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Stéphane Mallarmé
34 quotes
“Degas was discussing poetry with Mallarmé; "It isn't ideas I'm short of... I've got too many" [Ce ne sont pas les idées qui me manquent... J'en ai trop], said Degas. "But Degas," replied Mallarmé, "you can't make a poem with ideas. … You make it with words." [Mais, Degas, ce n'est point avec des idées que l'on fait des vers. . . . C'est avec des mots.]”
Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: From Degas, Manet, Morisot by Paul Valéry (trans. David Paul), Princeton University Press, 1960.
“J'invente une langue qui doit nécessairement jaillir d'une poétique très nouvelle, que je pourrais définir en ces deux mots: Peindre, non la chose, mais l'effet qu'elle produit.”
Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) first seen 1864 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On his unfinished work Hérodiade, in a letter to Henri Cazalis (30 October 1864); Oeuvres Complètes (1945) edited by Mondor & Jean-Aubry, p. 307, as translated in Mallarmé : The Poet and his Circle ([1999] 2005) by Rose…
“It is in front of the paper that the artist creates himself.”
Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) first seen 1865 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Eugène Lefébure (February 1865), published in Selected Letters of Stéphane Mallarmé (1988), p. 48.
“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 knowl edge that Dream has no existence, extolling the Soul and all the divine impressions 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!”
Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) first seen 1866 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Henri Cazalis (April 1866), published in Selected Letters of Stéphane Mallarmé (1988), p. 60.
“In a museum in London there is an exhibit called "The Value of Man": a long coffinlike box with lots of compartments where they've put starch—phosphorus—flour—bottles of water and alcohol—and big pieces of gelatin. I am a man like that.”
Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) first seen 1867 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter dated 17th May 1867.
“Hyperbole! can you not rise In triumph from my memory, A modern magic spell devise As from an ironbound grammary: For I inaugurate through science The hymn of all hearts spiritual In the labor of my patience, Atlas, herbal, ritual.”
Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) first seen 1885 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Prose" (1885).
“O Spirit of litigation, know, When we keep silent in this season, The stem of multiple lilies grew Too large to be contained by reason”
Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) first seen 1885 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Prose" (1885).
“La chair est triste, hélas! et j'ai lu tous les livres.”
Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) first seen 1887 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Brise Marine", line 1 (1887), as translated in Mallarmé : The Poet and his Circle ([1999] 2005) by Rosemary Lloyd, p. 70.
“Le monde est fait pour aboutir à un beau livre.”
Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) first seen 1891 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remark made to Jules Huret, who published it in his Enquête sur l’évolution littéraire (1891); as translated in Stéphane Mallarmé (1969) by Frederic Chase St. Aubyn, p. 23.
“L'acte poétique consiste à voir soudain qu'une idée se fractionne en un nombre de motifs égaux par valeur et à les grouper; ils riment.”
Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) first seen 1895 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Crise de Vers", La Revue Blanche (September 1895) as translated in Mallarmé : The Poet and his Circle ([1999] 2005) by Rosemary Lloyd, p. 231.
“L'oeuvre pure implique la disparition élocutoire du poëte, qui cède l'initiative aux mots.”
Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) first seen 1895 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Crise de Vers", La Revue Blanche (September 1895 )as translated in Mallarmé : The Poet and his Circle ([1999] 2005) by Rosemary Lloyd, p. 55.
“Un Coup de Dés Jamais N'Abolira Le Hasard”
Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) first seen 1897 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Title of poem (1897), as quoted in Mallarmé's Un coup de dés : An Exegesis (1949) by Robert Greer Cohn.
“Ce n'est pas avec des idées qu'on fait des vers, c'est avec des mots.”
Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A remark reported in Psychologie de l'art (1927) by Henri Delacroix, p. 93; as translated in Literary Impressionism (1973), Maria Elisabeth Kronegger, p. 77.
“Magical shadow with symbolic powers! A voice from the distant past, an evocation, Is it not mine prepared for incantation?”
Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When the sad sun sinks, It shall pierce through the body of wax till it shrinks! No sunset, but the red awakening Of the last day concluding everything Struggles so sadly that time disappears, The redness of apocalypse, whose tears Fall on the child, exiled to her own proud Heart, as the swan makes its plumage a shroud For its eyes, the old swan, and is carried away From the plumage of grief to the eternal highway Of its hopes, where it looks on the diamonds divine Of a moribund star, which never more shall shine!”
Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Are you a living princess or her shadow? Let me kiss your fingers and their rings, and bid you Walk no longer in an unknown age...”
Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A kiss would kill me, woman, If beauty were not death... By what attraction Am I drawn, what morn forgotten by the prophets That pours on the dying distance its sad rites?”
Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Away with those perfumes that do me harm! I hate them, nurse, and would you have me feel Their drunken vapors make my senses reel?”
Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How, save through obscure Terrors, imagine more implacable still And as a suppliant the god who some day will Receive the gift of your grace! and for whom, Devoured by anguish, do you keep the unknown Splendor and mystery of your being?”
Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I wait, but do not know for what or why Or perhaps you are uttering the last bruised sighs, Ignorant of the mystery and of your cries, Of a childhood feeling its frozen gems Being broken off at last amidst its dreams.”
Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am alone in my monotonous country, While all those around me live in the idolatry Of a mirror reflecting in its depths serene Herodiade, whose gaze is diamond keen ... O final enchantment! yes, I sense it, I am alone.”
Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The sun as it's halted Miraculously exalted Resumes its descent Incandescent.”
Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I feel in my sinews The spreading of shadows Converging together With a shiver And in solitary vigil After flights triumphal My head rise From this scythe Through a clean rupture That serves to dissever The ancient disharmony With the body As drunk from fasting It persists in following With a haggard bound Its gaze profound Up where the frozen Absolute has chosen That nothing shall measure Its vastness, O glacier But according to a ritual Illumined by the principle That chose my consecration It extends a salutation.”
Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“These nymphs I would perpetuate. So clear Their light carnation, that it floats in the air Heavy with tufted slumbers. Was it a dream I loved?”
Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All alone I gave Myself for triumph the ideal sin of roses.”
Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No water murmurs but what my flute pours On the chord sprinkled thicket; and the sole wind Prompt to exhale from my two pipes, before It scatters the sound in a waterless shower, Is, on the horizon's unwrinkled space, The visible serene artificial breath Of inspiration, which regains the sky.”
Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Inert, all burns in the fierce hour”
Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Then shall I awake to the primitive fervour, Straight and alone, 'neath antique floods of light, Lilies and one of you all through my ingenuousness.”
Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My breast, though proofless, still attests a bite Mysterious, due to some august tooth; But enough! for confidant such mystery chose The great double reed which one plays 'neath the blue.”
Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I, proud of my rumour, for long I will talk Of goddesses; and by picturings idolatrous, From their shades unloose yet more of their girdles: So when of grapes the clearness I've sucked, To banish regret by my ruse disavowed, Laughing, I lift the empty bunch to the sky, Blowing into its luminous skins and athirst To be drunk, till the evening I keep looking through. Oh nymphs, we diverse MEMORIES refill.”
Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Ah well, towards happiness others will lead me With their tresses knotted to the horns of my brow: You know, my passion, that purple and just ripe, The pomegranates burst and murmur with bees; And our blood, aflame for her who will take it, Flows for all the eternal swarm of desire.”
Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Etna! 'tis amid you, visited by Venus On your lava fields placing her candid feet, When a sad stillness thunders wherein the flame dies. I hold the queen!”
Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No more, I must sleep, forgetting the outrage, On the thirsty sand lying, and as I delight Open my mouth to wine's potent star! Adieu, both! I shall see the shade you became.”
Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If only I'd chosen an easy work! But, precisely, I, who am sterile and crepuscular, have chosen a terrifying subject, whose sensations , if they are strong, reach the point of atrocity, and if they are vague, have the strange attitude of mystery. And my Verse hurts me at times, and wounds me as if it were of iron! I have, moreover, found an intimate and unique way of painting and noting down the very fleeting impressions. I should add, which is even more terrifying, that all these impressions follow one another as in a symphony, and I often have entire days when I ask myself if this impression can accompany that one, what is their relationship and effect … You can guess that I write few lines in a week.”
Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) first seen 1865 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On his unfinished work Hérodiade, in a letter to Henri Cazalis (15 January 1865), as translated in Mallarmé : The Poet and his Circle ([1999] 2005) by Rosemary Lloyd, p. 48.