Richard Davenporthines

An infinite spirit

Unlike his spiky contemporaries, Mallarmé was modest, engaging and serene. And he wrote a remarkable poem as well

Can American publishers be dissuaded from foisting absurd, bombastic subtitles on their books as if readers are all Trumpers avid for tawdry, over-simplified stunts? Howard Bloch is a professor at Yale whose previous books have had medieval French literature, the Bayeux tapestry and medieval misogyny as their subject matter. He has taken an entertaining diversion in his career by writing a relaxed and accessible book about Mallarmé’s poem of 1897, ‘Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard’ (‘One toss of the dice will never abolish chance’) and its place in belle époque Paris. The professor’s erudition and light touch need no Barnum-style booming.

There is nothing incredible in the story of Stéphane Mallarmé, who once edited a women’s fashion magazine but spent most of his working life as a schoolmaster teaching English. The French art of living with unostentatious comfort, gentle ease and healthy satisfaction was exemplified by the poet-schoolmaster. His domestic amenities included a menagerie of adored pets, among them greyhounds named Yseult and Saladin, an owl named Clair-de-lune, a bluebird, a waxbill, several little green parrots, a white cat called Snow, her daughter named Fog, and a black cat whose grandmother had been the subject of a poem by Baudelaire. Mallarmé’s smiling serenity, and his gestures which mixed a dancer’s grace with priestly benediction, make joyful reading.

Bloch provides an attractive summary of Mallarmé’s literary career, personal life and character. Mallarmé’s rare, endearing modesty and sweetness of nature stand in contradistinction to the ruthless egotism and infectious unhappiness of most Modernist innovators. He was an Anglophile, who befriended Frederick York Powell, the regius professor of history at Oxford, whose manner among the Christian clerics in his university was described by J.B. Yeats as ‘like a sailor fresh from many voyages who has come to see his cousin the church-sexton’.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in