The Structure of Modernist Poetry (Routledge Revivals)

Theo Hermans

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317637868
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literatur
• Subtopic: Literaturkritik

First published in 1982, this book provides a descriptive and comparative study of some of the fundamental structural aspects of modernist poetic writing in English, French and German in the first decades of the twentieth century. The work concerns itself primarily with basic structural elements and techniques and the assumptions that underlie and determine the modernist mode of poetic writing. Particular attention is paid to the theories developed by authors and to the essential 'principles of construction' that shape the structure of their poetry. Considering the work of a number of modernist poets, Theo Hermans argues that the various widely divergent forms and manifestations of modernistic poetry writing can only be properly understood as part of one general trend.

1	MALLARME’S LANGUAGE: TRANSPOSITION, STRUCTURE

This first chapter is purely expository; the emphasis will be on those aspects of Mallarmé’s poetic which are most directly associated with the ‘transcendental’ or ‘metaphysical’ orientation of his aesthetic as a whole. The first section deals briefly with Mallarmé’s early views on the modalities of artistic creation. Section 1.2 discusses the later theoretical positions in more detail, concentrating on the notions of Transposition’ and ‘structure’. In the final section a reading of one poem (the sonnet ‘ses purs ongles …’) is attempted, as an illustration of the close interrelationship between Mallarmé’s poetic theory and practice.¹

1.1

It is customary to regard Mallarmé’s spiritual crisis of 1866–7 as providing the groundwork for his later philosophical and aesthetic views. The crucial notions of ‘le Néant’ and ‘le Hasard’, of impersonality and the transcendental dialectic, indeed appear in his writings only after 1866–7. In many other ways, however, the later views are a continuation, if often in modified form, of earlier positions and concepts, which subsist after the crisis years and without which the later aesthetic would be largely incomprehensible. In order to put things into perspective, then, it is advisable to consider briefly some aspects of these early views. Mallarmé’s position in the period prior to 1866 is most clearly set out in a number of letters and in the essays ‘L’art pour tous’ (1862) and ‘symphonie littéraire’ (1864; OC: 257–65). Both essays are openly polemical. Whereas the later Mallarmé confidently speaks as the ‘solitaire ébloui de sa foi’ (ibid.: 67), here he is still postulating principles and defining basic social and artistic attitudes.

The general starting-point of Mallarmé’s aesthetic system appears to consist of two complementary views: an exalted and absolute conception of art, which is seen as attuned exclusively to Ideal Beauty, and a strict separation between the sphere of art and the artist’s social surroundings.² Since the world around him has nothing of value to offer, the artist prefers to dwell in the ‘sanhédrin of art’, the small, closed community of spiritual aristocrats (OC: 259). Torn between disgust and worship, he inhabits two mutually exclusive worlds; Mallarmé speaks of ‘nous autres malheureux que la terre dégoûte et qui n’avons que le Rêve pour refuge’ (Corr. I: 90). Surrounded by a hostile or at best indifferent society, the artist, ‘un adorateur du beau inaccessible au vulgaire’, withdrawn into ‘la sérénité du dédain’ (OC : 259, 258).

The idea of artistic isolation, rejection and withdrawal is frequently repeated in later writings (notably in the ‘Autobiographie’ of 1885; ibid.: 661–5), and Mallarmé’s insistence on the need for solitude and silence (cf. Mondor 1941: 179; OC: 664; Corr. I: 150, 180) is in this context of more than merely biographical interest. This seclusion also invites introspection, so that the poet who cultivates his own sensitivity becomes able to register ‘les impressions extra-terrestres et nécessairement harmonieuses que je veux donner, que je m’étude jusqu’à une prudence qui ressemble à de la manie’ (Corr. I: 195). As the Baudelairean overtones here suggest, Mallarmé’s introspection is not so much self-contemplation as a dogged attempt to perceive the ‘harmonie surnaturelle’ behind phenomena, the ‘trésor profond des correspondances’ (OC: 262) which, planted in a contingent material world and revealed by artistic perception and expression, point to the existence of a superior, ideal world of absolute values. In that sense Mallarmé can claim that ‘il n’y a de vrai, d’immuable, de grand et de sacré que l’Art. Toutes les vaines disputes politiques passent, n’ayant rien d’absolu en elles’ (Corr. I:94).

The artist’s social isolation is reflected in the isolation of the artistic product. Since ‘l’art n’est fait que pour les artistes’ (ibid.: 168), their products remain gratuitous commodities, outside the commercial circuit (‘gratuité du produit ou dédain commercial; les deux, par un noeud simple’; OC: 405). However, the isolation of the work affects not only its distribution, but its nature and composition as well. Being a sacred pursuit, the practice of art is shrouded in mystery (ibid.: 257) and requires description in semi-religious terminology. Once it has cut itself loose from the material and social world, it must turn exclusively towards those spheres which Mallarmé at this stage still denotes with terms like ‘Rêve’, ‘Idéal’, ‘Azur’ or ‘Beauté’. Failure to acknowledge the supremacy of the Ideal draws Mallarmé’s immediate censure, as in his criticism of the poet Emmanuel des Essarts (followed by a sideswipe at Baudelaire): ‘Il confond trop l’Idéal avec le réel. La sottise d’un poëte moderne a été jusqu’à se désoler que l’Action ne fût pas la soeur du Rêve’ (Corr. I: 90). Given this exclusive orientation, the only possible value judgement on a poem depends on the way it appears as a reflection, as one manifestation, of the Beautiful; the decisive question then is: ‘Y a-t-il reflet de la Beauté?’ (ibid.: 104).

A logical consequence of this aesthetic puritanism is that the poem cannot serve as a vehicle for self-expression. The poet may well be an instrument vibrating under the touch of sensation and inspiration (Corr. I: 151), but Mallarmé repeatedly insists that the lyrical impulse is to be banned: the poem is neither impression nor expression, but formal construct. In a letter of July 1862 to Henri Cazalis, he clearly establishes the incompatibility between pure form and lyrical effusion:

Je ne veux pas faire cela d’inspiration: la turbulence du lyrisme serait indigne de cette chaste apparition que tu aimes. Il faut méditer longtemps: l’art seul, limpide et impeccable, est assez chaste pour la sculpter religieusement. (Corr. I: 36)

This attitude, which obviously foreshadows the later views on the impersonality of perfect structure, involves two complementary aspects. First, the poem’s status, its orientation towards the sphere of ideal beauty, resists the intrusion of all extraneous, impure matter, including the author’s lyrical sensibility; and, secondly, its formal perfection demands that technique take precedence over inspiration. Mallarmé’s emphasis, consequently, is on poetic writing as discipline, as a matter of painstaking study and application; in his own succinct phrase: ‘Devant le papier, l’artiste sefait’ (ibid.: 154).

Already in these early writings, poetic language is described as striving towards suggestion, mystery and insubstantiality. The precept ‘Peindre non la chose, mais l’effet qu’elle produit’ (ibid.: 137) dates from as early as 1864 (in a letter announcing the ‘Hérodiade’), and is in later years repeated in various formulations. In the letter just referred to, Mallarmé goes on to posit the need for a connotative and basically synecdochic mode of writing in which allusion and intimation replace denotation (‘Le vers ne doit donc pas, là, se composer de mots, mais d’intentions, et toutes les paroles s’effacer devant la sensation’; ibid.). But whereas the approach to this kind of immateriality is at this stage still thought of as a fairly straightforward process, the later texts will, in the concept of Transposition, opt for a more complicated path, moving from ‘réminiscence’ and ‘abolition’ via ‘oubli’ towards the ‘notion pure’. In later writings Mallarmé will also dispute the supremacy of music as a non-referential sign system precisely on the grounds that poetry is able to approach ‘immateriality’ via a dialectical process. The early texts still regard music as the superior form, not only because of its abstract and harmonious nature, but also because its very notation (‘ces processions macabres de signes sévères, chastes, inconnus’; OC: 257), inaccessible to the uninitiated, effectively prevents profanation.

The artist’s exalted conception of his calling, and the severe formal demands placed on artistic creation also lead, ironically, to a sense of exasperation and despair in the face of the unattainability of the Ideal. The poet’s predicament is that he requires of poetry a purity which only the unwritten work — the imagined poem, or the blank page — can possess. The situation often results in feelings of paralysis and impotence, as in the letter of March 1865 to Cazalis, where Mallarmé refers to himself as ‘moi stérile et crépusculaire’ (Mondor 1941: 160). The essay ‘symphonie littéraire’ begins with an address to the ‘Muse moderne de l’Impuissance’, who holds the poet prisoner in her ‘irrémédiable filet, l’ennui,’ and inspires only ‘la haine de la création et le stérile amour du néant’ (OC: 261).

Paradoxically, though, this state of mind itself provides the subject-matter for several of the early poems. Oscillating between the required ‘lucidité parfaite’ of mind and form, and an actual ‘navrante impuissance’ (Corr. I: 103), the poet’s creative sterility becomes the pretext for writing, and many poems take their own ideal forms as their theme.

In the poem ‘Les Fenêtres’ (1863), for example, the power of attraction exercised by the Ideal relates, ironically, to its very inaccessibility, in the same way as the poet’s resentment against his residence on earth only makes him more aware of its oppressive inescapability; the projections of rebirth and ascension result in crushing frustration:

Je me mire et me vois ange! et je meurs, et j’aime

— Que la vitre soit l’art, soit la mysticité —

A renaître, portant mon rêve en diadème,

Au ciel antérieur où fleurit la Beauté!

Mais, hélas! Ici-bas est maître: sa hantise

Vient m’écoeurer parfois jusqu’en cet abri sûr,

Et le vomissement impur de la Bêtise

Me force à me boucher le nez devant l’azur. (OC: 33)

In ‘L’Azur’ (1864) the overwhelming power of the Ideal (‘l’Azur’) is experienced as painful, and resented for its indifference:

De l’éternel azur la sereine ironie

Accable, belle indolemment comme les fleurs,

Le poëte impuissant qui maudit son génie

A travers un désert stérile de Douleurs.

and the poem subsequently traces the impossibility of escape, from the initial ‘Où fuir?’ (stanza 2), via the wistful ‘donne, ô matière,/L’oubli de L’Idéal cruel’ (stanza 6) and the despondent ‘En vain! l’Azur triomphe’ (stanza 8), to an obsessive and inexorable conclusion:

Où fuir dans la révolte inutile et perverse?

Je suis hanté. L’Azur! L’Azur! L’Azur! L’Azur! (ibid.: 37–8)

The particulars of the spiritual crisis which affected Mallarmé in the years 1866–7 need not be discussed here in any detail. In the present context the crisis itself is only important insofar as it bears on his views on poetic discourse and the status of the artistic product. In general it would appear, as D.J. Mossop (1971: 130ff) has observed, that the ‘metaphysical experience’ of 1866–7 is mainly philosophical and religious in nature, and cannot be entirely accounted for in terms of Mallarmé’s aesthetic development before 1866. Yet, as the crisis draws the ultimate consequences from a profoundly idealist philosophical outlook, its relevance for an aesthetic equally rooted in an idealist conception will be obvious.

The crisis, as Mallarmé’s letter of April 1866 indicates, revolves principally around the ‘abyss’ of ‘le Néant’ and the relation between ‘la matière’ and ‘le Rêve’:

Oui, je le sais, nous ne sommes que de vaines formes de la matière — mais bien sublimes pour avoir inventé Dieu et notre âme. Si sublimes, mon ami! que je veux me donner ce spectacle de la matière, ayant conscience d’être, et, cependant, s’élançant forcenément dans ce Rêve qu’elle sait n’être pas, chantant l’ Âme et toutes les divines impressions pareilles qui se sont amassées en nous depuis les premiers âges, et proclamant devant le Rien qui est la vérité, ces glorieux mensonges! (Corr I..: 207–8)

The religious aspect of the experience finds a partial resolution when Mallarmé is able to look back on ‘ma lutte terrible avec ce vieux et méchant plumage, terrassé, heureusement, Dieu!’ (ibid.: 241). In philosophical terms, as Mossop (1971: 133) also points out, the passage quoted above clearly illustrates the radical idealist reversal which denies the world of phenomena its reality and regards ideality is constituting the sole true reality. The flat denial of apparent reality, knowing itself to be ‘mensonge’, becomes an affirmation of that genuine ideal reality.

In subsequent stages of the crisis, Mallarmé also turns to the aesthetic implications of the whole experience: the creation of an impersonal universal consciousness, and the correlation between poetry and the universe. Already in the first few months the crisis had thrown up the question of the relation between Nothingness, ideal Beauty and Poetry (‘après avoir trouvé le Néant, j’ai trouvé le Beau’, he writes in July 1866, and in May 1867: ‘Il n’y a que la Beauté; — et elle n’a qu’une expression parfaite — la Poésie’; ibid.: 220, 243). In the letter of May 1867 he describes how pure contemplation of the absolute ‘Néant’ affects his own consciousness:

Je viens de passer une année effrayante: ma Pensée s’est pensée, et est arrivée à une Conception pure. Tout ce que, par contre-coup, mon être a souffert, pendant cette longue agonie, est inénarrable, mais, heureusement, je suis parfaitement mort, et la région la plus impure où mon Esprit puisse s’aventurer est l’Eternité; ce solitaire habituel de sa propre Pureté, que n’obscurcit plus même le reflet du Temps. … J’avoue, du reste, … que j’ai encore besoin … de me regarder dans cette glace pour penser, et que si elle n’était pas devant la table où j’écris cette lettre, je redeviendrais le Néant. C’est t’apprendre que je suis maintenant impersonnel, et non plus Stéphane que tu as connu, — mais une aptitude qu’a l’Universe Spirituel à se voir et à se développer, à travers ce qui fut moi. (ibid.: 240, 242)

A few months later, in September 1867, he writes in roughly the same terms to Villiers de l’Isle-Adam (who had advised him to read Hegel):

Ma pensée a été jusqu’à se penser elle-même et n’a plus la force d’évoquer en un Néant unique le vide disseminé en sa porosité. J’avais, à la faveur d’une grande sensibilité, compris la correlation intime de la Poésie avec l’Univers, et, pour qu’elle fût pure, conçu le dessein de la sortir du Rêve et du Hasard et de la juxtaposer à la conception de l’Univers. Malheureusement, âme organisée simplement pour la jouissance poétique, je n’ai pu, dans la tâche préalable de cette conception, comme vous disposer d’un Esprit — et vous serez terrifié d’apprendre que je suis arrivé à l’Idée de l’Univers par la seule sensation (et que, par exemple, pour garder une notion ineffaçable du Néant pur, j’ai dû imposer à mon cerveau la sensation du vide absolu), (ibid.: 259)

The significance, then, of this perplexing — and, for Mallarmé, crucial and shattering — experience appears to lie mainly in the greatly increased complexity of the philosophical conception which from now on is implied, and indeed embodied, in his poetic theory and practice. The early views, still largely aestheticist in nature, established a relatively uncomplicated relation between poetry and ideality, with the poet acting as the recipient of the ‘impressions extra-terrestres et nécessairement harmonieuses’ (cf. above). In the later theory, a term like ‘poésie pure’ becomes, as Hugo Friedrich (1956: 136) puts it, ‘das dichtungstheoretische Äquivalent fûr das Nichts, um das sie kreist’, symptomatic of a poetic which is developed almost entirely in negative terms and categories. The notion of ‘le Néant’, that is, has become the ultimate point of reference for aesthetic and philosophical speculation alike. Mallarmé’s philosophical stance is aptly characterized by Friedrich (1956: 124) as an ‘empty transcendentalism’: the earlier terms ‘Azur’ and ‘Rêve’, which designated the Ideal, are replaced by ‘le Néant’; the Ideal, as ‘Néant’, has no metaphysical existence, and yet it alone exists; the concepts of ‘l’Absolu’ and ‘le Néant’ become complementary in a system where, in appropriately Hegelian terms, Pure Being coincides with Non-Being (Davies 1953: 34; Bruns 1974:103).

From 1866 onwards, Mallarmé’s aesthetic begins to shape itself into a complex and extraordinarily coherent system. Already in July 1866 he confidently declares to have outlined ‘les fondements d’une oeuvre magnifique’, adding that

tout est si bien ordonné en moi qu’à mesure, maintenant, qu’une sensation m’arrive...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Mallarmé’s Language: Transposition, Structure
• 2. Apollinaire’s Perspectives
• 3. Ezra Pound: Image, Vortex, Ideogram
• 4. Max Jacob: Style, Situation
• 5. Pierre Reverdy: The Poem as Object
• 6. Georg Trakl: Existential Conception and Semantic Ambience
• Conclusion
• Notes
• References
• Index