mallarmé's relation to platonism and romanticism

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Mallarmé's Relation to Platonism and RomanticismAuthor(s): R. ChampignySource: The Modern Language Review, Vol. 51, No. 3 (Jul., 1956), pp. 348-358Published by: Modern Humanities Research AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3718387 .

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MALLARME'S RELATION TO PLATONISM

AND ROMANTICISM

The inversion of Platonism which has been noted in our Romantic age is to befound in Mallarm6,but with remarkable differences. Before examining Mallarme's

position, it is necessary to indicate what will be meant by 'Platonism'. The wordhas been an abundant sourceof misunderstanding. Plato has often been brandishedas a bannerfor indiscriminate 'spiritualism', when he has not been given a Christian

baptism.A return to Plato still makes a choice necessary. What remains of the theory of

Ideas after Plato checkedhimself in the Parmenides?Thephilosophy

of Plato doesnot offera solution; it sets up the problemof participation: of ideas between them-

selves, of being with non-being. Instead of solutions, myths are offered. Plato mayhave 'believed' in his myths; but 'belief' is a pejorative word for him.

The Timaeus is presented as a myth. Yet, it is comparatively reliable, for if it

makes use of such obviously inadequate metaphors as those of the demiurgos,ofthe exemplar, it tries at the same time to suggest quantitative determinations andto keep in touch with the theory of ideasduly amended nresponse o the Parmenides.We can thus reject the popularview of Platonism which, influencedby the dualistic

tendency of Christianity, reifies ideas and makes them constitute a world by them-

selves. There is only one world. There is no intelligible world, but the world is

intelligible in so far as it is.To allow for differences,being is allowed to mix with non-being. Being is stable,

eternal. Of being one can say it is, but one cannot say that it was or will be.If we did, we would frame our notion of being accordingto existence (consciousness

present to actual, past and future as such). Time is accepted in the bosom of

being, not as it is lived, but as 'the flowing image of eternity'. Being is both rest

and motion. Motion is intelligible, hence is, in so far as it can be frozen on a graph(more especially, for Plato, if it is circular). On a graph, there is no place for pastand future as such.

Christianity values faith over knowledge, the qualitative over the quantitative,the personal over the impersonal. Not only is God a person, but He (not it) was

incarnated. The theme of incarnation surreptitiously alters the notion of eternity.God is; but one is tempted to add: He was and will be. How can He be person ifHe is not presentto past and future?We are no longer led to oppose the indefiniteto the definite. We turn to the opposition between finite and infinite.

From the point of view of the present study, the most important principlewhich

emerges out of the Christian era is the axiom of Spinosa: omnis determinatioest

negatio. It influences both the Romantic and the Mallarmeanways of thinking.From a Platonic point of view, determination defines being in so far as it denies

that it is other than itself. But from a Romanticpoint

of view, determination isnot only an external negation, it affects the object internally.

With Romanticism eternity is thrown into time. The intellect and its inventionsare made relative to the living subject. From the God-manwe turn to the man-God



R. CHAMPIGNY 349

(Blake, Shelley, Nietzsche). Spurredon by the eighteenth-centurybelief in progress,

original Romanticism is delighted by the indefinite character of reality in time.Existence is the exemplar of the world. The world is not an intellectual, mathe-

matical cosmos, it is a sentimental, analogical nature. The Platonic cosmos wasstatic, or cyclic. Romantic nature is a vitalistic, dynamic notion. In the forma-tion of this concept, the Romantics may have been aided by the spurious 'Platonic'tradition. What Plato sees in the world is the realized reflexion of the impersonalintellect. What the Romantic sees in the worldis the realized reflexion of indefinite

emotion, or at least of sentiment (since emotion, or mood, really came into itsown with the Symbolist, or Impressionist, phase).

The true, the good and the beautiful are one for original Romanticism as well asfor Plato. But with Plato, intellectual truth defined both itself, the beautiful andthe good. With the Romantics, it is the dynamic beauty of poetry that 'undefines'

the good and the true. The Platonic intellect defineswhat at first appearsindefinitein concrete reality. Once this is accomplishedby the philosopher,not by the poet,man is reconciled with the cosmic order. The goodness of a conduct, the beautyof a work of art are ideally judged according to their truth and they are true inso far as they manifest the cosmic order. With Romanticism, on the con-

trary, indefiniteness is given a value. It is the indefiniteness of reality which

permits the poet to create. The world is not made, it is yet and forever to be

made.

Mallarme'sposition in regard to Platonism is so peculiar that it is in Mallarmehimself that one should look for its main 'causes'. Yet it is

possibleto see his

position as a conclusion, a sober one, to the evolution of Romanticism. Let usisolate three factors:

1. What has been called the death of God. By mundanizing mysticism,Romanticism drowned the divinity in nature. The indefiniteness of nature was

thought of as dynamic, but dynamic does not necessarily mean progressive. From

the original optimism of Romanticism we turn to a pessimism whose most remark-able expression may be Hartmann's doctrine: the half-blind unconscious playsthe role that Godplayed in Christiantheology and that the Ideas and the demiurgos

played in the Timaeus.

2. The success of science. The Romantic horror for the machine is generally

interpreted as noble human indignation. There may be a more basic motivation.

The nature to which the poet paid homage was ungrateful: it favoured the scientist.

The Romantic poet liked to see himself as the descendant of the prophets. But

compared to the 'materialistic' magic of science,1poetic magicwas ineffectual. Of

course the poet continued to preach a higher 'spiritual' truth and he looked for

guidance into occultist literature. But faith was lacking. Objectively the beautifulwas separated from the true.

3. Thebourgeois supremacy. Horror or the machine and horror or the bourgeoiswere linked in the same 'spiritualism' versus 'materialism' crusade. As reformerstoo the Romantics proved ineffectual. Human nature was as impervious as con-

crete reality. Out of the dynamic indefiniteness of the revolutionary period came

1 The imaginative vision of reality which science stirs up in us nowadays is much more'Romantic'.



350 Mallarme's Relation to Platonism and Romanticism

the static definiteness of bourgeois ethics and politics. Objectively the beautifulwas separated from the good.1

Hence art for art's sake. The artist is separated from things and from men.2The beautiful has nothing to do with the accepted good and the aesthete accepts the

bourgeois good as thegood. It is a convenient target: the indefiniteness of beautymystifies the definitenessof virtue. Beauty is an ironic,negative weapon. Aestheticsis a negation of ruling ethics, it is no longer conceived as an inspiration for moreadvanced ethics. Mallarme accepts this anti-Platonic situation, yet his concern

may often seem Platonic.

In the wake of Baudelaire, Mallarmeaccepts the defacto split between the good,the true and the beautiful, the failure of optimistic Romanticism.3 His most

pervasive notion is that of hazard. According to the Timaeus, the world is com-

posed by the demiurgosout of three principles: being, generation and place (khora).In Plato's world, being was the dominant 'paternal' element. Like Laforgue'sunconscious or Breton's surreality, Mallarme'shazard suggests that, in the worlds

imagined by these three poets, the ruling element is the 'maternal', the khora:'A formless universal recipient, which in the most dubious and scarcely explicablemanner participates of an intelligible nature... perpetually exhibits the phantasmof something else; and can only participate in essence in a certain imperfect degree,or it would become in every respect a perfect nonentity.'4

The world viewed by Mallarme, Laforgue and Breton seems to be a case of

parthenogenesis. If the 'paternal' element, which gives form, has intervened, the

demiurgosmust have been a nineteenth-century scientist or bourgeois, not a poet.At least not a Mallarmeanpoet:5 the Surrealistmight say that the demiurgoswasa poet in so far as he did not force form on surreality.

For the Impressionist generated things may offer a pattern of beauty. But this

pattern is the climate of a transient mood, the fugitive gestaltof emotional percep-tion. Reality does not obey a Platonic cosmic order and it is not the nature ofthe optimistic Romantic. All it can offer, by chance, is a paysage (landscape-inscape).

Yet both the Impressionist and the Surrealist manage somehow to make theiridea of beauty participate in the actual. A non-Platonic beauty is applied to a non-Platonic world. Mallarme,on the contrary, longs for a Platonic kind of beauty in

a non-Platonic world. Unlike a Platonist, or a scientist, he does not try to forgethis existential situation. Yet his ideal of beauty invites him to cancel this situation,

1 More is needed to show that aesthetics is not ethics, for ethics is no more 'objective' thanaesthetics. The disillusioned Romantics paid an unconscious tribute to the Victorian era byassuming it was. Ethics is inter-subjective. In the Surrealist phase of Romanticism, poetsthought that a reconciliation of ethics and aesthetics was possible through Marxism, whichoffered a dynamic concept of the good. But failure to enter the social circuit was registeredagain: the subjective is not the inter-subjective (though it is its condition).

2 Though it is a normal internal development, the gradual substitution of particular,indefinite moods for general sentiments may have been helped by the split between poet and

public. It is difficult to distinguish between cause and effect: all depends on the point of view,sociological or literary.

3See, in particular, Le Ten o'clock de M. Whistler (569-83). The numbers within parenthesesin this article refer to the pages of (Euvres completes de Stephane Mallarme (Paris, N.R.F. 1945).

4 Timaeus, Taylor's translation (New York: Pantheon Books, 1944), pp. 169-71.5 With Whistler and Wilde, Mallarme notes: 'La nature reussit rarement a produire un

tableau' (574).



R. CHIAMPIGNY

to make himself as impersonal as possible.1 What can be the relation between

beauty and reality? Not participation, not mimesis.Mallarme started from Baudelaire: art for art's sake, a dandified isolation of

beauty;2 also, in order to mystify the bourgeois, possibly oneself, a bad faithpseudo-Platonism which places qualitative correspondances oth in a transcendent'world of essences' 3and in nature. But the systematic mind of Mallarmedecidedto probe into this pose, instead of merely adopting it. Hence the famous crisis, the

meaning of which Igitur, Mallarme'sParamenides,was to analyse.

Igitur adopts a Romantic point of view: an ego trying to appropriate realitysymbolically and to appropriatehimself at the same time. Igitur is a person,a hero,who chooses the impersonal way. In its unfinished state the project shows theultimate equivalence of failure and success, since there is no subject without

object and vice-versa. The plan of the project is a reductioad absurdumand infiniteregression. It even presents the basis for such processessince the notions of absurdand infinite are brought into play.

Subject and object depend on each other in time and space: past, future, actual.

Through impersonality, Igitur attempts to be pure presence, 'un calme narcotiquede moi pur' (435). Through reflexion, the subject leaves the actual and fancies heis out of time: 'Moi projete absolu' (434). 'L'absolu existera en dehors-lune, au-dessus du temps' (433).4 Igitur 'se separe du temps indefini et il est' (440). He is'l'Identite (Idee)Soi' (428). The use of these terms indicates a Romantic translationof Platonism. Objectivity is shown to depend on subjectivity: only a person can be

impersonal. Idea, being (ina Platonic sense

here), absolute,the

one, identity,these terms are'hypostases of the mystery of consciousness, subjectivity, presence.A presence outside time, but present to past and future, suggests God. Igitur,

'croyant a l'existence du seul Absolu, s'imagine etre partout dans un reve' (442).Igitur fancies he is God, but he is not.5 He is God in so far as he is not. Mallarme

concludes that it is vanity to desire to be God.6 But he also implies that the con-

cept of God depends on this fancy of the ego. There can be no presence, no con-

sciousness outside time. For Mallarme this means a negation of the existence of

1 'Qu'est une immortalite relative, et se passant souvent dans l'esprit d'imbeciles, a c6tede la joie de contempler 1'Eternite, et d'en jouir, vivant, en soi? ' (Propos sur la poesie, Monaco,

1946, p. 71).But if this

eternityis

nrowhere exceptin

us,is it

not,in its utmost

purity,death?

Igitur develops this theme. See also Propos sur la poesie, p. 77: 'Ma Pensee s'est pens6e et estarrivee a une Conception Pure.... Je suis parfaitement mort, et la region la plus impure oiumon Esprit puisse s'aventurer est l'Eternit6....Je suis maintenant impersonnel.'

2 'I1 confond trop l'Ideal avec le Reel.... Si le Reve etait ainsi d6flore et abaisse, ofudonenous sauverions-nous, nous autres malheureux que la terre degoute et qui n'avons que le Reve

pour refuge?' (Propos sur la poesie, pp. 32-3). Representative of this juvenile mood are the

poems 'Les Fenetres' and 'L'Azur'.3 In his Esthetique de Stephane Mallarme (Paris, 1951) Delfel attributes this pseudo-Platonism

both to Plato and to Mallarme.4 Mallarm6's 'conception pure' (hazard affirmed and denied) and Laforgue's 'immaculee

conception' (unconscious affirmed and denied) meet in the symbol of the moon. Laforgue madefull use of the symbol. Mallarm6 preferred the constellation.

5 'Je veux me donner ce spectacle de la matiere, ayant conscience d'etre, et cependant,

s'6lanqantforcenement dans le reve

qu'ellesait n'Stre

pas,chantant

1'Ameet toutes les divines

impressions pareilles qui se sont amass6es en nous depuis les premiers ages, et proclamant,devant le Rien qui est la v6rit6, ces glorieux mensonges!' (Propos sur la poesie, p. 59).

6 'Cette prohibition s6vit expresse, dans la nature (on s'y bute avec un sourire) que ne vaillede raison pour se considerer Dieu' (364). This is said in connexion with language which is givento the poet as a conjunction of hazards.

351




a divinity as well as a negation of Igitur's possibility to be God.' Godis dead.

Worthy of his Romantic 'race',2 Igitur 'a enleve a l'Absolu sa purete' (Platonicor Christian), 'pour l'etre' (442).

In this fancy, or limiting situation, to an absolute subject corresponds,as object,the infinite. The infinite is hazard,the khora. As Christians,as Romantics, we have

'unleashed the infinite' (648). The cross has replaced the Platonic sphere. Sub-

jectivity is no longer kept within its sphere. It tries hybristically to appropriate

reality with the arms of the cross.3 The cross is the brand of possession (through

negation), but, reciprocally, the subject is quartered on the arms of the cross.

Absolute though he is, the hero remains under the sway of 'l'hymne (maternel)quile cree' (428).

'Ceci devait avoir lieu dans les combinaisons de l'Infini vis-a-vis de l'Absolu'

(434). 'Infinite' suggests at first the totality of space and time. Yet Igitur has to

'reduce' hazard to this aspect (442), to the ultimate aspect of khora. Hazard is tobe rid of its masks: the constellation (Platonic rest), the sea (Platonic motion, orindefinite change): 'De l'Infini se separent et les constellations et la mer' (435).Each event is viewed as a conjunction of hazards, as a dice-throw.4Thus hazard is

manifested nakedly by the clocks and, to the end, by Igitur's contingency, the

beating of his heart.

Igitur takes place at midnight. Daylight is perception; the actual is seen throughthe window (senses). From the window we turn to the mirror of reflexion,in which

objects appear as shadows.5 More generally, the room of Mallarme-Igitur is

reflexion, or memory, and can thus be comparedto Plato's cave. In the cave one

interprets the shadows on the wall as reminiscent of the 'ciel anterieur ou fleuritla beaute'. In Mallarme's room one sees the shadows of former dice-throws (anironicalpresentation of Plato's magicnumbers).The absolute is present, is presence.The former heaven is our invention, our dream, our lie. 'Du Minuit demeure la

presence en la vision d'une chambre du temps' (435).Hazard is trapped in the past. Past events can be explained, founded, after the

fact. The scientist will tell us why Jesus was born on Christmasday. But hazard

escapes its determinations in the past to appear infinite: 'L'Infini sort du hasard,

que vous avez nie. Vous, mathematiciens expirates-moi projete absolu' (434).

Igitur is presence to the future (or possible) which is the ultimate manifestation of

hazard. Igitur used to be divided between 'tenebres et temps crees' (438), futureand past. Now he has appropriated,justified the past. But, as possible, as future,hazard disposes of the meaning of this past.

Igitur has left the room of memory to descend the staircase of the future. Eachstair is a degree of reflexion. This infinite regression is the infinite. At each step,the subject 'emet un coup de des'. He is thus engulfed by hazard. A new stepabsorbs this hazard in memory; but this very step has to be justified in its turn;

I About the refusal of God, see Propos sur la poesie, pp. 77-8.2 There are connexions between Igitur and Villiers's Axel.3 In L'(Euvre de Mallarme (Paris, 1951) Cohn bases his exegesis of Un Coup de des on

a tetrapolar system. The sonnet in x uses crosses for rhymes: brand and tomb, signature and

erasure, affirmation and denial. On the anti-cosmic value of the cross, see Donne's poem 'TheCrosse'.4 Cohn (p. 32) notes this etymological meaning of 'hazard'.5 In the sonnet in x, the constellation is seen reflected in a mirror. The Platonic order appears

only in absence, in selective reflexion, through negations. The indefinite sea is absorbed by thecurtains.



R. CHAMPIGNY 353

and so on. The solution is to place oneself at the end of the future, that is, in fact,to put an end to the future. The absolute would trap infinite hazardin definedpast.The shadows of all Igiturs would be appropriated by Igitur, 'pour que l'ombre

dernierese mirat en son propresoi' (437).Igiturwould realize the dream of coinciding

with oneself, of founding one's own existence: 'L'infini est enfinfix4' (442). But,in order to trap all dice throws, the subject has to put an end to himself as well asto the object: 'II ferme le livre,-souffle la bougie,-de son souffle qui contenait

le hasard' (442).Mallarme wrote this conclusion: 'Bref, dans un acte ot le hasard est en jeu,

c'est toujours le hasard qui accomplit sa propre Idee en s'affirmant ou se niant.Devant son existence, la negation et l'affirmation viennent echouer. II contient

l'Absurde-l'implique, mais a l'6tat latent et l'empeche d'exister: ce qui permeta l'Infini d'etre' (441).

In order to destroy hazard and efface the contingency of his existence the

subject has to destroy himself. 'I1 y a et n'y a pas de hasard' (442). But since nohazard means death, this formula is equivalent to: 'Being is and nonentity is not.'

Or, to quote Un Coup de des: 'Un coup de des jamais n'abolira le hasard', sincethe dice-throw is the individual figure of hazard. 'Rien n'aura eu lieu que le lieu',that is, the ultimate concept of hazard, the khora. Igitur discovers he cannot do

away with the gratuitousnessof his existence without doing away with his existenceitself. And it is in so far as this existence is gratuitous that it can be consideredanabsolute: 'C'etait la conscience de soi (a laquelle l'absurde meme devait servir de

lieu)' (438).

Despite its barren appearance, Igitur was as fruitful for Mallarme as the Par-menides for Plato. The symbols on which Mallarme's fundamental writings will

rely have been fixed: mirror, window, room, curtains, furniture, constellation,book, white page, tomb (or rather cenotaph). They are all, to varying degrees,references to the anti-reality of poetry and of consciousness.

For Mallarmehas ascertained what the fuzzy concept of art, which he inheritedfrom Baudelaire, meant. Let us compare three statements. 'Apres avoir trouvele Neant, j'ai trouve le Beau.' 'Voici deux ans que j'ai commis le peche de voir leReve dans sa nudit6 ideale, tandis que je devais amonceler entre lui et moi un

mystere de musique et d'oubli' (Propos sur la poesie, p. 81). 'L'art se limitea

l'infini,et

y commen9ant,ne

peut progresser' (580). Mystery,the

infinite,dream.

The boundary situation of Igitur reveals the existence of consciousness asabsurd.Why not say instead, placing ourselves within this absurdity, as realisticallywe must, that consciousness s a mystery? Igitur was a presentation of this mystery,as far as Mallarm6was concerned,but it can be multiplied. After a pure vision ofthe one, Mallarmecan reveal the one in the many.

The infinite had been denied by subtracting subject from object. The infinitehas thus been recognized as the void between the poles of consciousness: subjectand object, oneself and oneself. Reflecting on what Baudelaire and Romanticismhave bequeathed to him, Mallarmetraces to its 'naked' origin the Romantic 'soifde l'infini'. The infinite is no longerreifiedin a divinity. WhereasPlato was content

1Propos sur la poesie, p. 68. Delfel emphasizes this quotation to substantiate his 'Platonic

view of Mallarm6'. Despite oscillations between feigned hieratic intoxication and dejection,Mallarme appears to me more consistent than he is made to look in Delfel's presentation.

23 M.L.R. LI




with the reflexion of intellectual definitions in the cosmos, the Romantics tried

to assume the infinite and see in nature the very infiniteness of consciousness. The

world of Platonic definitions and the world of qualitative Romantic correspondances

are two aspects of the world of consciousness. Is the word 'world' appropriate?If Mallarme is a subjectivist, he is also a realist: 'Nous savons, captifs d'une

formule absolue que, certes, n'est que ce qui est' (647). He does not mean Platonic

being: 'La Nature a lieu, on n'y ajoutera pas; que des cites, les voies ferrees et

plusieurs inventions formant notre materiel' (647). Contrary to what several

commentators have taken for granted (that hazard was on the side of non-being),it seems to me necessary to assume that, for Mallarme, being is nature and the

principle of nature is hazard. The khora is what is, ultimately. To be is to take place,a favourite phrase of Mallarme's. What can stand either through affirmation or

denial, except being? It would consequently be as misleading to speak of the

'world' of consciousness as to speak of an intelligible 'world'. In every thought,it is ultimately the world that is affirmed (even if denied). Ideas are not models,but shadows. In order to be, being does not need demiurgoi after the fact.

Nowadays it is the scientist, aided by the engineer, who proves the validity of

the Platonic-Pythagorean effort by showing that ideas and numbers work, penetratenature. We have just seen that Mallarme was not much impressed by industry.It may be because he did not live in the atomic age. Or one may see here the

prejudice of a representative of art for art's sake who prided himself in the useless-

ness of art1 and lumped together scientific truth and bourgeois good in the conceptof the useful. But his point of view was not only that of the aesthete, it was that of

thephilosopher.

He saw that the useful could be reduced to the uselessthroughan infinite regression of the what-for question, and that ideas that work are first

of all ideas that play. And it was in this fundamental region of play that he found

and founded beauty.2 Consciousness is necessarily and sufficiently play.One of the meanings of play, jeu, is looseness in a mechanism. Platonic thought

made being tight. Mallarmean thought takes advantage of the looseness of being.If being was not loose, there would be no consciousness, no ideas (Platonic or

otherwise). This looseness is the infinite 'dimension' of consciousness, which the

Romantics experienced in insatisfaction, in ennui, and which art manifests: 'La

Muse, pas autre que notre propre ame, divinisee' (503). One cannot call this

infiniteness a world since it does not exist by itself. The world of consciousness,

hence the world of beauty, can but be, by itself, an anti-reality. Mallarme refusesthe bad faith belief in a super-world (unlike, perhaps, Baudelaire), in accordance

with a Platonic argument: there is only one world. Hence an inversion of Platon-

ism: the cosmos of Plato is beautiful in so far as it is Plato's, that is, in so far as it

is not, as it is an anti-reality.1 In order to show that Mallarm6 has not forsaken the Platonic identification of truth and

beauty, Delfel quotes 'Sur le beau et l'utile' (880). But this article deals with the craftsman andthe engineer, not the poet. It is in a different sense that poetic beauty can be truth (truth ofthe lie). The work of the craftsman (furniture) disengages its beauty when shorn of its usefulness

('bibelots abolis', props in a play) in the 'grotte de notre intimite' (Igitur's room, reflexion,absence) (449).

2 'A quoi sert cela-/A un jeu' (647). See also: 'L'explication orphique de la Terre, qui est le

seul devoir du poete et le jeu litteraire par excellence' (663). This Orphic explanation is a game,for only the scientific explanation works. In the same 'Autobiographie', Mallarme recognizesthat the identification of the good, the beautiful and the true does not fit his time: 'Je con-sidere l'6poque contemporaine comme un interregne pour le poete qui n'a point a s'y m6ler'

(664). Poetry cannot be 'committed'.



R. CHAMPIGNY

Omnis determinatio est negatio. In Igitur Mallarme has found not only nonentity,but also beauty, for he has ascertained the playing power of negativity. Being is

affirmed even through denial. Yet it is remarkable that denial should be possible.

It may be illusory, but it is remarkable that illusion should be possible. Even

perception, which affirms being, manages somehow to affect being by determining it,

by making it become world. In so far as our perception is cosmic, it denies beingin itself by defining a first approximation of a demiurgic cosmos. Plato's cosmos is

obtained through negations. But Mallarme is more interested in memory, in

imagination, which he also calls dream. This time we have to deal with an explicitdenial of being.

The word 'imagination' has been the ecstatic battle-cry of Romanticism from

Blake to Baudelaire and from Baudelaire to Eluard. Mallarme plainly calls

imagination a lie, in accord with Plato. For the confident Romantic, imagination

is the order of the world, logos. Through imagination the poet participates innature and hopes to promote it (by enlightening the reader). For Mallarme dream

is an anti-reality. The thing that I imagine denies the fullness of the actual. Yet it

needs the actuality of the dreamer to be imagined. Mallarme states that the French

mind is 'imaginatif et abstrait, done poetique' (544). This association between

imagination and abstraction would sound suspicious to the average Romantic.

It reflects Mallarme's philosophical bent. But if one thinks of the etymological

meaning of the word 'abstraction', it appears to fit Mallarme's view of the imageas well as of the concept. The abstract is what does not exist by itself, that to

which being cannot be ascribed.1 Hence Mallarme's insistence on the concept of

absence: in so far as it is present to itself, consciousness is absent from the world,creates objects absent from the world.2

Art realizes imagination, art takes place. A concert, a play, ballet are performed.The spectacle is actual. But the intention of the 'volatile' mind (645) is to deny the

actuality on which it rests. We are not supposed to see the actual actor, we are

just supposed to look at him; we must be hypnotized by the hero, by the non-

existent Hamlet. The theatre is a 'lieu absolu' (277). The khora is denied by the

absolute Igitur. Duchamp's picture is not a nude descending a staircase. 'La

danseuse n'est pas une femme qui danse' (304). She is not a woman and she does

not dance.3For Mallarme, as for Plato, art is a lie. But whereas for Plato art was a lie in so

far as it was not philosophy, in so far as imagination was not intellect, Mallarm6

1 These two concepts of imagination, the Romantic and the Mallarmean, are now advocated

by Bachelard (see his works on 'material imagination') and Sartre (see his terminologicalquarrel with Bachelard in L'Etre et le neant). L'Imaginaire is Mallarmean. The kinship betweenMallarm6 and Sartre may be extended to the main concepts of L'Etre et le neant. Quite a few

passages in Qu'est-ce que la litterature? and Saint Genetcomedien et martyr are also Mallarmeanechoes. The relationship between these two widely different authors should be made clear in thebook which Sartre is preparing on Mallarm6. The fundamental difference is of course thatMallarm6 was exclusively interested in aesthetics while Sartre is primarily interested in ethics.

2 Mallarme links dream and laughter (Nietzschean laughter, Romantic irony). See for

instance 503; the sonnet 'Victorieusement fui'; Un Coup de dgs. Laughter is the truth of thelying dream. Like the dream, laughter manifests a consciousness which disengages itself from

being, and at the same time, as it is reflexion on the dream, shows that the dreaming con-sciousness was still engaged in being (though it considered itself absolute). To what degree isSocratic irony such laughter, to what degree does Plato laugh at Platonism?

3 Val6ry exploits this mock-Platonic commentary in L'Ame et la danse.

355




lumps together imagination and intellect ('Imaginatif et abstrait') within human

consciousness. Platonism thus becomes a 'glorious dream'. Mallarme s an ironical

Platonist (which, of course, Plato himself may well have been). Un Coup de des

is Mallarme's Timaeus. But this Timaeus, like Igitur, is still a Parmenides. Itsas-ifs must not be construed as 'assimilative of the truth' of being.

The Platonic idea assures us of what being is; the Mallarmean dea assures us of

what being is not. For Mallarme as for Plato art should deny nature. But forPlato nature should be denied in so far as it is not. For Mallarme the denial ofnature is the denial of being. Platonic art is reminiscently mimetic of being.Mallarmeanart is more creative: it gives us the illusion that what is not is. 'A l'egalde creer: la notion d'un objet, echappant, qui fait defaut' (647).1

For Mallarme poetry is, like other arts, 'fiction'. But, unlike the other arts

(and more explicitly than the poetry of other poets), Mallarme'spoetry is not only

fiction, but reflexion on the fiction.2This reflexion is philosophical, even Platonic:'A quoi bon la merveille de transposer un fait de nature en sa presque disparitionvibratoire selon le jeu de la parole, cependant; si ce n'est pour qu'en emane, sans la

gene d'un proche ou concret rappel, la notion pure' (368). Reflexion does not find

the truth of being, but the truth of non-being. Mallarme presents a lie, but he

presents this lie as a lie. He tells us the function of the artistic lie, which is to deny

being and reveal, or veil, the mystery of consciousness. Thus poetry can be truth

as well as fiction; it can be the truth of the fiction: 'J'ai fait une assez longuedescente au Neant pour pouvoir parler avec certitude. II n'y a que la Beaute,-etelle n'a qu'une expression parfaite: la Poesie. Tout le reste est mensonge' (Propossur la poesie, p. 79).

Language takes place. The existence of language which is reality (print, sound)and anti-reality (meaning) shows the looseness of being. The name of a thing, of

a motion, seldom 'paints' what it is supposed to refer to.3 Even in the case of

'concrete' words, language (except in conversation) tends to deny being, not only

by its nature, but also by its structure. Even 'concrete' words tend to assumethe

anti-world status which is generally admitted for 'abstract' words. Mallarme

emphasizes the overall abstract nature of language by various devices: alliance of

'concrete' and 'abstract' wordsin which the usual roles areexchanged; periphrases,

1 See also: 'Evoquer, dans une ombre expres, l'objet tu...' (400); and the well-knownpassage: 'Je dis: une fleur! et, hors de l'oubli ou ma voix relegue aucun contour, en tant que

quelque chose d'autre que les calices sus, musicalement se leve, idee meme et suave, l'absente de

tous bouquets' (368).2 'Aux convergences des autres arts situee, issue d'eux et les gouvernant, la Fiction ou

Po6sie' (335). In the same page Mallarme notes that the poem 'ne remplace tout que faute de

tout .3 Les Mots anglais is Mallarme's Cratylus. He remarks that the perfect language would be

'elle-meme mat6riellement la verit6' (364). As he himself recognizes, however, this would mean

the end of poetic play (and, we may add, of philosophical play too). It is because language is

a lie that poetry and philosophy exist, or rather that there are poets and philosophers. If

language imitated reality in its very structure, our mind would probably be unable to rise

above the level of conversation and attain reflexion: Mallarme's notes on a 'science' of languageare too skimpy to be commented upon with certainty. He seems to have been tempted by the

'glorious lie' of Hegelianism: 'L'esprit.Ce

qu'est l'esprit par rapport asa double

expressionde

la matiere et de l'humanit6, et comment notre monde peut se rattacher a l'Absolu' (853).Mallarme is speaking of language. This Hegelianism might be simply nominalistic and the

'science' of language might have for its only task to 'instituer un jeu .. qui confirme la fiction'

(380).



R. CHAMPIGNY 357

an infrequent blemish; a systematic use of negations and of negative adjectivesand nouns; above all, what characterizes best Mallarme's style, an elaborate

syntax.

Syntax can make language an anti-world since the rules of syntax are not thelaws of nature. As in the case of 'concrete' words, Mallarmetakes advantage of

this fact by steering clear of the syntax of conversation. Conversation flows: wedo not pay much attention to the words, we assume that they are a mirror for

reality. Mallarme makes us violently aware of the anti-reality of syntax, he

reminds us that syntax is a lie, he reminds us that 'it does not follow'.

Yet, at the same time, if the poem is to be an anti-world, syntax must link the

words so as to form a totality. The poem must look as if it were a world: 'le hasard

vaincu mot par mot' (387). The denial of reality must be coherent, it must producea totality in which connexions are unlike those of nature: 'Le vers qui de plusieursvocables refait un mot total, neuf,

6trangera la

langueet comme incantatoire,

acheve cet isolement de la parole' (368). This effort toward totalityl makes prose,in my opinion, a better Mallarmeanmedium than verse: witness Un Coup de des.

This linear effort toward totality must, however, be subordinatedto what could

be called the micro-macrocosmicdevice which is the properdevice of poetic com-

position. It consists in identifying terms with each other and in identifying the

part with the whole. This anti-logical device suggests consciousnesswhich recognizesitself through its metamorphoses.2

Such devices contribute to making the poem an anti-world, stretched between

reality and subjectivity. The blank page suggests the infinite field ofconsciousness

on which dark hazardis fixed, not in the individual letters, but through the blanks

which fuse letters into words,wordsinto a poem, thus manifestingthe powerof non-existent meaning, of the 'central purity' of consciousness.3

A book takes place, a book remains.4The book achieves a reconciliation between

Platonic and Mallarmeanbeing. But this reconciliation needs a reader. And the

readerforgets the book to becomeengrossedin the nonentity of meaning. The book,as thing, evaporates. Will the mystery of consciousnesswhich it reveals be absorbed

by the consciousness of the reader?

Mallarmedid not write conversation. The very anti-world quality claimed by the

poem prevents it from disintegrating. It resists the attempt of the reader to

dissolve the poem into the images of his world.5 (Poetry is approachedwith thisprosaic intention. It is a necessary step. It tells the reader, if the poem does not

resist, that he is dealing with prose.) Besides, Mallarmemay have tried to reveal

the mystery of consciousness, but to a reader the poem veils the mystery of

1 'Jamais pensee ne se presente a moi, detachee....' (883).2 'Tout le mystere est la: 6tablir les identit6s secretes par un deux a deux qui ronge et use les

objets, au nom d'une centrale purete' (Propos sur la poesie, p. 148). The best example of thisdevice may be Un Coup de des, in which the parts and the whole equal zero.

3 Note also the ink-well: 'L'encrier, cristal comme une conscience, avec une goutte, au fond,de t6enbres, relative a ce que quelque chose soit' (370). A reminiscence of this passage can be

suspected in the following extract from Sartre's L'Homme et les choses: 'Ce que nous trouvons

partout, dans l'encrier, sur l'aiguille du phonographe, sur le miel de la tartine, c'est nous-

mmems, toujours nous' (Situations, i, 291).4 'I1 a lieu tout seul: fait, 6tant' (372).5 An indifferent novel is not a book, but just a 'volume' (374), which 'ne pr6sente rien, quant

au lecteur, d'etranger; mais recourt a l'uniforme vie' (or, as the cliche goes the 'human

interest').



358 MIallarme'sRelation to Platonism and Romanticism

a consciousness. The poem stands as one anti-world. The reader cannot dissolve itinto the mystery of his own consciousness. The anti-world becomes a world.

Mallarme's obscurity is primarily intellectual. Once we hold the keys, the

intellectual mystery dissolves, for it was but a secret. What cannot dissolve,however, what is not a secret, is the proper poetic mystery. Even if they are

absorbed, justified intellectually, the connexions between words, between thestars of the constellation, which for Mallarmemay have been necessary, remainforus to some degree arbitrary, contingent, for the simple reason that Mallarme isMallarme and I am I. Gratuitousness, contingency, hazard: the signs of reality,of areality made cosmic since they are coupledwith an understood or felt coherence.Consciousness by itself does not constitute a world; but a conscious being isworld for another conscious being. Like hazard, he stands beyond appropriation,beyond affirmation and denial. Mallarme takes place.

R. CHAMPIGNY

BLOOMINGTON, INDIANA

mallarmé's relation to platonism and romanticism

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