Reading Order
Divagations (Mallarmé)Divagations Reading Order
Divagations (Wanderings, 1897) by Stéphane Mallarmé is the prose collection that Mallarmé himself assembled as the definitive statement of his critical and theoretical positions — gathering essays, prose poems, and critical pieces written between 1885 and 1896, including the famous 'Crise de vers' (Crisis of Verse), 'La Musique et les lettres' (Music and Letters), 'L'Action restreinte' (Restricted Action), and the prose poems of 'Anecdotes ou poèmes' and the 'Pages.' Divagations is essential for understanding what Mallarmé's verse was attempting: 'Crise de vers' argues that the French Alexandrine is dead and that verse must find a new relationship with language, silence, and music; 'La Musique et les lettres' argues that poetry and music are converging toward the same ideal of pure suggestion; 'L'Action restreinte' formulates the paradox of an art that achieves everything by doing nothing. These essays are among the most important critical texts of French literary history — the theoretical foundation of Symbolism as a coherent aesthetic program.
Where to start
Begin with 'Crise de vers' (the most important and most widely read essay — the crisis of the Alexandrine, the need for a new verse form, the ideal of suggestion) and 'La Musique et les lettres' (the ideal of music as poetry's goal). Then try the prose poem 'Igitur' (if your edition includes it) for the early theoretical narrative. Then read the whole Divagations sequentially, allowing the wandering quality of the book to do its work.
Complete Divagations (Mallarmé) Book List
- 1Buy
Divagations (1897)
Stéphane Mallarmé·1897·Most complete in the Pléiade Œuvres complètes; also in a standalone GF Flammarion edition. In English: Divagations, translated by Barbara Johnson (Harvard University Press, 2007) — an excellent scholarly translation of the complete text with a critical introduction. - 2Buy
Poésies (1899)
Stéphane Mallarmé·1899·The verse poems that the essays in Divagations are theorizing — reading the two together is the ideal approach, since each illuminates the other. - 3Buy
Un coup de dés (1897)
Stéphane Mallarmé·1897·Published the same year as Divagations, the spatial poem is the practical realization of the theoretical positions developed in the essays — especially the idea of the page as silence and the white space as meaningful absence. - 4Buy
The Symbolist Movement in Literature
Arthur Symons·1899·Symons's 1899 study introduced Mallarmé and the Symbolists to the English-speaking world and influenced T.S. Eliot and W.B. Yeats — useful for understanding how the Divagations essays were received internationally. - 5Buy
Œuvres complètes (Pléiade)
Stéphane Mallarmé (ed. Bertrand Marchal)·2003·The two-volume Pléiade edition (1998-2003) is the standard scholarly text for all of Mallarmé, with extensive critical apparatus — the place to go for the complete works in the most authoritative form.
Divagations (Mallarmé) — Frequently Asked Questions
What is 'Crise de vers' about?
'Crise de vers' (Crisis of Verse, 1886-96) is Mallarmé's major essay on the state of French poetry — arguing that Victor Hugo's death in 1885 marked the end of the era of the centralized, authoritative Alexandrine, and that the poetic crisis this has produced is in fact an opportunity: freed from the tyranny of official verse, poets can explore the music of their own language, find new rhythms and new forms, and move toward the ideal that Mallarmé calls 'la poésie pur' (pure poetry). The essay specifically discusses the new versification (free verse, the prose poem) and argues that every syllable of French has its own musical value that good poetry can exploit.
What does Mallarmé mean by poetry as 'music'?
Mallarmé's claim that poetry should aspire to the condition of music (developed most fully in 'La Musique et les lettres') does not mean that poetry should sound like music in a simple sense. It means that poetry should operate like music in its effects: creating meaning through suggestion, atmosphere, and pattern rather than through direct statement; exploiting the sonic and rhythmic qualities of language; and producing in the reader an experience that is felt before it is understood. The ideal poem would have the quality of music in that its meaning would be inseparable from its form — what it says would be identical with how it sounds and what it suggests.
What are the prose poems in Divagations?
Divagations contains two groups of prose poems: 'Anecdotes ou poèmes' (including 'Le Phénomène futur,' 'Plainte d'automne,' and 'Frisson d'hiver') and 'Pages' (including the important 'Conflit,' 'L'Ecclésiastique,' 'La Déclaration foraine'). These prose poems are more accessible than the verse — their imagery is vivid and sometimes narrative — but they share the verse's quality of evoking atmosphere and idea rather than making direct statements. They are the immediate models for the prose poem tradition that runs through Apollinaire to Surrealism.
Who attended Mallarmé's Tuesday salons?
The mardis (Tuesday salons) from the mid-1880s to 1898 were attended by an extraordinary range of artists and writers: Verlaine, Huysmans, Valéry (who became Mallarmé's closest disciple), Gide, Claudel, Henri de Régnier, René Ghil, Stuart Merrill, and many others from the Symbolist generation; also the artists Whistler, Redon, and Berthe Morisot; and international visitors including Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats (who came once, in 1896), and the young Stefan George, who translated Mallarmé into German. The conversations at the mardis were as influential as the published work — Mallarmé's ideas about poetry spread largely through oral transmission.
What is the relationship between Mallarmé and Paul Valéry?
Valéry was Mallarmé's most devoted disciple and intellectual successor — he met Mallarmé at the mardis in 1891 when he was twenty and was immediately overwhelmed by the experience. Valéry's essay 'La Soirée avec M. Teste' (1896) is a portrait of the ideal Mallarmé intellectual type; his later poetry, especially 'La Jeune Parque' (1917) and 'Le Cimetière marin' (1920), carries the Mallarmé aesthetic of pure suggestion and maximum formal pressure into the twentieth century. Valéry also wrote the most important critical studies of Mallarmé's work and was instrumental in establishing his posthumous reputation.
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