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Stéphane Mallarmé was the most radically innovative of nineteenth-century poets, and a key figure in Modernism. His writings, with their richly sensuous texture and air of slyly intangible mystery, perplexed or outraged many early readers; yet no writer has more profoundly influenced the course of modern poetry - in English as well as in French. This is the fullest collection of Mallarmé's poetry ever published in English, and the only edition in any language that presents his Poésies in the last arrangement known to have been approved by the author. Prose poems, uncollected verse, and the unique, unclassifiable Un Coup de dés... (A Dice Throw...) are also present, including over 20 items that have never previously been translated. Original spelling, punctuation, and lineation have been preserved throughout.
The lucid, wide-ranging introduction provides a clear survey of Mallarmé's work and deals fully with the difficulties that may face readers approaching it for the first time. Collected Poems offers both Mallarme lovers and first-time readers a full understanding of this astonishing poet's work. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Fantastic read...
This book is for any poetry enthusiast's library who appreciates the visual splendor that is poetry.The author does a great job mating the words with artistic appeal.This work is a great mix between surrealism and minimalism.

FINEST Mallarmé COLLECTION AVAILABLE...
Till now, collections of Mallarmé's works have been difficult to obtain; moreover, the translations were dicey.Here we have an inexpensively priced fine volume which features good translations with the original French facing for quick comparison.Excellent introductory essay as well.This is the best!

Especially excellent and of particular interest is the original double-page presentation of Mallarmé's magnum opus, A Throw of the Dice at Any Time Will Never Eliminate Chance.Superb! ... Read more

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

Customer Reviews (2)

Beautiful prose
Agree with the previous reviewer: this is lithe, beautiful writing, as fresh as if it were written today. Here is a great mind on display, dallying with digressions and knowing that it is they that actually get at the heart of things. The language is so poetic - made me finally believe that prose could be poetry. Mallarme takes one back to origins, to the need for freshness in approach and disinhibition in writing. Every poet needs to read this. A remarkable translation.

The Man of the Hour
I don't always think that the editors of Bookforum pock the right reviewers for most of the books they cover, but when they assigned Wayne Koestenbaum to review Mallarme's DIVAGATIONS they struck gold, and it seems clear to me now that WK is a Mallarmean writer or rather, of the school of Mallarme, and yet, I would never have thought so until I started dipping into Barbara Johnson's fantastic translations here.The wordplay and the love of digression, the little paragraphs and the long, lithe sentences, like Gina Lollobrigida stretched out on the beach, everything about Johnson's Mallarme brings me back to the gifted critic and fiction writer of today.Then I was struck by hos contemporary the whole of Mallarme's DIV. enterprise seems.One piece, "Crisis of Verse," might have been written today, or at any rate the day before yesterday, and page after page of it, with its emphasis on the "white space" surrounding the word, anticipates Jabes, Barthes, all the most beautiful of 20th century critics."What caused a medium extent of words. under the gaze's comprehension, to take on definitive traits, surrounded by silence?"(The entire paragraph--you see, they're brief enough, in general, to fit inside fortune cookies.)

I like the one where Mallarme claims that, of all the French words for "shade," OMBRE is too opaque and TENEBRES is not very dark."What a disappointment, in front of the perversity that makes 'jour' and 'nuit,' contradictorily, sound dark in the former and light in the latter.Hope for a resplendent word glowing, or being snuffed out, inversely, so far as simple light-dark alternatives are concerned."What a way to put it!As an American boy growing up in France, I too often pondered the way French people seemed to think of "jour" as a dour, creepy sort of time, while the "nuit" was full of radiance and fun.Well, now I know a little bit more about their ways, and it's no more Nabokov for me.We used to weave complicated fantasies about a group of little fairy people who came out at twilight, the border between night and day just as it seems, in retrospect, like the Maginot Line between life and death.In our language, "light" and "life" are next to each other on the tongue at any rate, and it was an irate schoolmaster who broke up our crepuscular reveries, urging us harshly to take uup our cudgels and proceed home where Weetabix awaited us.I thought at first, before taking up Koestenbaum's review in BOOKFORUM, that I would have to be considerably keener on de Banville, Tailhade, Verlaine, Morisot et al (than I am) to get caught up with DIVAGATIONS, but the truth is, you don't have to know as much as you think you might to enjoy this book tremendously.You'll love the part where he theorizes that the slow, mournful syllables of "Lord Tennyson" account for the poet's popularity, and furthermore for "something serene, isolated, and complete; the proud withdrawal of physiognomy." ... Read more

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Charting The Depths Of A Man's Soul.
This offers in startling detail the great French poets works in their variety.From the beautiful & exquisite lyricism of "Herodiade" to the vivid cathartic experience of"Igitur" & finally to the innovative & experimental"Dice Thrown Never Will Annul Chance".This also contains ofcourse his impressionist masterpiece "The Afternoon Of AFaun".Together with the bizarre & self-revelatory letters &prose poems the work offers a good representation of this masterful man& poet. ... Read more

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Stephane Mallarme Rules!!Great Poetry book!!
This is a great poetry book by Stepane Mallarme.It's highly recommended!!! ... Read more

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bilingual French/English edition, 130pp notes ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Great poetry, unfortunate translation
Weinfeld makes all the mistakes you might expect in a translation of a poet only posthumously appreciated. That is, Weinfeld is the kind of guy who would have hated Mallarme in the late 19th Century, and likes him now because of what is old about his poetics, not what was/is innovative.

It seems to me that people who see "ahead of their time" poets (i.e., Rimbaud, Lautremont, Poe, to some extent Whitman, etc) as valuable exemplars of daring experimentalism generally produce fresher translations because they are more interested in keeping language fresh. Those who see the aforementioned poets as valuable reminders of the importance of constrained prosody, "high" diction, a centered author, or other notions that have since been obliterated, tend to produce translations that make radical poets sound like stuffy Englishmen in ascots drinking sherry.

No one can mess up "A Throw of the Dice...", but in general I'd reccomend the Daisy Aldan translation. i haven't read it all the way through, but in looking over some of the poems, it seems she makes fewer gross errors. For one, she doesn't bother to try to translate French rhyme to English rhyme, a task that usually requires a complete rearrangement of the poem by a much less talented poet than the original author.

The Poet...double-minded visionary...enchanting chanter...
This volume of COLLECTED POEMS by Stephane Mallarme
and translated with commentary by Henry Weinfield
is a joy and a treasure. For it contains Mallarme
poems from various of his collections: First Poems,
Satirical Parnassus, The Contemporary Parnassus,
Other Poems, Album Leaves, Street Songs, Several
Sonnets, Homages and Tombs, Other Poems and
Sonnets, Poems in Prose, and A Throw of the Dice.
The best appreciation of Mallarme is cited by
Henry Weinfield in his "Introduction" to this
volume.The comments were by Paul Valery (and
were about Mallarme): "This poet was the least
-primitive- of all poets, yet it came about that
by bringing words together in an unfamiliar, strangely
melodious, and as it were stupefying chant -- by the
musical splendor of his verse as well as by its
amazing richness -- he restored the most powerful
impression to be derived from primitive poetry: that
of the -magical formula-.An exquisite analysis of
his art must have led him toward a doctrine, and
something like a synthesis, of incantation."
This volume contains the texts of the poems in
French on the right-hand side of each page -- and
the translation in English on the left-hand side.
Mallarme is an extremely interesting poet, artist,
and human thinker/creator, for he has a spiritual
crisis in which he came away perceiving: "Yes, I
-know-, we are merely empty forms of matter, but
we are indeed sublime in having invented God and
our soul.So sublime, my friend, that I want to
gaze upon matter, fully conscious that it exists,
and yet launching itself madly into Dream, despite
its knowledge that Dream has no existence, extolling
the Soul and all the divine impresssion of that kind
which have collected within us from the beginning of
time and proclaiming, in the face of the Void, which
is truth, these glorious lies."Yet, even this, is
not precisely what Mallarme finally winds up doing...
for his is a "quest for Beauty and for a transcendent
Ideal and the tragic vision on which that quest is
based."
And all of this is enveloped in the most beautiful
sounds and images...charming and mystifying...for he
is also hermetic in his approach, "Everything that is
sacred and that wishes to remain so, must envelop
itself in mystery."
Here is a portion from "The Afternoon of a Faun" in
English -- then in French:
"...through the motionless and weary swoon/ Of
stifling heat that suffocates the morning,/ Save
from my flute, no waters murmuring/ In harmony flow
out into the groves;" -- "par l'immodible et lasse
pamoison/ Suffoquant de chaleurs le matin frais sil
lutte/ Ne murmure point d'eau que ne verse ma flute/
Au bosquet arrose d'accords;".
"...the ancient technique of verse -- for which I
retain a religious veneration and to which I atribute
the empire of passion and of dreams..."

If you want Mallarmé, this is the one to get.
This a beautiful edition of the COMPLETE poems of one of the most important French symbolist poets. If only all French poetry books could be printed in handsome, large-format bilingual editions like this! The translation is not even half-bad, with Weinfeld doing his best to maintain the actual flavor of Mallarmé's words. Best of all, the poems are translated in a faithful stylistic way-- prose poems STAY in prose, and the early-surrealist poem "Un Coup de Des" keeps its complex typesetting. The commentary is substantial and the poems are arranged in order of the books they appeared in, which makes it easier to follow the progression. Sometimes it seems that Mallarmé is left out of his rightful place in poetry, and this edition should help to alleviate that problem.

collected works by father of symbolism
Mallarme is a classic poet. His poetry made great impact on almost every important modern poet. He follow a road of Baudelaire and Rimbaud, the hard road. Paul Valery's work, for example, can not be even imagined without Mallarme's poems. This book contains all Mallarme's poetry. It is an essential collection for every poetry fan whose taste is not satisfied with mere cliched rhymes. Mallarme is also a paradigmatical figure of modern literature. He is the author of that famous statement: "The world exists in order to become a book." ... Read more

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One of the most influential French poets of the last hundred years, Mallarme is known as the Father of Symbolism and defender of the Impressionists. The first biography of this seminal figure in Modernism in 50 years draws on unpublished correspondence and new documentation to humanize this elusive figure. Photos. ... Read more

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i would not buy this again
very big fan of the poetry but as far as lit biographies this is the most boring one I have ever read, i have had the book on my self for years and still have not finished it.

An excellent introduction to Mallarme's life
Quite an enjoyable read, Millan's book also presents us with a neutral account of his subject's life, which makes this biography all the more interesting and stimulating. Although some may feel a few things are missing, such as details into Herodiade and parts of Mallarme's literary theory, or more examples of Mallarme's interactions with other major writers of his century apart from his closest friends, this biography deserves the attention of anyone considering taking focused interest in Mallarme, or XIXth century French poetry in general. ... Read more

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An immensely moving poetic work addressing inconsolable sorrow: a father's pain over the death of his child. Bilingual.

"One of the most moving accounts of a man trying to come to grips with modern death—that is to say, death without God, death without hope of salvation—and it reveals the secret meaning of Mallarmé's whole aesthetic: the elevation of art to the stature of religion."—Paul Auster, from the Introduction

The great French Symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898), who changed the course of modern French literature (and influenced writers from James Joyce to T.S. Eliot to Wallace Stevens), suffered many tragedies. His mother died when he was just five years old, but in 1879 the cruelest blow of all struck when his beloved son Anatole died at the age of eight.

A Tomb for Anatole presents the 202 fragments of Mallarmé's projected long poem in four parts. By far the poet's most personal work, he could never bring himself to complete it. To speak publicly of his immense sorrow, Mallarmé concluded, "for me, it's not possible." Unpublished in France until 1961, these works are very far from the oblique, cool "pure poetry" Mallarmé is famous for, poetry that sought to capture—painstakingly—"l'absente de tous bouquets" (the ideal flower absent from all bouquets).

Paul Auster, who first published A Tomb for Anatole with the North Point Press in 1983 (a volume long out of print), notes in his excellent introduction that facing "the ultimate horror of every parent," these fragments "have a startling unmediated quality." As Mallarmé writes, it is "a vision / endlessly purified / by my tears." ... Read more

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Never-before translated prose pieces by the father of the Symbolist movement and one of the most influential cultural figures of 19th-century France. This volume contains never-before translated prose selections--on language and aesthetics (grouped with a brief selection from his meditation The Book) as well as lighter reflections on life, fashion, and the performing arts. A number of sections are devoted to Mallarme's great magazine of wit and opinion (every page of which he wrote himself): Derniere Mode, or The Latest Fashion, which included commentary on clothing, education, and travel.These pieces were written under various pseudonyms of various genders: Madame du Ponty, Mademoiselle Satin, and "the redoubtable and unspecified IX." As the translator and editor of this volume Mary Ann Caws puts it: "It is Mallarme as inventor which this volume wants to celebrate, along with the rest of his genius." Mallarme's reflections on the English language, as well as his portraits of poets and artists (including Tennyson, Poe, and Manet) --and letters to such renowned figures as Valery, Debussy, and Paul Claudel--also contribute to making this an enticing volume, a collection of prose pieces highlighting the multiplicity of Mallarme's voices and the variety of his forms. ... Read more

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In this highly original and provocative study, Bersani takes us away from the interpretative questions which the competing critics of Mallarmé familiarly raise, and explores a fundamental paradox within his work as a whole. On the one hand Mallarmé can be taken as a prime example of textual imperialism in modern literature: his hermetic poems seem to demand ever more interpretative ingenuity from his readers and to provide a foretaste of the supreme Book which he dreamed of- 'the Orphic explanation of the Earth'. On the other hand he mounted an extraordinary assault on literature's claims to importance. He went so far as to propose a view of literature as an essentially wordless fiction incapable both of communicating the nature of reality and of producing knowledge of reality. He comes to be engaged in the somewhat eerie strategy of celebrating literature as a way of burying it. He does not, however, give up writing; in fact, he begins what Leo Bersani considers to be his revolutionary subversion of literature at the very moment when he becomes a man of letters. In tracing this paradox, Bersani brings fresh insights to much of Mallarmé's work and suggests a unique way of understanding Mallarmé's place in modern literature. ... Read more