The leading poet of French symbolism, Stéphane Mallarmé has exercised an enormous influence both on French and on English and American avant-garde writers.
In this volume C. F. Mac
Intyre has translated forty-three of his poems, including the "Ouverture" and "Scène" from Hérodiade, which was to have been a drama in verse, and the well-known L'Après-midi d'un faune, for which Debussy composed his orchestral prelude. The French text faces the English translations, which are both true to the original and poetic.
Indeed, as Mac
Intyre suggests, Debussy is probably "one of the best guides into the mysterious realm of Mallarmé." The poet was more concerned with the music of words, their sounds and vague associations, than with their conventional meanings; one of the elements in his credo was that suggestion and evocation are of greater significance than statement. His syntax is fractious, his meaning frequently enigmatic; but the reader will find Mac
Intyre's notes helpful in savoring the translations and the original French verses.

Selected Poems of Mallarme, Bilingual Edition

Stéphane Mallarmé

Stephane Mallarme

Poetry Literature French studies, Berkeley, Calif. [u.a, 2002

United States, United States of America

Berkeley, Calif, 2002?], ©1957

Berkeley, Calif, 2000?], ©1957

2 edition, May 20, 2002

Berkeley, Calif, c1957

First, 2002