"disappearance of the poet, who cedes the initiative to words"

April 17, 2016 2:50 PM

Encrypted is an essay by New Yorker critic Alex Ross about French 19th Century poet Stéphane Mallarmé, and the difficulties he poses for translators and scholars. Notoriously the most bourgeois of avant-garde poets, his life has proved difficult to write about. So perhaps it's best to just go straight for the poetry. The Electronic Poetry Center has a nice page on his late masterpiece, Un Coup de Dés Jamais N'Abolira Le Hasard, with the original and several translations.
posted by Kattullus (9 comments total)

Barbara Johnson is the writer of the review-essay linked as "difficult to write about".
posted by Kattullus at 3:05 PM on April 17, 2016

Have you ever tried to read an enlarged document on an iPhone with a magnifying glass?

It's not pretty.
I was watching Voyage to the bottom of the sea, the one with the underwater alien city, and thought of Sea-Wind; "Nought, neither Ancient Gardens mirrored in the eyes".

Grandma wouldnt let me read Mallarme, I suspect it was L' Après-midi D'un Faune (Translated by Aldous Huxley) compare that to La Vierge, le vivace et le bel aujourd hui.

The New Yorker article keeps zapping out on this end.
posted by clavdivs at 4:27 PM on April 17, 2016 [3 favorites]

Excellent post/Hi, clav
posted by y2karl at 4:31 PM on April 17, 2016 [1 favorite]

:) hey karl. Yea, his posts are my fuel. I usually have scattered books and more questions and woefully little to say.
So let's be patronizing to deflect intellectual deficits! (Kidding, but we want baby Picts)

I'm at 10% power

I'm tempted to toss on the HAT light for this post.
posted by clavdivs at 5:00 PM on April 17, 2016 [1 favorite]

Hi guys! Nice post!
posted by languagehat at 7:42 AM on April 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

See, this is why I don't post any more. When I showed up back in 2002, this kind of post was considered Best of the Web, and lots of people would comment "This is why I joined MetaFilter!" Now it's just us spavined old musketeers who gather round, waving our rusty épées and mumbling toothlessly about Yeats and Ronsard and Mícheál Ó Siadhail and remembering the good days, the days when people cared about the things that mattered. Now all these kids are on the lawn, and they got no respect. I'm gonna go find a cloud to yell at.
posted by languagehat at 11:58 AM on April 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

Which no doubt looks like a cowboy facing east at one o'clock in the afternoon.
posted by y2karl at 1:45 PM on April 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

It does! How did you know?
posted by languagehat at 5:32 PM on April 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

I don't know
         about you


           spavined
             old
              musketeers


               but


                             a nearly


               




                                   empty







                               comment thread 



                                                              strikes me
                                                                  as
                                                                    a fitting tribute

                                                           to the author of

                                                                    UN COUP DE DÉS
                                                                              .
                                                                              .
                                                                              .

posted by Gerald Bostock at 8:13 AM on April 20, 2016 [3 favorites]