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  • Stefan Mallarme-Crisis of Verse

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    dijafora
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    Stefan Mallarme-Crisis of Verse

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    Stefan Mallarme-Crisis of Verse

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    340 vizualizări7 pagini

    Stefan Mallarme-Crisis of Verse

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    dijafora
    Stefan Mallarme-Crisis of Verse

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    din 7
    + Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England + 2007 ‘The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press d SUOTIESRAT STEPHANE MALLARME TRANSLATED BY BARBARA JOHNSON ‘The Author's 1897 Arrangement Together with “Autobiography” and “Music and Letters” AN sore sg, ping my tnd, vith he inde Shs ed bye aero eat bal nee, Te als gh nh a teal ving eens agp henge mare pea eye an ae se ot ea Sis ny sworn eed ari sli crn ej loving ey under ld ud ga enon ee los rm ih ose ‘Our recent phase, if not achieving closure, rakes a break oF ethaps takes stock: close attention uncovers the crestve and relaively confident incenion. Even the press, whose information is usually ewenty years old is wring about the subject, suddenly, when it happens Literasare is here undergoing an exquiite and fundamental Whoever grants this function a place, or even the pric mary place, will recognize inthis the curent event: we are ‘witnessing in this fn-desiele, not—as it was during the lat fone—a revolution, but, far from the public square a trem= bling of the vellin the temple, with sgnfcan fos, and, li- de, its rending. asia, Jo SIs, catot ve | 8 ‘A French eader, his habits interrupted by the deth of Vie~ tor Hugo, cannot fil tobe disconcerted. Hugo, in hi mysteri- ‘ous task, brought all prose—philosophy, eloquence, history — down to verse, and, since e was verse personified, he conis- cated, from whoever wied to think, or discourse, or narrate, almost the right to speak. A monument in the desert, sut~ rounded by silence; in a crypt, the divinity of «majestic un- conscious idea—that i, thatthe form we ell verse is simply ie Hteraure; thar dhere is verse as soon a8 diction cll a tention to itself ehyme as soon as thee is style, Verse, I think, respectilly waited until the gant who identified ic with his tenacious and firm blackimith’s hand came 10 be missing, a ‘order to, self break. Allo language, measured by mete, c= ‘covering therein its vitality, escapes, broken down into thou sands of simple elements; and, I add, not without similarity 10 ‘the multiplicity of notes in an orchestral sere, but this one re- ‘mains verbal ‘The change dates from that, although Verlaine’s under ‘ground sind untimely experiments prepared the way, so fui, sing back o primitive names, [Asa witness o this adventure, where others want to sce me 2s more effetve than it would be suitable for anyone tobe, L at least directed my fervent attention to ity and itis time to speak about it, preferably from a distance and, as it were, anonymously, Grant that Fresch poetry, because of the primacy ac corded to rhyme, in its evolution up to us, i intermittent: it shines a while, exhausts is inspicaion, and waits. Extinction, or rather a refusal to expose worn-dow threads, repetition, ‘The need to poetize, as opposed to many acidentl circum stances, leads, now, afer one of those periodic orgies that lasted almost a century, comparable only to the Renaisance, when shadow and chill should have followed, not at all che brilliance changes, continues: the rethinking, ordinarily hid- den, il the public eye, through recourse o delicious approx- 1 think 1 can break down, in its triple axpec, the teat. rent thatthe hiratic canon of verse hat undergone, in = quence, ‘This prosody, with is bri rules, is nevertheless uncom- promising. With it hemistich, an act of prudence, a statue to the smallest effor needed to simulate verification, rather like thove codes chat tell us that refisining from seling is proof of honesty ust what I didn't need to know; nt having quested it myself establishes the ueleseness of constraining myoelt 10 i subsequently. “Those who remain uthl to che alexandsine, our heame- ter, loosen internally the rigid and childish mechanism of its meter; the ea, freed from a gratitous inner counter, fels pleasure in discerning all the possible combinations and per- mutations of owelve bets ‘Consider that taste very modern, ‘One intermediate case, in no way the last curious, fellows: ‘The poet with acute tact who considers the alexandrine the Aeficve jewel, but not to bring out, sword, flower, very often and according to some premeditated end, touches i shyly or plays around it—he gives ut neighboring chords before re- Teasing it, superb and naked: leting his fingers drag against the eleventh syllable of go on 10 a thittendh, many times Monsieur Henri de Regnier excels a chi kind of play of his ‘own invention, iseeet and proud lke the genius he has ine “tated and revealing ofthe transitory trouble poets have with the hereditary instrament. Another thing, o simply the oppo- sir, can be detected in a voluntary mutiny agunst the old sono | itso ese |B ‘tired mold, as when Jules Laforgue, in the beginning, initiated 1s into the cersn charms of lines that were slighly off. Up to now, or inthe two cases we've ust cited, there has been nothing but reserve and abandon, because of lasiude a the frequent use of the national cadence, whose appearance, like that ofthe flag, should remain exceptional, With this pro. iso, however: that voluntary infactons or knowing disso- ances call only on our sensitivity, whereas, barely fifteen years ago, the pedant we have remained wed 10 ail against departures from the rules as agunst some ignorant sacrilege! 1 ‘would say that the recollection of strict verses haunts these ‘approximations, and that they benef from i ‘Whats new about free verse, not asthe expresion was une derstood in the seventeenth century when people spoke of fax bles or operas (hich was only an arrangement of known me- ters), bu let's calli "polymorphous": and let's imagine the dissolution of the official verse form, the form now becomffig ‘whatever one wants, so long a a pleasure repeats int. Some. times it's aeuphony broken up withthe assent of the ineitive reader, ingenuously and preciosly right-—that was once the ‘work of Monsieur Moré; or ese = gesture languid with Areamines, suddenly jumping awake, through passion, which rovides meter—char’s Monsieur Vielé

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