Mallarmé and the "Monstre d'or"

More clearly perhaps than any other writer, Mallarmé has long divided the ranks of literary criticism in France into two uneasy groups. The first, predominantly academic in origin, concerns itself with the exegesis of the most hermetic of the great French poets. The second, on the other hand, is apt to ignore such attempts and, instead of a meaning, to seek to define the obscure experience of the author as found, as it were, beyond the sense, in his work seen primarily as a sign and not an object complete in itself, as an act and not an expression. We pass, then, abruptly from one critical language to another, from the subtleties of textual analysis to the often tendentious, but no doubt more exciting discourse of psychological description as practiced notably by Blanchot and Poulet. A recent publication is the highest achievement of this latter approach; indeed, by dedicating L'Univers imaginaire de Mallarmé to Georges Poulet, Jean-Pierre Richard underlines for us his own critical parentage. In a thesis whose thought is as brilliant as its style, he studies the phenomenology of the poet's perception, scrutinizes the mirrors, fires, foam of Mallarmé's language, the fountains, ballet dancers, diamonds, and fans, with the skill of an admirable literary psychoanalyst: "Car l'objet décrit l'esprit qui le possède ..." It follows, however, that the individual poems hardly interest Richard as such and are treated less as works of art than as documents that record a vital pursuit, an "existential project," an inner drama.

The observer, faced with this apparent "dialogue de sourds," may suspect that there is some intrinsic dichotomy in Mallarmé's attitude and work; but it may well be that in reality he is an ideal example of the meeting of a poetic system and a fundamental stance in life and art, which was both intuitively attained and consciously developed. If his poems most certainly present an ornamental beauty, and the precious charm of a language whose delight is self-sufficient, they also coincide with deeper layers of meaning that Mallarmé had lucidly considered. A single form, we suggest, can be the epitome of abstract reason and the imagination, like the essential pattern of a reflective mind. (We recall that a phrase from the essay on Wagner gives a striking definition of Mallarmé's concept of the poetic: "strictement imaginatif et abstrait, done poétique"). In the hope of pointing to a pervasive symbolism of this kind, I would like to examine a motif that is found in one of his best-known poems and, by a review of parallel texts, to make some tentative observations about his language and thought as a whole. This motif we shall call the "monstre d'or."

The phrase we have chosen is taken from "Toast funèbre," the poem written in 1873 as an homage to Théophile Gautier, who had recently died. The dead poet is paradoxically a symbol, as necessary as fate, of men's happiness, of the glorious triumph of poetry; and Mallarmé offers him a toast that itself is poetry, the demential act that we yet know to be our salvation.

    O de notre bonheur, toi, le fatal emblème!
    Salut de la démence et libation blême,
    Ne crois pas qu'au magique espoir du corridor
    J'offre ma coupe vide où souffre un monstre d'or!

His toast, Mallarmé proclaims, is no attempt to recall Gautier in some magical hope of a spiritualistic reappearance. It is not for this that he raises his glass — "J'offre ma coupe vide où souffre un monstre d'or!" This last verse is harmonious in movement, ample in its evocation, and mysterious. How, we may ask, are we to interpret it? Suggestions are not lacking in the numerous articles that have been written on the poem, and I shall return to them in a moment. But first we may like to refer to an anecdote that seems to bear the stamp of truth and that brings into question Mallarmé's own reaction to this particular line; here it is, as recounted by a friend of the poet and a highly competent sonneteer in his own right, José-Maria de Heredia:

L'autre jour, dès l'aurore, j'ai vu accourir notre énigmatique Mallarmé. Sans préambule, il me dit: "Je viens de faire une pièce superbe, mais je n'en comprends pas bien le sens et je viens vous trouver pour que vous me l'expliquiez." Il me lut sa pièce. Il y avait entre autres mystérieux alexandrins celui-ci:

J'offre ma coupe vide où souffre un monstre d'or.

Cela rimait avec un sombre corridor. Pour répondre à sa confiance en mes facultés de devin, je lui donnai l'explication que voici: "C'est très clair; il s'agit d'une coupe ancienne où un artiste, Benvenuto Cellini, si vous voulez, a gravé dans l'or massif un monstre d'or qui se tord, avec une expression de souffrance." Stéphane, en m'écoutant, a bondi et s'est écrié: "Que c'est beau! Que c'est émouvant!" et il m'a quitté rayonnant et reconnaissant, en me disant: "J'ai monté dans ma propre estime, et vous, mon cher, du même coup!"

If we take this anecdote to be substantially true, are we to assume that Mallarmé was trying out on a fellow poet a new system of expression; that, having an ulterior aim in view such as might concern the structural integration of his language, he rejoiced to see that his image retained also for a sensitive reader an immediate and satisfying impact? It is impossible for us to judge with any sureness. What we must note, however, is that the majority of the exegetical critics have themselves adopted by and large Heredia's reading, even though his tone as reproduced in these lines appears to be far from serious. Thus Madame Noulet, in 1948, wrote in her commentary on the poem: "allusion, soit à une ciselure que présente la coupe que le poète tient en mains, soit, et l'on préfère ceci, au reflet concave et mouvant du fond de la coupe." Two years later, Gardner Davies came down on the side of the former of these alternatives, which was Heredia's choice also: "il est peut-être préférable cette fois-ci de prendre Mallarmé au mot et de croire à une coupe portant réellement un monstre gravé et doré." Later still, Guy Delfel, in his annotated Pages choisies of Mallarmé, agreed that "la coupe est ornée de quelque motif baroque"; while in Mallarmé et la morte qui parle, published in 1959, Léon Cellier reverted to Madame Noulet's second conjecture and surmised that the monster was a reflection: "Dans la coupe vide grimace, en ce jour funeste, le reflet du soleil."

Now, the assumption behind all these interpretations is that Mallarmé's image is basically a plastic one; that, as an ornamental poet, he is describing with intricate art an ideal glass, an elegant decorative design, which might be...