Les gossips de Mallarm; Athenaeum 1875-1876.

by Henri Mondor; Lloyd James Austin

Review by: Robert Greer Cohn
MLN, Vol. 79, No. 3, French Issue (May, 1964), pp. 330-331
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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M L N

330

Les gossips de Mallarme; Athenaeum 1875-1876. Textes inedits presentes et

annotes par Henri Mondor et Lloyd James Austin. Gallimard, Paris, 1962.

ONE may wonderwhytheselittle literaryand artisticnotices

117 pp.
Mallarm6 wrote for a Britishmagazine (togetherwith their approximate
translationsplus some reproductionsof art worksmentionedtherein,etc.)
should be published in volume form. The Mallarmistewill be pleased to
have them at all-nothing is likely to seem too trivial to the scholarand gratefulthat his poet is favoredby this kind of attention. Few others
will care and, on the whole, thereis littlehere to boost the general reputation of the author. Nor is there anythingof importanceto help us in
the understandingof his work.
Still, the man himself appears ever more attractivewith each new
revelation of this sort. This is a veryhuman, very real, and verygentil
Mallarm6. How kind he is, how eager to see the worthwhilein the production of even an avowed enemylike Barbey d'Aurevilly,so differentin
his style and aims fromhimself. One marvels at the graciousnessof his
effortto bring out the virtuesof Zola (who was so ungracious in his reverse treatmentof his friend): " chacun admire la puissance et l'exactitude du po&e et de l'analyste. Aux yeux d'un critique attentif,cette
oeuvre marque un des points de repere les plus singuliersdans l'6volution
moderne du Roman . . . Etonnant dosage d'invention et de realit6, etc.
. . ." (p- 69).

The solid realism, the freshmodernityof Mallarme's views are evident

in other such passages " Les vues d'ensemble,qui ne sont pas exprimees
par l'ecrivain [Theodore Duret], ressortent,pour le lecteur,de la parfaite
coordination des faits: et c'est ainsi qu'un

ouvrage . . . reste, dans sa

simplicitevoulue et savante, une oeuvre d'art de la plus haute portee"

(p. 74). This " simplicitevoulue et savante" is a quality whichpermeates
Mallarme's own writing,even the obscurer poems, despite the opinion
of many criticsto the contrary.It is the verybase of his aesthetic," une
clairvoyancedirecte du simple" (" Crayonne au theatre") . Of course
there are in addition the complexitiesof his refinedimagination,but the
point is that he is continuouslyaware of the naYvelyvisible world about
him; he assumes that the worthwhilereader will take that for grantedin
him, and he goes on fromthere to make the most of it. Richard, in his
Univers imaginaire de Mallarme, has seen this aspect of him very well,
calling him the " Chardin of our literature"; it can hardly be repeated
too often to offsetthe prevalent notion of him as a precious, abstract
"idealist."
For example, anyone can see that in the following passage about a
Manet painting, Mallarme is enthralledwith the " thisness" or " thinginess" of our world as revealed in the work of his impressionistfriends
(note particularlythe " a la fois solide et vaporeux "):

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M L N

331

Titre: Le Linge. Sur un fond de verdure et d'atmospherebleuissante

qui borne un jardin parisien,une dame en bleu lave, par jeu, ce qui de son
linge ne seche pas encore dans l'air transparentet tiede: un enfant
emerge des fleurset regarde la lessive maternelle. Le corps de la jeune
femmeest entierementbaigne et comme absorbe par la lumiere qui ne
laisse d'elle qu'un aspect 'a la fois solide et vaporeux, ainsi que le veut le
plein air 'a quoi tout le monde vise aujourd'hui en France . . . toute une

nouvelle fa~on de percevoiret de peindre qui va etre celle du continent,

avant peu d'annees" (p. 71).
As in everyaestheticmatteron which he touched critically,Mallarm6
here reveals a sure grasp of what is importantand durable. For the quite
obvious reason: he had it in himself.
Stanford University

ROBERT

GREER COHN

John Cruickshank (editor), The Novelist as Philosopher, Studies in French

Fiction 1935-1960 (London: Oxford University Press, 1962. 257 pp.).

TWENTY years ago Sartre wrote that " le roman contemporain,avec

les auteurs americains,avec Kafka, chez nous avec Camus, a trouv6 son
style." This collectionof excellent studies is somethingof an exploration
of an importantaspect of that " style." A total of ten novelistsare treated
and Mr. Cruickshankbegins the book with a veryperceptiveand nuanced
introduction,which amountsto a surveyof the historyof ideas during the
period. He himselfhas done the chapter on Camus, and the others are
as follows: Ernest Beaumont on Bernanos, Cecil Jenkins on Malraux,
Martin Esslin on Queneau and Beckett,John Weightman on Sartre and
Robbe-Grillet,GeoffreyHartman on Blanchot, Carlos Lynes on Cayrol
and Maurice Cranstonon Simone de Beauvoir. This is an able group of
criticsindeed, and their collaboration has produced a book that is both
admirably serviceable as an introduction to the contemporaryFrench
novel and also writtenat a high intellectuallevel withoutcondescension
or compromise.
It would seem fruitlessto quarrel over the choice of novelists. Of the
two classed as " precursors,"Malraux would have been hard to avoid.
He is actually only a few scant years older than Queneau, Sartre and
Beckett,but, as a novelist,he distinctlybelongs to the thirtiesand, before
his Gaullist phase, if it can be called that,exerciseda great deal of influence on youngerwritersand intellectuals. Bernanos is a bit surprising,
however-even Mr. Beaumont has had to allow that he has not " in the
strictsense had any successors."He was doubtlesschosen forhis perfervid
moral commitmentand his role of inquieteur, but as a force in contem-

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