From Publishers Weekly
If you suspect that Mallarme, the French Symbolist poet, wrote letters as aloof and impersonal as his chiseled verse, you are entirely wrong. His letters are playful, passionate, moody, generous, tender. They reveal both the mature poet and a sensitive, complex human being. Mallarme on childrearing: "I don't rejoice in all the charm that floats around a cradle." This selected correspondence records his months-long spiritual crisis, his languishing in the provinces where he endured a teaching job to support his family, the death of his son, his elation at securing a post in Paris, a love affair. The poet's preoccupation with music, art and literature comes across in letters to Zola, Manet, Swinburne, Claudel, Huysmans, Morisot, Whistler, Redon, Gide. Lloyd, who edited Baude laire's Selected Letters , has done an admirable job. Her nimble translations prove that Mallarme, the supreme poetic stylist, also wrote lovely prose. This is said to be the first selection in English of his correspondence. Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Book Description
It is the reading world's good fortune that St�9phane Mallarm�9's letters survived, allowing later generations an intimate look at the inner life of one of Europe's most important poets. Mallarm�9 (1842-98), often called the father of the Symbolists, has had an immense influence on the development of modern European poetry. It was his ambition to create a poetry pure of quotidian reality--autonomous, concentrated, linguistically inventive. His correspondence documents the evolution of this aim, the crafting of a poetics out of a life inescapably "real" in its pains and charms.





Language Notes
Text: English, French (translation)

FROM THE PUBLISHER

It is the reading world's good fortune that Stephane Mallarme's letters survived, allowing later generations an intimate look at the inner life of one of Europe's most important poets. The first volume of Mallarme's letters to appear in English, this selection follows the poet from childhood to his premature death. The letters from this period also tell movingly of the young poet's love affair with the woman he eventually married.

FROM THE CRITICS

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