Issue 78, Summer 1980
TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION
On October 6, 1879 Mallarmé’s only son, Anatole, died at the age of eight after a long illness. The disease, diagnosed as child’s rheumatism, had slowly spread from limb to limb and eventually overtaken the boy’s entire body. For several months Mallarmé and his wife had sat helplessly at Anatole’s bedside as doctors tried various remedies and administered unsuccessful treatment. The boy was shuttled from the city to the country and then back to the city again. On August 22 Mallarmé wrote to his friend Henry Ronjon of “the struggle between life and death our poor little darling is going through, . . But the real pain is that this little being might vanish. I confess that it is too much for me; I cannot bring myself to face this idea.”
The fragments that follow represent Mallarmé’s efforts to write about Anatole’s death. First published in 1961 in an edition scrupulously prepared by the French critic Jean-Pierre Richard (Pour un tombeau d’Anatole, Editions du Seuil), they reveal a side of Mallarmé that is all but hidden in his finished works: the man of direct feeling. Or, more precisely, they reveal how the artistic preoccupations of this most hermetic and cerebral of poets originated in the emotional depths of personal experience. Having read them, one can no longer approach Mallarmé’s finished work in quite the same way.
These selections are culled from the 202 fragments presented in Richard’s book. Although the pieces seem to resemble poems on the page, they should not be confused with poetry per se. They are notes towards a possible poem, sketches for a work that never came to be written. If, in spite of themselves, they carry the force of poetry, it is because they are the raw data of poetry, ur-texts of the poetic process. Beyond that, they stand as a rare example of utmost brevity wed to utmost feeling.
—Paul Auster
1
child sprung from
the two of us—showing
us our ideal, the way
—ours! father
and mother who
sadly existing
survive him as
the two extremes—
badly coupled in him
and sundered
—from whence his death—o-
bliterating this little child “self”
3
sick in
springtime
dead in fall
—it is the sun
______
the wave
idea the cough
4
son
reabsorbed
not gone
it is he
—or his brother
myself
I told this
to him
two brothers
6
did not know
mother, and son did
not know me! —
—image of myself
other than myself
borne off
in death!
7
what has taken refuge
your future in me
becomes my
purity through life
which I shall not
touch—
10
the supreme goal
was nothing
but to leave life
purely
you did this
in advance
by suffering
so much—sweet
child so that
It will weigh against
your lost life—your family
has bought the rest by their
suffering from having you
no longer
11
to pray to the dead
(not for them)
__________
knees, child
knees—need
to have the child here
—his absence—knees
fall—and
__________
for one of the true dead
a child!
13-15
Pref.
dear one
—great heart
<tr> truly son of <who>
father whose
heart
beat for things
too vast
—and which came here
to fail
it was necessary—
inheriting this
marvelous fil-
ial intelligence, making
it live again
—to construct
with his <clear>
lucidity—this
work—too
vast for me
and thus, (robbing
me of
life, sacri-
ficing it, if it
is not for the wk
—to be him grown up,
<robbed> of—and
to do this without
fear of playing
with his death—
since I
sacrificed my
life—since
I accepted as
my own this death
(cloistering)
16
example
we have known
through you this “better
part of ourselves”
which often
escapes us—and will be
within us—and our
acts, now
__________
child, planting
idealization
17
father and mother
vowing
to have no other
child
—grave dug by him
life ends here
18
vain
cures
abandoned
if nature
did not will it
_________
I would take
myself for
dead
balms, only,
consolations for us
—doubt
then no! their reality
37
time of the
empty room
____________
until we
open it
perhaps all
follows from this
(morally)
____________
39-40
you can, with your little
hands, drag me
into your grave—you
have the right—
—I
who follow you, I
let myseif go—
—but if you
wish, the two
of us, let us make..
an alliance
a hymen, superb
—and the life
remaining in me
I will use for
and no mother
then?
44-45
you look at me
I still cannot tell you
the truth
I do not dare, too little one
What has happened to you
____________
one day I will
tell you
—as man
I do not want
____________
you not to know
your fate
____________
and man
dead child
46
no—nothing
to do with the great
deaths—etc.
—as long as we
go on living, he
lives—in us
____________
it will only be aftet our
death that he will be dead
—and the bells
of the Dead will toll for
him
49
sail—
navigates
river,
your life that
goes by, that flows
____________
59
Setting sun
and wind
vanished gold, and
wind of nothing
that breathes
(here, the modern
? nothingness)
61-63
death—whispers softly
—I am no one—
I do not even know who I am
(for the dead do not
know they are
dead—, nor even that they
die
—for children
at least
—or
heroes—sudden
deaths
for otherwise
my beauty is
made of last
moments—
lucidity, beauty
face—of
what would be
me, without myself
____________
. . . . . . . .
76
family perfect
balance
father son
mother daughter
broken—
three, a void
among us,
searching...
79
no more life for
me
and I feel
I am lying in the grave
beside you.
87
o earth—you do not
grow anything
—pointless—
—I who
honor you—
bouquets
vain beauty
104
what! enormous
death—terrible
death
____________
to strike down
so small a creature
____________
I say to death coward
alas! it is within us
not without
122 (stop
earth—open ditch
never to be filled
—except by sky
—indifferent earth
grave
not flowers
bouquets, out
festivals and our life
128
mother identity
of dead life
father picks up
rhythm started here
of mother’s
rocking
suspense—life
death
poetry—thought
161-162
Oh! you understand
that if 1 consent
to live—to seem
to forget you—
it is to <so that>
feed my pain
—and so that this apparent
forgetfulness
can spring forth more
horribly in tears, at
some random
moment, in
the middle of this
life, when you
appear to me.
183
true mourning in
the apartment
—not cemetery—
furniture
184
to find only
absence—
—in presence
of little clothes
—etc—
mother.
185
little sailor—
sailor suit
what!
—for an enormous
crossing
a wave will carry you
ascetic
sea,
< + + >
190
no—I will not
give up
nothingness
____________
father---I
feel nothingness
invade me
Translated by Paul Auster
