Barnes "Clip": On Mallarme & Meaning




As for “meaning,” Mallarmé explains his poem “La nuit approbatrice” to Cazalis thus:
It is inverted, by which I mean that its meaning, if there is one (but I’d draw consolation for its lack of meaning from the dose of poetry it contains, at least in my view) is evoked by an internal mirage created by the words themselves. If you murmur it to yourself a couple of times, you get a fairly cabbalistic sensation.  
The key phrase in this—and a fairly crude one by Mallarmé’s normal standards of diction—is “dose of poetry.” It makes the poetic act sound like the plying of a magic syringe. Some poor, untrained clump of words is hanging out at the track, wondering if it will ever make the grade; then along com es Mallarmé with the pot Belge and the EPO.

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