (Cohn, p. 39). La conjonction (Page 5) maritale implique toute la complexite des relations maritales (Cohn, p. 213).

In other words, the tetrapolar pattern, which is the core of both texts, is here applied to the complexity of the male-female relation, reminding us of Freud's famous statement that in the love act he always imagined four people in bed. Mallarme elsewhere referred to this obliquely as " l e double jeu . . . toute l'aventure de la difference sexuelle" (305), and there are many references to sexual ambiguity in his work, e.g., the male-female siren of the Coup de Des, the hard and virile virgin princess, Herodiade, the dress-wearing priest in his prose poem,

L'Ecclesiastique,

the Hamlet who includes Ophelie (in his essay), etc. "mere - identite de vie mort pere reprend rythme pris ici - du bercement de mere suspens - vie mort poesie - pensee" (f. 128). Entendez que l'image du mouvement tout physique par lequel la mere berce et calme l'enfant malade peut servir au pere afin d'edifier le rythme de l'harmonieux poeme par lequel il en eternisera litterairement la pensee (Richard, p. 56-57).

la coque/d'un bailment/penche de l'un ou l'autre bord . . . LE MAITRE/hors d'anciens calculs/surgi/ ... prepare ... I'unique Nombre ... hesite. (Pages 3 and 4). This first version of a male act, emerging from a female womb-boatcradle, evolves into more refined versions which, true to their ambiguous origin (from a womanly source) continue to hesitate and fluctuate, in a fertile (Ewig-Weibliehe) way: thus in the act of writing the persistent hesitation, or suspense, of merely human life, en berce le vierge indice (feather or feather-pen), (Page 6) or la plume/ rhythmique suspens du sinistre (Page 9). In our book we summed up this evolution as follows: " L e rythme inclusif vie-mort de la Page 4 devient . . . le rythme vie-mort partiel de l'acte generateur . . . et . . . le delicat mouvement de l'ecriture" (p. 160).

32

" L E TOMBEAU D'ANATOLE"

In our chapter on " L e L i v r e " we shall further establish the significance of the bercement

in this respect, connected with the initial "feminine"

source of life-rhythms as reflected in the alternative/penchi I'autre bord womb-boat image of Page 3 of the Coup

de l'un ou de Des,

and

various other texts, plus the imagery we next cite where the ideas of boat and earth (fosse) are associated with the idea of feminine receptacle or womb, plus the mysterious shadow therein. "terre mere ä tous la sienne maintenant" (f. 174-5). "Terre parle mere confondue ä terre par fosse creusee par enfant . . . terre-mere reprends-le en ton ombre?" (f 154).

In our book, in connection with un bätiment (Page 3) we cited Mallarme's "Qu'est-ce alors que la nef Argo? Un symbole de la terre, en tant que generatrice: eile contient en soi les germes de toutes choses vivantes". And we added: " A cette Page nous avons retrace les purs mouvements d'onde de la realite physique qui cree d'elle-meme les pre-conditions de la vie, et dans l'image terminale du bateau nous avons l'idee d'une puissance de rhythme superieure, une femme, vaisseau de la vie humaine." (p 1567). We established the connection with this of the ombre (Pages 3 and 5) as follows: "Mallarme associe ces deux attributs feminins, la circularite et la dualite ä un troisieme . . . 1 'ombre . . . ce mot [ombre] est tres maternel" (p. 152). "Fils . . . il est aussi une ombre (Page 5) parce qu'il est encore cache dans la mere, juste comme ä I'autre extremite de la vie, Verlaine sera 'cache parmi l'herbe'" (p. 207).

The father and the mother, in both texts, are associated, as they are traditionally, with relatively opposed principles of negation ("the spirit which always denies") and affirmation ("the eternal yes"), of spirit and flesh: L'opposition de la mere et du pere recouvre done une antithese plus profonde entre vie et mort, ou plutot entre vie et pensee . . . la mere . .. symbolise un aveugle et

la fertile dualite de la vie . . . d'ou emerge la multiplicite en serie de la realite. Comme essence de la Femme, "fragments de candeur," il nous rappeile VEwigweibliche de

"LE TOMBEAU D'ANATOLE" magnifique instinct de la vie (Richard, p. 54).

33

Goethe. Cette note maternelle est appuyee par l'element native (Cohn, p. 154). Pere (Loi) en face de Mere (hasard, mer) (Cohn, p. 194).

The child of his flesh and the future child of his spirit (his Work)) are almost one in Mallarme's mind, not only because of the obvious connection between the two "offspring" - Montaigne, for example, spoke of the writer's true progeny being those he got on the Muse - but also, in this case, because the Work was to incorporate the boy's spirit deliberately. The Coup de Des takes up this idea, though in a more inclusive way, involving something more complex and universal than his personal son: "enfant sorti de nous deux - nous montrant notre ideal" (f. 1); "enfant, semence idealisation" (f. 16); le faire exister dans l'esprit d'un public ä venir, en ecrivant un Livre (Richard, p. 84).

Le couple simplifie le devenir quadripolaire en une polarite simple . . . dont le produit (fils) emerge (Cohn, 195), L'enfant ici est deja ambigue . . . "livre . . . semence ideale" (Cohn, p. 200). L'enfant est un coup de des vain . . . le fantome est ambigu: ä la fois enfantartiste et creation subtile (Cohn, p. 218).

In our book we show at length how this ambiguous and androgynous ideal creature (phantom of the innocent son, image of the father's spiritual progeny or creativity, the Work) becomes the stature mignonne tenebreuse debout en sa torsion de sirene. In both texts, the idea that the love act is a modification, a pis aller, substituting for a total metaphysical Act (or Coup) is very explicit: A l'aventure metaphysique et ä son echec succede l'aventure amoureuse, qui en constitue en realite la reprise terrestre, le recommencement mal deguise . . . "enfant notre immortalite - en effet, fait d'espoirs humains enfouis - fils - confies ä la Femme par l'Homme desesperant apres jeunesse de trouver le mystere et prenant femme" (f. 19), (Richard, p. 76).

. . . la tentative vaine de saisir le Tout ou l'Etre que l'homme sent monter en lui ä chaque maree de l'Eros (Cohn, p. 161). Le Coup est tente mais "cafouille" . . . et finit par etre l'acte humain (Cohn, p. 183); 1'amour . . . submerge la tete du vieillard (Cohn, p. 186); son fils, qui prendra sa place (Cohn, p. 187).

In both texts, the central paradox (life-death, affirmation-negation) emanates into the human acts which are varying attempts to deal with

34

"LE TOMBEAU D'ANATOLE"

it; it emanates also into the subsidiary phases of passive human fate, such as sickness (and recovery) which are, so to speak, death rehearsals (with a hint of possible resurrection): "On profite de ces heures, ou mort, frappe, il vit encore, et est encore ä nous" (f. 21). . . . rapport qui chez Mallarme reunit necessairement l'etre ä la negation. Or ce rapport, nous le verrons bientöt, ne peut pas etre vecu dans l'acte de la mort, puisque celle-ci le detruit dans l'instant meme ou elle l'etablit. II ne sera done approche, approximativement epouse, qu'ä travers l'experience de cette mort vivante, ou de cette vie mourante, que represente pour Mallarme la maladie (Richard, pp. 62-3).

Nous ne pouvons pas plus concevoir la mort (le Tout, la purete) que son absence. Que nous substituions ä la mort l'equivalent esthetique de Mallarme, le hasard, ou l'equivalent philosophique de Hegel, reine Negation, l'essentiel du dilemme demeure. Mallarme 1'avait dejä clairement resume dans son ceuvre de jeunesse. lgitur: "il y a et n'y a pas de hasard". (Cohn, pp. 32-3). Si l'on considere la mort comme univoque, la vie est equivoque . . . Sans fuir completement la mort (chute quotidienne, sommeil, amour) (Cohn, p. 84). Under chute quotidienne, we may include logically sickness, which idea is less explicit in the Coup de Des but certainly a part of the total picture of human fate therein represented, particularly in the chancellera, etc. associated with the son-figure on Page 5: "Fiangailles/dont/le voile d'illusion rejailli leur hantise/ainsi que le fantöme d'un geste/ chancellera/ s'affalera/ folie".

In one of the rare instances where Richard himself makes a reference to the Coup de Des, this parallel is further pointed up: "De la meme maniere que, dans le Coup de Des, 'L'ombre puerile' est 'caressee et polie et rendue et lavee assouplie par la vague et soustraite aux durs os perdus entre les ais', la maladie saisit en profondeur 'le petit fantöme' de maniere ä l'extraire doucement, et comme tendrement, de son enveloppe corporelle: 'Pourquoi', dit la mort, 'm'attarder ä vous le rendre inquiet - triste - deforme - tandis que je le petris pour le jour beau et sacre ou il ne souffrira plus - sur le lit de mort' (f. 71-72)". Note that in both texts the child is referred to as a fantöme. And the near-madness (at times, as Richard observes, perhaps true madness) brought on by the grief of the bereft father is echoed in the folie of Page 5 which we have just quoted, though there is an additional refer-

" L E TOMBEAU D'ANATOLE"

35

ence there to the madness or folly of any human hope, including the hope to survive through progeny. It is not too much to say, indeed, that almost all of the vocabulary referring to the birth and death of the (ambiguous) son-figure on Page 5, the ombre puerile, had already figured in the Tombeau d'Anatole for similar usage; for example: la main . .. legs ... α quelqu'un ambigu is parallelled by "c'est moi mains maudites - qui t'ai legue!" (f. 25); the idea of a son as a recurrence of the father's own childhood implied in vieillard ... son ombre puerile (we comment on this spiral emanation on p. 207 of our study) is implied also in: "tu ne fus done que moi . . . je me souviens d'une enfance - la tienne" (f. 24). The quelqu'un ambigu .. . celui/son ombre puerile, which we referred to (C, p. 207) as the spirit of the son in the father, with complex meanings, is duplicated in the "germe de son etre repris en soi T\ Ν Al IKK AGE

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