SOURCE: La Charité, Virginia A. “Mallarmé and the Elasticity of the Text.” Sou'wester 6, no. 1 (winter 1978): 1-12.

In the following essay, La Charité elucidates the ambiguous, intertextual, and elastic structure of Mallarmé's poetry.

In the poetic universe of Stéphane Mallarmé, the poet has the power to create with words, to go beyond the object by making an absolute out of language. On nearly every page of his prose commentaries on the essence of poetry, Mallarmé expresses commitment to “le Texte … parlant de lui-même” (“the Text speaking by itself,” OC, p. 663).¹ And, indeed, in his poetry, the object becomes a word which dissolves its material reference points and reveals a permanence beyond words, an authentic silence which communicates “perfect certainty” (OC, p. 446). This transformation of the real permits us to describe him as a “pure” poet.

Looking at the great diversity of Mallarmé's writing—his verse...