Divagations by Stéphane Mallarmé

Author:Stéphane Mallarmé [Mallarmé, Stéphane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780674032408
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2009-06-15T03:00:00+00:00

†Incomplete without Augier, Dumas, etc. [—Author]

†See volume 1 of the Goncourts’ precious Journal. [—Author]

†Les Honnêtes Femmes [Virtuous Women]. [—Author]

†La Parisienne (The Parisian Woman) and Les Corbeaux (The Crows): both are plays by Henry Becque. [—Trans.]

†Henri Meilhac (1837–1897), who did much of his work in collaboration with others, co-signed many operettas of Offenbach and many adaptations of novels (for example, Manon Lescaut). [—Trans.]

Parenthesis

MEANWHILE, not far away, the thorough washing of the Temple, accomplished to my astonishment by the orchestra, pouring out its floods of glory or sadness—don’t you hear it?—of which the restored but still invisible Dancer, finishing her preparatory ceremonies, seems the topmost moving foam.

There was once a theater, the only one I willingly went to, the Eden, significant of today’s state, with its godlike Italian resurrection of dances offered for our vulgar pleasure, while around back waited the monotonous promenade. The glow of false electric skies bathed the modern crowd, in jackets, holding satchels; then, through the sounds’ exaltation of an imbecilic gold and laughter, there descended on the glitter of sequins or skin the irremissible lassitude, mute with all that isn’t first illuminated by the spirit. Sometimes, I thought, when the conductor lifted his baton, it was the tap of an old-time fairy’s magic wand, transforming a multicolor crowd gradually into a glittering, garrulous sorcerer, a rare and charming effect; but of all this and of the light shed on the masses’ movements according to their subtle leaders, the watchword remained for the collection plates of the finales, glumly mourning the beyond, followed by the polyglot idiocy of amazement before the exhibition of the means of beauty, in a hurry to spread the enlightenment around, toward some simplifying rendering of accounts: for prostitution in this place—and that was an aesthetic sign—in front of the satiety of frills and nudity, swore off even the puerile extravagance of plumes, trains, or makeup, and only triumphed in the underhanded and brutal fact of its presence among uncomprehended wonders. Yes, I returned again and again to that place and to its flagrant case which occupied so much of my reverie, but in vain, without such music as we know equals silence or the gushing of voices, or the claims of the ones who occupy an ideal function—La Zucchi, La Cornalba, La Laus—setting aside with a kick of the leg the banal conflict, new, enthusiastic, and designated by a supreme foot above the venalities of the surrounding atmosphere, higher even than the stars painted on the ceiling.

Time to bid that very instructive exploitation adieu.

In the absence of a ballet expiring in luxurious tiredness, this singular local spot, for two years already, has enthroned the purified symphony via the Sunday vesper bells, not by enlarging the cherished French melodrama until there is harmony between the verse and the instrumental tumult (which is the aim of dance and sometimes of the poet), but by creating a whole art, the most comprehensive art of our time, such that through the omnipotence of a still-archaic total genius

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