The Formal Rhythms of Mallarmé´s Faun

The Formal Rhythms of Mallarm's FaunAuthor(s): DAVID J. CODESource: Representations, Vol. 86, No. 1 (Spring 2004), pp. 73-119Published by: University of California PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/rep.2004.86.1.73 .Accessed: 20/11/2014 10:22

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DAV ID J. CODE

The Formal Rhythmsof Mallarmes FaunThe poetic fact itself consists of grouping, rapidly, in a certain number of equal strokes,in order to bring them into focus, certain thoughts which otherwise would be distant andscattered; but whichthis is what is strikingrhyme together, so to speak. It is thusnecessary, above all, to employ the common measure, which must be applied; in otherwords, the Verse. The poem remains brief, and is multiplied to form a book; its xedorder creates a norm, as does the verse.1

N be written about Stephane Mallarmeand poetic rhythm in the simplest sense of the term. After all, this poet, endlesslycelebrated for his initiatory modernism and his anticipation of the theoretical con-cerns of post-structuralism, nonetheless continued to negotiate with classical me-ters from his years as a lyceen through his last refractory sonnets in octosyllables andalexandrines. Detailed attention to his prosody could well further the attempt torecover the historical perspective on his oeuvre that is so often lost when his criticismis given pride of place over his verse and selectively sampled as the foundation oflater literary theory rather than as attendant musings on a pratique poetique.2

It would be easy to nd preliminary purchase for such attention in Mallarmesown comments on prosodic rhythmas, for example, when he writes:

All the same, the Parnassians caution is not without value: it provides the point of orienta-tion between the resurgence, in all audacity, of romanticism, and freedom; and demon-strates (before versication dissolves into something identical to the primitive keyboard ofwords) an ocial game, submitted to the xed rhythm.3

Of course, Mallarmes placement of Parnassian poetry between a fallback to ro-manticism and the (excessive) prosodic liberty that might lie ahead is, in itself,entirely unsurprising. But his ne metaphor of the primitive keyboard of lan-guage that will remain after ordered prosody dissolves might usefully comple-

The eclogue LApre`s-midi dun faune has long been seen as a breakthrough to the maturesymbolist phase ofMallarmes oeuvre. Cliches about the mystery essential to symbolist poetic style have,however, forestalled rigorous analysis of the works structure. Exposing a formal rhythm that draws thestrophic sections into a pattern of virtual folios and bifolios, this article reads the faun eclogue as a se-cret model of le Livre, the Book, lodestar of Mallarmes aesthetic project. In giving new focus to theworks pointed dialogue with classical Virgilian pastoral, this reading also draws on Benvenistes writingsabout linguistic subjectivity to understand its enactment, through the character of the faun, of an agonisticsearch for voiced presence. / R 86. Spring 2004 The Regents of the University ofCalifornia. 0734-6018, electronic 1533-855X, pages 73119. All rights reserved. Direct re-quests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content to the University of California Press atwww.ucpress.edu/journals/rights.htm.


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ment the more famous announcement of poetic crisis in his Oxford lecture,whose most succinct statement hints delicately at the same metaphor: on a toucheau vers.4 His approval of the Parnassians caution, in other words, might be takento imply that the best way to position his poetry in history is to reattune our-selves to his touch with le vers, the ocial constraint that can (still) keep poetryfrom falling away into vapid improvisations on undierentiated verbal keys(touches).

Rhythm in this simple sense will indeed play a central role in my reading ofLApre`s-midi dun faune, long celebrated as a pivotal work in Mallarmes attainmentof stylisticmaturity. Indeed, an investigation of this poems rhythmic touch wouldbe highly appropriate, given that Mallarme, years later, claimed to have composedinto the verses of its last prepublication version, the 1875 Improvisation dun faune, arunning pianistic commentary on the alexandrine.5 But inmy attempt to reinsertthe faun poem into its historical moment, I will only arrive at detailed considera-tions of Mallarmes ngering on the measured syllables of le vers by focusing rston his rhythm at a wider formal level of the text.6 The rhyming alexandrines ofLApre`s-midi dun faune are organized into strophes whose formal array may seem,at rst glance, to lack any unifying pattern. The series of strophes can, however,actually be shown to fall into pairings and gatherings that mimic, in poetic struc-ture itself, the form of le Livre, lodestar of Mallarmes aesthetic. To imagine liftingand assembling this virtual book while readingto imagine thumbing throughits rhythm of folios and bifolios fold by fold, as it wereis to be led to experience,at the center of the foliated form, a moment in which the poets touch with le versbrings into tangible focus a particular moment in the history of his art.

The structural sense of rhythm that underpins such a reading can nd deepetymological justication if we recall Emile Benvenistes argument that the archaicGreek rythmos, before it accrued its later (Platonic) associations with measured mo-tion, originally bore the slightly dierent meaning of distinctive form, propor-tioned gure, arrangement, disposition.7 Benveniste elaborates with imagery thatcan further enrich our sense of virtual feuillets within the faun poems disposi-tional rhythms:

The root of rhythm . . . designates the form in the instant that it is assumed by what ismoving, mobile and uid, the form of that which does not have organic consistency; it tsthe pattern of a uid element, of a letter arbitrarily shaped, of a robe which one arrangesat ones will, of a particular state of character or mood.8

This emphasis on the mobile and uid aspects of rythmos suggestively parallelsMallarmes many attempts, in his own criticism, to negotiate the balance betweenxity and mobility in the relationship he often poses between poetic structureand le Livre.

I have, for example, chosen for my epigram one particularly decisive compari-son of the xed order of verse to the pagination of a book. Rather more typical,


75The Formal Rhythms of Mallarmes Faun

in its equivocation between static measure and dynamic process, is the formalistvariation of the keyboard metaphor through which Mallarme exhorts the reader,elsewhere, to approach his poetry like pieces at the keyboard, active, measured byfolios ( feuillets).9 Most intriguing of all, perhaps, is the passing mention, in oneobscure instance, of the intervention of folding, or rhythm, which might be saidto attach Mallarmes ideal of le Livre, with its formal-conceptual folds of paper, di-rectly to the archaic sense of rythmos Benveniste so compellingly associates with theloosely arranged folds of a robe.

Still, these arbitrary gleanings from Mallarmes prose should not be under-stood as justications before the fact for a reading that (willfully) seeks a rythmos offolds in the faun poem. I oer here, instead, an example of the ways an analysis ofthe poetry can illuminate the criticism. The Book, as it is repeatedly invoked inMallarmes writings, has often been taken as a purely metaphysical gure for theunattainablein other words, to put it simply, either as a symbol of the overween-ing ideal that doomed his literary labors to agonized incompletion, or, conversely, asthe all-encompassing goal that, in its own endless postponement, provided constantmotivation for the obsessive, compressed, fragmentary oeuvre he did in fact create.These and other more theoretical interpretations aside, I suggest that after pagingthrough the virtual feuillets of LApre`s-midi dun faune, we may be able to recognize,behind many of Mallarmes invocations of le Livre, something more substantive,more tangible, andmore fully achieved than can be seen from any purelymetaphys-ical standpoint.10

It might seem surprising that such grandiose conclusions could still be derivedfrom one of Mallarmes best-known poems. But it is typical of the Mallarme litera-ture, on the whole, that while many of the best glosses of LApre`s-midi dun faune aidgreatly in the attempt to understand the vague narrative, none say much aboutstructure, beyond an occasional acknowledgment that its 110 lines fall roughly intotwo halves.11 Even Roger Pearson, whose analyses of the shorter poems in his 1996book Unfolding Mallarme: The Development of a Poetic Art are more attuned to struc-ture thanmany others, nds in the poem as published in 1876 a greater formal loose-ness than in the 1875 Improvisation:

The previously approximate binary structure continues to be approximate (rather than nu-merically precise), and the central division of the poem (between ll. 51 and 52 in both theImprovisation and the Eglogue) is now less pronounced within an otherwise more fragmented,apparently improvised structure.12

Pearsons readiness to overlook the analytical implications of Mallarmes change oftitle, from the vague Improvisation to the more generically precise Eglogue, implicitlyendorses a common cliche about the poets artistic development. The greater frag-mentation he nds in the 1876 poem, that is, is exactly what we would expect givenMallarmes supposed progression toward the more rareed mystery always seenas typical of his mature symbolism.


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Although genetic considerations will be secondary to my argument, I will indi-cate a few revisions that, by creating clearer imagery and ner precision of form,demand a reappraisal of such cliches about the travail de mallarmeisation (as GerardGenette called it) undergone by the faun poem through its various stages of revi-sion.13 And indeed, one key to an appreciation of the last versions tighter formalfocus is its new subtitle, Eglogue. Often noted as an obvious signal of the poemsmany pointed echoes of Virgils archetypical Eclogues, Mallarmes generic subtitlehighlights a response to Virgil that unfolds at a deeper level than pastoral imag-ery alone.

Most fundamentally, the subtitle implicitly marks Mallarmes own concernwith the elusive generic relationship between lyric and dramatic verse that he experi-enced as irresolvably problematic from his rst inklings of the faun project in1865.14 This relationship is encapsulated, in Virgil, by his designation of each ofhis Eclogues as the words of named speakers. Mallarme both follows and signi-cantly alters the convention, by identifying an unconventional dramatic speaker,LE FAUNE, for his own Eglogue. The divided body of this exceptional pastoralcharacter can be seen as an obvious symbol of the mind-body duality he experi-ences in his pursuit of two nymphs. More richly, however, it might be taken as asummons to the reader to take this role, and thus to experience a similar divisionin the encounter with poetic language itself. Reading as the faun, in other words,we are invited to experience directly the division between printed poetrys illusorypromise of materialized speech, and its factual inertness as writing on a page.

A conict between speech and writing has occasionally been recognized as onetheme of LApre`s-midi dun faune. But even the best critics have, of late, allowedJacques Derridas deconstruction of traditional logocentrism (which was, ofcourse, partly derived from Mallarme) to deect them from the poems self-consciously classical instantiation of this dichotomy.15 Pearson, for example, whobegins his book by distancing himself fromDerrida, nonetheless interprets what hesees as the conict in Mallarmes Eglogue between the calm control of a writtentext and the unruly noise of spoken verse in ways that develop the Derrideaninection of the following methodological assertion:

We must, like the poet, let the words of the text play upon our own lips, murmur them,adapt them, remember their past, try placing unexpected silences between them, andthereby discover de voeux intellectuels une speculation dierente, a dierent (and defer-ring) way of mirroring intellectual intentions.16

No doubt support for this attribution of dierance to the spoken level of the poetrycould be found in Mallarmes criticism, which is deeply contradictory on this is-sue (as on many others). But a deconstructive approach to speech and writing inLapre`s-midi dun faune is anachronistic in the most problematic sense, for it makesimpossible a recognition of itsmanipulation of lyric conventionsaddress, apostro-phe, verbal musicas itself a nely formed confrontation with the agon of a



crepuscular moment (in Pearsons apt description) in the history of classicallogocentrism.17

Indeed, Mallarme signicantly deepens the classical inection of his staging ofidealized vocality by reactivating the self-conscious intertextuality exemplied byVirgil himself, through his own thoroughgoing adaptations of Theocrituss Idylls.18

In the faun Eglogue, whose references to the naive Theocritean wellspring of thepastoral tradition are just as well-attested as its nods to Virgil, Mallarme mightwell be said to take a stance as a latter-day Virgil, at a self-conscious remove fromprelapsarian utterance. As Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve once put it, in an e-cient formulation with obvious appeal for the present study, by comparison withthe immediacy and fullness of Theocritean lyricism Virgils pastoral poetry mustbe recognized as modern, because, while he may love the countryside, he alsoloves books.19

Appropriately enough, in other words, a formal analysis of the struggle withvoice and writing in this virtual book nds that it is best characterized by re-turning to the somewhat naive terms with which Jacques Scherer, rst editor ofthe sketches many take as preliminary jottings for le Livre itself, once characterizedthis relationship for Mallarme:

Like Diderot, Mallarme was a great speaker, and as with Diderot, the problem of the rela-tionship between speech and writing is fundamental for the comprehension of his work. Itis not easy to grasp the connection between this exceptionally sober and restrainedandalso extremely obscurewriting style and this speech, which struck all hearers with itsdirect, if subtle, character, and with its clarity. In this confrontation the advantage alwaysreturns to the spoken.20

Scherers biographical trope, as well as his particular adjectives, are reminiscent ofcountless classicist paeans to Theocrituss originaryclear, direct, and personalpastoral voice (Sainte-Beuve, again, is exemplary).21 But such pretheoretical naivetecan serve to highlight, alongside the (Virgilian) writerly obscurity usually taken torepresent Mallarmes deepest motivations, the humblermore touchingpoeticideals evident in his election of the conversational tone as the supreme limit; inhis characterization of poetry as the most judicious way of speaking, appropriateto a given epoch; or in his celebration of the very intimacy of the race, in itsower, speech.22 In following the fauns pursuit of intimate speech through thefeuillets of hisEglogue, we should recall that the sketches Scherer presents as le Livreitself were to envision, years later, a similar fusion of the lyrical and the dramaticin a rite uniting speakeroperatorand audience. The 1876 Eglogue, a vir-tual book poised between the physical andmetaphysical dimensions Scherer distin-guishes in the later sketches, thus takes its place behind the mature oeuvre as the rstintensive, rhythmic structuring of all the unstable oppositionsspeech andwriting,presence and absence, personality and impersonalityMallarme would subse-quently confront, again and again, under the sign of the unattainable Livre.23


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Strophes and Blanks,Folios and Gatherings

WhenMarcel Proust criticized the excessive mystery of symbolist poetryin his 1896 essay Contre lobscurite, Mallarme could well have replied that suchobscurity was, in his view, the only acceptable goal of modern literature.24 Instead,he asserted bluntly, in Le Myste`re dans les Lettres, that our contemporaries donot know how to read. He proceeded to characterize the act of reading in severaluntranslatable sentences that hint at the way LApre`s-midi dun faune, in particular,can be opened to formal analysis:

Lire / Cette pratique / Appuyer, selon la page, au blanc, qui linaugure son ingenuite,a` soi, . . . Virginite que solitairement, devant une transparence du regard adequat, elle-meme sest comme divisee en ses fragments de candeur, lun et lautre, preuves nuptialesde lIdee.25

The passage is strikingly saturated with the very synonyms for the theme of chas-tityvirginity, ingenuity, candorthat occur in the Eglogues clouded nar-rative of a fauns desirous pursuit of two nymphs, one more chaste than the other.In LeMyste`re dans les Lettres,Mallarme brings these synonyms for sexual purityunder a single master-symbol. It is the virginal blankness of the page, he suggests,that can, under the transparency of an adequate scrutiny, be seen to articulatethe fragments of a text into a nuptial proof of the Idea. Elsewhere, he empha-sized the structural importance of the blank spaces that articulate the strophes withinhis poems: the intellectual armature of the poem is concealed andhas itsplaceholds fast in the space that isolates the strophes and amidst the blanknessof the paper, signicant silence that it is no less beautiful to compose than theverse.26 Taken together, these two references to the blanks that isolate poetic stro-phes on the page can suggest a way to read through the surface sexual story ofLApre`s-midi dun faune and discover the deeper drama of linguisticmaterial beneath.

In this poem, the armature intellectuelle of blanks separates the 110 linesinto strophes whose precise proportional and symmetrical relationships are rein-forced, on the one hand, by a careful use of punctuation and, on the other, by atypographical distinction between roman type and italics in quotation marks.There is no doubt that a certain obscurityas Proust would have itinitiallyshrouds any coherent pattern that might lie beneath these sectional relationships.I suggest that one essential divination (one of Mallarmes favored terms for theact of reading) is necessary if we are to recognize that the symmetries, the punctua-tion, and the typography all demarcate an armature best portrayed as the gath-ered feuillets of a book. If the structural blanks between strophes are taken as stand-ins for blank folios (that is, blank versos of printed rectos, or vice versa), and strophicdemarcations by typography and punctuation with no intervening blank space areseen, concomitantly, to operate as direct turns from recto to verso on a single



1. Pictorial representation and bibliographic diagram of the book.

folio, we can begin to gather the poems array of strophes and blanks on the printedpage into an orderly rythmos of folios and bifolios.

Figure 1 illustrates the book form that emerges from this reading of the in-tellectual armature of LApre`s-midi dun faune. As the diagram shows, the virtualbook is enfolded by an outer bifolio representing the rst and last strophes. Withinthis cover, so to speak, the internal strophes fall into a structure that expandsincrementally from a single folio, to a single bifolio, to a gathering of two bifolios.27

Perhaps this synoptic representation already risks, in its clarity and simplicity, over-balancing our experience of the virtual book too far toward xity. I suggest,however, that the exquisite interplay in this poetic morceau between structure andprocess, uidity and form, can only be sensed if we begin, at least, by attributingto it enough substance to imagine taking it up and reading it folio by folio withLE FAUNE.


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The strenuous attention to detail in the reading that follows is inevitable giventhe complex interplay of its threefold motivations. My primary purpose is, quitesimply, to show that the texts various themes, gures, and classical references arefar more intensively structured than we might expect from the non- (and anti-) for-malist tendencies in the Mallarme literature. This task, intricate enough in itself,is further complicated by a few attempts to question the genetic trope under whosesway only a predictable deepening of symbolist mystery has been seen in all thepoets revisions. But in addition, I have tried both to enact the dilemmas of readingsuch a structure brings into focus, and to interpret that enactment. It is hard to pre-vent the simultaneous pursuit of all three tasks from becoming, at times, laborious.The worthy result, in my view, is a new appreciation of the agonistic material di-mension of Mallarmes poetic practice, and a newly precise sense of the way thispractice enfolds the central linguistic crisis of its historical moment.

An Echo of Virgil;a glimpse of the Book

Figure 2 shows the rst seven lines of the poem, the rst folio of thevirtual book. A particularly close reading of this folio is necessary, for not onlydoes it eciently introduce many central themes and problems, it also eectivelypregures the entire livre-form in its own poetic structure.

Mallarme once wrote that The fabrication of the book, as the ensemble thatwill unfold, begins with a single sentence.28 In the rst sentence we readers aregiven to speak withasthe faun, Mallarme commences the fabrication of thispoem-livre by recomposing the opening of Virgils rst Eclogue:

1 Ces nymphes, je les veux perpetuer.

Si clair,2 Leur incarnat leger, quil voltige dans lair3 Assoupi de sommeils touus.

Aimai-je un reve?

4 Mon doute, amas de nuit ancienne, sache`ve5 En maint rameau subtil, qui, demeure les vrais6 Bois memes, prouve, helas! que bien seul je morais7 Pour triomphe la faute ideale de roses

[Those nymphs, I want to perpetuate them. So clear / Their light carnation, that it vaultsinto the air /Weighed down by tufted slumbers. Did I love a dream? /My doubt, accumula-tion of ancient night, completes itself / Inmany a subtle branch, which, remaining the real /Trees themselves, proves, alas! That all alone I was oering myself / For triumph the idealfault of roses.]



1 Ces nymphes, je les veux perptuer.

Si clair,2 Leur incarnat lger, quil voltige dans lair3 Assoupi de sommeils touffus.

Aimai-je un rve?

4 Mon doute, amas de nuit ancienne, sachve5 En maint rameau subtil, qui, demeur les vrais6 Bois mmes, prouve, hlas! que bien seul je moffrais7 Pour triomphe la faute idale de roses

LAprs-midi dun fauneglogue

LE FAUNE

1 r

2. Folio 1 recto of the virtual book.

Virgils poem, a dialogue between two shepherds, begins with Meliboeus, who isleaving into exile, bidding farewell to Tityrus, who remains in the pastorallandscape:

Tityre, tu patulae recubans sub tegmine fagisilvestrem tenui musam meditaris avena;nos patriae nis et dulcia linquimus arva.nos patriam fugimus; tu, Tityre, lentus in umbraformosam resonare doces Amaryllida silvas.

[Tityrus, you, under the spreading, sheltering beech, / tunewoodlandmusings on a delicatereed; /Weee our countrys borders, our sweet elds, / Abandon home; you, Tityrus, lazingin the shade, / Make woods resound with lovely Amaryllis.]29

In fact, the very rst words spoken by the faun encapsulate the problem Mallarmeconfronts in this Eglogue. The precise rhythmic congruence between his Cesnymphes, je . . . and Meliboeuss Tityre, tu . . . highlights a fundamental dier-ence in pronominal position. Even though Meliboeus anticipates exile from hispastoral world, he can still name his friend and address him directly with thesecond-person pronoun, tu. The faun, by contrast, can only indicate obliquely,as ces and les, the objects he sees.

Tu does, in fact, appear in Mallarmes rst sentence, but it is separated fromthe je, secreted within the last verb, perpe-tu-er. This verb, a new addition tothe Eglogue (the Improvisation had emerveiller), has often served as a mot clef for a


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reading that takes the perpetuity of artistic representation as the poems maintheme.30Once the delicate rhythmic nod toVirgil is recognized, however, it is betterto recognize Mallarmes cunningand surprisingchoice of verb as a discretesignal that his pastoral book will be motivated, in large part, by a search for theje-tu address that has conventionally held lyric poetrys most compelling promiseof direct speech.

The recomposition of Virgil continues, at several levels, through the rst fo-lio. While Meliboeus is able to repeat Tityruss name and the tu four lines later,when the faun returns to the rst person in line 3, he can only restate his relationshipto his objects as a question about a dream. In the next four lines, the adaptation ofVirgil shifts to the imagery, as the faun senses a confusion between his own doubtand the subtle branches of real trees. Sheltering trees, tegmine fagi, are atrope of Virgilian pastoral; Tityruss posture, lazing in the shadelentus in um-brais the conventional posture of the mode. But the faun cannot laze beneaththe trees of his pastoral world because he is unsure where their shade leaves o andthe shadows of his own doubt begin.

Drawing his rst strophe to a close, the faun, likeMeliboeus, turns tometaphor.But unlike the shepherd, who can celebrate the pastoral music that lls the woodswith the beauty of the nymph Amaryllis, he can only bemoan the displacement ofhis desired nymphs by roses, an inadequate metaphorical compensation for hisobjects of desire (faute ideale). The trope of pastoral piping is strikingly absentfrom this rst folio. But Mallarme nely emphasizes the fauns loss of pastoral secu-rity with the verbal music of the last line, whose two dark o sounds, faute androses, contrast poignantly with the felicitous echo (resonare) in MeliboeussAmaryllida silvas.

Rhythmically, the broken lines and internal blank spaces of this rst folio com-pose an emergence of prosody from formally unconstrained speech. After the rstline, broken ten syllables plus two, line 2 coheres as a pure alexandrine articulatedin hemistichs. But then line 3 is also broken: line 2 hangs amidst irregular surroundsas an isolated conventional vers. After the free-oating question completes line 3,lines 4 and 7 then frame the poems rst rhymed couplet of alexandrines, 5 and6both, like line 2, classically articulated in hemistichs.

In terms of the poems primary motivations, such an incremental congealingof prosodic order represents a loss: amove from immediacy of utterance to themedi-ation of literary craft. A similar progression can be said to characterize the faunsvisual relationship to his world: the clear rosiness collapses into the obscurity oftufted slumbers, leading the faun to question the reliability of his sight; after sightdims further with Virgilian shadows, the desirable hue, incarnat is displaced bymetaphorical roses. But at a deeper level, we should recognize that seeing, as anaspect of internal imagery, can standmetaphoricallyas inMallarmes response toProustfor our own eorts of reading. And if we attune our eyes to the typographicalprogression of the rst seven vers we can glimpse, in their emerging prosodic order



on the page, a preguration of the virtual book that will enfold the whole ensuingstruggle to recover lyric voice.

In a recurring trope in Mallarmes criticism, the rhyme between two vers in apoem is described as a small-scale reection of a similar, higher-level rhyme be-tween two feuillets in a book. Scherer, summarizing this idea, quotes from theLivre sketches:

Two symmetrical folios can serve to bring about rhyme already, as if in echo of two vers. . . , if, on the one hand, the verses eectively rhyme from one folio to the other, or, on theother hand, the content of one folio bears, more generally, a resonance with the content ofthe other comparable to the sonorous, yet mysterious, relationship that rhyme establishesbetween two words.31

When the rst feuillet of the faun poem is brought under an adequate transparencyof regard, the sonorous relationships and virginal blanks that determine theprogression to a single, framed rhyming couplet can be recognized as an advanceecho of the poem-books internal foliation. The emergence of the rhyming alex-andrines, that is, exactly pregures the incremental expansion from folio to bifolioto gathering (see the diagram in g. 2): one nearly complete vers begins, followedby approximately two together (lines 23), followed by precisely four (lines 47).Deepening the numerical congruence, the framed couplet in lines 56 can be seento echo, at the higher formal level, the bifolio (f6f7) within the gathering of fourfeuillets. Even more deftly, the line-breaks in the rst and third vers allow the pair oflines, 2 and 3, which begin together at left, to end at right in an extra, o-kilterrelation sonore between clair and lair that echoes, structurally, the poem-books rst internal bifolio (f 3f4).

In other words, with blanks between lines that pregure the armature ofblanks between pages, Mallarme opens his pastoral morceau by composing an elab-orate, secret, prefatory counterpoint between rhyme-rhythm and structuralrythmos. The seemingly improvisatory revoicings of Virgil that commence hisEglogue-livre thus actually oer, under closer study, the nest imaginable exempli-cation of his reverence for le Vers as the dispenser, organizer of the game of pages,master of the book.32

A Literary Fugue

The esoteric structural counterpoint between two levels of formalrythmos on the rst feuillet could conceivably be understood as an oblique, purelyvisual reection of the iconic musical topos of Virgilian pastoral. But it seems bestto recognize that by restricting himself, at a more immediate level, to a purely verbalecho of Virgils music, Mallarme saves his explicit confrontation with the thematicmusic of pastoral piping for the series of strophes that follow the poems rst struc-tural blank. In lines 851, the theme of ute-playing enters into the negotiations


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with pastoral lyricism. And through the formal disposition of his treatment of thistheme across various strophes, Mallarme now brings the musical-textual possibili-ties of counterpoint right to the surface of the poem, creating a far more explicitformal-thematic interplay than the secret structural rhymes just seen betweenvers and feuillets.

As has often been noted, Mallarmes portrayal of the faun as a desirous musi-cian draws on Ovidian myth: Pan chased the nymph Syrinx to the waters edge,where the water nymphs saved her by turning her into a stand of reeds, fromwhich Pan constructed the pipes he played to compensate for thwarted desire. Thismythological background easily blends with the Virgilian aspects of MallarmesEglogue, for Virgils shepherds often take up their pipes in compensation for lostlove, and they also often invoke Pan. But in Mallarme, after explicitly identifyinghimself as a pastoral piper three times, all in passages that admit to the elusivenessof the desired nymphs, the fauns fourth and nal reference to his utethe onlytime, in fact, that he names it as Syrinxlaunches the second half of the poemby casting the instrument aside. Rejectingmusics supposed compensation for thwarteddesire, along with the Virgilian trope by which pastoral music becomes metaphori-cal for the art of poetry itself, he thus makes clearMe, proud of my noise, I amgoing to speak [line 54, my emphasis]that he does not want to pipe in memoryof the nymphs, he wants to contact them directly with the lyric voice.

Matching the mastery with which he pregures the poem-book in the rstseven vers,Mallarme composes the fauns threefold confrontation with the deceptivepromises of pastoral music into the poetic equivalent of a musical form. It seemsthat Paul Valery, in his many discussions with Mallarme, may have received somersthand knowledge of this formal conceit, for he is the only commentator to bothname the form and specify its principal themes:

The poembecame [through revision] a sort of literary fugue, in which the themes interweavewith prodigious artistry; every resource of poetics is employed to sustain a triple develop-ment of images and ideas. An extreme sensuality, an extreme intellectuality, an extrememusicality, combine, intermingle, or oppose each other in this extraordinary work.33

Indeed,Valerys literary fugue proves beautifully accurate as a structural descrip-tion of one large section of the poem, lines 851. Across these lines, three themeswhich I will identifymore simply as seeing (Valerys intellectualite), feeling (sensu-alite), andmusicare treated in precise fugal proportions: a subject of norma-tive length presents the themes, followed by an augmentation (the same thematicpattern doubled) and a diminution (halved). But after the pivotal rejection of theute in lines 5253, fugal proportions (the patterns of an explicitly musical poeticrythmos) are also discarded. The second half of the poem, in which the fauns pursuitof voice gains focus in the absence of pastoral piping, proceeds as a structure oftypographically distinct pairs of sections in one-to-one proportional relation-



3. Folio 2r (folio 1v is blank). S marksthe subject of the literary fugue.

shipsin other words, in a structure more simply and directly analogous to thesymmetrical feuillets in a book.

In truth, both of Valerys terms are important to understand the formal role ofthe whole contrapuntal section. In this literary fugue, the fugal patterns thatproject the theme of music into the formal rythmos of the poem also begin to ar-rangerecall Benvenistes robeits strophes, and its armature of blanks, into afoliated structure. To perceive this double formal eect, we must imagine turningthe rst feuillet, and begin to read the internal foliation. As I have shown in gure3, the blank between lines 7 and 8 can be represented as a blank folio, 1v. Indeed,we might take the rst, isolated word on folio 2r, Reechissons, as a linguisticmark of the page-turn. The collective rst-person imperative serves as a pronomi-nal pivot from the fauns opening soliloquy to his rst voicing of the second-persontu. At this point, tu does not yet address the nymphs, it turns back on thefaun himself.

In gure 3, I indicate the main themes that articulate the fteen lines into thesubject of the literary fugue. With boxes, I highlight in particular the contrastbetween seeing and feeling most fundamental to the fauns pursuit of personal voice.In all three sections of the fuguesubject, augmentation, and diminutionthiscontrast is followed by two further thematic occurrences: an explicit reference to thefauns music, then a disappearance of the desired objects, seemingly caused by themusic in each case. A closer reading of the subject can prepare the explorationof the contrapuntal intricacy with which Mallarme handles these themes.

8 Reechissons . . .

ou si les femmes dont tu gloses9 Figurent un souhait de tes sens fabuleux!


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10 Faune, lillusion sechappe des yeux bleus11 Et froids, comme une source en pleurs, de la plus chaste:12 Mais, lautre tout soupirs, dis-tu quelle contraste13 Comme brise du jour chaude dans ta toison?14 Que non! par limmobile et lasse pamoison15 Suoquant de chaleurs le matin frais sil lutte,16 Ne murmure point deau que ne verse ma ute17 Au bosquet arrose daccords; et le seul vent18 Hors des deux tuyaux prompt a` sexhaler avant19 Quil disperse le son dans une pluie aride,20 Cest, a` lhorizon pas remue dune ride,21 Le visible et serein soue articiel22 De linspiration, qui regagne le ciel.

[Let us reect . . . or if the women you are glossing / Figure a wish of your fabulous senses! /Faun, the illusion escapes of the eyes, blue / And cold, like a spring in tears, of the morechaste one: / But, the other all sighs, would you say she contrasts / Like warm breeze ofday into your eece? / Ah no! from the immobile and weary swoon / Suocating withwarmth the cold morning if it struggles, / Murmurs no water save that my ute pours /Into the thicket sprinkled with chords; and the only wind / Besides the two pipes quick toexhale before / It disperses the sound into a dry rain, / It is, at the horizon not stirred by aripple, / The visible and serene articial breath / Of inspiration, which regains the sky.]

After the pronominal pivot, the faun begins to develop the doubt from therst feuillet. Juxtaposing two verbs, gloser (to gloss, or speak about) and gurer(to gure or represent), he eciently distills, before the more structurally signicantcontrast, the problematic relationship between speech and visual representation.Making a palpable attempt to gain control over the discourse by naming himselfat the start of line 10, he then attempts, inquiringly, to describe his two desirednymphs, in four lines punctuated as two plus two.

Characterizing the more chaste one as an escaping illusion of blue eyes (1011), he leaves no doubt about the poverty of vision as a means of sensuous gratica-tion. By asking himself whether the other, all sighs, might be like a hot breezeinto his eece, he poses heat against coldness; an intimate approach against anescape to distance; lower-bodyanimalsensation against seen illusions. Here,the 1875 Improvisation had the more precious lautre au tie`de aveu for lautretout soupirs, and brise du jour vaine for chaude. Not only is the 1876 languageclearer and more formally incisive, but the revision adds to the readers experiencea brief foretaste (or foresense) of the breathy passion that might lie in store with thefull attainment of spoken music. With the new adjective (chaude), that is, thefauns words actually materialize the sighs and the hot breeze of the day as acrescendo of sibilant consonants: brise du jour chaude, sjch.

The faun answers his inquiry with an abrupt denial, Que non! And now,for the rst time, he recognizes the metaphorical deceptions of his own musical



performance. This pastoral ute explicitly replaces speech, in the murmurs ofthe waters it pours forth. The nely chosen verb, verser (to pour), relatesthe deceitful music directly to the art of poetryversitself. And while wemight now, belatedly, recognize Virgils resounding woods in the description ofthe thicket as sprinkled with chords, Mallarmes liquid adjective arrose clearlyechoes the roses the faun recognized, just prior to the fugue, as false substitutesfor the envisioned rosy esh. Pastoral piping is identied as just as treacherous, inits proliferation of metaphors, as the poetic imagination that reduces sensuous ex-perience to faulty symbols.

The disappearance that completes the fugue subject negates or confuses the ideaof breathing in particular. In the last mention of the ute (line 18), the deux tu-yaux (two pipes) are said to exhale. As the sound disperses, the fauns experi-ence of his world becomes visual again: an articial breath of inspiration becomesvisible at the horizon and regains the sky to draw the subject to a close (lines 2022.) Some general rhythms can be discerned through the syntactical haze: inspira-tion, which can also mean inhalation, answers the earlier exhalation of the ute,and brings this now-disembodied breath under the shadow of the adjective arti-cial ( line 21). Articial inspiration, it seems to me, sums up the recognitionacross the whole passage that poetic craftat least in its traditional pastoral form,infused with metaphors and metaphorical musicsoers only an insubstantial ar-tice of experience.With a nal rise of breath to the sky (ciel), the fauns languageregains the upper reaches of the imagination from which the search for sensuoussubstances began.

If we imagine turning the page, we arrive, after the blank folio 2v, at folio 3r,which begins the fugal augmentation and the poems rst internal bifolio. Ingure 4, I show the complete augmentation as it appears on both 3r and 4r (theblank between lines 37 and 38 becomes the blank 3v), so that its thematic patternscan be compared with gure 3.

The themes identied on the right in gure 4 show how precisely Mallarmehas adapted fugal process to literary form. In the rst, somewhat clouded instanceof an arithmetic principle that will later become more precise and more unmis-takeable, the proportions can be said to be exact to within one line: the augmen-tation, doubling the thematic pattern of the fteen-line subject to twenty-nine lines,enfolds the diminution, distinguished by the italics, which halves the pattern to(approximately) seven lines. I have given, for these two later sections, one furthertheme. The location by the shores, clear in both the augmentation and the diminu-tion, further strengthens their formal relationship.

23 O bords siciliens dun calme marecage24 Qua` lenvi des soleils ma vanite saccage,25 Tacite sous les eurs detincelles, CONTEZ26 Que je coupais ici les creux roseaux domptes


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4. Folios 3r and 4r (2v and 3v are blank). The brokenvertical (lower image) marks a fold; D=Diminution,A=Augmentation.

27 Par le talent; quand, sur lor glauque de lointaines28 Verdures dediant leur vigne a` des fontaines29 Ondoie une blancheur animale au repos:30 Et quau prelude lent ou` naissent les pipeaux31 Ce vol de cygnes, non! de nades se sauve32 Ou plonge . . .

Inerte, tout brule dans lheure fauve33 Sans marquer par quel art ensemble detala34 Trop dhymen souhaite de qui cherche le la:35 Alors meveillerai-je a` la ferveur premie`re,36 Droit et seul, sous un ot antique de lumie`re,37 Lys! et lun de vous tous pour lingenuite.

[O Sicilian shores of a calm marsh, / Which in envy of sunbeams my vanity ransacks, /Tacit beneath owers of sparks, TELL That I was cutting here hollow reeds tamed / By talent;when on the glaucous gold of distant / Greenery dedicating their vine to fountains / Undulates an animal



whiteness at rest: / And that at the slow prelude in which the pipes are born / This ight of swans, no!of naads save themselves / Or plunge . . . Inert, everything burns in the tawny hour / Withoutindicating by which art together ed / Too much union desired by the one who searchesfor the A: / Thus I will awaken to the rst fervor, / Erect and alone, beneath an antiquewave of light, / Lilies! And one of all of you for ingenuity.]

The contrapuntal elaboration begins with an even stronger linguistic gesturethan the pronominal pivot that opened the subject. With an apostrophic invocation(line 23), one of the most powerful devices of lyric utterance, the faun addresses hispastoral setting: O Sicilian shores of a calmmarsh. This overt nod to Theocritus,Sicilian founder of pastoral poetry, is a typical Virgilian device, as in the fourth andsixth Eclogues: Sicilian muse, lets sing a nobler song; My playful muse rst choseSicilian verse: / She did not blush to dwell among the woods.34 But rather thaninvoking a Sicilian muse, the faun can onlyin his vanityclaim to be ran-sacking Sicilian shores, which remain tacites (silent, but also hidden or im-plied) beneath owers of sparks (line 25). In the simplest reading, we might saythat dazzling reections on the water conceal the shores from his eyes. But a deepermeaning suggests itself if we look again to Sainte-Beuves Etude sur Virgile.

In his preface, a Discours given on his accession to the chair of Latin poetryat the Colle`ge de France in 1855, Sainte-Beuve celebrates literary tradition withthe metaphor of a torch (ambeau) passed from the Greeks to the Romans,through the Renaissance, to the modern era. More precisely, in his view, only afew etincelles from this torch have survived the vicissitudes of modern literaryextravagance; it is the job of careful classicists to make sure they are never extin-guished.35 ForMallarmes faun, if the eurs detincelles are the sparks of traditionso cherished by classicist critics, they do not guide his eyes into historical vistas, theyrather obscure the Sicilian shores from his ransacking vision. The overwrittenpages of modern literature, we might say, intervene, blindingly, between thisspeaker and the Theocritean muse of his art. He can only beg the silent shores toTELL, in a plea for aural recovery, at least, of prelapsarian voice.

The poems rst change of typography suggests that the shores respond to thesummons to speak. But the seven-line diminution begins in the rst person ratherthan the third person of narrative, and while it starts in the past tense (coupais)it soon shifts to the present (ondoie, line 29). The faun can only pretend to hearthe originary Sicilian voice as he himself revisits the thematic pattern of the fuguesubject. After marking his location by the shores of the marsh (cutting hollowreeds, creux roseauxanother echo of deceptive roses), and giving a few de-tails of the setting (the greenery, the fountains), he glimpses an undulating vision(line 29).

The contrast between seeing and feeling is encapsulated in just two words:blancheur animale. Whiteness, a seen color, relates back to the vision in thesubject of the blue-eyed nymph; through its gurative meaning of purity or inno-cence it also recalls the chastity of that prior illusion. The adjective animale, on


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the other hand, adds a palpable frisson to the visionas if the whiteness is suddenlyrecognized as desirable eshand a link back to the sighing nymph in the subject,who seemed to sigh into the eece of the fauns own animal half. (Given that themotion of ondoie at the beginning of this line also contrasts with the stasis ofau repos at the end, we might see the two-word contrast as dividing the wholealexandrine into two hemistichs, which brings this moment more closely into linewith the proportional diminution.)

This contrast, too, leads immediately to music. Now both the type of music,a slow prelude, and the instrument, the pipes, enter the italicized telling,dispersing both vision and sensation (lines 3031). Unable to decide whether hehas seen swans or naiads, the faun is equally confused about theirmanner of escape.If associated with ight (vol), the verb se sauve would most strongly matchthe sense of upward disappearance in the subject; the obscure objects, however,might instead plunge into the waters beyond the shores.

The augmentation that enfolds the diminution resumes with the return to ro-man type. In a transitional passage, the faun notes that the burning heat of noon(lheure fauve) erases all trace of the desired objects, and he identies himself inmusical terms as the one who searches for the A (line 34). One way of relatingthis passage to the fugal process would be to look back to the beginning of theaugmentation, and note that the seven italicized lines are, in eect, inserted betweentwo verbsconter (to tell) and marquer (to mark or indicate)that juxtaposespeech and visual representation much in the way that gloser and gurer didin the same position in the subject (two of these four verbs, gloses and contez,already appeared in the Improvisation; gurent and marquer were both addedin 1876). In this wider view, the italicized telling, with its (ctive) implications ofspeech indicated visually by the typography, can be seen to gure or mark thepoems motivating dichotomy in the textual presentation itself.

Mallarme further strengthened the fugue structure in 1876 by adding the wordsouhaite to the line before the augmented version of the contrast (line 34), match-ing the position of souhait in the subject (line 9). The augmented contrast, justas strongly marked by punctuation, begins with the faun asserting, in three linesto a full stop, that he will awaken to his rst fervor, erect and alone, beneath anantique wave of light. It is as if he claims the visual stage of the poem, beneath aspotlight of tradition. Such boldness, it seems, inspires a sudden lurch to metaphor.Exclaiming the name of a white owerLys!and relating it to his own inge-nuite or innocence, the faun underlines its symbolic link, through the blancheurin the diminution, back to the chaste nymph of the subject.

38 Autre que ce doux rien par leur le`vre ebruite,39 Le baiser, qui tout bas des perdes assure,40 Mon sein, vierge de preuve, atteste une morsure41 Mysterieuse, due a` quelque auguste dent;42 Mais, bast! arcane tel elut pour condent



43 Le jonc vaste et jumeau dont sous lazur on joue:44 Qui, detournant a` soi le trouble de la joue,45 Reve, dans un solo long, que nous amusions46 La beaute dalentour par des confusions47 Fausses entre elle-meme et notre chant credule,48 Et de faire aussi haut que lamour se module49 Evanouir du songe ordinaire de dos50 Ou de anc pur suivis avec mes regards clos,51 Une sonore, vaine et monotone ligne.

[Other than this soft nothing by their lip sounded out, / The kiss, that in low tones theperdious ones assures, / My breast, virgin of proof, attests aMysterious / Bite, due to someaugust tooth; / But enough! such a secret elected as condant / The vast, twin reed onwhich under the azure one plays: / Which, returning to itself the trouble of the cheek, /Dreams, in a long solo, that we amuse / The beauty of the surrounds with false / Confu-sions between itself and our credulous song, / And to make just as high as love modulates /To vanish from ordinary dream of back / Or of pure ank followed by my closed gazes, /A sonorous, vain and monotonous line.]

After the blank folio 3v, the second half of the contrast appears on 4r, in fourlines to a colon, 3841. The faun resumes, obscurely, in midthought: other thanthis sweet nothing by their lip sounded out. Perhaps the line refers back to thective telling, in acknowledgment that the lip of the shores actually said noth-ing. But deeper formal implications can be recognized by reading these lines as amultiple chiasmus around the fauns reference to his breast (Mon sein). On oneside, we read of the lip and the kiss, on the other, of the bite and the tooth;also, the guilty overtones of perdes on one side contrast with the purity ofvierge; nally, baslowon the side of the lip opposes augusteaugust,or highon the side of the tooth. Altogether, two more animal types of contact,the kiss of a (lower?) lip and the bite of an (upper?) tooth, here intensify the sensual-ity of the oral/tactile conjunction previously given in breezy sighs.

With an abrupt ejaculationMais bast!in the same place as Que non!in the subject, the faun turns, again, to pastoral piping (line 43). As in the diminu-tion, the theme ofmusic in the augmentation includes both the instrument, the vasttwin reed, and what it plays, a long solo. The dream attributed to the reedthat we amuse / the surrounding beauty with false confusions / between itself andour credulous songblends music and setting much in the way the ute that mur-mured into the chord-sprinkled thicket did in the subject. And as before, the syntaxnow becomes particularly baroque: the reed, it seems, also dreams . . . to make ashigh as love modulates / to vanish from the ordinary dream of back / or of pureank pursued by my blind looks / a sonorous, vain and monotonous line (lines4551).

Reading through the verbal tangles, we can recognize in this disappearance (tovanish) both the turn to vision (regards) and the rising motion (aussi haut)


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suggested in the subject (visible soue . . . regagne le ciel) and also in the diminu-tion (vol de cygnes . . . se sauve). Perhaps the odd ascription of vision to blindor closed eyes (line 50) adds a note of confusion similar to the indistinct whitenessin the diminution.With a negative turn similar to the articial breath that closedthe subject, the fugue ends with an acknowledgment that artistic modulations ofsensuous desires into representational or musical lines can only be vain andmonotonous.

From subject to augmentation, the faun has made some progress in his attemptto secure presence and clarity within language. The contrast between seeing andfeeling initially appeared within a description of the nymphs and featured the pro-nominal prevaricationta toisonof internal dialogue. In the later, expandedcontrast, not only is the faun himself staged, lilylike, in light, but he claims, withthe rst-person Mon sein, amore centered bodily experience. In the formalmodelof the book, this cohering of pronominal security has the eect of opening the rstfold within the internal pagination. We might say there is something gravitationalabout the corporeal armation of the rst person, as if the very verbal texture ofsuch personal utterance attains a delicate weight somewhat like the fabric of Ben-venistes robethe substance that, falling as it will, imparts its own folded form.36

Such metaphors aside, perhaps the larger implications of this rst inner foldfor the dispositional rythmos of the whole Eglogue can be sensed once we note that itappears as a strange absence, or signicant silence, as Mallarme might have it,between the fauns descriptions of himself in the contrasting terms of seeing andfeeling. In the second, sensuous half of this contrast, the terms of oral experience,kiss and bite and tooth and lip, have gained particular specicity. At this point,however, these oral attributes and activities still remain the property of some othermysterious mouth. To read on is to discover that the chiasmus after this rst visi-ble fold actually pregures, in formed language itself, the fauns true (and moretruly substantive) goal: the conjunction of his own lower lip and upper tooth in audible,passionate speechwhich can only be attained by discarding the pastoral ute andbreaking free of fugal form.

The Gathering Aroundthe Central Fold

Turning the page, we begin reading the second half of the poem withthe lines on folio 5r, gure 5. This folio is strongly related in textual form and lin-guistic detail to folio 8v, its companion on one bifolio. I will begin by reading inorder and then demonstrate the relationships that eect the foliation later.

To begin the gathering of two bifolios, the faun speaks the pronoun tu to anexternal other for the rst time. But the addressee is not yet a true second per-son, rather it is his ute, the Syrinx. In rejecting this instrument des fuites, he



52 Tche donc, instrument des fuites, maligne53 Syrinx, de refleurir aux lacs o tu mattends!54 Moi, de ma rumeur fier, je vais parler longtemps55 Des desses; et par didoltres peintures,56 leur ombre enlever encore des ceintures:57 Ainsi, quand des raisins jai suc la clart,58 Pour bannir un regret par ma feinte cart,59 Rieur, jlve au ciel dt la grappe vide60 Et, soufflant dans ses peaux lumineuses, avide61 Divresse, jusquau soir je regarde au travers.

5r

5. Folio 5r (folio 4v is blank).

could well be said to reject fugal form as well, for etymologically, fugue derivesfrom the Latin fugere, to ee. Indeed, line 53 can suggest an explicit recognitionof the ensnaring artices of the fugal form associated with the Syrinx, for lacs,often translated as lakes, can also mean snare or snares (le lacs or leslacs).37

52 Tache donc, instrument des fuites, o maligne53 Syrinx, de reeurir aux lacs ou` tu mattends!54 Moi, de ma rumeur er, je vais parler longtemps55 Des deesses; et par didolatres peintures,56 A` leur ombre enlever encore des ceintures:57 Ainsi, quand des raisins jai suce la clarte,58 Pour bannir un regret par ma feinte ecarte,59 Rieur, jele`ve au ciel dete la grappe vide60 Et, souant dans ses peaux lumineuses, avide61 Divresse, jusquau soir je regarde au travers.

[Try then, instrument of ights, o malign / Syrinx, to reower at the lakes where you awaitme! / Me, proud of my noise, I am going to speak at length / Of the goddesses; and byidolatrous paintings, / From their shadow lift again the girdles: / Then, when from thegrapes I have sucked the clarity, / To banish a regret by my feint put aside, / Laughing, Iraise to the summer sky the empty bunch / And, breathing into their luminous skins, avid /With drunkenness, until evening I stare through.]

The escape from the snares of music is marked immediately in the language.Line 54 begins with the strongest rst-person pronoun, Moi, and continues with


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verbal musicde ma rumeur erthat audibly reclaims the murmure initiallydisplaced onto the ute.38 The proud anticipation of speechje vais parlerbecomes conated with a direct, lascivious seeing, which anticipates a sensuouspromise in vision far richer than any chaste illusion. Like idolatres peintures,the address the faun desires will be a moment of undress: in a line with obvioussexual overtones, he will enlever des ceintures from the ombre of these god-desses.39 Still, at this point speech and sight remain wishful ambitions, in the futuretense. In the last ve lines of the folio, it becomes clear that he has not yet brokenfree of metaphor. A bunch of grapes becomes the focus of a temporally confusedfantasy. Shuttling strangely between past and present, he claims to suck the grapesand to look through their skins, in some drunken equivalent of the pleasures ofnoisy speech and prurient sight.

However weak his linguistic hold on reality may still be, and however troubledby regret (an immediate rebuttal to the anticipation of pride), the faun has, none-theless, made signicant progress in pronominal power. The rst-person construc-tion je vais parler continues through enlever to several more: jai suce, jel-e`ve, je regarde (the participle, souant, which adds breathing, a crucialcomponent of lyric speech, to the list of activities, is also implicitly a rst-personaction). Prior to this folio, and after the wish of the opening line, we have read onlytwo such clear rst-person verbs, both in the past tense. The rst, je morais (line8), was reexive and tinged with woe; the second, je coupais (line 26) occurred inthe italics of the tale ostensibly told by the shores. Every other prior action hasbeen attributed to other beings or objects, including the faun as a virtual secondperson (tu gloses) and his attributes (ma vanite saccage). In its new pronominalforce, this rst folio of the gathering represents a further stage in the gradual coher-ence of the poems language around the speaking self.

Turning the page, after the blank folio 5v, we arrive at folio 6r, gure 6. Thetwelve-line strophe in italics and quotes is introduced by a one-line apostrophe inroman type in which the faun calls on the nymphs to swell again with MEMO-RIES. This interpolated apostrophe, in fact, both underlines the main point of thewhole palindromic second half and deepens the dynamic move toward the cen-tral crux. Invocation, a summoning of the world through speech, is precisely the aes-thetic motivation of this whole climactic series of strophes.

62 O nymphes, regonons des SOUVENIRS divers.63 Mon oeil, trouant les joncs, dardait chaque encolure64 Immortelle, qui noie en londe sa brulure65 Avec un cri de rage au ciel de la foret;66 Et le splendide bain de cheveux disparat67 Dans les clartes et les frissons, o pierreries!68 Jaccours; quand, a` mes pieds, sentrejoignent (meurtries69 De la langueur goutee a` ce mal detre deux)70 Des dormeuses parmi leurs seuls bras hasardeux;



62 nymphes, regonflons des SOUVENIRS divers.63 Mon oeil, trouant les joncs, dardait chaque encolure64 Immortelle, qui noie en londe sa brlure65 Avec un cri de rage au ciel de la fort;66 Et le splendide bain de cheveux disparat67 Dans les clarts et les frissons, pierreries!68 Jaccours; quand, mes pieds, sentrejoignent (meurtries69 De la langueur gote ce mal dtre deux)70 Des dormeuses parmi leurs seuls bras hasardeux;71 Je les ravis, sans les dsenlacer, et vole72 ce massif, ha par lombrage frivole,73 De roses tarissant tout parfum au soleil,74 O notre bat au jour consum soit pareil.

6r

6. Folio 6r (folio 5v is blank).

71 Je les ravis, sans les desenlacer, et vole72 A` ce massif, ha par lombrage frivole,73 De roses tarissant tout parfum au soleil,74 Ou` notre ebat au jour consume soit pareil.

[O nymphs, let us swell again with diverse MEMORIES. / My eye, piercing the reeds, stungeach immortal / Neck, which drowned in the wave its burn / With a cry of rage to the sky of the forest; /And the splendid bath of hair disappeared / Into the clarities and the shivers, o jewels! / I run up;when, at my feet, join together (bruised / By the languor tasted by this evil of being two) / The sleepersamidst their own arms in disarray; / I take them up, without disentangling them, and y / To thishilltop, hated by the frivolous shade, / Of roses {exhaling} all perfume to the sun, / Where our sportis similar to the consumed day.]

The capitalization of SOUVENIRS marks a formal relationship that gainsclarity from the book model. The only other internal bifolio of this livre (folios 3and 4) similarly begins with an apostrophe (O bords . . .) in which one word,CONTEZ, is capitalized. Furthermore, like that earlier apostrophe, this laterinvocation to the nymphs is an altered pastoral convention. The archetypeWhere were ye nymphs, when Daphnis lay dying?appears in Theocrituss rstIdyll. It is echoed in Virgils tenth Eclogue: Where were you, Naiads, in what grovesor glades, / As Gallus languished in ignoble love?40 This lineage of pastoral invo-cation exemplies the elegiac tendencies of the modeits attempts, as Paul Alpersputs it, to mitigate a loss by poetic practice.41 In adapting this tradition and ini-tiating an internal bifolio that is now free of the snares of music, the faun invokesthe nymphs to help him recover a direct lyric address to them.


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Although the faun does speak directly to the nymphs here, he cannot yet layclaim to the second-person pronoun present in both classical prototypes. Intimateaddress is only implicit in the collective imperative regonons. This verb picksup the image of breath into empty skins from the previous folio, as if breathyspeech itself, not yet attained, might eventually allow shared memories to cohere.When the ensuing italicized strophe (g. 6) begins with a strong rst-person posses-sive, Mon oeil, it is as if the fauns eye attains physically penetrative force. Pierc-ing the reeds, and spearing each neck of the desired bodies, his burning gazehas found, in place of the metaphorical grape skins that ended the previous folio,the true sensuous objects. The rich sensuality of the rst few lines of the foliothesplendid bath of hairstimulates an apostrophic exclamation, o pierreries!But sight, again, cannot be upheld as the ultimate goal: this energetic ejaculationcan only record the disappearance of his sensuous vision.

Folio 6 further strengthens in pronominal force, the principal engine of thefauns linguistic progress.While rst-person claims were distributed throughout thevers on folio 5, now, for the rst time, rst-person actions appear, twice, at the begin-nings of lines. With Jaccours, the faun lays claims to his rst physical motiontoward the nymphsindeed, his rst decisivemotionwithin these perennially con-fusing pastoral spaces. After describing the intertwined sleepers he nds at hisfeet, he makes a second line-leading claim, Je les ravis, which literally capturesthe nymphs as grammatical objects as he seizes them physically.

At the end of the section, he ies up to amountaintop to sport with the objectshe has nally grasped, eectively claiming for himself the rising motion that playeda negating role in the fugal rst half. As if to underline the progress he has madesince the poem beganthe nymphs already were linguistic objects, after all (je lesveux), but only of vision and fantasythe folio endswith another image of roses.Now separated from the nymphs, no longer frustrating metaphorical substitutions,these read like real roses, perfuming the air of themountainside on which sensualsport consumes itself like the day.

Turning the page, we reach the peak of the crescendo of pronominal agencyand the consummation of the desire to speak. No blank intervenes between the ital-ics and the roman type that follows. Translated to the livre form, this gives a sectionarticulation with no intervening blank pagea direct turn from recto to verso onthe same folio, 6r to 6v. The seven lines in gure 7, folio 6v to 7r, enact a linguisticcrux best represented as a fold, the preeminent Mallarmean image. Here, unlikebetween f3v4r, the fold no longer opens between text and textual absence; it ismade palpable through the woven texture of language itself.

75 Je tadore, courroux des vierges, o delice76 Farouche du sacre fardeau nu qui se glisse77 Pour fuir ma le`vre an feu buvant, comme un eclair78 Tressaille! la frayeur secre`te de la chair:



75 Je tadore, courroux des vierges, dlice76 Farouche du sacr fardeau nu qui se glisse77 Pour fuir ma lvre an feu buvant, comme un clair78 Tressaille!

79 Des pieds de linhumaine au coeur de la timide80 Que dlaisse la fois une innocence, humide81 De larmes folles ou de moins tristes vapeurs.

6v

7r

6 7v r

la frayeur secrte de la chair:

7. Open bifolio showing 6v and 7r. The central fold.

79 Des pieds de linhumaine au coeur de la timide80 Que delaisse a` la fois une innocence, humide81 De larmes folles ou de moins tristes vapeurs.

[I adore you, wrath of virgins, o erce / Delight of the sacred naked burden that slides /To ee my lip drinking re, like a lightning-bolt / Thrills! the secret terror of the esh: /From the feet of the inhuman one to the heart of the shy / Let be relinquished at once aninnocence, humid / With foolish tears or with less mournful vapors.]

The declaration of love, Je tadore, is the only time the faun speaks to thenymphs directly, with the je-tu address that gives themost potent promise of vocalpresence in lyric poetry. Rhythmically, the ensuing lines demand a reading aloud:the rst few words, through vierges, form an octosyllable, a verse-rhythm closelyassociated with oral tradition and ancient drama.42 Then, from the apostrophe, odelice, the prosody dissolves in a literally delicious rush to the climactic conso-nants of Tre- and the slide of the double s into the diphthong -aille. The doubles is only the last of a hissing chain of sibilantsvierges, delice, farouche, sa-cre, se glissethat claim for the lyric voice the breathy sounds sensed earlier in


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the brise du jour chaude; even more palpably, the labiodental fricatives invierges, farouche, fardeau, fuir, le`vre, feu, and buvant bring thelower lip and upper tooth of the literary fugues last thematic contrast together inthe fauns own mouth. Claiming the sighor the kissof lyric address formy lip instead of their lip (the only two instances of this word in the poem), hegives thrilling voice to materialized speech in its maximal intimacy.

Just into the central line of seven, after an exclamation mark, the rush of lyri-cism stumbles as the faun admits to a secret terror. Now the language palpablyturns a corner. The prosody falls into order again, as he separates and species thetwo bodies in a parallel structure that clearly marks the hemistichs of the alexan-drine: Des pieds de linhumaine / au coeur de la timide. Unlike the tumblingelisions that led to the central thrill, the enjambment between lines 80 and 81stutters on the blandest vowel: humide / De larmes. The liquid l and the close-lipped m accumulate, quenching the breathy hiss as we read out, through the musi-cally crowded pairing moins tristes, to the dissipation of passion and linguisticpresence into vapors.

Reading for verbal music, we share with the faun a sense of breathy vocal pres-ence that surges to an ultimate owering on Tressaille! We share, too, after thispivotal moment, the feeling of retreat: the congealing of prosodic order, the mutingof the poetic music, the deceleration. As a composition for mouth and ear, the pas-sage seems, briey, to consummate the desire for speech that has motivated theentire form. But while we may want to believe, with the faun, that his climacticlyric music, in lling out his own corporeal character, has also attained intimatecontact with the world, the text will not, in fact, allow such unreective naivete. Forbeyond the word that seems like the climactic arrival, the rush of breath delivers usto a clause whose aective cast perturbs any sense of lyric wholeness.

The exclamation mark may insist on the thrilling sounds in Tressaille, butthis verb, here, is transitive. At its sonorous climax, the phrase remains grammati-cally incomplete. With the given completion, we nd ourselves carried beyondvoiced presence to a darker, more inward realm of experience.

Any one-sided sense of this climactic turn would sell it short. To speak of a se-cret terror right after a thrill of vocal presence might seem to undercut suchpresence with thought. But it could be, conversely, that the central fold marks theplace where thought and feeling truly merge, in a tangible, near-graspable distilla-tion of all the elusive promises of the unitary symbol. It could be, in other words,that even if we seem to be brought up, with the faun, against a recognition thatspeech, too, is trapped in illusionis vaporous rather than substantivewe mightstill be permitted, eetingly, to celebrate the vibrant expression of this illusionthrough mouth and body.

Still, in the awareness of the inexorable formal rythmos of turning pages, itseems impossible to escape fully (or forget completely) the sense of loss that tingesthis central crux. In slipping ineluctably from a reading of dramatic passion to a



mentally mediated reading, we are, I think, forced to acknowledge that the surren-der to the music of these lines has only been possible through a willful blindness toproblematic shadows of meaning. Looking back, once we begin to scrutinize thetext more carefully, pensively, we nd that it is shot through with reminiscences thatundermine the lyric address.

Even in this moment, for example, the nymphs remain vierges. The themeof chastity, associated throughout the poem with seeing, carries over into the at-tempt to arm the carnal promises of speech. And the very sensation of breathand tooth on lip, we must now notice, derives its energy from the ight of thesevirginal nymphs from vocal contact, much in the way that the illusion of eyes andthe swans (or naiads) and the bath of hair ed the fauns sight. Finally, even theclimactic conjunction of je and tu, saved for this moment, nds only an unin-dividuated courroux of virgins and an unspecied fardeau nu. These twonouns encapsulate, synesthetically, the balancing act Mallarme has prepared forthe reader. We hear, in passing, sonorous ashes of a rosy hue: cour-roux; fard-eau.But with a closer look, not only dowe stumble on the strangely negative overtoneswrath, burdenbut we also realize that this address to the incarnat onceonly seen has not succeeded in separating the naked burden into a unitary object.Indeed, the very attempt to specify a single tu for intimate linguistic union occurswithinperhaps even causesthe withdrawal of language into the ordered pros-ody of the printed poem and the folded virtual feuillets of its book-like form.

The contrast between seeing and feeling, previously a thematic oppositionacross a blank folio and a fold, becomes, in this climactic turn, a superimposedopposition between ways of reading. In gure 7, I have represented the fearfulclause astride the central fold, in order to show the precise rhythmic touch on asingle word that resonates tantalizingly with one of Mallarmes invocations of thebook as a form. The structural focus provided by this poems central folding, thatis, allows for a new, surprisingly claried understanding of the one brief referenceto the book I previously singled out as most suggestive in light of Benvenistesthoughts on rythmos (I give a slightly awkward translation, to retain word order):

Even to the format, pointless: and, vainly, concurs that extraordinary, like a wing gatheredin but ready to open, intervention of folding or rhythm, initial cause that a closed page contains asecret, silence remains there, precious and evocative signs lead, for the mind, to everythingliterarily abolished. [my emphasis]43

After the fauns burst of lyric passion, the completion of line 78 can indeed be seen(and sensed) as an intervention of rhythm. Nine syllables divided three plus threeplus threela frayeur / secre`te / de la chairframe the adjective secre`te be-tween the two nouns. Se-cre`-te, a symmetrical vowel structure, becomes the pivotalword in the pivotal clause. This poem-book literally contains a secret exactly atthe intervention of folding.

Indeed,Mallarmes gloss on the book format has further resonance with this


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reading experience. The comparison of le Livre to a ight of wings strengthensone allegorical association of the vol de cygnes seen earlier, in the poems rstitalicized tellingindeed, the cygnes reappear here as written signes.44

When Mallarme gives these signes a subtle inection of vocalityevoc-atoiresand then leads, through a turn tomind (lesprit) to the nal words, toutlitterairement aboli (all is abolished into literature) the whole succession comes toseem like an oblique gloss on the experience of reading, as the faun, through thecrux of his Eglogue. After formal analysis, in other words, it seems that this tangledinvocation of le Livre is not just a future-oriented fantasy about an impossibleOeuvre, but alsolike the other hints at rhymes between vers and feuilletsa trace in Mallarmes criticism of a book already completed in the intellectualarmature of this poem.45

Still, it is probably better to recognize that the precise moment of linguisticfolding is unlocatable, secreted within the faunlike experience of reading. For now,we need to close the central bifolio, acknowledging that only silence remains(silence y demeure, as Mallarme puts it) after the eeting claim to speech, and com-plete the exposure of the formal gathering that centers on this intervention offolding, or rhythm. If we imagine turning folio 7, we nd that the central utterancein roman type leads directly, with no intervening blank space, to an eleven-linestrophe in italics and quotes. Again, in the virtual book this implies a turn directlyfrom 7r to 7v. From this point, we read on versos until the end.

To illustrate what it would be like to continue reading in sequence, I haveshown folios 7v and 8v, alongside their companion blank folios, 8r and 9r, in gures8 and 9. In reading these last internal folios, however, I will open out the two bifoliosof the gathering, to show their symmetries. Figure 10 opens out the central bifolio,folios 6 and 7, such that 7v appears to the left of 6r.

82 Mon crime, cest davoir, gai de vaincre ces peurs83 Traitresses, divise la toue echevelee84 De baisers que les dieux gardaient si bien melee:85 Car, a` peine jallais cacher un rire ardent86 Sous les replis heureux dune seule (gardant87 Par un doigt simple, an que sa candeur de plume88 Se teignt a` lemoi de sa soeur qui sallume,89 La petite, nave et ne rougissant pas:)90 Que de mes bras, defaits par de vagues trepas,91 Cette proie, a` jamais ingrate se delivre92 Sans pitie du sanglot dont jetais encore ivre.

[My crime, it is to have, gay from vanquishing those treacherous / Fears, divided the dishevelled tuft /Of kisses which the Gods were keeping so well mixed: / For, hardly was I going to hide an ardent laugh /Beneath the happy folds of a single one (holding / With a little nger, so that her feathery candor /Became tinted by the passion of her sister who ares up, / The little one, naive and not blushing:) / Butfrom my arms, defeated by some vague deaths, / This prey, forever ungrateful, breaks free / Withoutpity for the sob with which I was still drunk.]



82 Mon crime, cest davoir, gai de vaincre ces peurs83 Traitresses, divis la touffe chevele 84 De baisers que les dieux gardaient si bien mle:85 Car, peine jallais cacher un rire ardent86 Sous les replis heureux dune seule (gardant87 Par un doigt simple, afin que sa candeur de plume88 Se teignt lmoi de sa soeur qui sallume,89 La petite, nave et ne rougissant pas:)90 Que de mes bras, dfaits par de vagues trpas,91 Cette proie, jamais ingrate se dlivre92 Sans piti du sanglot dont jtais encore ivre.

7v

8. Folio 7v (8r is blank).

93 Tant pis! vers le bonheur dautres mentraneront94 Par leur tresse noue aux cornes de mon front:95 Tu sais, ma passion, que, pourpre et dj mre,96 Chaque grnade clate et dabeilles murmure;97 Et notre sang, pris de qui le va saisir,98 Coule pour tout lessaim ternel du dsir.99 lheure o ce bois dor et de cendres se teinte100 Une fte sexalte en la feuille teinte:101 Etna! cest parmi toi visit de Vnus102 Sur ta lave posant ses talons ingnus,103 Quand tonne un somme triste ou spuise la flamme.

8v

9. Folio 8v (9r is blank).


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82 Mon crime, cest davoir, gai de vaincre ces peurs83 Traitresses, divis la touffe chevele 84 De baisers que les dieux gardaient si bien mle:85 Car, peine jallais cacher un rire ardent86 Sous les replis heureux dune seule (gardant87 Par un doigt simple, afin que sa candeur de plume88 Se teignt lmoi de sa soeur qui sallume,89 La petite, nave et ne rougissant pas:)90 Que de mes bras, dfaits par de vagues trpas,91 Cette proie, jamais ingrate se dlivre92 Sans piti du sanglot dont jtais encore ivre.

62 nymphes, regonflons des SOUVENIRS divers.63 Mon oeil, trouant les joncs, dardait chaque encolure64 Immortelle, qui noie en londe sa brlure65 Avec un cri de rage au ciel de la fort;66 Et le splendide bain de cheveux disparat67 Dans les clarts et les frissons, pierreries!68 Jaccours; quand, mes pieds, sentrejoignent (meurtries69 De la langueur gote ce mal dtre deux)70 Des dormeuses parmi leurs seuls bras hasardeux;71 Je les ravis, sans les dsenlacer, et vole72 ce massif, ha par lombrage frivole,73 De roses tarissant tout parfum au soleil,74 O notre bat au jour consum soit pareil.

6

7

7 6

r

v

v r

10. Open bifolio showing 7v and 6r.

The italicized strophe after the central fold, 7v, forms a direct response to theone before, 6r. Each begins with a rst-person possessive, Mon oeil and Moncrime (the change of the rst from Mes yeux in the Improvisation nicely exempli-es formal clarication through revision), and proceeds through three linked lines,with similar internal structures of commas and clauses, to a strong point of punctu-ation. Later in both strophes, another striking similarity of punctuation is apparent:the poems only two instances of parentheses (new to this version) delicately rein-force the visual symmetry between the two folios.

This congruence of structure gives emphasis to the linguistic contrast appropri-ate to the two folios dierent formal positions. The rst-person possessive that be-gins 6r initiates the crescendo of pronominal force towards the lyric climax. 7v, bycontrast, begins with moral judgment instead of agency: it owns up to a crime.Then, after some oblique, past-tense rst-person constructionscest davoir di-vise, a` peine jallais cachermost actions in the later strophe become attrib-uted, in reexive verbs, to the objects of the discourse. One such third-person re-exive, Se teignt, now comes to occupy the line-leading position formerly



claimed by Jaccours, and is followed by another reexive, sallume. In directresponse to his earlier claim to seize the nymphs with the words Je les ravis, theynow escape, se delivre, from his defeated arms.

The later folio also continues, and deepens, the poems underlying reectionon the act of reading. The central turn in language involved, in part, a settling intoordered prosody, which was related to the attempt to specify the nymphs. Now, inidentifying his crime as one of division on 7v, the faun elaborates on the associ-ation between the bodies in the poem and the poetic language in his mouth. Headmits having divided a disheveled tuft of kisses. In the central outburst, the sen-suous fricatives materialized the contact between lower lip and upper tooth asa lyric kiss. The fauns crime, then, which was signaled by the settling intoprosodic order, was to divide the beautifully mixedbien meleeoral sensa-tions of lyric speech in the search for meaning. Now, attempting to be more preciseabout this crime, he touches again on lost oral pleasures: hardly was I going tohide an ardent laugh / beneath the happy folds of one of them. The image of aspasm of laughter into happy folds has obvious sexual implications, but it canalso be read as a gure for the joyous lyricism breathed into the open fold of thesingle central bifoliothat is, into the replis heureux dun seul feuillet.

In the parenthesis on 7v, the faun turns to the language of visual descriptionand deepens his remorse with a retrospection on the other side of the divided expe-rience of reading. The whiteness of one nymph is described with a metaphor, can-deur de plume, feathery whiteness, that recalls the plume of the writer, thepen that makes the marks that seek, vainly, to capture sensuous experience on thepage. The naive nymph, it seems, is not blushing, ne rougissant pasa col-oristic echo of his earliest vision of esh (incarnat) and of the climactic echoes(-roux and fard-), now recognized as beyond the grasp of language.

Although the faun tries to hold onto his desirous illusion, and to rekindle pas-sion with a single nger, the prey inevitably escapes. Given that our experienceas faunlike readers has been so compellingly composed into the poem, we couldwell recall hereMallarmes summons to treat his poems as pieces at the keyboard,active, measured by feuillets. We might ask, in other words, whether this is, in fact,our single nger, poised on the outer edge of the central bifolio, reluctantly closingit even as we try to recall the promise of rosy presence in the lyric address, alreadyfaded into innocent marks on the white paper, litterairement aboli.

If we restore the central bifolio and turn folio 8 (let us avoid sobbing with thefaun), wewould see 8v and the blank 9r, gure 9. As before, I will refer inmy analysisto the open bifolio, gure 11, showing 8v to the left of 5r.

93 Tant pis! vers le bonheur dautres mentraneront94 Par leur tresse nouee aux cornes de mon front:95 Tu sais, ma passion, que, pourpre et deja` mure,


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v r

93 Tant pis! vers le bonheur dautres mentraneront94 Par leur tresse noue aux cornes de mon front:95 Tu sais, ma passion, que, pourpre et dj mre,96 Chaque grnade clate et dabeilles murmure;97 Et notre sang, pris de qui le va saisir,98 Coule pour tout lessaim ternel du dsir.99 lheure o ce bois dor et de cendres se teinte100 Une fte sexalte en la feuille teinte:101 Etna! cest parmi toi visit de Vnus102 Sur ta lave posant ses talons ingnus,103 Quand tonne un somme triste ou spuise la flamme.

52 Tche donc, instrument des fuites, maligne53 Syrinx, de refleurir aux lacs o tu mattends!54 Moi, de ma rumeur fier, je vais parler longtemps55 Des desses; et par didoltres peintures,56 leur ombre enlever encore des ceintures:57 Ainsi, quand des raisins jai suc la clart,58 Pour bannir un regret par ma feinte cart,59 Rieur, jlve au ciel dt la grappe vide60 Et, soufflant dans ses peaux lumineuses, avide61 Divresse, jusquau soir je regarde au travers.

8 5

8

5r

v

11. Open bifolio showing 8v and 5r.

96 Chaque grenade eclate et dabeilles murmure;97 Et notre sang, epris de qui le va saisir,98 Coule pour tout lessaim eternel du desir.99 A` lheure ou` ce bois dor et de

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The Formal Rhythms of Mallarmé´s Faun