Mallarmé's Interior Designs

This article approaches Mallarmé's poetic theory and practice via his interest in furniture and the arrangement of interior spaces. In exploring this neglected aspect of Mallarmé's writings, I seek to dispel the image of a writer whose gaze is turned away from the world we inhabit, and also to show how the human duty to 'arrange'— be it words or things — lies at the heart of Mallarmé's aesthetics. Having taken issue with the arguments of Yves Bonnefoy, who sees Mallarmé as having abandoned his pursuit of the absolute in favour of the 'futility' of everyday objects (in the Vers de circonstance), and of Daniel Oster, who sees in Mallarmé's 'minor writings' an early version if postmodernist irony at the expense of myths and grand narratives, I examine Mallarmé's interest in 'interior design' under four headings: the biographical, thematic, formal, and metaphysical. Far from disdaining objects, this Mallarmé revels in them, not in literal-minded renuciation of the quest for significance but rather with the aim of finding in even the most inconsequential piece of matter — say, a piece of candied fruit or an empty vase — a symbolic pattern that can palliate our existential anguish in a godless world.