21 Stephane Mallarme Quotes

Stephane Mallarme quotes

1. J'invente une langue qui doit necessairement jaillir d'une poetique tres nouvelle, que je pourrais definir en ces deux mots: Peindre, non la chose, mais l'effet qu'elle produit.

2. L'apres-midi d'un faune.

3. La chair est triste, helas! et j'ai lu tous les livres.

4. Le monde est fait pour aboutir a un beau livre.

5. L'acte poetique consiste a voir soudain qu'une idee se fractionne en un nombre de motifs egaux par valeur et a les grouper; ils riment.

6. L'oeuvre pure implique la disparition elocutoire du poete, qui cede l'initiative aux mots.

7. Ce n'est pas avec des idees qu'on fait des vers, c'est avec des mots.

1. The flesh is sad, alas, and I have read all the books.

2. Dreams have as much influence as actions.

3. I have made a long enough descent into the void to speak with certainty. There is nothing but beauty--and beauty has only one perfect expression, Poetry. All the rest is a lie.

4. A soul trembling to sit by a hearth so bright, To exist again, it’s enough if I borrow from Your lips the breath of my name you murmur all night.

5. In reading, a lonely quiet concert is given to our minds; all our mental faculties will be present in this symphonic exaltation.

6. O naked flower of my lips, you lie! I await a thing unknown or perhaps, unaware of the mystery and your cries you give, O lips, the supreme tortured moans of a childhood groping among its reveries to sort out finally its cold precious stones.

7. The reproach that superficial people formulate against Manet, that whereas once he painted ugliness, now he paints vulgarity, falls harmlessly to the ground, when we recognize the fact that he paints the truth.

8. A throw of the dice will never abolish chance.

9. As for me, Poetry takes the place of love, because it is enamored of itself, and because this self-lust has a delightful dying fall in my soul.

10. It is in front of the the paper that the artist creates himself.

11. Yes, I know, we are merely empty forms of matter, but we are indeed sublime in having invented God and our soul. So sublime, my friend, that I want to gaze upon matter, fully conscious that it exists, and yet launching itself madly into Dream, despite its knowledge that Dream has no existence, extolling the Soul and all the divine impressions of that kind which have collected within us from the beginning of time and proclaiming, in the face of the Void which is truth, these glorious lies!

12. The world exists to end up in a book.

13. Everything that is sacred and that wishes to remain so must envelop itself in mystery.

14. The world was made in order to result in a beautiful book.