Stephan Mallarmé

Etienne Mallarmé , known as Stephan Mallarmé , born with Paris the March 18th 1842 and died in Valvins (commune of the Vulaines-on-Seine, Seine-et-Marne) the September 9th 1898, is a French poet.

Author of a poetic work ambitious and made (often voluntarily) obscure, Stephan Mallarmé was the initiator of a revival of the poetry whose influence is measured still nowadays near contemporary poets like Yves Bonnefoy. At the end of the 19th century, Mallarmé inserts poetry in the era of modernity.

By reading Hegel, Mallarmé discovered that if “the Sky died”, nothing is a starting point which leads to the Beautiful and the Ideal. To this philosophy a poetic news was to correspond which says the crowned capacity of the Verb. By the rate/rhythm, syntax and the rare vocabulary, Mallarmé create a language which ressuscite “absent it from all bouquets”. The poem becomes a world closed again on itself whose direction is born from resonance. The worms is made color, music, richness of the feeling, “contest of all arts causing the miracle”. It is with Mallarmé that the “suggestion” becomes the base of the poetic antirealist and fact of the symbolism a literary Impressionnisme.

“Poetry is the expression, by the human language brought back to its essential rate/rhythm, of the mysterious direction of the aspects of the existence: it thus endows with authenticity our stay and constitutes the only spiritual task. ”
“(...) Which speaks differently than everyone is likely not to like all; better, to pass for obscure to the eyes of much. (...) The attraction of this poetry holds so that she is lived like a spiritual privilege: it seems to raise with the more high degree of quality, with the help of the exclusion of profane crowd, this pure joy of the spirit which any poetry promises. ”
( According to Mallarmé , Paul Bénichou, Gallimard, 1995)

Biography

It loses his mother in 1848 and is entrusted to his grandparents. Put in pension as of 1852, it showed a poor pupil, and was returned in 1855. Boarder with the college of Direction, it was marked by the death of his Maria sister in 1855. At this same time, it composed its first poems of adolescence, collected in Between two walls , texts still strongly inspired by Victor Hugo, Theodore de Banville or Théophile Gautier. The discovery of the Fleurs of the evil of Charles Baudelaire in 1860 was outstanding and influenced its first works. This same year, Mallarmé enters the working life while becoming supernumerary to Sens, “first step in the degradation” according to him. In 1862, some poems appear in various reviews. It becomes acquainted with a controlling young person German with Sens, Maria Gerhard, born in 1835, and left its employment to settle with London with it, intending to become English professor.

Reformed military service in 1863, Stephan Mallarmé Marie with London with Maria the August 10th and obtains in September its training certificate to teach English. In September, it is named part-time lecturer to the imperial college of Tournon (Ardèche), where it is regarded as exiled. It does not cease during this period composing its poems, like the flowers , Angoisse , “ Las of a land-mark rest… ”. During the summer 1864, Mallarmé made knowledge with Avignon félibres, poets of language Provençal E: Theodore Aubanel, Joseph Roumanille and Frederic Mistral, with which it maintained a correspondence. His/her Genevieve daughter is born with Tournon the November 19th 1864.

The following year, it composes the Afternoon of a fauna , which it hopes to see representing in the Th3e4atre Fran1cais, but which was refused. It binds with the Parisian literary circle, in particular with Leconte de Lisle and José-Maria de Heredia.

The year 1866 marked a turning for Mallarmé, at the time of a stay in Cannes in his/her friend Eugene Lefébure where it was the one absolute period old object of doubt which lasted until in 1869. Appointed professor in Besancon, it began in November a correspondence with Paul Verlaine. In 1867, named in Avignon, it began the publication of its prose poems, it made a stay at Frederic Mistral with Maillane in 1868. It began in 1869 the writing from Igitur , tale poetic and philosophical, left unfinished, which marks the end of its period of poetic impotence begun in 1866. In 1870, it is put on leave of education, and is delighted by the introduction of the Republic in September. His/her Anatole son is born the July 16th 1871 with Sens and, named in Paris with the Fontanes College, it settles street of Moscow.

Mallarmé makes the meeting of a young poet in 1872, Arthur Rimbaud, then, in 1873 of the painter Edouard Manet, whom it supported at the time of the refusal of works of this one at the time of the Living room of 1874 and which makes him meet Zola. Mallarmé publishes the review the latest fashion which will have eight numbers and of which he was the corrector. New refusal in July 1875 for the publication of its new version of the afternoon of a fauna , which appeared all the same the following year, illustrated by Manet. It prefaces the republication of the Vathek of William Beckford. As of 1877, the meetings of Tuesday are organized at Mallarmé. It makes the meeting of Victor Hugo in 1878 and publishes in 1879 a work on mythology the ancient gods . This year is remembered by the death of his/her son Anatole, the October 8th 1879. In 1880, Mallarmé sick makes stays with Valvins, commune of the Vulaines-on-Seine, close to Fontainebleau.

In 1884, Paul Verlaine makes appear the third article of the cursed poets devoted to Mallarmé, just like works which appeared in 1884, the book of Joris-Karl Huysmans, With wrong way , where the main character, of Esseintes, dedicates a sharp admiration with the poems of Mallarmé, these two works contributed to the notoriety of the poet. Stephan Mallarmé is named with the Lycée Janson-with-Sailly. In 1885, Mallarmé evokes the orphic explanation of the Earth . Its first poem without punctuation appears in 1886, to introduce Me into your history . The final version of the Afternoon of a fauna is published in 1887. In 1888, its translation of the poems of Edgar Allan Poe appears. Again reached acute rheumatism in 1891, Mallarmé is on leave and obtains a reduction of its working time. It meets Oscar Wilde, Paul Valéry which became a frequent guest of Tuesday. In 1892, with died of the brother of Edouard Manet, Mallarmé becomes tutor of its daughter, Julie Manet, whose mother is the painter Berthe Morisot. It is at that time that Claude Debussy begins the composition from its part Prélude to the afternoon of a fauna, which was presented in 1894. Mallarmé obtains its setting reprocesses in November 1893, gives literary conferences of it to Cambridge and Oxford in 1894. Mallarmé assists with funerals of Paul Verlaine, deceased the January 8th 1896, it succeeds to him like Prince of the poets .

In 1898, Mallarmé lines up at the sides of Emile Zola which publishes in the newspaper the Dawn , the January 13rd, its article I show in favor of the Captain Alfred Dreyfus (cf Affaire Dreyfus). The September 8th 1898, Mallarmé is victim of a spasm of the larynx which misses choking it. It recommends in a letter to his wife and her daughter to destroy her papers and its notes, informant: “There is no there literary heritage… ”. The following day, victim of the same faintness it dies. It is buried near his Anatole son with the cemetery of Samoreau.

Influences

Works

  • the Afternoon of a fauna (1876)

  • Foreword in Vathek of William Beckford (1876)
  • Small philology, the English words (1877)
  • ancient Gods (1880)
  • Album of worms and prose (1887)
  • Pages (1891)
  • Oxford, Cambridge, music and the letters (1895)
  • Divagations (1897)
; Posthumous publications ; Translations
  • the Corbel of Edgar Poe ('' The Raven ''), French translation of Stephan Mallarmé with illustrations by Edouard Manet , Editions Richard Lesclide, Paris, 1875. Text in line
  • the Star of the fairies of Mrs. W.C. Elphinstone Hope, 1881.
  • Poems of Edgar Poe , 1888.
  • Ten o' clock of Mr. Whistler , 1888.

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