Review: A Poet's Life

Author(s): Wallace Fowlie

Review by: Wallace Fowlie
Source: The Sewanee Review, Vol. 103, No. 2 (Spring, 1995), pp. xxxvi-xxxix
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27546987
Accessed: 12-05-2015 13:58 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/
info/about/policies/terms.jsp
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content
in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.
For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Sewanee
Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 109.121.63.134 on Tue, 12 May 2015 13:58:32 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

CURRENT BOOKS IN REVIEW

edition?about

fifteen

thousand

pages.

However
successful he was in
like Baron
financiers
creating
all his life
lived
Balzac
Nucingen,
from creditors
in debt?fleeing
and being forced into undignified
subterfuges. After his and his
wife's deaths there was a wild
auction of his collections. For
tunately the Belgian bibliophile
Viscount
Spoelberch de Lovenjoul
to acquire Balzac's let
managed
ters and unfinished manuscripts.
in Balzac's life,
Of the women
a few deserve particular mention.
de Berny,
The first isMadame
at forty-five his first mistress, who
during the years of their on-and
off affair lent Balzac fifty thou
sand francs, as indeed did his
mother. There were other lovers,
d'Abrant?s
notably the Duchesse
and a certain Marie du Fresnay,
the mother of Balzac's daughter.
But the great love of his lif e was

for awealthy Polish aristocrat,

It was a largely
Hanska.
relation
kept alive by
epistolary
in St. Peters
occasional meetings
at
estate
in
her
Poland, in
burg,
Vienna, and in Geneva. When
Madame Hanska finally made up
her mind tomarry Balzac, his
health was already broken, and
his death ended their marriage
after five months.
the
Graham Robb's biography,
since 1930, is a
first in English
Robb has
solid accomplishment.
and controls an over
mastered
It
whelming mass of material.
must be the vain pursuit of
certainly not
political correctness,
of grammatical
that
propriety,
Eveline

I leads him to avoid the third

pos
person singular masculine
sessive, and so to write these
sentences:
"An old man is some
one who has had their dinner";
and "no one but Balzac would
to admire
interrupt themselves
purple

passages."

?Donald

Schier

A POET S LIFE

A Throw of the Dice: The Life

of St?phane Mallarm?
by Gordon Millan
(Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1994.
Illustrated. 390 pages. $35)
the Paris
In 1942 Henri Mondor,
admired
who
Mallarm?,
surgeon
in two large volumes
published
of 800 pages his Vie de Mallarm?.
This biography, which remains
an important study of the leading
never
French
|
symbolist poet, has
been translated. Now, fifty years
later, a Scottish professor at the
has
of Strathclyde,
IUniversity
an
excellent
biography
published
less than half as long.
With new documents,
especially
Mr. Millan has
correspondence,
given a fuller picture of the early
years of the poet, of his school
of
teacher's exile in the provinces,
the poor reports the lyc?e in
spectors gave of his teaching in
and in Paris. It is a
the provinces
well organized
written,
lucidly
the
that emphasizes
biography
the
close relationship between
poems and the time in the poet's
were written.
I life when they

xxxvi

This content downloaded from 109.121.63.134 on Tue, 12 May 2015 13:58:32 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

CURRENT BOOKS IN REVIEW

Until his last years, when he had
become a celebrity, Mallarm?
was attacked regularly by the
press. He was called deliberately
obscure, an
difficult, needlessly
enemy of French clarity.
Born in Paris in 1842, he was
a shy, affectionate boy who was
raised by his grandmother. Never
strong in health, mild and cour
teous in temperament,
he studied
in various

schools,

wrote

verse

early, and became a bach?lier-?s

lettres in 1860 at the lyc?e of
Sens. He discovered Baudelaire
in 1861, who exercised on the
young man the first strong literary
influence. He fell in love with a
of German
young schoolteacher
extraction, Marie Gerhard, who
in
him to London
accompanied
1863. Later, in an autobiographi
cal letter to Verlaine, he explained
that he had wanted
to learn
in
to
read
Poe. The
order
English
trip to London helped determine
his career, because there he
learned English well enough to
receive a teaching certificate.
There also, in the Catholic chapel
in Kensington,
he married Marie
Gerhard.
Mallarm?'s
first appointment,
in the fall of 1863, was as teacher
of English
in the lyc?e of Tour
non, on the Rh?ne River. His
daughter Genevi?ve was born in
Tournon. The three years in
Tournon were rich and produc
tive. There he formed his slow
meticulous
writing habits. Poe re
as his dominant
Baudelaire
placed
and
there the
literary influence,
was
of H?rodiade
composition
begun in 1864. His work on

H?rodiade
alternated with work
on L'Apr?s-midi
d'un faune.
In October
1866 Mallarm?
to Besan?on, where he
moved
taught one year at the lyc?e. The
next year he was sent to the lyc?e
at Avignon,
in the warmer and
far more poetic land of Provence.
In July 1871 a second child was
born, this time a son, who was
named Anatole.
By the end of summer, Mal
larm? accepted a teaching post in
Paris. A few of the established
poets showed him signs of recog
nition and esteem. On the first of
June 1872, at a banquet for poets,
Mallarm?
observed Arthur Rim
baud, a sixteen-year-old
poet,
in the midst of older men. Rim
baud's behavior was reprehensi
ble. From today's perspective
are the
Mallarm?
and Rimbaud
and
the
leading symbolists
founders of what the French
call modernism.
In Paris, in 1874, the Mallarm?s
to 89 rue de Rome, and
moved
that summer went to Valvins
for the first time. His career of
teacher continued until his retire
ment in 1895. The vacation
spent at
periods were mostly
recu
where
Mallarm?
Valvins,
now
each
from
his
year
perated
dual role of pedagogue
and liter
is a village
ary master. Valvins
on the Seine near Fontainebleau.
The family occupied a small
house a few kilometers
from the
river. There Mallarm?
enjoyed
a tiny sailboat. It was a yearly
interval of freedom when he could
dream, walk, sail his boat, talk
with the country folk, and receive

xxxvii

This content downloaded from 109.121.63.134 on Tue, 12 May 2015 13:58:32 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

CURRENT BOOKS IN REVIEW

his friends, who called at Valvins
more and more frequently as the
years

passed.

The apartment on the rue de

Rome became during the last
twenty years of the century the
site of literary gatherings on
evenings
Tuesday
(les mardis).
The faithful friends, poets and
artists who came regularly, were
In this section
called les mardistes.
of his book Mr. Millan gives us
a careful description
of the meet
attended.
of
those
who
and
ings
He explains the importance of this
very special salon. Here Mr.
is both biographer
and
Millan
historian, as he provides us with
greater detail than we find in
other

accounts.

The Tuesday meetings were

initiated during the winter of
1880, when Gustave Kahn, irri
tated that Mallarm? was not being
recognized, began calling on
evenings. It was not un
Tuesday
fame
til 1884 that Mallarm?'s
reached a degree that can be
Often Mal
called considerable.
in
almost a
larm? would
speak
newcomer
a
asked
If
monologue.
a question,
the others felt in
sulted. On the walls of this very
the mardistes
modest
apartment,
could see Manet's portrait of Mal
larm?, a sea painting of Berthe
a
a nymph ofWhistler,
Morisot,
of Gauguin. These were
woodcut
gifts of the artists to the man
whose presence among them be
came symbolic and precious.
is not in
One anecdote, which
Millan's book, might be recalled
here. Claude Debussy,
twenty
years younger than the poet, in

the meetings.
frequently attended
One Tuesday night he arrived
that he was
early to tell Mallarm?
The
setting
Afternoon
of a Faun
to music. "Cher Debussy,"
the
"I thought I had
poet answered,
already done that."
The biography
of Mallarm?
in reality is revealed in his work.
is followed closely
This conviction
In 1877 Mallarm?
by Mr. Millan.
: composed his sonnet on Poe to
i commemorate
the anniversary
of
Poe's death, which was being
in Baltimore.
In 1892
?celebrated
Mallarm?
his
vol
first
published
j
!urne, Vers et prose. The poet was
fifty years old.
Not only did he celebrate in
verse the greatness of Poe, of
but also
ofWagner,
Baudelaire,
the luxuriant hair of his close
friend, M?ry Laurent
(who was
Manet's model). For years she was
his neighbor on the rue de Rome.
M?ry was fascinated by Mal
larm?'s elegant speech and wit?
and by his goodness. He was
attracted by M?ry's love for
artists, by her beautiful hair and
inmany of
her body, reproduced
Manet's

paintings.

At the end of summer 1898

Mallarm?
died at Valvins. On the
an attack of
8th of September
overcame him. It was
suffocation
a familiar manifestation
of a life
chronic
laryngitis.
long malady,
Before his death, which came the
next day, he asked Genevi?ve
to burn all his papers and to
publish nothing posthumously.
He was buried beside his son
Anatole, who had died at the age
of eight.

xxxviii

This content downloaded from 109.121.63.134 on Tue, 12 May 2015 13:58:32 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

CURRENT BOOKS IN REVIEW

A Throw of theDice (Un coup
last poem,
de d?s), Mallarm?'s
shows us, as the other major
poems do, that the poems grow
in clarity as the figure of the man
loses its physical and other per
sonal traits.
Mallarm?
celebrated
language,
the sanctity of language, as a new
Orpheus.
Symbolism belongs to
all periods of art. Mallarm?
rediscovered
the power of the
Each poem is a
word-symbol.
r?sum? of the poet's life, whether
it be H?rodiade's
cold winter or
a faun's

summer

day.

?Wallace

Fowlie

trans
with the English-language
lation of her poems, a brief
summary of her anything but

OF EDEN

Concert
by Else Lasker-Sch?ler
translated by Jean M. Snook
(University of Nebraska Press,
1994. xiv 4- 162 pages. $25.00)
"Wherever you look there is still
a bit of paradise." This quotation
from Concert summarizes
the
central theme of an assembly of
fifty-six short essays, sketches,
letters, and poems in which
Lasker-Sch?ler
reflected on her
life shortly before she became an
exile from Nazi Germany;
and it
reveals an essential turning point
in her

Weltanschauung

as

con

trasted with her works preceding

the publication
of this slim vol
ume. Since she has remained
to American
virtually unknown
readers except for those familiar

serve

as

a use

to one of the last

ful introduction
books published
by a German
came to power.
before
Hitler
Jew
was born
Else Lasker-Sch?ler
a
in 1869 inWuppertal-Elberfeld,
ro

city

seven-hundred-year-old

situated in a narrow
mantically
cut
valley
by the river Wupper
the
through
thickly forested
mountains
of this part of the
northern Rhineland.
The youngest
of six children o? a boisterous
and flamboyant
father and a
somewhat melancholy
but highly
literate mother, her childhood
in
was, as she tells us in Concert
prose

A REMNANT

life may

paradisic

and

poetry,

"a paradise."

She loved her father and adored

her mother,
and although she
in
her
life
showed a tenden
early
she felt
cy toward withdrawal,
at one with her older siblings.
Her "paradise" extended from the
house into the garden and from
there down to the river and up
into

the mountains,

an

environ

instilling in her a deep and

abiding love of nature that be
came a principal
theme of her
Her
life, whose
writings.
paradisic
peace and stability had already
been shaken by the death of a
brother to whom she was most
closely attached, ended once and
for all when, at the age of twenty
four and by then an accom
plished writer, illustrator, and
she left her family and
musician,
to Berlin to marry the
moved
physician Berthold Lasker. The
lasted nine years, until
marriage
ment

xxxix

This content downloaded from 109.121.63.134 on Tue, 12 May 2015 13:58:32 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions