Review of “Toute l’âme résumée” (1895)
Stéphane Mallarmé (writer).
Read in 2022.
Read in its original language and in Swedish-language prose translation.
Cigars.
A beautiful metaphor with the purpose of advocating hermetic poetics. Hermetism, in this conception, sounds a lot better than the mere riddling of poems like “Safe in Their Alabaster Chambers” (1859). I do think that “The Sleeper in the Valley” (1870/1888), for example, would have been better without spelling everything out on the final line. However, the other Mallarmé I’ve sampled doesn’t quite realize the promise of his last poetics.
References here: Modern utländsk lyrik (1975/1985).