Mallarme on Blogging

from *A Break in the Act*
translated by David Paul

"How far civilization is from assuring us the pleasures
that are supposed to be its attributes! For instance one
might well be amazed that there is no league of dreamers
in every great city, existing to support some newspaper
that would record events in the light appropriate to
dream. *Reality* is a contrivance, serving to situate the
average mind among the mirages of an event: but by
that very token it must be founded on some universal
understanding: so let us see whether, ideally, there is no
essential, obvious, simple aspect of things that would
serve as basic type. I want, from my own solitary view-
point, to narrate, as it struck my poet's eye, a particular
anecdote before it is spread abroad by reporters en-
trusted by the public with the task of assigning each
thing its commonplace character..."