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- Title
Bertrand et Mallarmé « en fleuron et cul-de-lampe invisibles ».
- Authors
THOREL, SYLVIE
- Abstract
Mallarmé's well-known admiration for Aloysius Bertrand is not limited to the inheritance of the prose poem form. It also engages the larger question of musicality. In Gaspard de la nuit, Bertrand posits the defeat of harmony through the examples of the harp, the viola and other string instruments associated with the minstrel's chant, all the while making this very defeat the origin of his volume through his insistence on its bookish dimension and condition. The typographical indications by Bertrand to his editor and the metapoetic allusions of his poems suggest he found in the prose poem a form appropriate to an era in which the rise of the press buried the chant and diminished the status of the voice. Typography gained in those circumstances a newfound importance: counterbalancing the loss of the chant and establishing itself as a signature, not unlike the "grain of the voice." Mallarmé takes hold of the question of the book and the voice where Bertrand left it, developing it to encompass that of the poet and the reader, thereby assuming a new mode of textual intelligibility regarding the production and reception of the poetic text. This article compares Mallarmé's texts to those of Bertrand in order to illustrate that, contrary to the romantic poet, who experienced the textual layout of the chant as a loss, Mallarmé considers the mute voice of the text as a positive force granting full autonomy to written poetry.
- Subjects
BERTRAND, Aloysius, 1807-1841; MALLARME, Stephane, 1842-1898; GASPARD de la nuit (Book); MUSIC in literature; FRENCH prose poems; CHANTS; HUMAN voice in literature
- Publication
Études Françaises, 2016, Vol 52, Issue 3, p93
- ISSN
0014-2085
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.7202/1038059ar