Azure: Poems and Selections from the "Livre"

by Stéphane Mallarmé, Blake Bronson-Bartlett (Translator), Robert Fernandez (Translator)

A vibrant new translation of a modernist poet

During his lifetime, Stéphane Mallarmé (1842 - 1898) was recognized as one of the greatest living French poets. He wrote extensively on themes of reality and his desire to turn away from it, marrying form and content in revolutionary ways that departed drastically from the more tightly controlled French tradition. Despite his status as one of the first modernists, much of Mallarmé's radicalism has been lost in translation. Finally, in this new collection by Blake Bronson-Bartlett and Robert Fernandez, the magic and mastery of form and diction, so striking in Mallarmé's French verse, comes to life in English. Drawing from Poésies (1899), Un coup de dés (A Cast of Dice), and the "Livre" (the "Book"--the overarching conceptual work left unfinished at the death of the poet), this collection captures Mallarmé's true linguistic brilliance, bringing the poems into our current history while retaining the music, playfulness, and power of the originals.

Genres: Poetry

232 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2015

About the author

Stéphane Mallarmé (French: [stefan malaʁme]; 18 March 1842 – 9 September 1898), whose real name was Étienne Mallarmé, was a French poet and critic. He was a major French symbolist poet, and his work anticipated and inspired several revolutionary artistic schools of the early 20th century, such as Dadaism, Surrealism, and Futurism.

Reviews

[Edita · Rating 3 out of 5]

Soul to forehead where night cinema, o calm sister,
An autumn surging stingray-red edges,
And to your eye of tents and deserts, angels,
Climbs, in a chilly purple garden,
Faithfully, a sighing leaping waterjet, straight to Azure!
— To mellowed Azure of October,
Which mirrors in huge pools its infinite whatever
And drags, on still water whose windy
Gray heaped leaves drag agony into a furrow,
A long ray of sun behind it

[Gavin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quite simply, it's a pleasure to finally see some of "The Book" translated into English. I've long been fascinated by this work through the excellent French text via Jacques Scherer's mid-20th century Gallimard study, but longed to get a glimpse of the thing sans the filter of my own paltry reading-French. Tres Bon.