¹ Pages 113–140, esp. pp. 123–124, 137–140. Misled by the belief that this sonnet was inspired by the blond locks of Méry Laurent, Mallarmé‘s intimate friend in the later years of his life (1880–98)—which is chronologically impossible, since the poem was written in 1868—Soula saw in it “le symbole de la chevelure”, and he called it “le sonnet de l'amour satisfait.” Cryptic as Mallarmé‘s remarks are, it is quite evident from them that the sonnet has nothing to do with either a woman's hair or satisfied love.

² Parnasse et Symbolisme (Paris, 1925), pp. 124–125.

³ Discussions of the sonnet and the explanatory material concerning it are to be found in Henri Mondor's Vie de Mallarmé (Paris, 1941), pp. 259–261, 267–268, 271–272, 274, and in Oeuvres complètes de Mallarmé, p. par Mondor et G. Jean-Aubry (Paris: Bibl. de la Pléiade, 1945), pp. 68–69,1482–1485. Two letters referring to it are found in Mallarmé's Propos sur la poésie, p. par Mondor (Monaco, 1946), pp. 83–85, and it is discussed by E. Noulet, in L'Oeuvre poétique de Stéphane Mallarmé (Paris, 1940), pp. 279–281 and 452457, and by Charles Mauronin Mallarmé l'obscur (Paris, 1941), pp. 162–164. (For convenience, we shall refer to these works as Vie, Oeuvres, Propos, Noulet, and Mauron.)

⁴ In the prospectus announcing the photo-lithographed edition of 1887, the sonnet was entitled “La Nuit.” When published, it appeared merely as the fourth of “Plusieurs sonnets.”

⁵ “Défunte nue” has been interpreted as meaning “departed cloud.” Though possible, such a meaning is less likely than the one given here, especially in view of these lines in the prose poem Frisson d'hiver, written a few years earlier: “Et ta glace de Venise, profonde comme une froide fontaine, en un rivage de guivres dédorées, qui s'y est miré? Ah! je suis sûr que plus d'une femme a baigné dans cette eau le péché de sa beauté: et peut-être verrais-je un fantôme nu si je regardais longtemps” (Oeuvres, p. 271).

⁶ Two published versions of this letter (that in the Oeuvres, p. 1484, and that in the Vie, p. 268) give the reading “avec une personne dedans”, which seems to me an obvious error (cf. “ce logis abandonné du inonde”). Mme Noulet, who copied the letter from M. Mondor's collection, and M. Mondor himself, in his later publication of the Propos, give the reading which we take to be correct. (See Noulet, p. 281, and Propos, p. 83.)

⁷ The revised version: “Car le Maître est allé puiser des pleurs au Styx” gives no further enlightenment. The change has nothing to do with the meaning; it was made to remedy the defective rhythm of the original verse (puiser with 3 syllables). Mallarmé was well aware that the first version of his sonnet was imperfect: writing to Cazalis on July 21, 1868, he said: “deux ou trois vers, encore à l'ébauche grâce au court délai accordé, me tortureront jusqu'au jour de la correction des épreuves” (Propos, p. 85).

⁸ Vie, pp. 267, 268,271–272,274.

⁹ The sonnet was not accepted for Burty's collection. Here is Cazalis' reaction to it: “Ton sonnet est très bizarre. Plairalt-il? Non, bien certainement; mais c'est ton honneur de fuir le goût du populaire” (see Vie, pp. 271–272).

¹⁰ On ptyx see Noulet, p. 454. Mme Noulet declares that ptyx here means “conch shell”, in the face of the fact that Mallarmé stated definitely (v. 6,8) that it was meaningless.

¹¹ Bouts-rimès, p. par Alexandre Dumas (Paris, 1865), Préface.

¹² Dumas had contrived 24 rime-words (most of which were unusual, to say the least: femme, Catilina, âme, fouina, jongle, citoyen, ongle, païen, mirabelle, Mirabeau, belle, flambeau, Orestie, Gabrio, répartie, agio, figue, faisan, ligue, parmesan, noisette, pâté, grisette, bâté) and had challenged a friend to use them in a poem. Considering the result very successful, Dumas published it in the Petit Journal, and invited his readers to go to work on the same rimes. In a short time he received more than 200 poems. He published these, and over 150 more that he received later, in a subscription volume. No poet of any reputation whatsoever was included, and not one of the poems shows anything beyond a certain competence in versification and a certain ingenuity in fitting in the rime-words. Most of the poems lack even this.

¹³ In three poems in prose, grouped under the title “Symphonie littéraire” and published in L'Artiste of Feb. 1, 1865, Mallarmé expressed his admiration for Gautier, Baudelaire, and “le divin Théodore de Banville.”

¹⁴ E.g., Jacques Schérer, L'Expression littéraire dans l' uvre de Mallarmé (Paris, 1947), pp. 39–44.

¹⁵ “Je disais quelquefois à Stéphane Mallarmé”, Variété, III (Paris, 1936), 29.

¹⁶ uvres, pp. 851–854, 1622–23.

¹⁷ On the other hand, the curious unfinished “conte”, Igilur, ou la folie d'Elbehnon, written, it would seem, about a year later, contains not only a theme (a departure from a room at midnight), but also certain details of expression that recall the “ptyx” sonnet (and also recall the paraphrase of it that Mallarmé gave in his letter to Cazalis). See uvres, pp. 435–439, esp. p. 435, first paragraph. The resemblance is too vague to be very conclusive, but nevertheless one is inclined to suspect that in the opening paragraphs of Igitur Mallarmé was putting into prose the same theme that he had, not long before, used in the “ptyx” sonnet—which he had shelved after its rejection by the publisher.

¹⁸ I disagree with Mme Noulet's interpretation (op. cit., p. 281) that giving the sonnet the title “Sonnet allégorique de lui-même” is an “aveu désolé”, that is, a confession of sterile futility. Whatever expresssions of discouragement at his failure to realize his ideal may be found elsewhere in Mallarmé's correspondence (and they are not rare), at the time he was composing this particular sonnet his attitude was far from defeatist. (Cf. the quotation given above, where he speaks of an “ uvre si bien préparé et hiérarchisé, représentant, comme il le peut, l'Univers.”)

¹⁹ I am assuming that the “Master” means Mallarmé himself and that he is not referring to the death of another poet, as Mauron seems to think (op.cit.). Mallarmé wrote a number of commemorative poems, but he had the habit of giving definitely the name of the person he was commemorating.

²⁰ This would be an additional reason for calling it a “sonnet allégorique de lui-même.”

²¹ It must be the glace de Venise which was described in the prose poem Frisson d'hiver. See n. 5 above.

²² Paul Valéry said that “plus en poème est conforme à la-Poésie, moins il peut se penser en prose sans périr … Résumer, mettre en prose un poème, c'est tout simplement méconnaître l'essence d'un art”—“Au sujet du Cimetière marin”, Variété, iii (Paris, 1936), 68.

²³ To make completely clear the syntactical meaning (which we gave imperfectly in our crude paraphrase in Part i), we interpret this as being an elliptical way of saying: “elle est le fantôme nu que souvent j'ai cru voir dans le miroir.”

²⁴ (Paris, 1946), p. 290. Mauron (op. cit.) also makes this suggestion.

²⁵ In the prose poem Frisson d'hiver a “pendule de Saxe”, a “glace de Venise”, and a. “bahut très vieux” are beloved furnishings of the drawing room that are mentioned.

²⁶ Notably Mallarmé's contemporary, George Meredith, in the first poem of the Modern Love sequence (1862) :

Then, as midnight makes Her giant heart of Memory and Tears Drink the pale drug of silence, and so beat Sleep's heavy measure ....

²⁷ The theme of anguish is also maintained by the idea of the nix being attacked by the unicorns.