Stéphane Mallarmé Quotes

The onyx of her pure nails offered high, Lampadephore at midnight, Anguish bears Many a twilight dream the Phoenix burned To ashes gathered by no amphora.

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?

Verse is everywhere in language where there is rhythm, everywhere, except in notices and on page four of the papers. In the genre called prose, there are verses [...] of all rhythms. But in truth there is no prose: there is the alphabet, and then verses more or less tight, more or less diffuse.

All alone I gave Myself for triumph the ideal sin of roses.

Will new and alive the beautiful today Shatter with a blow of drunken wing This hard lake, forgotten, haunted under rime By the transparent glacier, flights unflown! A swan of long ago remembers now that he, Magnificent but lost to hope, is doomed For having failed to sing the realms of life When the ennui of sterile winter gleamed.

I kiss your knees that self-communing prayers chastize,
I kiss your feet that would appease the open sea;
I wish to plunge my head between your vital thighs
and in your hair-shirt weep for my iniquity;

there, my dear saint, in that oblivion of the dim
Chasm and the Boundless, rapt with scents vibrant and fresh,
when I have finished softly chanting my long hymn,
I shall assuage my torment on your wholesome flesh.

formally propose now to examine the differences between this rag and the book, which is supreme. The newspaper is the sea; literature flows into it at will. Now then — The foldings of a book, in comparison with the large-sized, open newspaper, have an almost religious significance. But an even greater significance lies in their thickness when they are piled together; for then they form a tomb in miniature for our souls. Every discovery made by printers has hitherto been absorbed in the most elementary fashion by the newspaper, and can be summed up in the word: Press. The result has been simply a plain sheet of paper upon which a flow of words is printed in the most unrefined manner.

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.]

Were it not, such short tresses so great a treasure,
That you teach me a sweetness, quite other,
Soft through the kiss murmured only in your hair.

De l'éternel azure la sereine ironie
Accable, belle indolemment comme les fleurs,
Le poëte impuissant qui maudit son génie
A travers un désert stérile de Douleurs.

Fuyant, les yeux fermés, je le sens qui regarde
Avec l'intensite d'un remords atterrant,
Mon âme vide, Où fuir? Et quelle nuit hagarde
Jeter, lambeaux, jeter sur ce mépris navrant?

Brouillards, montez! Versez vos cendres monotones
Avec de longs haillons de brume dans les cieux
Qui noiera le marais livide des automnes
Et batissez un grand plafond silencieux!

Et toi, sors de étangs léthéens et ramasse
En t'en venant la vase et les pâles roseaux,
Cher Ennui, pour boucher d'une main jamais lasse
Les grands trous bleux que font méchamment les oiseaux.

Encor! que sans répit les tristes cheminées
Fument, et que de suie une errante prison
Èteigne dans l'horreur de ses noires traînées
Le soleil se mourant jaunatre a l'horizon!

-Le Ciel est mort. -Vers toi, j'accours! donne, ô matière,
L'oubli de l'Idéal cruel et du Péché
A ce martyr qui vient partager la litière
Ou le bétail heureux des hommes est couché,

Car j'y veux, puisque enfin ma cervelle, vidée
Comme le pot de fard gisant au pied du mur,
N'a plus l'art d'attifer la sanglotante idée,
Lugubrement bâiller vers un trépas obscur. . .

En vain! l'Azur triomphe, et je l'entends qui chante
Dans les cloches. Mon âme, il se fait voix pour plus
Nous faire peur avec sa victoire méchante,
Et du métal vivant sort en bleus angélus!

Il roule par la brume, ancien et traverse
Ta notive agonie ainsi qu'un glaive sur;
Ou fuir dans la révolte inutle et perverse?
Je suis hanté. L'Azur! l'Azur! l'Azur! l'Azur.

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?

Tel qu’en Lui-même enfin l’éternité le change

The poetic act consists in suddenly seeing that an idea splits into a number of motives of equal value and in grouping them; they rhyme.

...for we are always at one with the instrument of our magic spells.

The world was made in order to result in a beautiful book.