12 Mallarmé’s modernity in 1913
-
Virginie A. Duzer
Abstract
This essay discusses the consecration of Stéphane Mallarmé as a modernist icon through a careful unpacking of a series of mediatized events that led to the 1914 book edition of Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard. Journal articles, essays, public commemorations, music and ballet performances (by Ravel, Debussy, and Nijinsky), aimed at celebrating or commemorating Mallarmé, and transformed for a new generation the legacy of the poet from an obscure symbolist to the quintessential modernist icon. Duzer highlights the Nouvelle Revue Française’s central role in this orchestrated campaign, as an alternative to the rear-guard’s and the avant-garde’s reaction to the symbolist ‘end of literature’. In so doing, the Nouvelle Revue Française reinvented symbolism turning it from the tail-end of romanticism, into the beginning of the modern with Mallarmé as its central figure.
Abstract
This essay discusses the consecration of Stéphane Mallarmé as a modernist icon through a careful unpacking of a series of mediatized events that led to the 1914 book edition of Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard. Journal articles, essays, public commemorations, music and ballet performances (by Ravel, Debussy, and Nijinsky), aimed at celebrating or commemorating Mallarmé, and transformed for a new generation the legacy of the poet from an obscure symbolist to the quintessential modernist icon. Duzer highlights the Nouvelle Revue Française’s central role in this orchestrated campaign, as an alternative to the rear-guard’s and the avant-garde’s reaction to the symbolist ‘end of literature’. In so doing, the Nouvelle Revue Française reinvented symbolism turning it from the tail-end of romanticism, into the beginning of the modern with Mallarmé as its central figure.
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i
- Contents v
- List of figures viii
- Notes on contributors xii
- Acknowledgements xvii
- Introduction 1
-
Acknowledgements
- Introduction 29
- 1 Prehistoric Proust 33
- 2 Fantômas and the shudder of history 54
- 3 Inventing, collecting and classifying in the margins 72
- 4 The anxious centre 88
- 5 1913, the year of the arrière-garde? 109
-
Acknowledgements
- Introduction 123
- 6 A modernism that has not yet been 127
- 7 On situating French modernism 145
- 8 Les Caves du Vatican and the real novel 163
- 9 1913, between peace and war 173
-
Acknowledgements
- Introduction 193
- 10 Camille Flammarion’s flash-forward 197
- 11 How ‘simultaneous’ is it? 220
- 12 Mallarmé’s modernity in 1913 237
- 13 Poetry displaced 252
- 14 Behind Picasso’s pins 274
-
Part IV: Coda: on modernism, beyond France and 1913
- 15 1913, the future in the past 299
- 16 The paradox and promise of the ‘new’ French Modernist Studies 310
- Index 325
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i
- Contents v
- List of figures viii
- Notes on contributors xii
- Acknowledgements xvii
- Introduction 1
-
Acknowledgements
- Introduction 29
- 1 Prehistoric Proust 33
- 2 Fantômas and the shudder of history 54
- 3 Inventing, collecting and classifying in the margins 72
- 4 The anxious centre 88
- 5 1913, the year of the arrière-garde? 109
-
Acknowledgements
- Introduction 123
- 6 A modernism that has not yet been 127
- 7 On situating French modernism 145
- 8 Les Caves du Vatican and the real novel 163
- 9 1913, between peace and war 173
-
Acknowledgements
- Introduction 193
- 10 Camille Flammarion’s flash-forward 197
- 11 How ‘simultaneous’ is it? 220
- 12 Mallarmé’s modernity in 1913 237
- 13 Poetry displaced 252
- 14 Behind Picasso’s pins 274
-
Part IV: Coda: on modernism, beyond France and 1913
- 15 1913, the future in the past 299
- 16 The paradox and promise of the ‘new’ French Modernist Studies 310
- Index 325
