Mallarme: Transpositions of Reading



from Stephane Mallarme to
Georges Rodenbach 28 June, 1892


"Your human history, at times so erudite, evaporates; and the city, in the form of a vast phantom, continues, or recovers consciousness through the characters, and all that's done with a subtle certainty which instills a very pure effect. All the modern experiments in reading seek to make the poem end as a novel, and the novel as a poem, but there's no doubt the writer is hampered by too many separate items if his juxtaposition is less exact than yours is here: and if he lacks your magic."

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from Stephane Mallarmet to
Emile Zola 18 March 1876

"A book whose special aesthetics are in absolute harmony with whatever mode of reading its readers may adopt is a masterpiece."