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Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School 1968 The Theme of Sterility in the Poetry of Mallarme: Its Development and Evolution. Donald R. Vidrine Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses Recommended Citation Vidrine, Donald R., "The Theme of Sterility in the Poetry of Mallarme: Its Development and Evolution." (1968). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 1421. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/1421 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This dissertation has been microfilmed exactly as received 68-10,763 VIDRINE, Donald R., 1932- THE THEME OF STERILITY IN THE POETRY OF MALLARME: ITS DEVELOPMENT AND EVOLUTION. [Portion of Text in French]. Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, Ph.D., 1968 Language and Literature, modern University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan THE THEME OP STERILITY IN THE POETRY OP MALLARM^: ITS DEVELOPMENT AND EVOLUTION A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of Foreign Languages fcy Donald R. Vidrine B .S., L ouisiana S tate U niversity, 1954 M.A., Louisiana S tate U niversity, 1962 January, 1968 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to Dr. Elliott D. Healy for the assistance and encouragement which he pro­ vided during the preparation of this study. TABLE OE CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION................................................................................................ 1 Chapter I . HANTISE DE L'AZUR.................................................................... 25 I I . YEARS OE C R IS IS ......................................................................... 72 I I I . HANTISE DU NiSiANT..........................................................................124 IV. AFFIRMATION........................................................................................182 V. CONCLUSION........................................................................................ 225 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY..............................................................................232 VITA .........................................................................................................................243 iii ABSTRACT The theme of impotence, or sterility, is a recurrent one throughout the poetry of Stephane Mallarme. In his poetry written prior to the year 1865 > th is theme is ex­ pressed in terms of the hantise de l'azur, which represents a kind of Platonic ideal which he struggles to comprehend in order to give expression to it in his poetry. Bailing to comprehend it, he seeks to escape it through love, through eroticism, through concentration on the material aspects of life. The years 1864-1869 bring a metaphysical crisis, from which Mallarme emerges with his Bream, i.e., the old Platonic Ideal, destroyed. It is replaced by a perception of the Void, which brings, rather than a nega­ tive attitude on the part of Mallarm6, an existentialist assumption of that Void, and the determination to make something positive of it. Under the influence of Hegelian thought, he views th is Void, not as an end but as a begin­ ning, as an absence from which something positive must be made to issue. This something positive is the poet's work, for only one thing survives the Void—the work of artistic creation. This conviction is expressed throughout the "Tombeaux" poems commemorating such lum inaries as Poe, Baudelaire, Wagner and Verlaine. But for himself, Mallarme could only derive limited consolation from this conviction, iv for ever the idealist, he conceives his poetic task to he the production of a "Grand Oeuvre," a Book that would syn­ thesize the Truth of the universe, an "orphic explanation of the Earth." Against this Ideal Work, Mallarme must now measure the poetry he produces, and he is never entirely satisfied with what he sees. Once again there is the danger of an impasse, for he must face the possibility of not being able to achieve the Work. He lives with this fear, rea­ lizing to what degree the accomplishment of the Work is governed by chance, which cannot be negated despite the best efforts of the poet, as is demonstrated in Un Coup de des. The only hope lies in patient endeavor, as ex­ pressed in Prose pour des Esseintes; by means of language and constant application, perhaps he will be able to wrest from the Void at least a part of the Work that he hopes to achieve. Mallarme's correspondence reveals his awareness of the fact that he has set too large a task for himself. Mentions are frequent in both his correspondence and his critical writings that his poetry falls short of the de­ sired objective. Nonetheless, Mallarme works assiduously until his death, in total dedication to his art and to his vision. But on his death-bed he feels constrained to re­ quest that his family burn all his notes accumulated over a period of almost f i f t y years. The "Grand Oeuvre" has remained simply an Ideal. The poet's death-bed wish is but one further bit of evidence of the frustration of that Id e a l. vi INTRODUCTION The study of the poetry of Stephane Mallarme may easily prove to he a baffling and frustrating experience, defying even the most persistent efforts to comprehend. Respected critics who have spent years in deciphering (the word is used advisedly) his poetry, must admit to uncer­ tainties about the meaning of certain segments of his work. A survey of criticism about the writings of Mallarme re­ veals frequently wide divergence of opinion as to the in­ terpretation of given texts. Mallarme has been criticized from numerous angles, and yet for all the extensive bibli­ ography in his name, he remains one of the most difficult and mysterious poets of all time. This mystery in the art of Mallarme is no coinci­ dence. It is rather the result of several complex factors which will be considered in this introductory chapter as a means of entry into a study of the theme of a r t i s t i c s te ­ rility in the poetry of this chief of the Symbolist school. It is, first of all, the product of a life-long endeavor on the p art of the poet to remove his a r t from the grasp of the casual reader and to avoid simple interpretation. It is a deliberate and consistently sought effect, born of the poet’s conviction that art must be aristocratic in 1 2 its nature, that it must be reduced to the level of the vulgar medium for the communication of idea alone, that poetry has as its most sacred calling the conveyance of a mystery that transcends our physical universe, that lan­ guage, as the principle vehicle of poetry, may be stripped to its bare base and induced to suggest this higher reality which was the source of such constant preoccupation for the poet. These convictions, ironically enough, led Mallarme through a lifetime of anguished labor as he sought to put his theories into practice. Mallarme suffered by his own hand, so to speak: the realization of his goals in poetry cost him long years of grueling labor, seldom free of the anguish of possible failure, of the fear that he might not be able to give expression to his particular vision, of an overriding concern with sterility. Mallarme has provided a large number of essays and critical writings which express his views about his es­ thetic of poetry. The foremost expression of his opinion about the need to keep poetry an a ris to c ra tic a rt form and about the need for mystery in art is found in his essay entitled "Heresie artistique: L'Art pour tous," written at Sens in 1862 when he was only twenty years old. I ts importance cannot be over-estimated for, although over­ looked by his contemporaries and critics, it serves as something of a key to his entire art, as Madame Emilie Noulet observes: "Fiddle pendant trente ans a cette page 3 premiere, il (Mallarme) la tient secrete... H&tons-nous de surprendre, a l'4tat naissant, une pens^e qui se voudra bient&t inaccessible; a l'etat irrefl^chi, une doctrine qui s'ignore en tant que doctrine."'1' This doctrine that is crystallizing in this early work is not hesitantly ad­ vanced; the opening line of the essay reveals the poet's view of his calling as a sacred trust: Toute chose sacr^e et qui veut demeurer sacree s'enve- loppe de myst&re. Les religions se retranchent a. l'abri d'arcanes devoil^s au seul predestine: l'art a les siens.... La musique nous offre un exemple... J'ai souvent demande pourquoi ce caractere n^cessaire a 4te refuse a un seul art, au plus grand. Celui-la est sans mystere contre les curiositls hypocrites, sans terreur contre les impietes, ou sous le sourire et la grimace de 1' ignorant et de l'ennemi. Je parle de la poesie. 2 Mallarme admires in religion and in music the very quali­ tie s which function as boundaries beyond which one does not penetrate. This early statement foreshadows not only a basic idea but a technique that will characterize his poetry; religion is inspirational for its mystery, music for its abstractedness. The latter is a particular source of fascination for the poet's mind. The sight of a sheet of music, filled with its rows or ordered, abstract signs, suggests to him something approaching the supernatural: "...ces processions macabres de signes severes, chastes, inconnus," whereupon, in the grip of a kind of religious astonishment, he once again closes the music book, des­ tined now to remain "vierge d'aucune pensee profanatrice. u^ These mysterious signs are responsible for lifting this particular art form, through their very technical nature, above the level of the layman, filling the latter with awe before their incomprehensibility.

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