Space and Time in Stéphane Mallarmé’s "Poésies": Between Immanent Fatalism and an Imminent Outlet

Abstract

The article focuses on Stéphane Mallarmé's poetry read in time and space. If it is clear that the space-time duo, in their configuration, actively participates in the disintegration of the figure of the poet; with Stéphane Mallarmé, the metaphysical crisis of movement (powerlessness) and memory (regret) corrupts any possibility of taking advantage of the “here” and “now”. While mentioning the brilliance of an Azur  out of reach in the space and the time, an "Azure to stare at while dying of hunger” (Mallarmé, Divagations, 1889), this article shows the modalities of a sublimated quest for an “elsewhere” and a “past”, resulting in a metaphysical dissatisfaction. This failure of the transcendental quest remains in a way the failure to free oneself from one's human condition and also the failure of a poetry of the unspeakable.