Mallarme and the Language of Ideas

St�phane Mallarm� (1842-1898) marks the emergence of a new type of writing. A close reading of his great poem "Prose (pour des Esseintes)" (1885) shows how Mallarm� is moving away from the language of philosophy, represented here by the word "Id�es," and toward a new relationship between abstract ideas and poetic textures. The true excitement of Mallarm�'s abstract ideas, and his originality, is inseparable from his verbal inventiveness and daring, which finds in poetic textures a new way of working with concepts. (HMW)